I haven't made an entry in a while cause I've been pretty busy, so I'll give a quick recap of the last few days. Saturday I got together with Matt, Kelly, Cookie, Kurt, Josh and Josh's friend Jen and we all went to the Arclight to see Kill Bill: Vol. 2. Kill Bill: Vol. 2 I found to be ok, but overall pretty disappointing in comparison to Vol. 1. While Vol. 1 was action packed, over-the-top and just in general roustingly entertaining, Vol. 2 seemed almost to have little to do with the first one. There was almost no action at all, in general it was very toned-down, and it really moved pretty slowly. In the first one, one of the things I liked was that you didn't know who these characters were or really what made them the way they were; all you really knew was that they were all ass-kickers and they hated each other. While that made them more caricatures than characters, it didn't matter because it fit with the movie being over-the-top that way. In Vol. 2, to my displeasure, there was all kinds of backstory on who these people were, how they became the people they were, why they hated each other, etc... While that was kind of interesting, with the exception of the character Budd, it wasn't satisfying in the end, and was really superfluous (Budd might have been the exception because in Vol. 1 he is almost not referenced at all, ever). Anyway, the film was still enjoyable, but really needed some tightening through editing, and it just didn't live up to the promise of the first one.
After the movie Matt, Kelly and myself stuck around at the Arclight and had dinner at the restaurant there. Matt knew one of the bartenders, and that ended up getting us a ridiculously good deal on dinner (the three of us got dinner and drinks and the bill was only $14, so we left $40 and figured it was better off going to the server than to the :evil evil corporation :evil :lol). Since the Lakers opened the playoffs against the Rockets on Saturday at the same time the movie started, I taped the game and watched it when I got home. I didn't find out what had happened beforehand, so watching it on tape was like watching it live for me (except I got to fast forward through the commercials :grin). It was one of the ugliest playoff games I'd ever seen, but the Lakers pulled out a one point win, so I was happy for that.
On Sunday I went over to my Dad's house to watch some of the other basketball games and to have dinner (and conversation, of course). We watched the Heat-Hornets game (which was surprisingly good), and then had filet mignon for dinner, which my Dad cooked himself (and which was very tasty). After dinner we watched the second half of the Timberwolves-Nuggets game (which was also pretty good), and then I went home and got ready for work the next day. Yesterday was very busy at work, as is today, and after work I rushed home to watch Game 2 of the Lakers-Rockets series. Game 2 was awesome, even though Shaq recorded his playoff career low in points. LA won easily, although it was a close game for the first 30 minutes or so. In the second half the Lakers really broke it open and ran away with it, so now LA is up 2-0 and don't play again till Friday. That's a long enough entry for now, maybe I'll write some more later.