Coolio was in line one checkout over from me at the grocery store last Taco Tuesday.  Yeah, that's right, Coolio.

I also got my first taste of Guitar Hero on Sunday night.  Then, we played some more tonight at Taco Tues.  I think I'm hooked, and I shall be purchasing it after the 4th of July.  My only fear is that I'm going to waste a lot of time on it.

Be sure to check out the latest additions to ShowTimeMaps as well.

Today, I registered showtimemaps.com, cinemapper.com, and mapthemovie.com.  Hopefully, I'll be getting some sample data from my new data source tomorrow.  If I do, I'll try to get everything adjusted and up at the new domain name(s) within a week.  I'm aiming to have my first set of features ready to go with live data (for the LA market) by June 1st, though I may try to get it done earlier, in time for the Da Vinci Code release.

Thanks everyone for all of the suggestions.  Between those posted in the comments, in emails, and in discussion with friends, I easily had 50 to choose from.

How about cinemapper.com?

I talked with my movie data source, and it looks like it's going to be feasible to build my movie maps deal with some better data.  So, now I need your help deciding on a domain name.  Here are some names that are available:

showtimemaps.com
movietimemaps.com
movietimemap.com
cinemamap.com

Unfortunately, moviemap.com and moviemaps.com are already taken.  Let me know what you think of these, and please suggest new ones!

I've actually had some stuff to blog about lately, but my blog was experiencing some technical difficulties.  I have now fully transferred this site over to ASP.NET 2.0.  Not important to most of you.

Not to be outdone by Mark's latest gadget, I've been working on a "mashup" of my own.  Mine gets theater and movie show time data for your zip code, converts the theater addresses to coordinates, and then maps them all using Virtual Earth.  It's still in its infancy with many more features to come (hopefully).

Here it is:  http://www.flatlandmedia.com/atlas/ShowTimeMaps.aspx  (only works completely in Internet Explorer)

UPDATE:  Everything that works in IE now also works in Firefox (on a PC).  I made the popups work better, and there's a nicer close link on it now, too.  Also, zooming no longer removes the pushpins.

I non-chalantly linked to Dolph Lundgren's site in my Back from Texas post the other day.  If you missed it, I strongly suggest you go to http://www.dolphlundgren.com/ and catch up on what he's been doing since Pentathlon, which is one of my favorite movie trailers on one of my favorite mockumentary tapes (And God Spoke...).  "They created him...but they can't stop him!"

On our way home from Taco Tuesday, Jamie and I saw a strange fog with a bright light on the commercial end of Playa Vista.  On closer inspection, we saw that it was a set for a movie about 9/11.  It's a scale replica of the towers after they fell.  Truly a spooky sight to behold not far from our house.  We got a picture, but it's not real clear.

We went to see Kung Fu Hustle tonight.  It was pretty good.  It was kind of a mix between a movie, a video game, and a cartoon.  It was interesting to me how influenced it was by American culture.  As an added bonus, Wayne Knight was there watching the movie as well.  You may know him better as TV's "Newman".

We saw Ocean's Twelve this weekend.  I found it to be enjoyable, though maybe not as enjoyable as Jeff found it.  My favorite scene was the one with Topher Grace, which is all I'm going to say about that for now.  Before the movie, they played an ad from MPAA & RespectCopyrights.org.  They don't have the one I saw up on their site, but you can get the same idea from watching this ad.  It didn't strike me right away, but I realized the next day that they were trying to teach us in this 45 second ad that downloading or buying a pirated dvd is stealing, and stealing is wrong.  Then, we watched a two-hour movie which glorified stealing and never once intimated that stealing is wrong.  Now, I don't advocate downloading movies or buying pirated dvds, but I think that the people who don't want their movies stolen need to realized that they are the same people who have been teaching us through their movies that there's no such thing as right and wrong.  Am I right?

I stumbled across this blog in which the author puts up bad query letters that he has received.  In case you are like me, and didn't know what a query letter is, it's a letter that writers send to people to get them interested in reading and/or purchasing something they've written.  I can't remember if I found this via someone else's blog, or I'd give them credit.

Now, you're getting tired of me.  I saw the preview for In Good Company today for the second time.  I'm really looking forward to this one.  A friend of Clinton's at Dreamworks is going to try to get the script to me, so I can read it before I see it.  I want to see if I can imagine the movie myself without the aid of the movie.  I figure that is a skill I'll need if I ever want to be an actual producer.

In the course of the last week, I saw National Treasure and Finding Neverland.  I expected very little from National Treasure, and apart from the in-your-face, surprise-attack-style product placement, I thought it was quite entertaining, actually even good.  Cage's sidekick is really good, and the characters' self-deprecation keeps the movie from taking itself too seriously.  Finding Neverland was really quite sad, but if you don't mind that so much, the story is moving, especially when you already know the story of Peter Pan and can see it forming before the Depp's character's eyes.  If you prefer to escape sadness in movies, be warned.

Oh yeah, we have to pay $1 for parking at the ArcLight now.  Boo.

Twas an eventful Saturday.  I'm a little under the weather, so I slept way in.  Once up and showered, we picked up Clinton and headed to Quiznos for lunch.  Then, it was off to Urban Outfitters to exchange a shirt that was too small.  Next, we headed to the Grove and Farmer's Market for a little shopping.  While there, I saw an advertisement for a movie called The Machinist, which I had not heard anything about.  This really surprised me as it is scheduled for release on Friday, Oct. 22nd and it is starring Christian Bale.  I was immediately intrigued to go home and watch the trailer.  Discussing it with Clinton, the conversation turned to who would be a good actor to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, as Brosnan is only doing one more Bond film.  Clinton suggested Bale, to which I questioned his Britishness.  Clinton and Jamie (and IMDB) confirmed that he is indeed British (if Wales counts).  Here were some other names that came up for Bond potentials:  Jude Law, Ewan McGregor, Heath Ledger.  Hmm, I thought that list was going to be longer.  Clinton?  Jamie?  Am I forgetting someone?  None of these seem to quite hit the nail on the head for me, certainly not as much as Brosnan did back before he had been tapped.  However, once it was confirmed that Bale hailed from across the pond, I started to think that he might be a good pick.  Then I started to wonder why I seemed to have this affinity for Bale as an actor.  I couldn't name a single movie of his that I had seen.  I have seen the trailer for the new Batman movie, which I fully expect to be awesome.  That could have been the answer.  So, I looked up his credits on IMDB to see what else I might have seen him in.  The most recent thing I'd seen him in was Newsies, and while Jamie loves that movie, I was sure that wasn't what had done it for me.  Then I saw it, Empire of the Sun.  I saw that movie maybe as early as junior high, and I loved it.  It's a war movie and a little bit depressing, typically negatives for me in selecting movies, but something about it just really hooked me.  So, all that to say, rent Empire of the Sun, I'll see The Machinist asap and get back to you, and start getting excited for Batman Begins.

I'd like to note that for awhile there, I really didn't feel like blogging, and so I didn't.  Lately, I've been wanting to blog, but I've been quite busy working.  Today I got a little breather.  I even got to play a little Tiger Woods today and shot my best round ever, 28 under par.  I got 10 eagles in one round.  Granted, it was an easy course, but I was chipping in shots from 100 yards out.

I also finally got to see The Forgotten tonight.  I'd really been looking forward to this, because I love those can-you-trust-your-own-memory-type movies, like Memento.  We've been so busy and out of town so much that we just now made it to the ArcLight to see it, the first time to the ArcLight in months in fact.  I tell you this story not because I like to rant and rave about bad experiences, but because I always rave about all the good the ArcLight does, and I suppose I should be fair.  There were two big problems.  First, buying tickets took forever.  We didn't have to wait in line, but the guy was new and the system was not working like it was supposed to.  Their card reader couldn't read my ArcLight membership card (which I was using points from for a free ticket), and it wouldn't read my credit card.  I then had to help the employee through some of the screens to type in the card number manually.  He made some mistake, and I had to sign some error log, even though I had nothing to do with it.  Meanwhile, Clinton goes to the counter next to us and buys his ticket in about 0.23 seconds.

Next, we head into our theater and hit our seats (reserved of course), right smack dab in the middle of the first row up from the floor.  Sweet.  Everything looks like it's going to be awesome as the trailers begin.  The theater is practically empty.  I'm psyched.  But then a crazy man comes and sits right next to me.  This is the down side of reserved seats.  Some people think that they have to remain in their reserved seat even if the place is practically empty.  The guy reeks of smoke, and before the trailers are over, I can tell he's going to be trouble.  He's talking to himself in a very conversational way.  At first, I thought he was on a cell phone, but no, he was pointing out to himself how funny or scary or interesting or sad something was.  Throughout the trailers and the movie he had to respond in some way out loud to everything that happened on the screen.  The only times he wasn't talking were when he was opening his very loud bag of snacks, which were apparently very hard to open and required opening many many times during the movie.  His comments were also interrupted by throat-clearing and coughing.  Early on in the movie, I actually even shushed him.  I do not like to do this, but at this point I hadn't realized that he wasn't crazy.  Apparently he was too busy responding to something on the screen, because he did not acknowledge my shush one way or the other.  By the end of the movie, I realized that he was crazy and wished that I had gotten an employee to come in and handle the situation.  Instead, I just sat there and took it and used my extraordinary powers of focus to block him out.  I leave you with the funniest of his interactions with the screen.  At the climax of the movie, there's a chance that Julianne Moore has forgotten about her son, and all she has to do to let us know that she remembers him is to say his name.  There's tense music and a dramatic delay which is filled by my neighbor pleading with her, “Say it.  Say Sam.  That's all you have to do.  Say it!”

Clinton just emailed me this link: http://www.mgm.com/pinkpantherthemovie/home.html.  I had heard rumors that this was in the works, but I didn't realize they had made so much progress on it.  I have mixed feelings about this.  I'm a big fan of Steve Martin and an even bigger fan of The Pink Panther series.  Inspector Clouseau (er, Chief Inspector) was such a brilliant character created by Peter Sellers.  I'm worried that any attempts to revive the series by any actor, no matter how talented, are doomed to fall short.  They tried reviving the franchise with Roberto Benigni back in 1993, and it didn't work then.  Don't get me wrong; I want it to succeed, but I'm only 28 and I know all of the Pink Panther movies backwards and forwards.  Maybe in another 50 years...

OK, I'm a little late on this.  I'm going to go ahead and start at the beginning of September, because some of the movies are probably still out.

September 1 - Vanity Fair
I wasn't really planning on seeing this, but we caught it with the Siebers when we were down in Fallbrook.  It was pretty, I suppose, but there was no character that you wanted to win.  So, stuff happened, but I didn't really care about it.

September 3 - Paparazzi
This is another film that I wasn't planning on seeing, but again, in Fallbrook.  This movie was exactly the opposite of Vanity Fair.  Not pretty, but a pretty good story.  Also, it had some funny cameos, especially the one of Mel Gibson.  But, this could easily fall into the category of a renter.  The production values on the film were about what I would expect I could achieve if me and my friends ever got serious about making a movie.

September 10 - Criminal (limited)
Now we're getting into movies I haven't seen.  This may end up just being a renter for me.  It's really just a matter of whether or not Jamie and I want something to do.  The ArcLight is always fun.

September 17 - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
When I first heard about this movie, I was pretty psyched.  However, the trailer that I keep seeing leaves something to be desired.  I'll probably see it at the theater though, because if it does anything, it's going to be in the world of visual effects, which should only be enjoyed on the big screen.  Jamie can't wait for Wimbledon, which also premieres this weekend.  Even though the main character does have an almost completely awesome name (Peter Colt), I think I'll sit that one out.

September 24 - The Forgotten
Now here's the first movie that I'm really pumped about seeing.  Jamie thinks this movie looks super-scary.  I don't think it really looks as scary as it does suspenseful.  I mean, there doesn't seem to be blood or gore involved.  It's just a matter of some people messing with other people's perception of reality, which is just my kind of movie.

October 1 - I Heart Huckabees (limited)/Ladder 49
I don't like watching John Travolta, but Joaquin Phoenix tends to make some good choices as far as roles he takes in movie.  I'm hoping that it will be good enough to get me over the John Travolta thing.  Plus, John Travolta's acting isn't obviously revolting in the trailer, so maybe he won't annoy me at all.  As for I Heart Huckabees, I like the cast.  And the idea of existential detectives is a funny one.  How seriously it's all taken will eventually decide how much I end up liking it.

October 8 - Primer (limited)
This is the film from some Baylor students that went to Sundance.  The trailer seems quite intriguing to me, so I'm there.  It had no trouble beating out Taxi in my book.

October 15 - Shall We Dance?
No, we shall not.  I make it a point to not see movies with question marks in the title.

October 22 - Alfie
I never saw the original with Michael Caine, and I like the Jude Law enough to accompany Jamie to this one.

October 29 - Ray
Every time I see the trailer for this, I get excited.  I don't know the story of Ray Charles' life, and it looks like an interesting one.  Jamie Foxx's performance looks like it is going to be outstanding, and the feel of the movie just really hits the spot for me.

I think I'll stop there and pick up with November movies as they come a little closer.

Ironically, I found that the Olympics inspired me to glue my butt down on the couch and watch TV for two weeks.  I did exercise a couple of times while watching the games.  I found that the soccer games were a good thing to run to, because I knew how much harder the players on the screen were working.  It's finally over, so I can go back to my non-TV-watching everyday life, and it's none too soon, because I actually watched The Patriot on TV today.  No, not the cool one with Mel Gibson, the lame one with Steven Seagal.

Jamie and I just finished watching a documentary called Home Movie.  For those of you who enjoy docs like Trekkies and Okie Noodling, you'll definitely want to check this one out.

As I type this, I'm listening to the Garden State soundtrack, which Coop was kind of enough to send me, as it was sold out already in these parts.  I forgot to mention a couple of celebrity sightings from the ArcLight the other night when we saw Garden State.  When we arrived, there was some special screening for Shaun of the Dead, and there were several zombies walking around outside.  Inside was a tall, balding, blond comedian whose name I don't know.  I'll have to do some research.  After the movie, as we peered out across the lobby from upstairs, I spotted David Carradine.  I couldn't think of his name fast enough, and so I pointed him out as “Bill” from Kill Bill, fortunately out of his earshot.  Then, as we hung around talking in the parking garage, the diminutive Giovanni Ribisi walked by.  Actually, by the time I finished typing this, I'm now listening to The Postal Service.

I saw Monster's Ball a while back, and I can't say that it struck me as an Oscar-worthy performance.  Now, every time I see a Catwoman trailer, or pretty much anything involving Halle Berry, I can't believe that she's an Oscar winner.  I think it would haunt me if I ever won an Oscar, by some bizarre chance (very bizarre since I'm not an actor).  I'd be up there accepting my trophy, all the while thinking that it put me in the same class as Halle Berry.  Something I wouldn't be proud of.  So, to untaint the Oscar, I say we recall Berry's award.

We finally got to go see Garden State last night.  It's an artsy-indie film, written, directed and acted by Zach Braff from Scrubs.  I don't think it's been released beyond NY and LA yet, but will this weekend.  Now, I'm reviewing it, so if you haven't seen it, and don't like to be tainted, skip the rest of this. 

Here's some text to distract you from the real content, in case your eyes skip ahead and you really don't want to be tainted.

I thought it was really good--well-acted, beautifully composed, and emotionally provocative.  It is not a comedy, but there are definitely some funny parts.  The reason it isn't a comedy is probably because there are at least as many sad parts.  I was somewhat surprised that Jamie loved it.  There are a lot of ways that you could say it's depressing, but it's not without hope.  I think all of these things--funny, sad, depressing, hopeful--help to make it seem more real.  For me, it was a reminder of how people misconstrue what a successful life is all about.  It made me sad, because of the people I know that never made it out of that world.  I'll probably see it again.  The soundtrack is excellent.  It came out yesterday, I think, and it's already sold out.

(Fixed spelling of provocative from procative.  Left this note so that Mark's comment would make sense.)

We always have time to blog whenever nothing is going on.  Then, when we have exciting news, we don't have the time.  Ben & Jamie Dudley were supposed to be coming out to visit the 4th-11th.  Jamie was supposed to be working non-stop through the 3rd.  I got a call a couple of weeks ago from Ben who broke the news that they had just bought a house and were going to close on it and move into it instead of coming out to Cali.  What a jerk.  Since Jamie was super-busy, I decided to keep it on the down-low, and plan a little anniversary extravaganza surprise.  We had already gotten the hook up from Toni for tix to the Crowder/Mercy Me/Smitty concert in San Diego.  Jamie already knew that we were going to meet her parents, Marianne, and Jeff at the Prado for our annual dinner there before the show.  She also knew that we would be heading back up to LA on the 4th to get ready for Ben & Jamie's arrival that night.  Instead, we went to dinner and the show, which was a lot of fun.  The adults stayed out front for most of the show, but us kiddos hung back in the bus and Tiki Lounge with the band.  It was a good time of roasting forbidden marshmallows and sausage on a stick while catching up on the stories of Waco and the road.

After the show, instead of heading back to Fallbrook, we went to the W in downtown San Diego.  It was a very relaxing hotel with all the amenities.  Jamie awoke the next morning to huevos rancheros in the room.  We walked down to the GasLamp district and checked out Urban Outfitters and the Z Gallerie.  I was tempted to get a t-shirt at Urban that said, “Everybody loves a Jewish boy”, mostly because I thought it might help me to get ahead in Hollywood.  I resisted.  We grabbed some lunch at Hennessey's, a pub frequented by Jeff, where I got a chili dog and a Guinness.  Mmmm.  We got back to the hotel in time for Jamie's appointment at the spa, which she'll have to blog about.  I headed up to the “Beach”, which is a sandy area on the roof of the hotel where I spent my time reading “The Bourne Identity”.  It's nothing like the movies.  (The same can be said of “Bourne Supremacy”).  That night, we ate at the hotel restaurant Rice, which was nice, though my meal of prosciutto wrapped salmon left something to be desired.  We headed back up to our room, where we had cookies and milk delivered to our room, while we watched The Last Samurai.  We checked out the next morning and headed up to Jamie's folks' house where we have been lounging about until today.  I may fill in some of those days activities, but not now.  Back off.

I came across Zach Braff's Garden State blog tonight.  Pretty cool, methinks.  And boom...it's in the blogroll.  We bought our tickets for The Village today.  Will report.

Napoleon Dynamite is going into wider release, people!  No excuses!  Go see it!  And yeah, it's got an additional scene in this latest release, so I may have to go see it a fourth time.

Jamie and I went and saw Bourne Supremacy on Friday.  It was pretty intense.  Mark thought there was too much shaky, and I see his point.  I would suggest that the shakiness helped us see things from Bourne's shaky, fragile point-of-view, plus I don't how they would have pulled off some of the stunts and effects if the camera were showing us too much.  Sheesh!  Best car chase scene ever!

Wildfires abound around the town.  We've got a layer of ash on our car, but we're pretty much out of harm's way.

My name is Pete.  Welcome to my blog.  July has been quite busy.  It all started when Jason came out from the east coast back on July 2nd.  He came to visit his girlfriend out here, and Clinton took advantage of his presence to shoot a video.  We all met up at the Siebers (including Doug and Jeff and Lindsay) and started shooting.  Clinton rented a Panasonic DVX-100, which is an awesome camera that Mark can tell you all about.  I called Mark and got a plethora of operational advice.  We shot a few scenes and learned how to use the camera as we went along.  It really is amazing how good this camera makes our production values seem.  Anywho, we shot for awhile then went to a restaurant who tried to overcharge us by $100.  Took several go rounds with the owner to straighten that out.  We shot some more the next day, then on the 4th, most of us went to the Padres game at Petco Park followed by a cookout at the Wonders hosted by Jamie's cousin Aaron.  What a fantastic day!  There was a jerk at the park during fireworks, but we weren't going to let him spoil our day.

The following week, my sister and her family came out to visit for a few days.  They stayed down in Anaheim, which was pretty central to all the activities we had planned.  We met them at Downtown Disney for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe.  The next morning we headed down to Carlsbad to go to Legoland.  We had a good time, in spite of the fact that the rides were definitely aimed at young kids.  Afterwards, we met up with the Siebers at Ruby's on the pier in Oceanside.  That was a very enjoyable experience, and I recommend it to those visiting the area.  On Saturday, the Theodores met us out at the construction site to check out our new digs.  The kids couldn't go inside and for some reason had the hardest time figuring out that we didn't actually live there yet.  The finish date has been pushed to mid-February, but hopefully they'll finish early.  We then introduced the Theodores to In-N-Out, which is really near our new place.  That night we ate at CPK at Hollywood & Highland where I'm sure we saw Robert Downey, Jr.  We just missed Hillary Duff at her premiere of The Cinderella Story.  My niece, Lauren, was anxious to try to catch a glimpse of her.  The kids spent the night with us that night to give Grace and Steve a much-needed break.  The next morning we took the kids down to the La Brea tar pits where you can actually watch them excavating some fossils amidst the tar-y ground.

After the Theodores left, we had a couple of days to catch up on work and housecleaning and such.  But then on Tuesday, we drove back down to Laguna Beach to see the Pageant of the Masters, where they recreate life-size works of art.  It really is amazing how they can make the 3-dimensional live people look like they are a part of the 2-dimensional painting.  We had a couple more days of normalcy before the Siebers came up this weekend for their anniversary.  We saw The Clearing and Napoleon Dynamite with them.  Yes, I did enjoy ND for the 3rd time.

Amongst all of this, I actually did get some work done.  I'm finishing up my first big project with my newest client, and I meet with the producers of CSI this week to discuss my next big project.  Jamie got booked yesterday for a 16-day straight job starting today.  She'll be quite busy, but the pay is good, and she's getting to work for a new stylist, so her experience and connections are growing by leaps and bounds.  OK, exhale.

Clinton's mom and several other of his female relatives came through town this week.  We went and met them for dinner on Sunday night down at El Cholo in Santa Monica after church.  The next day, while I worked, Jamie went with Clinton and his mom down to Playa Vista, as part of our plot to get our LA friends all to move to the same community.  She really liked Tapestry, so who knows?

Last night, Jamie and I went to see The Terminal at the ArcLight.  In spite of my initial reservations, I quite enjoyed it.  It was a great mix of humor and story and love and sadness.  Plus, there seemed to be a tribute to Wes Anderson there in the middle, in which I laughed out loud quite a bit.  Thanks, Ben Dudley, for your recommendation.  When I went out to get popcorn and a soda, Harland Williams was in line in front of me.  After he left, the concessionaires and myself tried to recall the stuff he's been in.  My first recollection was from The Whole Nine Yards.

A week or so ago, Jamie mentioned how awesome the trailer was for Napoleon Dynamite to one of her former co-workers, Joy, at Hawk.  The next day, Joy called Jamie and said that they were doing a sneak preview at The Grove on Tuesday, and she saved us some passes for it.  Now, these 'passes' aren't exactly a guarantee.  You have to show up early and wait in line and hope that you are close enough to the front to actually get in.  And we knew the passes were somewhat widespread, because Clinton's friend, Colin, way out at Chapman had come across some passes as well and was planning to come up for it.  So, I figured we'd need to get there a couple hours early.  Colin, in fact, got in line at 5:00 p.m. for the 7:30 showing.  Fortunately, earlier in the day, Joy had received a call from the movie rep that had given her the passes to give out at Hawk.  The rep asked Joy how many she had passed out.  When Joy told her that she had passed out a significant amount, the rep asked if she could reserve some seats for Joy and her friends.  Joy said yes and promptly called Jamie to let her know.  Jamie called me and let me know that we didn't have to go early after all.  Score.  It turned out that Jamie was stuck at her shoot until late last night, so she couldn't make it, which freed up an extra reserved seat.  We rolled in about 7:00 p.m., got Joy from Hawk, and went into the theater.  She talked to some people at the head table, and got some reserved seat passes for us.  We grabbed Colin out of line, while his friends glared at us, and we all headed in while the line that reached for a city block was still stuck outside.  On our way in, we were given a 'Vote for Pedro' t-shirt, and then were allowed to sit in the roped off center section.  It gets better.  We put our stuff down to save our seats, and then Joy and I headed out next door to the theater to the adjoining restaurant called 'The Farm', where she also works.  She was able to get us free brownies and drinks, which we were allowed to take back into the theater, because, as Joy puts it, they are in cahoots.  So, there we are sitting in the best seats after not waiting, snacking for nothing to our hearts content.  On top of all that, the movie was very funny.  It stayed funny all the way through.  It wasn't thick on story, but it didn't really matter, because of how funny each little scene was.  I don't know if this movie will make it out of its limited release, but at least look for it on DVD when it comes out.

I haven't gone surfing just yet, but I hit the six week mark today of working out every weekday.  I only missed one day during that time, because I was both sick and out of town.  Results?  Well, it kind of seems like there should be some dramatic differences based on that regimen, except for one important detail.  I didn't really change my diet.  The only significant change is that I try to stop eating when I'm full.  Novel, I know.  In spite of that fact, there definitely has been a change.  I've probably lost 5-7 pounds and can actually tighten my belt one more notch.  Not too shabby, but I've still got some work to do.  I really thought that working out would be easier once I got in the habit, and I think doing something every day for six weeks should be habit-forming, but every day there's still that option to sleep in.  The way I see it, though, the first six weeks has really been kind of a primer or a base coat.  Hopefully, the next six weeks will see some accelerated improvement.

We saw Harry Potter today.  It was pretty darn good, I must say.  I can't rate it very objectively having read the book already and the one that follows it, so I'd be interested to hear reviews from some of you who have not read the books but have seen the movies.

Jamie and I (and Clinton) bought tickets for a matinee of Harry Potter tomorrow.  She's “super-excited”, while I am merely “looking forward to it”.  I watched Bjork's Dancer In The Dark today.  It was quite sad, but somehow not depressing.  It was sad enough though that I was still sad an hour after watching it.  Jamie would probably have found it depressing as well, but the enormous personal sacrifice that Bjork's character willingly makes in spite of everything kept it from dipping to depressing for me.  The musical numbers also kept the spirits up.

On another note, Tony & Martel have decided to rent an apartment across the park from us in Playa Vista, so we'll be neighbors.  It's already turning into a little community for us.  Hopefully, we can get Clinton to get a place over there as well.

As I was checking off the categories, I saw 'Celebrity Sightings', and I thought of a couple that I may have forgotten to mention.  You know the dorky looking guy with the spiked red hair in the new Burger King commercials set in an office?  We saw him at Anthropologie.  OK, not really a celebrity, but still.  The other actually happened months ago now.  We were at church at Bel Air Pres, and we were exiting out to the courtyard after the service.  That's when we saw the Hoff.  That's right, David Hasselhoff, in all his Germans-love-him glory.

That's enough categories for one night.

July 2nd - The Clearing
Robert Redford and Willem Dafoe.  The trailer's got me intrigued on this one.

July 9th - Anchorman
Yes.  I'm Ron Burgundy?

July 16th - I, Robot
At the moment, I haven't seen too much about this movie other than that Will Smith is in it, but it looks like the best one scheduled for release this week.

July 23rd - The Bourne Supremacy
I really liked The Bourne Identity, so I'm hoping that this is a strong sequel.  Catwoman comes out this week as well, and I just want to note how stupid that movie looks to me.  Any comic book fans out there know if the Catwoman character has a deep history in comic books, or is she just a peripheral character?

July 30th - The Village
I've loved everyone of M. Night Shyamalan's movies, and this looks to be no exception.  Very psyched.  However, this film has some heavy competition in my eyes with The Manchurian Candidate and Garden State coming out the same weekend.  Manchurian stars Denzel Washington, whom I'm becoming a bigger fan of lately, especially after Man On Fire.  Garden State, which Jeff keeps talking about, was written and directed by and stars Zach Braff (of Scrubs fame).

UPDATE: Added links as requested.

Jamie and I went and saw Stateside this past week.  It wasn't great but wasn't terrible either.  We went to see it because we knew Tony played some part in it.  It turned out to be a pretty small part, but it was worth a day at the ArcLight.

It's about this time of year that I used to prepare the movie going schedule for the summer at ubc.  Since I don't do that any more, I thought I'd share my summer picks here.

June 4th - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Yeah, that's right.  I read the books.  The first two movies were pretty good as well.  I am a little nervous about the new director, but I'm hoping that Rowling has enough say in the finished product to keep it from going bad.

June 11th - Napoleon Dynamite
I've mentioned this before.  Sorry, it's only going into limited release.

June 18th - Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
If the name doesn't say it all, then Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn should say it.  Granted, Starsky & Hutch was a flop, but this premise should be a better backdrop for their styles.  The Terminal also comes out this week, but I'm still undecided.  The first teaser teased me not, but the first trailer peaked some interest.  Plus, Hanks and Spielberg can't be too bad.

June 30th - Spider-Man 2
Very excited.  Plus, it could be the Dudley's big screen debut!

Well, I was going to do the whole summer, but I accidentally hit back in the browser and lost this whole post, and now I'm so annoyed that I had to retype it that the rest of the summer will have to wait.

I put in another solid week of working out.  I think I might just be forming a new habit.  It's produced some other good side effects.  In order to stay consistent, I'm getting up early to work out first thing in the morning.  By early, I mean a little before 8:00 a.m.  Doing so, I can be done and showered and start to work by 9:00 a.m. with the whole day ahead of me.  Pretty sweet.  I know you are all wondering what kind of awesome effects the working out is having on my well-manicured physique.  Well, the jury's still out on that, but I fell pretty good about it.

On another note, I went to buy tix to Superman on Tuesday, and it was already sold out.  For May 18th!  Merde!

When we went to see Envy this weekend, we got to see a trailer for Napoleon Dynamite.  I don't know if they can sustain a whole movie of the same caliber as the trailer, but I sure hope so.  Man, we laughed hard.  It goes in limited release in June.  Keep an eye out.

I'm pretty excited about a special event happening at the ArcLight this month.  They are showing Superman: The Movie, but with 20 minutes of additional unseen footage and some reworked special effects.  Also, there will be a Q&A with the director, Richard Donner.  I hope I can score tickets.

Clinton and I went up to the ArcLight to catch a special AFI presentation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest last night.  It was quite pleasant.  The audience was full of film buffs.  The popcorn was free.  And the film we were watching was the producer's (Saul Zaentz) personal print.  Which made me think that I want to have my own personal print of a movie I produced some day.  After the movie was over, everyone headed to the restroom, where Clinton spotted Luke from The O.C.  Pretty exciting.

I got an ice cream freezer for my birthday, and it got its first use at our place for Taco Tuesday.  I made vanilla ice cream, then added chopped up chocolate chip cookies to the mix during the last 5 minutes.  It was quite tasty.  The freezer is really cool, too, because no ice or rock salt is necessary.  You keep the freezer bowl in the freezer.  It has some sort of liquid in its lining that freezes.  Then, you put your ingredients in the bowl, and turn on the mixer.  Twenty minutes later, you've got cream.  I'm really looking forward to trying out my favorite homemade ice cream flavor: Big Red Peppermint.  I would have made it first, but we haven't found Big Red (the soda, not the gum) out here in California yet.  Boo.

In an unrelated story, we saw David Spade once again at The Grove last night.  This time we saw him at the theatre where we watched The Whole Ten Yards.  I didn't notice, but Jamie said that he was laughing really loudly and then left halfway through.  As for the movie, it wasn't as good as the first one, but it wasn't too bad.