Monday, May 15, 2006

Now I know what to do with that extra waffle iron

We watched about 20 minutes of the film Prefontaine last night. I've been reading these articles about Bill Bowerman, Steve Prefontaine, and the University of Oregon track team in Runners' World lately (I think there are a couple of books coming out), and got an interest in seeing these characters played out in film. After the film had already arrived from Netflix, however, I read a blurb in RW about all of the training Billy Crudup had done so that he could realistically portray Prefontaine. Since the movie we had starred Jared Leto and not Billy Crudup, I started to realize that perhaps I hadn't gotten the best film.

There was a bit on NPR a few months ago talking about the art of creating a movie trailer. Insert the right song, and you've got a mood and a feeling about what the film is all about. This works well when the mood and quality of the music in the trailer matches that of the film. Prefontaine, staring Jared Leto, is an example of when good (or in many cases trite) music and a pretty face were about all the film had going for it. The portion of the movie that we saw just felt like a montage of classic film clips from the late '60's and early '70's. The other entertaining part was watching Leto run around with his overdeveloped "vanity muscles" (biceps, shoulders, etc.) on skinny little legs. He had obviously spent time in the gym, but he didn't exactly look like a record-setting track star. My favorite discovery, though, was this user comment written by jonny-deppfan185.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

May I use those melons for my Fruit of the Loom salad?

Long time local favorite grocery store, Larry's Markets, filed for bankrupcy yesterday. Apparently, box stores like Whole Paycheck are just too much competition. For a while I lived just a few blocks from the Larry's in Queen Anne. My two single male housemates swore that Larry's was the best place to meet women because it's where the most attractive women shopped. When I related this story to a single male co-worker, he expressed surprise that you could actually pick people up in grocery stores. Determined to prove that I didn't make this up, I found a few internet gems:

Grocery Store Pickup Advice
How to Pick up Chicks at the Grocery Store
15 Best Worst Grocery Store Pick-Up Lines