We slept in a bit again today. We were all very tired. Once again Oreo was up earlier than us to go in search of the sun.
Most of the morning was spent getting ready for this afternoon’s family picnic. We discovered that dad has a spider infestation in the back yard. All of the picnic tables, benches, umbrella and even dad were covered in medium sized brown spiders. I believe that they were wolf spiders but I am not sure. Right colouring and size. There were tons of them. Just everywhere. It was really weird.
The family came over around one. Dad grilled in the backyard. Everyone had hotdogs and hamburgers. Min and I had tofu beer brats.
After lunch we had the now annual family “sofa on the haywagon” ride around the farm. Grandma’s old four person sofa, the one that Min and I had in our basement for a while in the theatre room, has been mounted on the old haywagon on the farm for a while and dad drives it around with the Ford tractor. There is so much awesome scenery on the farm with views of the Genesee Valley, Avon, Geneseo, Mt. Morris, Rochester, etc. We also got to go right by the new Route 63 road construction and see how that is going to look.
There was a lot of sunshine out in the open yard today and most of us got pretty burnt. The top of my head was completely fried. Being bald isn’t always as advantageous as it would first appear.
After the wagon ride I mentioned to Dominica that it was too bad that we didn’t get a chance to go to the Silver Lake Drive In this year. She asked what was playing so I ran into the office to look up online what was scheduled for tonight. If something good was on we were going to go and call the Ralstons as they almost always join us on our once per summer trip to the drive in.
Just as I was getting to the web site the phone rang. As soon as I heard it I knew that it was Art calling. Sure enough, I was right. The Ralstons had just checked the movies that were showing and were calling us to see if we wanted to go! The new Indiana Jones movie and Ironman are showing together tonight so we decided to go to that. The only movie that I really want to see is Prince Caspian but both of these movies look interesting.
We quickly got the BMW convertible out of the barn and tested it out. Who wants to go to the drive in in the old Mazda PR5 with the 330 is available? We were planning to get it out of storage this weekend anyway. This just made us need to get it out really, really quickly.
Rachael was taking off for the evening and Jeremy had no plans so he decided to come along with us as well. Oreo always enjoys the drive-in since he gets to hang out in the car with all of us while we eat.
Getting the BMW out of storage went really well. No problems at all. We were prepared for at least the battery to be dead or the tires to be flat. But nothing was wrong. Everything went very smoothly. There was a lot of dust and some raccoon prints all over the hood and roof but other than that it was pretty good.
The Ralstons got to the drive-in just a little bit before us. It is really busy there tonight. We parked and then went in to the restaurant to get some ice cream like we always do. As it seems every year, there has been a bit of new construction at the Charcoal Corral since we have last been there. The back room, where Min and I had our rehearsal dinner, is much expanded and much nicer than it used to be and there is a new building on the east side of the complex.
While waiting for the movies to start Art, Jeremy and I watched a DVD that Art and Danielle picked up over the weekend from the planetarium at the Creation Museum in Kentucky. They had driven to Tennessee over the weekend and had stopped on their way home as they went by. The DVD was really well done. It was a “basics of astronomy” kind of thing but since it spent time on the science of astronomy and no the religious cosmology often tied to it for no reason it actually contained a lot of information rather than religious marketing fluff that we have come to expect from the paradoxically named “secular astronomy”.
The first movie was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which was absolutely awful. All six of us, Min, Jeremy, Art, Danielle, Michael and myself were extremely disappointed. Jeremy, Min and I had heard from Sara this afternoon that she was really upset with it so we had a bit of a warning. But it was far worse than we had expected. This movie was totally pathetic and embarrassing. I felt embarrassed for the actors in it for having to do a movie like this to feed themselves. It must be really rough being stuck doing B movies like this as that is exactly what this was. Everything was bad in this movie. The acting was bad. The plot was horrific. The whole thing was one big, cheesy setup for a really bad kid actor to move into the role of young Indiana Jones so that the Spielberg/Lucas trainwreck can continue once Ford figures out that it is better to starve than to go out in public after doing this crap. This movie was on a massive budget as well. Whole sections were clearly filmed on a bluescreen with unmatched lighting and lots of characters just composited in. It was bad when Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow pulled this stunt but that movies hook was that the whole thing was blue screened and that was its only draw. Here it just shows just how out of touch and lacking in skill Industrial Light and Magic is these days. Amateur films from Finland five years ago were ahead of this!! I can honestly say that there was nothing redeeming about this movie at all. Nothing. This movie does more than any other to show why I feel that the industry has gone down the proverbial crapper and why it is practically never worth going to the theater to see a movie. Had Ironman not been showing after this I would have left in the middle.
The second movie was Ironman which, apparently, is a comic book that a number of people know. I never heard of it but that isn’t uncommon. I had no idea that it was known enough that any number of people actually knew it though. Normally I am at least aware of names of things even if I have never seen them. Even with it being a relatively obscure concept the movie was actually very good and entertaining. Not my type of movie but still quite enjoyable. Robert Downey, Jr. did a great job. Hopefully there will be some sequels because, as with all of these comic book movies, the first movie is nothing but a set up for later movies so it is pretty lacking unless at least three sequels are made.