Sunday, August 28, 2005

Remains of the (Sun)day

Just some observations as the sun sets in the West and the rugrats of Montgomery County return to school on the morrow:

1. "The Brothers Grimm": wow, that movie blew, and it blew hard. The film was made even worse by a horrible stuttering problem that caused characters to repeat themselves over and over again. I have no idea if the problem was with the actual print or the theater's projector. Either way, it didn't help an already painfully bad film. Ugh. Went with the Sasquatch to Dave and Buster's midway after the showing this morning, in the hopes that air hockey and a few games of Pod Racer might wash away the pain of the Worst. Terry. Gilliam. Movie. Ever. (Note to self: Pod Racer not as much fun as I'd remembered. The silly snowmobile game was, however, a blast. And the Sasquatch is an amazingly aggressive air hockey player. Scary even. Am now glad I'm too uncoordinated to ever play paintball with him...)

2. The guys at the Weather Channel have just earned the title of Really Sick MF'ers. Their commercial sponsor for tonight's coverage of the impending Category 5 doom in the Big Easy was Six Flags' Hurricane Harbor, "bigger, better, wetter summer fun!" Sick. Really sick.

3. Chris Farley has a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Very nice. He was a good physical comedian, although his act was pretty limited. As the star thingies are basically marketing devices for the recipient, it's no surprise Farley's is timed to match the DVD re-release of "Tommy Boy." Why we needed a second release of "Tommy Boy", I will never know. It's a cute movie - there are bits that make me laugh more than I should, but... why, oh why do we need a 2-disk special "Holy Schnike" DVD edition of this film??? The world may never know.

4. I'm listening to Javi on Fanboy Radio right now. I wish I had a decent question. I'd call in. I'm awful at coming up with good questions. Mr. Grillo-Marxuach, if given the chance, would you put facial hair on Shannen Doherty again? Javier has just mentioned a bear on a motorcycle, wearing a helmet with a hammer & sickle on it. Little does he know that I saw such a creature performing more than once on the Old Arbat in Moscow.

About halfway down the Arbat, there was a restaurant called Traktir, located in the basement of a creepy decayed building. The place was painted a really vile shade of turquoise - whenever the facade started to crumble, they'd just come by and slap another coat over the holes. The aforementioned bear was the dinner entertainment at Traktir. Yeah, I know, nothing better than being in an enclosed basement - with one staircase and no emergency exit, a kitchen full of meat and a large, stinky, angry, hungry bear. (Guess who never ate there??) However, every once in a while, they'd let the bear come out into the sunshine and have him ride around on this tiny motorcycle. While he motored around in little circles, he wore a little yellow helmet emblazoned with a Soviet flag. (He was not wearing a muzzle or a leash.) Somewhere, I have photos of this. Taken from across the street. Because I like having all my limbs intact. "Safety first" is not exactly a Russian cultural concept.

I think I'm in need of an iced coffee or a Coke Zero before it gets too late to drink anything heavily caffeinated...

6 comments:

suze said...

awww..i'm disappointed re: Brothers Grimm...not that i ever make it to the movies in the theatre but i was looking forward to seeing that one eventually. ah well...glad it was a good sunday nonetheless :)

Anonymous said...

My find out who this sasquatch is...


N

Anonymous said...

My = must wish there was an edit button ...

:) (Not at my brightest ATM.)

Merujo said...

Ah! You can find the amazing Mr. Sasquatch at his occasionally updated, but always grammatically correct blogspot home, sasquatch1968.blogspot.com.

He loves visitors, despite his reputation as a shy arboreal creature. :-)

And Suze, yeah, it does stink that Bros. Grimm was so... grim. But there's another Terry Gilliam movie coming up in a few months. Here's hoping!!

Anonymous said...

safety first is NOT a russian cultural principle? maybe, but it would have taken all the fun out of their space program!

if you find pictures of the bear, please post them - that's an awesome story!

ja
vi

Merujo said...

Javier - I will hunt for the photos - they're likely buried in one of my gazillion Moscow boxes. Give me some time, and I will find those suckers.

Safety first, indeed. Ha!

Someday, we'll have to meet up for a cup of coffee and I'll tell you all my Scare-o-flot stories... Oh, there are SO many... I stopped flying Aeroflot after 56 successful flights because I assumed my number would be up sooner or later - for real. I've been on planes with wings repaired with duct tape. Planes with burned out seats. Planes so overloaded with passengers and produce that the wings actually flapped on takeoff (and passengers were sitting in the aisles.) Of course, there were always the air crashes that were never cleaned up, just pushed off the runways, year after year after year...

Yeah, I got stories for ya!