claycle

So. When The Return of the King was released, the day before the official release, New Line Cinema held special screenings in a few select theaters around the country.

All three films screened in one day, with hour (or hour-and-a-half) breaks in between (in don't recall precisely).

The screenings were, for the first two films we all had already seen, the new extended editions, so each was over two hours long. Then there was TROTK screening (which was new to everyone).

New Line Cinema reps were there, handing out gifts. We all got three framed cells of 35mm film cut from one of the original prints of the new film. I still have mine.

It was actually quite amazing, being in a theater packed with people who all wanted to be there. It was breathtaking when the first strains of the LOTR theme played in the dark theater. And people wept openly as TROTK went through its many endings.

What stuck with me was how much the three films felt like one cohesive film when you watched them back to back.

I think we arrived at the theater around 9AM. We left the theater around 10PM (not including jaunts out across the street to grab a burger or something during the intermissions). It was grueling, but it was marvelous, too.

It constantly makes me smile, whether it’s being smart, the actors are giving perfectly calibrated performances, or the action suddenly goes wham-bam VATS over the top.

3 eps in. Happy.

Perhaps, but middle-schoolers genuinely stink to high heaven, especially after P/E. I think one can imagine more obvious/less conspiratorial reasons for showers being mandatory.

I understand the sentiment, but I reserve that disgust for this country - or more specifically for our national parties and their apparatchiks. If these geriatric nincompoops are seriously the best we, as a country, can put forward to lead us, when we are simply voting on degrees of shittiness, we are probably too far gone to recover.

If you're not holding your nose when voting for someone, you're in trouble. The two go hand-in-hand. Be suspicious of any politician who seems so good you don't feel the urge to hold your nose when you cast your vote for them.

If I have to pick one drink to take to a desert island, it's the classic Sazerac.

That is what I will want most of the time when I want a cocktail. However, I will allow a few others to enter rotation, depending on mood, time/temperature, and place:

1. Margarita.
2. Vesper.
3. Pastis.

And, finally, my embarrassing guilty pleasure (which I never order except when I am in company I know well or I am on a Caribbean island): piña colada.

As a person who has had (in the last week) three shots and a series of oral antibiotics because of a small-looking but very angry infection in my index finger from a splinter(!) that has required two trips to the doctor to (NSFL) squeeze out the pus, I can understand this. Sepsis ain't no joke and can come from the most minor wounds.

I was just at Canyon de Chelly a few months ago. It was so lovely I shed a tear.

I don't eat fast food much at all, but a couple of months ago we went into a nearby Shake Shack to get 2 burgers, 2 iced teas, and a shared order of fries.

The bill was north of $30. Not surprising when, apart from the fact the burgers were about $10-ish each, the iced tea costs $3 each for a small. 8oz of Iced tea. That's criminal.

Needless to say we learned our lesson and don't eat out fast food anymore. I can sling a mean burger at home on the stove top in my cast iron pan.

I worked for a medical imaging company that got acquired many years ago. The CFO was a nice enough guy, with the perfect blonde wife, huge suburban house, matching Lexuses for him and missus, and his son was the handsome, curly-headed quarterback with the giant fancy pickup truck (that no teenager NEEDS unless they're the spawn of cattle ranchers...) at the best high school in the county.

But, as I said, we got acquired, and the new company sent over a junior-junior (ie, just out of school) accountant to do the boring duty of running the books. Poor kid tried and tried but he just couldn't get the numbers to add up, so he went to his boss and apologized for not being able to do his first assignment. Boss took a look, cocked an eye, patted the kid on the back for doing an excellent job, and took it to legal.

Seems the CFO was just writing himself $50,000 checks once a month to fuel his lifestyle and "nobody knew it". He ended up in the prison, divorced in a hot second, and his former wife and kid skedaddled out of town before the thing even went to trial.

When looking for my last vehicle, I still needed a midsize very-light-duty truck for my business (film production), I drove the Chevy midsize truck (Colorado?) first on my checklist of trucks to drive. It was a piece of garbage (and this made me sad because I was [trying to be] open to finding an excellent US-made midsize truck). The sales guy was super-enthusiastic, of course, to the point of pushy obnoxiousness. When he asked me "HOW GREAT IS THIS TRUCK???!!!??" I was like "I wouldn't complain if someone gave one to me, but I have other trucks to test."

After test driving four other competitors, I ended up with Honda Ridgeline (which beat out my second favorite from Toyota), that I have now had for 4+ years and absolutely love it - it is a great midsize+ truck. It's kind of a unicorn in Texas (so many Fords and Dodges), but I saw a ton of them in Arizona and other Western states. Great vehicle, and it has CarPlay. Sadly, it's in the shop at the moment (I, uh, backed into a bollard, cough) and my rental is a brand-new Dodge Charger which drives like a lead brick on wheels compared to the Ridgeline. Interior finish isn't bad though...and the UI, while not CarPlay, is polished).