Do You Know Your Friends? Quiz Meme

I generally have given up on memes, but people like to read about themselves, so have at it:

1. Go here.
2. Pass it on.
( my answers )

La Siesta, Test Screening Ticket, 40 Year Old Virgin, Battlestar Half There, Politics

I did a minor amount of work when I got up in the afternoon, followed by a quick shower and then a pretty damn terrific evening out with friends.

First, I went to dinner with bongirl5, her guy, phillystyle13, Bon's friend, Cathy (no LJ!), and my own brother. I'd been wanting Mexican food for a while, and amazingly, everybody else agreed and was willing to go for it, too. We went to our standard little joint - a family place where the waitresses literally know me by name (as I know theirs), and know what I'm drinking. I went really wild and had a strawberry wine margarita (they use sangria instead of tequilla - much tastier, I think).

Crammed into the small half-circle booth, eating chips and shouting over the crowd and the mariachi band, it was just a great time. We had a good range of conversations, despite the conversational paths being rather detailed (my brother and Bonnie's guy talked cars, which the girls sort of ignored, then my brother and Cathy talked surfing, which Bonnie's guy, Bonnie, and I ignored, etc). It was a wholly delightful evening.

Or maybe I'm just remembering it so fondly due to wine margarita goggles. Don't laugh, my glass was the size of a soup tureen.

My brother went home, and we went on to see The 40 Year Old Virgin. Our first theater attempt was botched by a sold-out show, but I did pick up a test screening ticket for a new Lindsay Lohan flick, Just My Luck. Oh, that reminds me, I got to call the ticket in...

*makes call*

Hm. While I liked Lohan in her earliest Disney movies, and I liked her in Mean Girls, I have been suddenly struck with paranoia that this film might be more like, say, Herby than the films I've actually enjoyed her in. So I went and checked the credentials of the test-screening's director and writers...

The director made Miss Congeniality (which was just okay) and How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, which I utterly loathed. Even more troubling, there are four credited writers on the project, three of whom supposedly worked together, of whom did rewrites. When there's that many, there's probably more, which means a lot of rewrites and which usually means a lot of suckage. Do I dare?

Well, I can go or not, I've reserved a spot, and if I don't go, someone else will. But...sheesh.

We did manage to get to a theater to see The 40 Year Old Virgin. The 89% fresh rating on Rottentomatoes.com was the driving factor in getting me to the theater, and I was not disappointed. The movie has some flat out slapstick humor, of course, but most of the movie's jokes sound like they were written by The Daily Show staff, and not third-rate Saturday Night Live alumni. It was smart and bizarrely sweet. Instead of bodily fluid jokes and visual gags (which are, really, sort of exhausted now), the dialogue was witty and fast.

For example, one of my favorite line readings was, "I'm a virgin. I always have been." *pause* *small eye-roll of self-disgust*

It was that eye-roll of self-disgust that got me. The line itself is funny, once you process it, but it was the character's small, internal realization at how insane the line sounded that made it truly human, and therefore, truly funny.

I was not expecting to be charmed by this movie, and yet I was. I thought Steve Carell was, you know, that Daily Show guy. That The Office guy. Kind of assy, and annoying. I had no idea he had the range to be really, really likable. The TV ads do not convey the sweetness and likability of this movie, so pay no attention to them. Just go see it.

I got home in plenty of time to see Battlestar Galactica. While its usual excellence, this particular episode was just as good as the others, not better (which breaks the trend of each recent new episode being better than the last). This episode was sort of a transition episode, but then, it's also a two-parter, complete with a "To Be Continued..." so I should have suspected as much. It was like watching only half of a really, really wonderful movie, with none of the payoffs of the second half.

On a final note, I'm thinking it's time to nose-dive The Free Land of Christinastan, my country over at NationStates, straight into the ground. I've run through most of the questions and it's become apparent I will probably never move from my current UN dossier classifications: UN Category: Capitalizt, Civil Rights: Superb, Economy: Powerhouse, and Political Freedoms: Very Good.

I think Christinastan is as good as the game will allow me to make it (there are some logical fallacies). I'm proud of what my people have achieved. But I'll tell you what's really strange, though - now that I've been ruling Christinastan for 75 days, I'm starting to feel...responsible...for it. Even though it was always my intention to make it a Libertarian paradise and then tank it into a Socialist hellhole as fast as possible, I find myself oddly reticent to do so. First, there are the ethical considerations - can I in good conscience pass Socialist or Communist legislation, even to witness the results? And what about my people? Is it wrong to make my hypothetical people suffer just for my amusement?

Seriously. For all that I'm joking in the above paragraph, I do feel this odd God-like benevolent responsibility to the inhabitants of my country. Now I don't know what to do. :o(

( Quizzie on what kind of role-player I am )

Heh. The quizzie was oddly accurate, revealing me to be both a "Method Actor" (meaning I believe that roleplaying is best when refined down to it's truest form: pure "Let's Pretend," as I always used to put it), and a "Specialist," meaning I only like to play one type of character, or one specific character. So very true of me.