books, transformers

I took a little trip up to Cleveland on Saturday to go to the Half-Priced Bookstore and encountered the Worst. Construction. Traffic. Ever. It was extra annoying since I was relying on a map.

Finally got to the store and brought in my 4 boxes of books. In a surprising short amount of time, they returned an offer of 26 dollars. Which seemed a little low, but I went ahead with it - most of the books were paperback anyway.

So, I shopped for a bit and was disappointed. The sci-fi/horror section was small and was heavy on Anne Rice and Stephen King. The crafts section had only 2 books on Origami - and the one labeled "Advanced Origami" was, on closer inspection, not very advanced. The comics? Terrible. No bags, no boards, all of them stacked loosely on a shelf in no particular order. It was sad.

I checked out, got over charged on the comics I did find (but didn't really care at that point) and exited. I made a brief stop at the nearby world market for some rubber ducks, green tea, and candy from Japan - then headed home.

On Sunday, I decided to go see Transformers. I checked the movie times, noted 12:35 as the time I wanted to see, then headed out at 12:05 to ensure a good seat. Well, I purchased my ticket and saw that the next showing was, in fact, at 1:00. So, instead of being a little early, I was a lot early. I decided to buy some popcorn while I was waiting, and when I finally go the attention of the clerk, he spieled me with combos and up sizing - even though I was making it pretty clear that I wasn't interested. I think the only way I could have made it more clear was to reach across the counter and smack the shit out of him - and I was pretty close to doing that. All I wanted was a small popcorn - which cost me $5.00

I folded some paper, ate my popcorn and waited. At about 15 till, I headed in and got my seat. 30 minutes of previews later, the movie started.

And I liked it. It was funnier than I expected and the effects were amazing. With the exception of Frenzy/Soundwave - the characters were well realized and the story was well written. There were some cheesy moments, but still really good. And the actors fit into the CGI seamlessly.

There were a lot of themes in the movie - war, power, love, friendship, loyalty, technology - but I think in some ways, it was really about a boy and his first car.

And I have to admit that when I left the theater, I was a little nervous when I got into my own car. :)

That's it for now - got a big meeting coming up. later...