It started out innocently enough...

Yesterday, I decided to hit the Grand City Buffet in St. Louis Park for the delicious buffet, then go next door to Target to pick up a few things. Once at Target, I grabbed a can of hairspray, then wandered over to the Electronics section...just to look around. I checking out the TVs when I notice sign that said "Temporary price cut" to the price of $249 in front of a 32" Westinghouse LCD television. I contemplated for a good while, long enough to miss my bus before deciding to give Bean a call, allegedly to talk me out of buying it (and potentially to coax her into buying it). Well, that didn't work out.

She decided to pick me up at St. Louis Park and drive me out to Roseville to comparison shop at Best Buy. If I couldn't find a similar deal at Best Buy, we could hopefully find the same deal at Roseville's SuperTarget. I had to wait around for 30 minutes not buying that TV while she came to get me. While waiting I checked to see if Best Buy had anything similar on line (they did not) and had pretty much made up my mind to buy it.

Once Bean arrived, we made our first foray over to Best Buy. We went straight back to TVs and browsed for a goodly while. The only thing similar to what I saw at Target was a Dynex 32" for $269. While I'm checking those out, Bean notices a Dynex 40" TV for $399. And what do you know? She wants it!

So having NOT found a similar or comparable deal at Best Buy. We head BACK to Target where I purchase the $249 TV. While doing that Bean decides that she does want that 40" after all. So we go back over to Best Buy where she purchases one similar to the one she wanted (it was only for display). While Brad (his name was Brad) was ringing her up, I mentioned that I had just bought a TV from Target. Brad tells me, I should have told him and he could have gotten me a better deal. I told him he still could.

So once he finished ringing Bean's TV up, we got to talking. Because Best Buy did not have the Westinghouse TV, Brad offered me that Dynex 32" I had been eyeballing early for $5 less than I had paid at Target. Well, because I love me some Best Buy SO MUCH (I really do! No snark!) and I could add a protection plan AND get Reward Zone points, I decided to take him up on the offer (once I shifted some $$ around in my bank accounts).

So Bean and I went BACK to Target where I returned the TV I had purchased less than an hour before, went to her house and set up her TV, went BACK to Best Buy where Brad hooked me up with my second TV purchase of the day, went to dinner at Outback Steakhouse (mmmmm, steaaaaaaaak), then went to my house where we set up my new TV.

The initial setup was relatively easy, but because of the wonkie-ness with the many devices I have, I spent a couple hour reconfiguring and trying things. I now have only the blu-ray player and the cable box hooked up. I love my DVD/VCR, but now that I have the blu-ray player, it's kinda useless. My Roku on the other hand, is hanging out in my bedroom which is fine and all, but it doesn't have HDMI which means the picture isn't as nice which means...well, it means I need to buy another blu-ray player. I have one with built-in Wi-Fi and a good chunk of the apps I want in my Cart at Amazon. And I'd have already bought it, if not for the fact that I have to wait for Target to return my money for that other TV. This impulse buying thing is just crazy.

So that was my Sunday.

I Need an Upgrade

It's official. I need to get a new TV. No, my current telly didn't die on me. (I actually haven't turned it on yet today, so it could make me a sad liar.) I need a new TV because I am now a part of the blu-ray generation. I now own over 30 blu-ray movies (32, to be exact). My blu-ray player currently is housed in my bedroom because that is where my hi-def TV is and that is what them bad boys are made for is watching movies all sorts of fancy like. Stuff doesn't look awful on my current non hi-def television (and I don't even know that I am doing things right in order to watch things all HD-like on my other telly. Maybe I just think they do. That telly is small though. It's only 19" while my living room telly is 27". I want a new one that's about that size for the living room. And even that seems kind small in comparison to what ELSE one can get nowadays.

This is such a stupid first-world problem. Meanwhile, my nephew asked to borrow money from me and I said I didn't have it. Which I don't but that's because I bought movies or went to see a movie or did something else unnecessary with my money. I just need to suck it up and deal with my TV.

Oh and of course, "Hanna" which I bought on DVD yesterday for $19.99 is on sale at Best Buy today for $17.99. That's the blu-ray by the way. Fortunately, the nice young man at Best Buy allowed me to trade that one in and put the $2.00 saving towards my purchase of "Hulk" (it's an Eric Bana thing, you totally should understand because he is F-I-N-E Fine, honey). I also traded in "The Negotiator" and "Forces of Nature" which I owned for reasons I can't explain for "Punisher: War Zone" (blame that on How Did This Get Made?) and "Conan the Barbarian". It took a lot for me NOT to buy more movies than that and well, this is the beginning of this week's sale.

And can I just say I love Best Buy employees. I am sure earning a commission doesn't hurt (assuming they do work on commission and well, there is no incentive for the kids at the registers so they are just nice kids), but I have rarely received anything but great service from them. And despite those commercials that complain about big box store employees being ill-informed, lazy, pimply-faced teenagers, I have never had that experience with any of my purchases and I have purchased many a product from many a Best Buy. Computers, monitors, printers, microwaves, DVD players, blu-ray players, iProducts, always great service.

Here's The Thing

I did the adventure thing and took 2 buses (would have been 3, but I decided to be healthy and walk downtown) to Roseville to see The Thing at 10 a.m. The theatre wasn't packed, but there were a good number of folks there. No one sat near me, THANK GOD and everyone was very well behaved.

The movie was actually okay. I didn't love it but I didn't leave all angry and shit like I did after Rob Zombie's Halloween. That may be because something happens at the end that put a big ole smile on my face. Overall, the movie does leave a bit to be desired. It is really just a bunch of half-hearted reinterpretations of scenes from the previous movie with a hint of The Thing from Another World thrown in. Instead of blood tests to determine who's an alien, it's teeth. We get a spidery thing again, but it's a little different this time. And instead of Keith David and Kurt Russell, we get Adebisi (yaaaaaaaay!) and some dude who was sooooooooo not Kurt Russell.

On the plus side, the acting was pretty good and the pace is pretty quick (almost too quick). Overall, I enjoyed spending that $5.

After the movie, I had a about 40 minutes before my bus, so I walked over to the Best Buy to look at movies. I watched Hanna last night and I kinda fucking loved that movie, so I wanted to buy it (which I did, on DVD). Well, lo and behold, there on sale for just $9.99 on the shelf was a blu-ray of John Carpenter's Halloween. Boughten!!! And next to that (not on sale) was the 30th Anniversary edition of Halloween II and the best part is that is that it includes Terror in the Aisles. Happy Dance!!!!

I really want to get a new TV for my living room because I want to watch blu-rays on a big TV.

I am rambling and losing interest in what I'm typing. I'm hungry. Will find food and my update this post later. Or this is as good as this is gonna get.

Prejudging

After seeing that the Onion A.V. Club gave the new presequel of The Thing a C-, I have to remind myself that originally critics HATED John Carpenter's original (and also, Halloween) and well, we all know how that worked. That said, this is not being made by John Carpenter and this doesn't have practical effects but CGI which doesn't look as good to me, and there's no Kurt Russell (unless we get some surprise cameo, but I'm not holding my breath). I am still very excited for this and am already trying to plot and plan when and where I will go see it Saturday morning. Right now, I'm am feeling like getting all adventurous and heading out to Rosedale since it is the only theatre I can get to that has a 10:00 a.m. showing. All the others have starts around 11:30 or later. Boo! I like an early-early show because I hope everyone else is just not motivated to get up and out of bed to go to the movies at that hour. We shall see if I feel like getting up at 8 o'clock just to avoid other people. (I think I kinda am.)

Not down on Netflix yet

Things I've learned: I can take Ryan Gosling more seriously as a smarmy, backstabbing politico than I can as a face-stomping tough guy. In other words, The Ides of March equal good. Drive equal not as good. But he is still fine as hell in both movies.

Next!!!

So I have been trying to wrap my little brain around this whole Netflix issue. Many people are still pissed about the separation of streaming and DVDs and its accompanying price hike. I too am not crazy about the price boost, however, I am not ready to go streaming only so I'm sucking it up. It'shttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif funny that people claim that the reason Netflix is doing this is so they can eventually drop DVDs all together. This argument was helped along by the now-abandoned idea to move DVDs to a new site and rename it Qwikster, which was dumb. Frankly, I don't see how Netflix would really benefit from dropping DVD. I like getting DVDs because of the additional content and options that are available. Right now, neither my Roku, my Blu-ray player, my iPod nor my Inspire provide closed-captioning or subtitles (unless a film is originally in a foreign language). We also don't get much in the way of bonus content with streaming and the picture quality on some flicks leaves much to be desired. I don't know how much of that is Netflix fault or the various players (can't do captioning/subtitles for Amazon either on my Roku...I don't think).

The other major beef is that Netflix is losing content. It was recently announced that come February of 2012 they will be losing a bunch of Starz and Sony content. The thing is I thought that meant those movies and shows would disappear from Netflix, but really it's just that they won't be available through Netflix Instant Watch. Now, while I'm sure that is inconvenient for some of the lazy fuckers who can't wait the two days to get a disc or aren't will to trudge over to their local Redbox (or if they're 'lucky', Blockbuster) to get the movie, it isn't the end of the world. HBO doesn't have a streaming deal with them, but you can still get HBO show DVDs from Netflix (for the most part). Waiting sucks, but remember when Netflix first became a THING and not only did you have to wait but you had to wait like 4 or 5 days between discs? That is rarely the case anymore.

And yeah, sometimes a movie or show you want is a Very Long Wait for a Very Long Time (looking at you Breaking Bad, although that is mute now since those are now streaming on Netflix), but if you just can't stand it anymore, you can do what I did and just buy the freakin' discs yourself, or even use some other type of streaming (which will usually cost you). Which is what all these people who are belly-aching about it and leaving Netflix will end up doing anyway.

I guess I have drank the Netflix Flavor-Aid (it wasn't Kool-Aid, y'all) and just won't give up on them yet. I am still DVDing and streaming and I just can't quit them.

Drive

After wasting time seeing "Dream House" on Saturday, I decided I would see a GOOD movie on Sunday. I had been hearing all sorts of great buzz about "Drive" and well, Ryan Gosling is damn pretty. So on a sorta whim, I chose to head down to little-attended theatre St. Anthony Main. Boy, that place is drab, but in a nostalgic way. At the counter, I bought my ticket and then stepped over to the concession stand to get snacks. I stood there for about a minute before the guy who sold me my ticket (one of only three people working there), hurried over to sell me my popcorn and soda. Unlike the AMC experience I get at Block E, there are no looooong commercials for 10,000 TV shows, cars, and sodas before the trailers. Heck, there wasn't even any music. The seats aren't stadium and they are ripped and make you think twice about sitting in them. And there wasn't a string of trailers, just two if I recall correctly.

I chose St. Anthony Main figuring there wouldn't be a whole lot of people there. Turns out there were 11 of us at this particular screening. That is more people than where at "Dream House" and that was a new release.

Anyway, the movie. I think I saw something quite different than all the critics because I was not enamored of this film. It came across like a really long music video with bouts of random bloody violence. I like Ryan Gosling, but he is not someone I think of when I think of movie badasses. Maybe that was the point, but I just couldn't buy him as this tough guy who is threatening mob bosses. He was not helped by spending most of the movie wearing skinny jeans and a satin jacket with a scorpion EMBROIDERED on the back. The film is beautifully shot, but some of those came off as (forgive me for using this over-used word) pretentious. Lots of unnecessary slow-mo. I think I hate slow-mo. Overall, the acting was good but I didn't always get the characters' motivations.

All this to say, I came away a bit disappointed. Maybe I don't like Ryan Gosling as much as I thought. This is the second movie of his ("Blue Valentine" was the first) I've seen that so many people LOVE that I thought was just meh and the third ("All Good Things", anyone?) that I, personally, where I wasn't dazzled by his performance. I have liked him in things and I hope he redeems himself in my eyes in "The Ides of March".

On a side note: Bryan Cranston was in "Drive" (and "Contagion"). Good for him. Last night's "Breaking Bad" kicked ass!!!

Ketchin' up

I am an old lady now. So there's that.

I've been seeing a few movies lately...in the theatre even. Recently, I have been keeping Block E alive. Not much else is. Hard to believe that place is only 10 years old. It is a virtual ghost town now. Everything is gone. Borders, GameWorks, even the Cold Stone Creamer is gone. The Mrs. Fields must be closed because it hasn't been open the last few times I was there even though there are still sodas in the fridge and cookies in the display case. So sad.

Downtown Minneapolis is very different from when I first moved here 20 years ago. City Center was basically a mall then with many of the same stores one would find at Southdale or MoA. Now, it has Len Druskin and GNC, plus some random shit like ProStaff and Kaplan University. What the heck happened?

Anyway, back to my recent movie adventures. Today, I saw "Dream House". I went in with low expectations because I thought it would be your standard haunted house movie. I don't tend to like haunted house movies. Ghosties just don't do it for me. Instead, it was this kinda Lifetimey mystery/thriller. Reviews are saying the "twists" were spoiled in the trailer. I never saw the trailer, so I didn't know what to expect, but that didn't stop me from figuring out half of what was going on within 10 minutes and well, the movie provided that twist at the halfway mark. The resolution (?) was pretty dumb and nonsensical and also, I do not get what people see in Daniel Craig. He has pretty eyes, but that's about all I can say about the guy.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw "Contagion" which despite what horror fans so want to believe is NOT A HORROR MOVIE!!! It's kind of like "The Stand," but without all the God vs. the Devil stuff thrown in. That is not a complaint. I would call it a disaster movie, but with less Irwin Allen. I really enjoyed that movie. And well, Gwyneth Paltrow dies in the first 5 minutes. Always cool.

I also saw "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark". See my comments above about me and haunted house movies. I don't know who was more bored by the experience, me or Guy Pierce.

"Dream House" was not helped by the fact that I watched a Netflix movie last night with a plot twist that was kinda similar. It was call "The Haunting". It's a Spanish movie about a couple who move into a giant house in the middle of nowhere (SURPRISE!!!) and the wife starts hearing noises and seeing things. It was a-ight, but I could have never seen it and been okay with life.

Not much going on in the social life. Had sushi with the girls for my birfday. Went apple picking with Bean the day before. There were no apples to pick really, but we did go through the corn maze which was pretty awesome. I would love to go through one of those at night. Wish I knew some adventurous sorts who would be down for that sort of thing.

Did I ever tell you about the times I tried watching "Breaking Bad" and just could not get into it? Twice I Netflixed the first disc of season one and twice I didn't make it past the second episode. Well, about a month and a half ago, I came across the first 3 seasons on sale at Best Buy for just $14.99 each, so for some random reason I bought them. Me and my impulse buying, right? I started watching that same day and pretty much devoured those first 3 seasons over the course of two weeks. I kinda love this show with its complex characters and cute Aaron Paul.

By the time I had finished my DVDs, AMC was over halfway through with season 4 and the first 3 episodes were no longer on On Demand. I thought about waiting until S4 comes out on DVD/Blu-ray, but who knows when that will be...so I bought a Pass on Amazon last Monday (Happy Birthday to Me!!!). I have watched 9 of the 11 so far. The only reason I'm not watching right now is because I am typing this little update and because I wanted to try to finish my book.

Speaking of books, that's the other thing I have been doing lately: reading. Earlier this year, I decided to give those Stieg Larsson books a whirl and really enjoyed them. Now, I am checking out other Scandinavian mystery series. Currently, I am reading the Erlander books by Arnauldur Indridason. I picked up the latest in the series, "Hypothermia" at the library this afternoon, but still have a few more pages to finish in "Arctic Chill". I am liking this reading thing.

I have also decided to revisit my Spanish learning. I was trying French for a little bit, but decided that my experience with Spanish called for me to handle that first. I have "Spanish for Dummies" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide", but finally decided that my best source was the one I paid over $100: my textbook from my Metro State Spanish class. I am taking it kinda slow and I am starting from the beginning even though it is a lot of stuff I have already learned, like, 5 times since I have taken about that many different Spanish classes. Every once in a while, I even get to use a word or two at work with a customer. Look at me with my international self.

And speaking of work, very busy of late. This nasty business of a cold has run amok through our offices for the last 3 weeks. We are really short-staffed, not helped by Lindsay going off to become a Driver Examiner last month and Vicki unceremoniously quitting about a week ago. That doesn't stop me from continuing to hunt for work with the Fourth District. Right now, there is a post that is basically the criminal version of what I do at the DMV. It would mean a pay cut, but it would be worth it to not have to take those hell-buses to and from St. Paul 10 times a week. They will keep posting jobs and I will keep applying. I may be old, but my will is STRONG!