More cleaning, whittled the garage chore down to one box. Brian and Elizabeth came over as I finished up. Elizabeth retreated to the air conditioning while Brian played with my phone as I finished the last box of the day.
I mean he could have helped.
Now there’s just one big pile of papers to pour through. Should they be saved? Should they be shredded? Can they be thrown away? That’s the box I’m dreading.
Brian did help. He set up a few things on my iPhone. He downloaded a flashlight app — which I’ve yet to figure out — reworked my Email set up and synchronized my calendars. I firmly believe you should find a guy who’s better with technical things than you are, flatter him, give him the occasional meal and volunteer to chauffeur him around if he needs a driver. It pays off.
They had dinner with us tonight. The girls watched the first two Eclipse movies and — because I’ve watched them, and Brian took my advice not to — he and I visited the dollar theater.
We watched Iron Man 2. It was good. Action, explosions, comedy. I think I’m spoiled by the latest iterations of Batman, though. There almost seem to be too many jokes here, but that’s Iron Man and a wry Robert Downey. Meanwhile, like Samuel L. Jackson’s role? He’s going to do it eight more times.
One of those will, of course, be in the 2012 Avengers, Many a comic book fan will be happy about that. Given the absence of subtly with which they discussed it in Iron Man it will be beyond ridiculous how much publicity and interest that film could stir.
We also watched A-Team which was, honestly, a lot better than I expected it to be. I haven’t checked yet, but they might have set a record for explosions per reel (non-John Woo division). Murdock was great, Quinton Jackson was a serviceable Baracus — though Mr. T could still play the role. Face was fine. I couldn’t get based Liam Neeson, but I always have that problem with him. It seems that the theme here is that planning is hard. Hannibal thinks, but only because no one else can, and he’s a bit troubled to have to make the effort. Ultimately the moral to the story, aimed at 10-year-old boys, is to understand the virtues of contingency planning. That’s a good lesson for kids to have.
I am not troubled by the film and how it treated the original because I have no illusions about what the show was. Everything held together fairly well until the bad guy delivered an RPG through a barge. That was just a bit much. But otherwise, it was a reasonable summer flick. Surely worth the dollar for the ticket.
For both movies, watch through the end of the credits. We caught them because we were trying to help people find things on the floor of the theater. I still can’t use that flashlight app.
Even more pressing: the girls are going to watch the third Eclipse movie this weekend. I need to find something to do as an excuse to avoid it. Any ideas?
