Weekend (28 Feb) - The Rest of the Weekend

Weekend (28 Feb) - The Rest of the Weekend

Philly wasn't just fooling around in VH, although those runs did gain her about 20% xp, which is why she wants to do random dungeons. Philly also got in her dailies. The gear improvements to her disc spec had a side benefit in that it also improved her shadowform gear. Three of the gear upgrades (ring, necklace, and trinket) Philly crafted herself with Jewelcrafting. Burning through the Isle of Quel'danas dailies was even easier and quicker, and she finished her weekend at 39% of the way to level 76.

Saturday was a lost day for the Wild Family, though. I was at the movies. All day. And all evening. A local theatre was offering a special ticket event called Showcase. On two consecutive Saturdays, five of the ten Academy Award nominees for best picture were being shown for $5 each (and free all you can eat popcorn).

Apparently they do this every year, but this was the first time I had tried it. The longest stretch of movie watching I had done to date was on opening day of the third Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King. On that day my brothers and I sat down early that day and watched the extended DVD versions of the first two movies, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, and then went to the theatre to see the third. That was a pretty much all day affair, but it was far short of what I did this past Saturday.

The theatre complex was very crowded, not because of the Showcase, but because it was a saturday - and it was raining. It rained all day and into the evening, and everyone in Southern California decided it was a good day to be at the movies. The group of us that was here for the Showcase got our own theatre, though. It was a good crowd, but there were plenty of open seats and everyone found a good spot. Since we were a group, there was a lot of getting to know folks before and in between movies, and I got to make some new friends. The Mrs was still out of town, in case you were wondering.

The first movie started at 10:30am, the 3D version of "Avatar". I'd already seen Avatar twice, so this was my third time, and I have to admit I enjoyed it just as much. I even noticed a couple of things that had somehow escaped me the first two times. One was obvious once you noticed it - all of the animals in Avatar have six legs. The other is just a little more subtle. The Navi people in the film look like very tall humans for the most part. Yes, they are blue skinned, and yes they have those eyes. And that tail. But did you also know that they only have three fingers? A thumb and three fingers. And did you also know that the "avatars" (the navi body that is controlled by a human) has a human hand - thumb and four fingers.

The second movie was "Up." This is an animated movie about a flying house driven by balloons to a magical land of the main character's youth. I'd never seen it and it was hilarious and touching. A must see.

The third movie was "A Serious Man," one of those strange Coen Brothers movies. Some of their movies I like, others I don't. This one bored me to the point of dozing in my seat. A day in the life of an uninteresting, ordinary man who got a lifetime worth of bad luck all at once.

The fourth movie was "Precious." I have to admit I went to dinner and didn't watch this one. It is very much an "artsy" movie and for those who like that kind of movie - well, you can have it.

The fifth an final movie of the evening was "District 9." I have mixed feelings about this one. It is touted in political circles as a statement about apartheid (the movie takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa) and other periods of inhumanity against groups of people, which turned me off a little. The movie is sort of like "Independance Day" comes to South Africa by way of "Alien Nation" (if you've seen those movies). An alien ship parks itself over the city of Johannesburg and just sits there. Eventually the ship is pried open by force, and a million plus aliens are found inside dying of malnourishment and who knows what else. Scroll forward to District 9, the brutally miserable slum inside the city where the aliens are forced to live, and which is controlled more by voodoo practicing gangs of humans than by the government troops that contain them. Life for the "Prawns" as they are referred to (for obvious reasons once you've seen them), is abject poverty and virtual slavery. Killing a prawn is hardly even considered a crime. Yet I could not sympathize with them. They are completely un-likable and even worse, the stupidest aliens I've ever seen depicted, despite the central plotline which revolved around the alien's awesome weaponry. Which the aliens never bothered to take advantage of. The movie has it's moments, but in the end, when I got no explanation of why the aliens came here, what had happened to them, etc, and a complete lack of providing any sense of who these aliens were (culture, etc) I was disappointed.

Back to the live action, there was still a chance to do some pvp over the weekend, and with Ando's help hunter Mery dinged to level 39. You've also heard that the DER family is harboring an alliance toon now, one of his many Deathbot toons. Behind Wild's back, the Wild Family black sheep alliance, Chaitee, decided to join Bot for some pvp on the alliance side of the fence.

Chaitee is a hunter. Her pet is the equivalent of an ostrich named Stretch. Chaitee is level 13, and, back in her playing days, belonged to the Mrs. She's been retired for a very long time and wasn't that well geared, but she had plenty of arrows and got a nice gear boost by heisting the heirloom gear from Philly. Pvping as an alliance toon was a first. Chaitee happily cheered at every new sight, even her first trip (of many) to the graveyard. Our fortunes on the night were not with us. We lost two games on the horde side before we switched to alliance, and then lost both games we played on the alliance side. Chaitee was pretty menacing despite the losses, finishing 2nd and 1st in dealing total damage in the two matches and getting a lot of killing blows. Chaitee even dinged to level 14.

The Wild family isn't exactly keen on having an allie around, but they are not above trying to convince the Mrs to take Chaitee out for a whirl now and again. Maybe. We'll see.