Mrs. Mau and I have been on a slight Blockbuster spree lately. Over the past week or so we've seen:

• The Prestige
• Casino Royale
• The Number 23
• Stranger Than Fiction
• Serenity

(For us that's a spree.)

Anyway, the brief reviews first:

• The Prestige: 8 on a scale of 1 - 10. Good story. Good effects. Good ending.
• Casino Royale: Also an 8 on the scale. Maybe even an 8.5.
• Serenity: This one's more of a niche movie. If you wanted to see it, you probably REALLY wanted to see it and enjoyed.

Now for the meat:

The Number 23

This was just a weird, bad movie. Don't read this if you plan on seeing it, and don't want me to spoil it. Jim Carrey plays an average dude, who finds a comes across a book about a more-than-average dude that is slowly being driven crazy because he keeps finding occurrences of the number 23 in his life. The disturbing part is that Jim's character also keeps finding odd parallels between his own life and crazy dude's. He's put over the edge when the character kills someone. Somehow he arrives at the (correct) conclusion that the book is some kind of thinly-veiled confession of a real murder. The kicker: Jim's character actually wrote the book, and the book IS about him. It's all very weird and stupid.

Stranger Than Fiction

When this one was in the theaters I wanted to see it, but never made it happen. The main character is Harold Krick, played by Will Ferrell. Harold is a decently likable, if extremely boring, guy. One day he starts hearing a random voice narrating his day-to-day activities. For a while he's moderately annoyed about this, but he's coping reasonably well until the narrator lets it slip that Harold will be dying soon. Rather than going quietly into that good night, Harold sets out to confront his would-be killer. Along the way he falls in love and resolves that he's okay with dying. (He doesn't die in the end.) A thoroughly charming movie. I quite enjoyed it.

The Ten

Mrs. Mau caught a sneak preview of this one with her best friend. No matter what the trailers look like, don't let them convince you to see it. My interpretation of her feelings on it: It's bad. It's stupid. You'd be better served by sitting in a tub of ice-cold water and slitting your wrists. With a dull, rusty razor blade. It's. That. Bad. Don't see it.

Holla.

So Yahoo is shutting down their "Yahoo Photos" service. The reason this is noteworthy is because they made it SO easy to migrate my photos to another service. They also offered the options of downloading them or having them burned onto a CD.

The process was as easy as
1

2
3



Nice and painless. Just like I like it.

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Y'all really have NO idea of how many different people's random incessant experiences and thoughts I come across every day. Every once in a while I find something noteworthy, and share it with you.

Today we have a Trip from a woman named Judy. Judy took a South Pacific cruise out of New Zealand that almost turned reminiscent of the themesong from Gilligan's Island, only on a much larger scale. Alls well that ends well, though.

Her report from the Independent Traveler.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

I like to think I have a talent for sizing things up. I can look at an item or an idea, and I can poke holes in the execution of it, or I can give it the thumbs up.: "I think this is a good idea. It should work". Over the years I've managed to get pretty quick at this.

Well, I saw a product this morning that I think is a GREAT idea for families and single-folkz alike. It's called the Lock Jaw.

The Lock Jaw is a device that is used to secure a deadbolt from the inside so that nobody can disengage that deadbolt from the outside, whether or not they have a key. It can be installed on the door with screws, or even with double-sided tape. It's simple to use, but very secure. When it's not being used, it's out of the way. It can be used in homes, apartments, dorm rooms, or even in hotels while traveling if you do it right. Maybe pack it with some strong magnets? Just be sure not to erase your credit cards. Good, clean, simple engineering. I like it. There's a write up at this site, with more photos.



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I like being born in August.

Why? Because there are no major holidays in August. Your birthday seems a bit more special when you don't have to share the month. Although, August would be a GREAT time for Couch Day.

This year my birthday was pretty low-key. I like it that way. Gives me time to be...introspective. My wife and I had dinner on Sunday with my parents and my brother (whose birthday was the Tuesday before) and his wife. Just the six of us. Good times.

Last night Mrs. Mau took me to a restaurant that I've been wanting to hit for a while - Element Gastro Lounge and Food Lab. (More on that later, I think.)

My breakfast today: Carrot Cake. My favorite.

How old? 31. Yup. 31. Feels good. It feels like I'm at the beginning of some trip. Remember how you recited numbers when you were a kid? "Twenty-nniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine, Thirty." That "Thirty" had the tone of such...finality. Then, you hit "Thirty-one", and it was like the journey to 40 was just starting!

So, these days I'm not thinking of what will happen this year. I'm thinking about the next 10 years.
Positive and negative.
Births in the family.
Deaths in the family.
Happy times.
Sad times.
Reaching landings and turning corners.

I'm looking forward to the trip.

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I find stuff on the internet. It's a talent I have.

Today, I found this dude's blog, who sees interesting products in his travels and purchases and reviews them.

I was searching for something about IKEA, and found one of his posts, and from there, I found his post about Chicken of the Sea Mandarin Orange Salmon Cups. Yeah. Turns out it's as bad as it sounds.

I gotta admit, this guy is pretty good with words. Maybe we kink alike. On simiar wavelenghts or something.

Anyway, his post is just an interesting, entertaining, slightly stomach-turning read.

Enjoy!

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If you ask me, Comedy Central's Roast of Flavor Flav put Black people back by AT LEAST 15 years. Probably more.

Remember Spike's movie Bamboozled? That was a satire. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously. This was even worse than the worse moments of Bamboozled, but they weren't being critical. They were serious. Really enjoying themselves.

Make that 20 years. This HAS to be the most un-funny thing ever to air on TV, much less Comedy Central. I'm considering a personal boycott of anyone and everyone who had a hand in it or even attended and was in the audience laughing their ass off. Somebody get me a guestlist.

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By the way, I do realize that spelling out the entire title of the show may make this post show up when people Google the event. I don't care.

Tonight my wife asked for nachos for dinner. When I do nachos, I essentially make the same taco sauce that I use for Taco Night, but put it with nachos instead of taco shells, and I always do two layers of the nacho chips with the sauce, some cheese, lettuce.

Okay. The sauce: Usually I buy the Old El Paso Sauce Mix. I get a pound of ground beef, cook that through, add the sauce mix and a little bit of water, and that's the sauce.

Now. Tonight, I went to Publix and got all of my ingredients. I got home, and I realized that I FORGOT the sauce mix. So, what to do? Now, the average dude would turn around and get back in the car, and go buy the mix. The gas you would burn to get to the store would cost more than the mix! I'll you what I did. I made my own sauce. That's right. I made my OWN DAMN SAUCE.

I browned my ground beef with some chili powder and some black pepper, and added some chopped onions and bell pepper (which I was going to do anyway). This is where I started creating. I pulled out a can of tomato sauce, and added that. A little salt. A good dose of Adobo seasoning (this dude I used to work with hipped me to the Adobo). Some sprinkles of ground red pepper (just a tad too much for Mrs. Mau. Sorry.)

That was it. Better than the mix.

Hell yeah.

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I was channel surfing briefly this morning, and I saw that Smurfs was on!

Of course, I didn't stop to watch, but it did bring back some fond memories.

I think I'm going to try to work "Smurf" into my daily vocabulary. It's such a universal, versatile word! It's a proper noun, a regular noun, a verb, and an adjective!

"What the Smurf! Listen here Smurf. You better stop smurfing with me, before you force me to smurf you a smurfy new smurf!"

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...Bust a Move!

Holla if you hear me!

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This one is for all my Atlanta natives.

If you call yourself an Atlanta native, and have no idea what I'm talking about with this one, then ask your parents.

Ready?

Y'all remember the Thrifty Nickel?

Holla if you hear me.

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