A Long Blog Entry...Great Weekend!

A Happy Saturday

My Saturday was great, because I spent a lot of it with my mommy (that's the two of us to the right!) and then later hung out with my pal Shalane (my usual Saturday night dinner and a movie buddy).

Mom and I had lunch (Aubrey's) & then caught a movie (Music and Lyrics). I am happy to report that the waitress did not utter one "absolutely" nor did she ask us if our food was fantastic or fabulous. She was just plain polite. (I had a chicken salad sandwich, because Aubrey's simply has the best in the city. Mom had the chicken salad salad. Yes, it really is "salad salad.")

Later, Shalane and I had a good dinner at Bonefish Grill (one of my very favorite restaurants). I had a filet medallion with to die for crab stuffed shrimp. Shalane had the monkfish. YUM YUM YUM!!! We caught a movie afterwards (Wild Hogs). The waiter at Bonefish was excellent. Of course, my assessment may be jaded by the fact that he did not charge me for my coffee. I didn't have any wine, because I really had a taste for something a little stronger. (You know my friend, Jack, don't you?) Seriously...the waiter was personable, attentive without being obnoxious, and he was well-practiced in traditional polite talk which didn't include one utterance of an "absolutely." Instead of asking if everything was fabulous, he asked, "How is everything?" To top it off, he was a fun guy with a good sense of humor (often needed when dining with Shalane and Christine having cocktails with their dinner).

My Sunday

Mass, grocery shopping, shoe shopping, and a great nap! I hung out with Curtis and his sweet girlfriend, Meghan, for a while this evening. Curtis is home this week on Spring Break. He'll be working all week. He works for The University of Tennessee bookstores and since the dorms are closed for the week, he'll be commuting downtown every day. He's not thrilled about the extra gas expense. You see, he usually rides his bike to work (on Henley Street in downtown Knoxville) from his dorm. In any event, it's been a nice restful weekend and I'm ready to hit the ground running with the start of new quarter tomorrow.

Music and Lyrics Synopsis (from Fandango)

Former music superstar Alex Fletcher (Hugh Grant) used to pack them in back in the 1980s, but now he is reduced to playing nostalgia tours and county fairs. Alex scores a chance at a major comeback when reigning pop diva Cora Corman asks him to write a song for her, but Alex hasn't written anything in years and cannot compose lyrics anyway. Noticing that Sophie (Drew Barrymore), the plant lady, has a way with words, Alex proposes that he and Sophie make beautiful music together.

My Review

And so they make beautiful music...literally. Cora likes what they come up with, but then she wants to commercialize it with her brand of a "steamy and sticky" Indian & Hindu flavor. Sophie won't compromise. Alex wants a hit and to make some money, so there's a little romantic conflict leaning towards a broken heart. In the end, he convinces Cora that "steamy and sticky" isn't the way to go and Sophie is won over by Alex. Romance, comedy, and a happy ending where Alex and Sophie end up together and, no doubt, have a great songwriting partnership ahead of them. I am a sucker for a happy ending. I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating. It even makes up for a movie that has a spot where it sort of slows down a bit. If you have fond memories of 80's music and like the nostalgia of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Wham music, then that's another reason you may enjoy this movie.

Wild Hogs Synopsis (from Fandango)

Tired of their humdrum lives, some middle-aged friends (Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy) decide to temporarily ditch their responsibilities and take a motorcycle trip. The freedom of the open road holds many surprises for the group, including an encounter with the Del Fuegos, a hardcore gang, who take a dim view of the novice bikers.

My Review

LOTS of laughs! Great to see middle-aged men with saggy chests skinny dipping in a pond-like body of water. We see that these men are real and it's fun to see they are clumsy, less than self-assured, and dealing with their own relationship issues. They have the common sense to know it's time to get the heck out town for a little while and regroup. There's nothing wrong with that. Betsy Pickle disses this one, saying it's "programmed, formulaic and designed to appeal to the widest spectrum at the lowest level."(KnoxNews.com, 2007) Whatever...if what we need to escape for a few hours and laugh is a programmed, formulaic comedy which uses actors we love, then I'll take it and I am not going to criticize. I enjoyed it and I'm pretty sure Shalane did since she laughed way harder than I did!