Quick update of my weekend, deeper musings later on:

Caught Harry Potter at 12:30 AM Friday Night/Saturday Morning. Went to Mann's Chinese, but saw it in one of the Chinettes (not really what they're called, but one of the the smaller 6-plex theaters next to the big Grauman's theater). It was pretty spectacular, as expected. It was a really late showing, hence, fewer younger kids, and not very crouded. I think I share the musings of several others that this book wasn't as wonderful as the others, and the movie reflected that, but I must say that the casting, especially Kenneth Branagh for Gildroy Lockhart, amused me to no end. He was fabulous for that cheeky, big grinnin part. It was sad seeing how frail Richard Harris looked too. The FX were great, and the story was fun as always.

Cleaned up in the apartment most of Saturday, but went to dinner for a bit at Bennigan's with Coyote. It was nice to take a break. Made some big improvements with our kitchen, which simply seemed to be too small until I realized that we had three blenders, 4 toasters, and a lot of unused tupperware taking up space. All excess kitchen stuff was boxed up for storage. Now there's actual room to be organized in there. When I came back from dinner I was going to finish reorganizing the bathroon, but I started to work on more web development for Noahboddy.com and the other sites that are going to be used for the game. It is going to be great seeing the new pieces to the story come into play this week. We're finding out that, although we expected the response to be pretty big, introducing interractive characters into the story/game, and allowing players to communicate to them, is very time consuming. The story has some main characters, I'll be running some of the characters (yay! more creative role in the game!), and there will be more characters introduced later on run by some others. There's 22 weeks left for the story to unfold and for the contest to come to an end. There's about half a dozen online communities following the game now, it's going quite well.

Went to Punch Drunk Love yesterday. It was a very different movie.I liked it, it was quirky, just like P.T. Anderson's other movies (Magnolia, etc.). I was impressed with Adam Sandler's role, and in general liked how the story went one it got going. I thought their use of "He needs me" from the movie Popeye was interesting too, and the sound and music in general was interestingly done.

RENT last night, from the third row, was spectacular, although it was a smaller production (and fairly younger cast than before) than usually expected. I've loved the music for this show for years now. The players had awesome voices (and they were all HOT!) Caught a glimpse of some celebs too. Laura Prepon (redhead from That 70's Show) and Christopher Masterson (big brother from Malcolm in the Middle) were two rows directly behind us. (We had better seats, neener neener!) Erik saw Russel Crowe in the lobby ordering a whiskey-sour from a very star struck bartender. That show always fills me with a certain energy to go and do something grand and creative, sing my heart out, seize the day, that sort of thing. If you haven't heard it yet, I'd suggest getting it, especially if it doesn't come back to town for a while.

It's funny how a "quick update, more details later" turns into a ling diatribe of my weekend.

Off to yet another busy week. :)