Okay – so last Wednesday was my birthday – but we celebrated it on Saturday – because I had a day-off that day.
Let me tell you about it.
For starters – on Wednesday morning Belinda got up early and made me a big breakfast of blueberry pancakes and bacon. There is NOTHING I love better than pancakes and Belinda makes them better than anyone I know of – so right away I’m a happy man.
We’re grown-ups – so she has already asked me what I wanted sort of present I wanted. I had originally planned on letting her buy me a copy of the fifth season of BREAKING BAD. We’ve been watching the series and loving it – and were especially blown away by the end of the fourth season and we’re keen on seeing how they finally tie things up – but the season pack is only half the season and I decided at the last minute to hold off on buying it until the entire final season is available for purchase.
And yes, I know that you can watch it online – but I’m old-school. If I’m going to watch it I want to own the sucker first.
So I made a decision and told her what she could buy me for my birthday.
I’ll tell you about it in a minute.
I had asked for custard pie – flavored with real maple syrup. It’s awesome. I’m still picking away at it – making it last.
I was scheduled to work a night shift on Wednesday evening at work – so I decided to do something different and bring a cake with me to work to share with everyone. I bought a gi-normous pound cake at Sobey’s and a bag of Oreo cookies and dropped it off at the lunchroom. It was a real treat just to watch other people grin and have fun.
Come Saturday we had our big celebration.
Belinda took me out to the Dragon King Buffet for a monstrous dinner and then we went over to the theater and she treated me to THE WOLVERINE.
Dinner was great.
I had sweet and sour pork, fried chicken, Kung Pao chicken, lemon chicken, sweet and sour ribs, deep fried squid, shrimp fried rice, spring roll, egg roll, veggies – with a custard biscuit and a bowl of congee rice pudding and a bowl of chocolate pudding and a bit of butterscotch pudding with some deep purple Jell-o – while applying a rear naked death throttle upon my diet prior to entering the restaurant.
Mourners can send flowers.
The movie was awesome. Absolutely awesome.
Hugh Jackman does a GREAT job as Wolverine in retreat. The movie really isn’t a “super-hero” movie so much as it is a movie about a gentleman who has been through several kinds of hell and is trying to forget about his past. It takes place after the third X-Men movie – which a lot of people hated but I actually loved – and gets the Wolverine character for the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past that is scheduled for a 2014 release.
That’s a lot of what I love about this movie. It is almost completely separate from the whole X-Man movie series – yet it doesn’t go off like a freaking reboot and it does not ask the viewer to forget about the other movies. It builds upon what has happened and opens the door towards future episodes.
I’ve really grown peeved with Hollywood’s incessant rebooting of various series – the rebooted Spider Man, Superman, the constant reboots of Jason and Michael Myers and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Goddamn it – give me an honest to god series with a set of movies that logically build upon each other.
Which is what this movie does.
A cool geeky detail I noticed was early on in the movie we see a bottle of Stanley’s Whiskey – in Wolverine’s forest hide-out – which, I guess, makes up for the lack of the Stan Lee cameo appearance.
Hugh Jackman looked awesome in this role – with an absolutely perfect comic book physique. Apparently The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) played a part in getting Jackman into shape – mostly, as I understand it, in an advisory capacity. I looked it up – and I guess Jackman was on a six month schedule of intensive training coupled with a 6000 calorie a day diet of an “awful lot of chicken, steak and brown rice” – resulting in the gain of a pound of muscle a day. On top of that Jackman chose to adopt a “dehydration diet”, much like a professional body-builder. For thirty-six hours before ANY of his shirtless shots he did not drink any fluids.
The dude is definitely hard-core.
It cheered me up – hearing about his training diet. I figure I put away about 6000 calories at that Chinese Buffet – so if I can only keep that up for another six months I’ll look like Wolverine too.
A really ROUND Wolverine.
(grin)
The villain WAS a little lame – Marvel movies seem to have a hard time coming up with a really kick-ass villain worthy of their heroes – but I really loved this movie and will definitely pick up the DVD when it finally comes out.
And for those who HAVEN’T seen it yet – definitely make sure you stick in for the credits – there is an important must-see appearance of two dudes I’ve been wanting to see back up there together again on the main screen.
NO SPOILERS!
Thanks, darling – for the wonderful birthday celebration. From the meal to the movie to the after-movie visit to Chapters where we read GOODNIGHT GORILLA together and giggled like school kids – I had a blast!
yours in storytelling,
Steve Vernon
YOURS IN STORYTELLING... 