Everyone's A Movie/Food Critic

And so we return to the magical kingdom of Work Land, where Jobs grow on Jobbies.

Watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, in case you don't watch Always Sunny and therefore don't get the reference, or admission into heaven.

To be honest I'm pretty exhausted; not so much from work as from going out and doing other shit and then trying to go to work on top of that. The recent source of exhaustion, aside from resuming morning hikes with Casey, has been movie-binging. I can only justify it because they're cool new movies, liiiiiiike:

American Hustle

I'll say this: it was good. They did stuff right. Stuff wasn't wrong. Ultimately? Solid movie, but it's not going to be on anyone's "Top 10 ____," unless they make a list of "Top 10 Ways to See the Space Between Amy Adams' Boobs," where this movie would rank #1. The film had very strong moments but didn't resonate heavily enough to be particularly memorable. I feel like that's putting too negative a spin on it when it was actually very well done, but that's all I can chalk it up to.

Things I Learned From American Hustle
1. White collar crime is too complicated to bother looking into
2. Bradley Cooper looks GREAT with tight little Jew curls
3. Jennifer Lawrence is still doing okay, so that's good

Next on the movie-palooza itinerary was

her

But let's be honest, it was all about him... Joaquin Phoenix, that dreamy fuckin' weirdo. Not gonna lie, for the longest time I could've sworn he was the guy from Lars and the Real Girl, which makes sense, because "her" is essentially the same exact premise set in semi-futuristic Los Angeles. I really appreciated this movie because it's one of the few films I've seen that didn't treat futuristic technology the way the pre-Avatar era treated 3-D movies. Sure, the technology seems cool and at times implausible, but at no point does the film seem to be screaming, "HEY GUYS... GUYS! CHECK OUT THIS TECHNO-MA-ROBO-JIGGER! IT READS MINDS AND CAN COOK YOUR DINNER! THE FUTURE IS WILD!" You don't get knocked over the head with the strangeness of it so you just end up slipping into this ambiguously futuristic place where it's very natural for people to fall in love with robots.

I'll come clean, I did cry a little bit near the end. However, I spent a lot more time tying my brain into philosophical slipknots. This is a very head-y/heart-y movie, and we can all thank writer/director/secret crush Spike Jonze for that. After watching it you'll spend hours contemplating the nature of love AND the difference between humans and robots. Like, there is zero pie-throwing in this movie. Not one pie.

Things I Learned From her

1. Video games are going to be a lot like Sims in the future and I can't wait

2. Amy Adams can go without baring her non-cleavage and still be pretty and infinitely likable

3. Sex with robots. It's gonna happen.

And so, last on the movie-watching list was

Philomena

Ya bish.

I started watching this movie having no idea what it was about, just that it involved old ladies which meant it would probably win an award. After watching it the whole way through, I've decided that I wouldn't hate it if this film won an academy award. I'll try not to spoil the ending, but it's what I liked about this movie. By the end you feel fulfilled, but not how you thought you were going to be fulfilled, so you feel kind of dissatisfied, too. It's a pretty emotional movie. I wasn't sold in the beginning, as I sat in bed cynically rolling my eyes and thinking, "Oh great, nuns. Next thing you know Judi Dench will show up out of nowhere with some Oscar-worthy performance."

Judi nailed it, folks. She plays a spacy old woman and it's simply delightful. Yes, this is definitely a "darling of the critics" type film, but it's well-made and will make you hate nuns.

Things I Learned from Philomena

1. The Irish weren't doing so hot for a while there

2. Even asshole journalists can come to accept Jesus into their heart

3. Being a pregnant nun is not as much fun as it sounds

That concludes my thoughts on the screeners I obtained and viewed through completely legal measures. 

To wrap things up I just wanted to brag about how awesome my Thursday was. Casey and I went to our second LA Artwalk in downtown, this time joining a Meetup group of fellow 20-ishes who just graduated and moved to LA. I'll admit I was very nervous the group would just be a bunch of party-seeking ho bags and a bunch of ho-seeking bro-bags, but everyone turned out to actually be really cool. We were a formidable group of about 12, and spent the evening walking down Spring Street and using the artwork as a convenient conversational buffer. The real bonding happened at the food trucks however, since we were all starving and craved delicious, somewhat overpriced gourmet food. I ate at Tokyo Doggie Style, which is either Japanese food for weird Americans or American food for weird Japanese people. I got the veggie dog, a.k.a. a bunch of different flavors inside a piece of bread. It was delicious, make no mistake, but if you can't even convince me that what I'm eating is pretending to be meat, then you probably shouldn't call it a veggie dog.

And that concludes the self-righteous food snob portion of today's blog.

For dessert Casey and I got beignets which were the beign-omb. We ate them all the way to The Perch, le fantastic rooftop bar where people in blazers go to contemplate how well they've done for themselves.

"Yup, Lizandro, you put your dues in and it all paid off."

There, we just-graduated-and-moved-to-LA-ites hung out, had some drinks, and basked in the smug novelty of the classy rooftop bar. We were a pretty diverse bunch. There was a crazy Swiss dude who kept ordering bottles of champagne and he was pretty cool... there was a friendly guy visiting from Jersey who could sell you a rotting cat carcass if you talked to him long enough... and a girl living not far from my work who could probably solve the world's energy crisis if we hooked cables up to her. I ubiquitously approved of everyone, and hope we get to do more Meetuppinz in the near future. 

That's right, it's gettin' pretty social up in here... look at me go!

[goes home on a Friday night to blog and eat take-out Thai food in bed]