G-Force at the Arclight

We went to see G-Force today at the Arclight Cinema in Sherman Oaks, in the Sherman Oaks Galleria. The Arclight is a swanky movie theater that has assigned seating (you can select your seat beforehand), very clean theaters, and comfortable seats with lots of leg room. An usher usually comes in at the beginning of the movie to announce the movie to check the sound and picture quality.

They also have a gift store and a restaurant (which is unfortunately only open for dinner now). There’s two Arclight cinemas, the one in Sherman Oaks and one in Hollywood – we usually go to the Sherman Oaks one as its closer. The tickets are $11.50, which really isn’t that much more than regular first run movie tickets, and the added comfort is worth it.

Anyway, back to G-Force. The movie was pretty much what I expected it to be - funny, cute, lot of action and color. We went to the early show, but there were still a lot of kids. Didn’t really matter much as the movie was loud and there weren’t a lot of subtle moments that required quiet contemplation. I’d give it a B+ overall – it wasn’t a great movie, but was entertaining and kept me amused for 90 minutes.

Blogging at Starbucks

Bought an Asus netbook a few months ago. Set up this blog a few days ago. The obvious next step was to go to a coffee shop, buy coffee, connect to their wireless, and post on the blog. Techno coolness would be mine. The netbook has a SD card reader, so I could even take a photo of myself writing my blog post and post it with my post. Could I get any more hip than that? I even had a gift certificate for Starbucks, so in addition to being hip and cool, I’d be thrifty!

We went to the local Starbucks (one of them). I ordered a Grande Mocha and Deane ordered a Vanilla Bean Frappe (aka a milkshake). Despite a bit of confusion with a new employee, we successfully got our drinks (along with a rice krispie snack), and sat down, ready to enter the world of coffeehouse blogging.

I Booted up the netbook, connected to the wireless hotspot. An AT&T / Starbucks screen appeared instead of Google. Ok, no problem, clicked home. Same thing. Tried Yahoo.com. No change. Tried a few other sites – nothing but the Starbucks screen.

I got up and asked one of the Starbucks persons (not the new one) about the much touted free wireless. She said it was indeed free, but you need to buy a gift card. This didn’t make much sense, as generally when one buys something it isn’t considered free. We went around a bit, but I wasn’t able to get any more details except that a purchase was required, but it was free.

Giving up, I went back to my slowly cooling Mocha and packed up my netbook. We left, never achieving the legendary coolness of coffeehouse blogging.

ZAP! POW! BAM!

We went to the Skirball Museum (or Skirball Cultural Center to be exact) today to see the ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938-1950 exhibit. It featured many of the early artists and writers from the 1930s and 1940s such as Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Bob Kane, C.C. Beck (creator of the original Captain Marvel), and many more – most of the big names. They had the original comics on exhibit, as well as original scripts and art. It wasn’t a huge exhibit, but was well done.

They also had some amusing superhero related displays – an old coin operated Batmobile, Kryptonite, etc. You couldn’t take photos of the original art, but could take them of the displays, so I got a few of those. It was also a free admission day, and was fairly crowded – had to take some of the pictures fast to get them without a crowd in front of them.

There was also a companion exhibit, Lights, Camera, Action: Comic Book Heroes of Film and Television. This was a smaller exhibit of various comic book associated media and was centered on the 1950’s – 1970’s. It had games, toys and original comic books – Amazing Fantasy #15, Daredevil #1, etc. from the early Marvel era. They had the original Batcycle from the 1966 television show, but they unfortunately didn’t allow photos at all in the exhibit.

Deane and the Batmobile