Fore!

I enjoy golf. Very relaxing. Seldom do I get too upset about my play, which is generally poor to bad. I appreciate the opportunity to get outside, to play with a friend or two, to have some quiet time away from everything else.

And then, when the temperatures soar up around 100, when we're in a red ozone alert day, when we're in an orange alert particulate day ... well then you enjoy golf even more.

So The Yankee and Our Friend Dave teed up for 18 at Frank House, where the front nine rolls up and down maniacally and the back nine twists and turns and looks more normal, with a blessed one water hazard and five sand traps.

My first drive? Right down the middle. Most of them went that way, but the few that diverged from their flight plan veered badly. The short game was spotty as always, the putting was pretty ragged too.

I only lost one ball and found several more throughout the day, which alone makes it a great round of golf. I hit several trees, and a few of them solidly, but got nowhere near a personal best.

On two holes I decided to play through the trees and take shortcuts through the doglegs. This worked once, and was impressive, but a failure the first time.

On the 17th hole Our Friend Dave had a nice drive on the par three. See the little blurry ball off in the distance? The Yankee would not be outdone. My par threes were not my best offerings for the day.

And then there was the 18th hole, which will forever live in punchy, sun-stroke infamy.

We'll definitely do this again, and it'll be about 20 degrees cooler next time.

For lunch we stopped by the new shopping center in my neighborhood. They have a different name for the thing (Colonial Promenade Tannehill), and probably don't enjoy the shopping center reference with conjured images of old strip malls now 20 years past their prime and high traffic.

This place will do well. Actually I shot a video of the construction a few minutes ago. The video is long with slow boring cuts, but I was playing with the new cameras and struggling with a slow computer and Windows Movie Maker. I sarcastically sided against the development because of the traffic it'll bring -- many people in the immediately surrounding area agreed judging by the For Sale signs -- but I'm looking forward to the grand opening next week.

There are three or five places that'll save a lot of travel time and the roads they've messed up might actually be improved now. So I'm coming around.

A nice lunch at Habanero's, the new Mexican place helps the favorable opinion. So far it is as good or better than Guadalajara, a restaurant I've been visiting for almost 20 years. Such long relationships can't be severed, such things can't be judged by two soft tacos alone, but I'll have to go back; it is also 13 miles closer to home.

At home we watched Batman Begins on DVD, because we had tickets to watch The Dark Knight later in the evening. We wrapped that up just in time to eat again and then head to the theater.

This is the new theater in the new shopping center. This is the night after their opening night but things move smoothly.

I'll likely still spend most of my movie-going time at the dollar theater. But. But Our Friend Dave wanted to see Batman, as did the rest of us, and all of the co-workers will be talking about it next week. Some movies can't be put off until the dollar theater.

So we went to the Premiere Tannehill, which might be the only theater in the U.S. named after a Civil War-era war machine. The whole development is named after a state park eight miles away, where they could produce22 tons of iron a day before Union soldiers moved through.

The place isn't attractive. Outside the neon is bright yellow. One supposes they could pick another color, any would have been preferable, but you'll see yellow from the state park itself. Inside the carpet and the faux-murals are everything you've come to expect of a 1980s theater. There are really nice leather sofas sitting in the main area, and hopefully they'll hold up well. Translucent walls block off the game room, where an old Ms. Pac-Man machine has a prominent location.

There are at least three police officers and three security guards on the grounds this evening. The tickets they're giving out right now are strips of receipt paper. Call me sentimental, but I prefer the heavier, old ticket stock, and for $8 a ticket they could shell out for it. They are tearing the ... "tickets" ... beyond the concessions area, which is large, but time will tell if it is large enough.

It was at this point that I asked the young lady at the ticket stand where the restrooms were located. This is a two-and-a-half hour movie, we'd just had dinner and no one likes to miss a crucial scene. She pointed up front.

There aren't restrooms back here?

"Nope. Just that one up there."

How many theaters are in this building?

"Fourteen."

How many restrooms?

"One."

Does that seem like a smart design plan?

They hadn't trained her for this question.

I walked to the front hoping the restroom was overly large, but wasn't surprised when it was of your average theater size. So plan ahead I guess.

Granted they are into their second day of Batman, and they're launching a new reel every half hour for at least half the day, but there were a lot of empty seats in our theater. That's a plus for me, but it makes you wonder how the theater pros are reading their numbers.

And now since we've reviewed the restaurant and the theater, here's the traditional 12-word review on The Dark Knight:

Fine ensemble cast, and serves as both a great epilogue and prologue.

After that initial impression we customarily have a bit of navel gazing on the rest of the movie.

Heath Ledger, yeah he's good. Is he Oscar good? Do I care? Christian Bale turns in another strong performance, but like all of them I almost prefer him as Bruce Wayne. They did an excellent job bringing in both the overt and the subtle from Batman Begins. Nothing was too surprising here, but the performances were delivered with gusto.

Now, about Harvey Dent. That makeup job was a thumb in the eye at the Tommy Lee Jones Two-Face no doubt about it. Actually his entire run mocked the previous incarnation.

But they used and wasted him quickly. The movie was really about Harvey Dent, but his deeds and the resolution of his character came about awfully quickly. He's not a perfect villain for your caped crusader, because watching two hours of Bats chasing a guy with a grudge, a coin and a tendency to contract infections wouldn't be very interesting.

Which is why you have the Joker. He was at his best in the small things, wearing the Harvey Dent sticker, reacting to the hospital, mouthing the word "Six" and with all of the things going on while telling how he got his scars.

His speech to Dent, in the hospital, is where the movie is a fantastic prologue. Joker tells Dent that he introduces chaos. You could take that to mean all of the things that he's done so far in the movie. You should consider it, though, in the context of Joker unleashing Harvey Dent on Gotham.

What he does prompts what Batman does. (He said, trying to be descriptive without spoiling the movie, just in case they need those last few dollars this blog can drive to the box office). The chaos wasn't so much what Joker did throughout, or what Dent did in his rage, but what must now follow those actions after Batman's reaction.

And it is going to make for an even better third movie.

Finally, did anyone else notice that Wayne Towers has changed dramatically from one movie to the next? Discuss.