Reilley thinks it was Thor who hid all those butterscotch candies in various places around his room.
cannot remember how it began, but suddenly we were all heading out to see X-Men: First Class at, what, 6 pm? It was Reilley, Tom (whom we met through Reilley), Thor, Mirra and myself. The whole group agrees that First Class is easily the best X-Men movie that has been produced so far. Reilley loves to mention that it's so good that it actually overwrites the movie cannon established by X-Men III and by that Wolverine movie.
I think it is thoroughly enjoyable by both geeks in love with the comic book as well as laymen, as I'd like to think I fall somewhere between the two. It really is a beautifully well written movie, that puts its attention on the characters more than anything else. If you go and watch it, I recommend that you specifically pay attention to how they deal with Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto) and Charles Xavier (Professor X). They spend their time building up both characters, and then do an amazing job of showing how the two influenced each other. Charles changed Erik from a renegade loner into a leader, while Erik took away some of Charles idealism and gave him a bit of a ruthless bite. I have to stress, that this is all done over the corse of the movie, rather than as a cheesy, sudden realization due to the twist at the end of the movie (which I'm certain we all already know). Rather, the main 'plot' of the movie (which I won't spoil here) is used as a catalyst and a background for the interplay between the characters, and that makes this movie as good as it is. That and Wolverine's scene (but I won't spoil that either).
So that happened, and afterward we all ate a midnight breakfast at Denny's (Reilley also thinks it was the waiter who thought to serve his hamburger, disassembled and on three separate plates. We all tipped well after that). It was three by the time we got back to the apartment. Tom and Reilley stayed up later than I did, but when I woke up (at eleven the next morning, sadly) Tom was asleep on the couch. Then Clinton arrived at our door to tell me that the WSU surplus store was having a patently ridiculous sale on computers, and if we wanted to upgrade our server, we would have to get over there before they closed in an hour. I woke up Thor and Reilley, and we all headed over there (letting Tom continue to sleep on the couch). We ended up getting two $80 computer that had been marked down to $30 each, figuring to split the cost between the three of us. Twenty dollars for two fairly good computers is an extremely good deal, and we plan to network them with our (my) current computer and set up some sort of networked computing dealie to improve our Minecraft server (which we've also set up to work over the internet, so my friends will be able to get on that eventually as well).
By the time we got back Tom was awake (for certain definitions of 'awake'), and was emphasizing the need for pizza. He offered to pay (having been excited about recently getting a job) so we all agreed. Then Reilley got a text asking if we wanted to go to see the Green Lantern movie. Coincidentally, this had been a point of discussion after we saw the trailer for the Green Lantern movie before the X-Men movie came on. Everybody except for Thor and Mira, that is Clinton, Tom, Reilley and I, decided to go.
Reilley made a point to have a pessimistic view. He thought (still does) that the Green Lantern's outfit looked like it was made of green and black bacon. I cannot disagree. He was expecting it to be another expensive movie going for an easy audience that wouldn't really be worth it. He was also unhappy that we were going to watch it in 3-D (he doesn't like how 3-D tends to turn out, and it's more expensive). I don't know how he'd respond if you asked him, but I'd say it was a great movie. He'd probably say it was good, and then go into an explanation as to why, but that doesn't change the fact that during the movie, he was enjoying it as much as I was. It was funny, it made fun of itself and the whole movie genra ("I've known you your whole life! I've seen you naked! Do you think I wouldn't recognize you just because your cheek bones are covered?!"), I NEVER found myself bored or tortured by any of the scenes, and though it was not necessarily faithful to the comic cannon, it WAS faithful to the comic's IDEA, and it felt like a Green Lantern story. It was very well done. Our only complaint about the movie was the teaser at the end of the first credits (before the scrolling credits), but I won't get into that until you've seen it for yourself (even though we all were expecting that particular twist).
So that happened. It was getting late again, but Reilley needed to get his bike back from Tom's place (I recall now that Thor and I had to pick him up from there before going over to the X-Men movie the previous day), so we all walked over there. Once there, Clinton got called back by his girlfriend, and we watched Hero, because Reilley had never seen it before. The last time saw Hero, I couldn't understand what was going on. This time I'm glad to say that I understood it perfectly, but I found myself constantly irritated at it. I cannot recall exactly what it was, but I found the fight scenes patently silly. Yes it's a Chinese kung-fu opera so all the characters are going to be over-the-top with melodrama, ridiculous kung-fu moves and patently stupid mistakes, but I found myself laughing at the characters more than sympathizing with them. It's an amazingly beautiful movie, and the fighting WAS cool (wire-fighting and all), but it was up it's own asshole with melodrama, and the philosophical twist wasn't all that amazing. I know that many people enjoy it immensely for better reasons, but that's my opinion.
So that happened. Afterward, we just kind of hung out and talked for a while, before randomly starting an role play game that Tom ran for Reilley and I. Once that petered out, Reilley and I walked back to the apartment, only to find Zack sitting on our couch playing videogames. Apparently he had gotten off work to start his free day, and headed over here, expecting to find Reilley eventually. When that didn't happen, he just kind of hung out with Thor. By this time it was five in the morning. I realized I should just stay up to reset my sleeping schedule, but I haven't gotten anything worthwhile done in a while, and I've been slipping with my Japanese studies again. I wanted to be productive today, and I realized that if I reset my schedule, I would be a vegetable all day long. So I decided to take a two hour nap, and just keep napping periodically to keep myself productive. Either my alarm didn't go off, or I just slept through it, because when I woke up this morning it was noon again.
It's been a goo two days, but just thinking about it makes me want to just crawl back in bed and go to sleep...
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