It was a nice weekend with no 5Ks to wake us up nice and early on Saturday. Enough said, right? NO! Besides playing a good bit of Assassin’s Creed Unity, which I’m pretty compelled by as it’s running pretty great on my PC and the game is just fun, we did have some fun out there in the world!
First, we went to the premiere night of the restaurant All’Acqua, which is owned by the same owners of that awesome place right outside our house, Barbrix. All’Acqua was a pretty great place to go with a bunch of awesome women. Had our own corner of the restaurant and didn’t stop laughing and drinking wine and just having a good time. Pictures? OF COURSE.
November 22, 2014 – Night at All’Acqua
Today was a fairly relaxed day in terms of activities, but we did watch some TV, and from that I ended up having to grab some new music from iTunes. On SNL, Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson were the musical guests and they blew my fucking mind with a song straight out of the best Jackson 5 type of revival called “Uptown Funk” – it’s fucking amazing. Then tonight we watched the fairly cheesy TV movie, “En Vogue Christmas” on Lifetime, and while it was really cheesy (I’ve said that twice now), I couldn’t help but watch. It was my girls, En Vogue!!! I’ve written about my love for them before so this was a no-brainer. Unfortunately it didn’t have all 4 of the original girls in it (no Dawn or Maxine), but that didn’t mean I didn’t love it. Surprisingly for me, they debuted a new song at the end of the movie during the in-movie concert called “Emotions” and I MUST HAVE IT. It’s not on iTunes yet and is supposed to come out in a few days, but I freakin’ love it. There’s a brief sample from the 1980’s ABC song, “Smokey Sings,” and it’s showcasing En Vogue in a fun way. So yeah, Yay Music! And here’s to hoping there is a new En Vogue album on its way next year.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
Saw this at the Vista Theater on November 22, 2014
Of course we also went out and saw the latest Hunger Games movie, Mockingjay – Part 1, and I have to say that it was surprisingly entertaining. The book it is based on is such a different beast from the two books that came before it, and I think it really could have been just one movie – yet having said that, the movie producers put together a really good movie for having just the first half of the book. They split the book at around the natural splitting point and near where I predicted it would (spoiler alert! when Peeta re-enters the picture, dramatically), yet created a compelling narrative to fill up 2 hours worth of movie beforehand. Wisely, they brought back Effie for this movie whereas in the book, she disappeared. She’s much-needed comic relief. It does suck to have to wait for the concluding chapter but I guess this means they’ll make that last half fairly spectacular? It should be interesting to see how detailed they get into those specifics – it’s pretty fucking intense and gory. Thumbs up from me and from the non-bookreader Larry, who enjoyed it as much as I did.