where: UA EMERY BAY STADIUM 10 in Emeryville, CA
when: Friday, July 1st, 2011
show: 9:45 p.m.
costs: $11.00 Ticket + $4.75 small Zero Sprite + $5.00 Carquinez Bridge Toll = $20.75
auditorium: 5
seat: 5th row, 12th column
synopsis/overview: A good retail clerk, Larry Crowne ( Tom Hanks ), loses his job as he falls victim to corporate down-sizing. With an uncertain future before him, he enrolls at a community college to better his chances in the job market. He becomes part of a scooter gang. And he kindles the flame of romance with one of his instructors, Mercedes Tainot ( Julia Roberts ), who is having some marital problems and who has lost her passion for teaching.
noteworthy scenes: 1.) Lack of college education; 2.) Complementary coffee; 3.) Yard sale; 4.) Big spin; 5.) East Valley Community College; 6.) Gas station; 7.) "It's got power"; 8.) Scooter parking; 9.) First day in Speech class; 10.) "Repeat after me: Lance Corona"; 11.) "You're looking at porn"; 12.) Brain freeze; 13.) How to make French Toast; 14.) "Are you clairvoyant"; 15.) "Only dummies use them in my class"; 16.) Scooter ride; 17.) The "make-over"; 18.) GPS; 19.) "Three focal points"; 20.) "You got inventory"; 21.) "Tough but fare"; 22.) Star Wars; 23.) Donut shop; 24.) Pop topics; 25.) "I love you, Lance Corona"; 26.) Comments; 27.) "Big knockers"; 28.) Kiss; 29.) "I can see you, you know"; 30.) "Demon rum"; 31.) "I hope that I don't have this same conversation with Dr. Matsutani ( George Takei )"; 32.) Bad debt; 33.) "I love a woman with a measuring tape"; 34.) "Lance is mute on the subject of you"; 35.) "By now, you should be laughing with me"; 36.) "This is glass. I can see through glass"; 37.) The pizza delivery; 38.) "I can keep a secret"; 39.) The finals; 40.) Cellphones; 41.) Final grade; 42.) "My secret identity"; 43.) "He smells like grilled onions"; 44.) Shakespeare, the politician; 45.) The note; 46.) Talia's ( Gugu Mbatha-Raw ) soy sauce packet; 47.) "I met you"; and 48.) Chinese characters for "Soy Sauce" during the Ending Credits.
audience reaction: The audience liked this movie.
recommendation: I liked it enough even though it stretches the boundaries of credibility in the Friendship and Romance departments. Despite its title character, this movie is actually a "Chick Flick" type of "Date" movie. Go see this with your date.
spoiler alert! Larry's text to Talia in the Economics class was too fast for the kind of cellphone that he had. Mercedes' husband should have argued that ogling at pictures of amply-endowed bikini-clad women on his computer did not constitute watching Internet porn! Her husband was clueless about what Internet porn was really all about, if you ask me. Is it just me or do they always have to have a "Kissing Scene" in a Rom-Com whenever the awkward and/or improbable dialogue starts to go nowhere fast? Talia should have used a compact mirror to check on her tattoo, one would rightfully think. At the end, they were riding without the use of helmets even though Larry insisted on the use of a helmet in an earlier scene.
fyi: What puzzles me about employers is that they will make examples out of the good employees first. They'd have a lazy, irresponsible and incompetent worker on one hand and a good employee who adheres to company policy and do everything by-the-book on the other hand; but, when it comes to firing somebody, the employers would almost always go and fire the good worker first. What message are they trying to get across, that if they can fire a good worker they can fire a bad worker, too, so the bad worker better shape-up? Does that make sense to you?
I don't get "Brain freeze," I get "Sinus freeze." It's that area in my nose between my eyes that gets painfully cold when I sip too fast on a slushie.
Julia Roberts' nose has uneven nostrils: the left one is higher-up than the right one. And she is quite conscious about it because she rarely looks at the camera straight-on. And her movie posters always has her posing with her face slightly turned to the left to hide this nasal asymmetry.
According to one of those supermarket tabloids, the late Saddam Hussein was a fan of the Julia Roberts movie, PRETTY WOMAN! He supposedly watched it countless times.
This movie is basically an ad for Genuine Scooters, an American motor scooter company, because although Larry rode a Yamaha ( ? ), pretty much the rest of the scooter gang were on Genuine Scooters, i.e. Buddy International and Stella, from what I noticed.
The Buddy International line ( St. Tropez, Pamplona, and Italia ) are really beautiful "old school" style Taiwan-made scooters which are supposedly much more reliable than their Chinese counterparts. And they look even better with all the accessories added.
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| Genuine Scooter Buddy International St. Tropez |
The Stella--also "old school"--oh, the Stella, is quite an old-fashioned charmer manufactured in India with a feature unique onto itself: It doesn't have a front fork for its front tire. It has a side-car option. And it can go 140 mpg--yeah, you read that right--in the city! It's not for Freeway use, though. But it is the perfect gas-miser for "around-town" trips.
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| Genuine Scooter Stella |
word of advice: Be thankful that you have a job.
tidbits: I took my white Geo Metro, first thing this morning at around 9:00 a.m., to Broadway Auto Body on Broadway, here in Vallejo, for repair work on the left quarter panel--no thanks to that Chinese bitch who backed into my car in a hit-and-run incident back in mid-May.
Then, I rented a silver 2010 Nissan Versa sedan from Hertz Rent-a-Car. I'll take it on a long road trip on Tuesday just to get my money's worth from it. Oh, and it was a pleasant surprise for me to find out that a former co-worker's younger sister works at Hertz. And she took care of my car reservation. She is quite the exotic Creole beauty, a taller and slender version of her mom--not that I was checking her out! ( Yeah, right .... )
And I went to Hector's place to make and share the German Potato Salad w/ Bratwurst & Barbecue Sauce dish that I talked about on my last blog--I didn't want to eat the whole thing by myself. It was good but a little sweet for my taste. I don't like equating a main dish with sweetness. Only a dessert should be sweet, in my opinion. I will have to omit the sugar the next time that I make this dish.
Speaking of that Chinese bitch .... When I got to Hector's place, her black SUV was parked next door at the curb. Unfortunately for me, since I was driving a rental car, I didn't have my box-cutter with me to slash her tires with! Anyway, her rear bumper cover is now detached on the left side, as Ismael ( Hector's son ) pointed out. She probably hit another car again while backing out of the driveway when nobody was watching. And she probably told the latest victim of her hit-and-run who came knocking at her parents' door the same line that she gave me: "Call da cops. I call my insu-lance al-lady." That bitch .... What goes around comes around, is what I'm saying--and hoping for--'cause she deserves it!
I installed batteries in my new digital point-and-shoot Vivitar camera. Then, I programmed the date, but I unintentionally pressed the wrong button when I tried to program the time--and the damned thing wouldn't let me back-track! So, I'm stuck. Oh, well. I guess that I'm just gonna have to buy another one and hope to program it right. ( Update: The following day, I figured out how to re-program the date and time on my new camera; but I practically drained the batteries figuring out how to do it without the aid of a user's manual [ I'm a guy; us guys don't ask for directions/instructions, we just do it! ] But I think I'll just leave the theatre picture up above just the way it is with its date and time set for October 16, 2027 at 5:52 a.m. Gee, I wonder what the world will be like 16 years from now. Well, there's only one way to find out. )
We watched a National Geographic TV show about animal friends. I'm talking about animals out in the wild which would normally be mortal enemies or which would otherwise be in a predator/prey relationship. But for some inexplicable reason, they just became friends almost instantly as though prophesied by Isaiah, himself, in the Old Testament of the Bible in Isaiah 11:6.
After saying, "Goodbye," to Hector and his wife who were sitting in lawn chairs in their front yard, I walked to my rental car across the street with Tiger, the kitten, in tow. Last week, Tiger pounced on my car by jumping on the hood when I started the engine! Hector had to shoo him away. This time around, as I started the car, I couldn't see Tiger anywhere. I had to call out to Hector to ask him where Tiger was at so that I don't run him over. He was there on the sidewalk, grooming himself as I carefully turned the car around.
As I was traveling down Fruitvale Avenue towards the Freeway on-ramp, I noticed this guy riding a pocket bike without a helmet on. And his bike was not even street legal because it didn't have any lights at all. And the idiot was weaving around as he rode his bike. I had to slow down just to keep a safe distance between the two of us. Where was a cop when I needed one?
I took the picture, up above, of this theatre, UA Emery Bay Stadium 10, shortly after I arrived and just before I bought my movie ticket.
After the movie, as I was gathering my things in the dark, the security guard came over and lighted the area with his flashlight. We got to talking about Tom Hanks, how he went to school in Oakland and about his early 80s TV show, BOSOM BUDDIES, with fellow actor, Peter Scolari.
The toll taker at the bridge handed me five rolled-up dollar bills in exchange for my 10-spot. When I got home and took the rolled-up bills from my T-shirt pocket, I could smell the unmistakable scent of stale cigarette smoke--the dollar bills just reeked of it! How disgusting. I've heard of cigarette smoke sticking to people's clothing, but this is the first time that I came across stale cigarette smoke-scented dollar bills.
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