8/10 - 8/12 Step Up 3D and Whatnot

This is an icon from the first Step Up. But hey, it's related.










Previous Posts:
Planning on Catching Up
Visiting My Old Teacher
Playing with Glue
A Book I Read
Jamboree and Failed Meeting
Randomness
A Bird Bath Project
A Clean Room
Sled Run
Game Cube and N64
A Short Post
Hopeless
Hanging with People
Hanging with Online Friends



Right, so I have a friend. Her name is Jordyn. I met her when I first started working at the cafe, four years ago. She was 10 at the time. When the cafe closed, we kept in touch, mainly via Facebook, sometimes through text.

I went looking through my photos on my computer for some older pictures of her... and that was major trouble. I have no filing system. Basically, whatever folder I'm currently using gets whatever photos I have. At least... that's how it was until a year or so ago. When I started putting the photos from my camera in a "pics" folder... but there's no organization to that folder either. Though I'm starting to try... my current photos are being uploaded in to the directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\Jackie\My Documents\My Pictures\imvu\1pics\2010\august

Whereas, before "august", the directory was:
C:\Documents and Settings\Jackie\My Documents\My Pictures\imvu\1pics\picture\New Folder\JG\New Folder\Newr\flowres\New Folder

My organization on my puter... sucks. ROFL. And those directories are just for the original uploaded pictures. The resized edited ones have been falling in to various folders in my "ED" folder... even though most of the stuff in that folder actually isn't ED related anymore. Oy.


ANYWAY... in order to find the pictures of Jordyn from the past, I did a search to find ALL PICTURES FROM 2006-2008. rofl. There was... a lot of them. I wanted to do just a search for jpgs, but realized I've been saving resized photos as pngs for so long, I might be unsuccessful in finding it if I looked just for jpgs. So hundreds and hundreds of photos later, I finally find the ones I'm looking for. Sadly, most are unflattering, just her being goofy, (she was 10-12 after all) so I'll only share a couple.



This picture was taken in February of 2008. I was um... working... and since it had snowed so badly that day and the night before, there were no customers. Jordyn often hung out with me at the cafe, to which I'm incredibly grateful, because I go insane if I have nothing to do. I decided I wanted to make a snowman, but I was still working, and I couldn't just walk out of the cafe to make a snowman outside... so we went up to the balcony, and left the door open so we could hear the chime if anyone came in. There was enough snow to make a decent sized snowman. Hehe haha. Looking at this pic now, I remember I didn't have a coat... but did I make my parts of the snowman with no gloves too? Geeze, I must be a moron. lol.



And this one was taken in April of that year. Jordyn is awesome. And we hung out a lot. I enjoyed her company, and I act young a lot, so we got along really well. This particular photo was taken upstairs at the cafe around 2am. My boss occasionally allowed us to have sleepovers in the cafe, so long as we didn't use any of the food unless we'd bought it beforehand. So we'd bring our own food - we were allowed to use the fridge and oven, so we could bring anything. We even made cake once. lol And that might even have been on the day this picture was taken. Can't remember. lol. - and have a sleepover on the second floor, away from any windows. The pink thingers around her neck are hands of a huge bunny I named Bunizzle. He was a gangsta rappa. Except she kept calling him Bunzilla, which seemed to fit him well, since he was a huge bunny.


That's Bunzilla Bunizzle in all his gangsta glory. Anyhoo, after the cafe closed later that year, we still hung out occasionally, she slept over a couple days during the following summer, during which we watched High School Musical 2 a million and a half times. But eventually we stopped. Not her fault at all. Mainly mine. She moved a town over, I had already moved a town over, which made us two towns away, approximately 45min. Then after babysitting subsided and I was unable to get a job, I no longer had the money to keep driving over to visit or hangout or whatever. So we stuck to facebook and texting.


But an exception is always made. We saw Step Up when it first came out. Like... four times. lol. And then when Step Up 2 came out, we saw that at least twice. Naturally, we had to see Step Up 3D together. I had luckily found a random one-time babysitting job a couple weeks before and saved some of the money just for the purpose of going.


Here's the Mickey D's I passed on the way to pick Jordyn up. It's the one closest to me that's 24hr. It had been demolished four months ago and claimed it would be up by summer. I was like "HA! Unlikely..." I was wrong. We ended up going here after the movie, and I should have taken a picture of it then, because at night, that Ronald McDonald is downright creeeepy.


So the plan was to pick her up at 4:20. I ended up there closer to 4:30. I hate being late. I'd left early, but apparently there was an accident...
I don't know what happened, but they had roads blocked with cop cars and firetrucks.


While sitting in traffic, I noticed there was a dude actually wandering around in the lake... I have no idea what was going on still. I tried to look it up the next day, but I either suck at searching for news, or there wasn't anything written about it.


That's the only pic I snapped of Jordyn. It had been almost two years since we'd hung out, I wasn't sure how comfortable she was with pictures anymore.

Okay, so we get to the $3 movie at 4:38, and I'm all freaking out because I thought it started at 4:30, but apparently it started at 4:45, so we were just in time. lol. We decided for $20 we could see Step Up 3D (for $13), a $3 movie, and use the extra couple bucks for Mickey D's. We saw Toy Story 3 because Jordyn hadn't seen it yet. And I, again, acknowledge how pathetic I am. I'd seen the movie already. And I cried during the sad parts. This time around? I cried again. AGAIN. And worse?? I knew when the scenes were coming, so I had a head start and cried in preparation. Are you kidding me!? Jordyn doesn't cry during animated movies. As she's so helpfully pointed out, it's animated, the characters aren't even real. Sigh. So yeah, I cried. Again. And more than I had the first time.

I did get confused though. I like to sit through the credits at the end of a movie. You never know if there's something at the end. There was only one time that I was forced to leave early, because majority rules, and I didn't drive. It was during X-Men 3. And SURPRISE! There was something at the end!! UGH. So yeah, I stay. And while staying, I saw the cast... and saw that Erik von Detten was listed as playing Sid. Sid, for those who may not remember, was the devil child from the first Toy Story. He was also voiced by Erik. So I got confused. I'd seen Toy Story 3 twice now and don't remember seeing Sid... does anyone else who's seen it remember him?? Did you see him in the movie? What did I miss?

Anyhoo, after that, we raced to the other theater, because it started at 7, and the traffic was still in effect. The people were no longer in the lake, but cop cars were still blocking roads. We got to the other theater just in time, and to our delight found out that the movie was only $8 on weekdays. Yaaay.

Step Up 3D sounded... unnecessary to me. I mean... why the hell do we need to see dancing in 3D?? It's not an action movie, not like there are many opportunities to make things 3D. I had a flashback to TGIF on ABC. Do you remember that? Back when Boy Meets World, Full House, Funniest Home Videos, Home Improvement, Family Matters, etc. were all on Friday night on ABC? They had a 3D night. Seriously, waaay back in the 90's, they had a 3D night. I remember exactly two scenes. One, in Home Improvement. Tim and Al had a 2x4, and were shoving it towards the camera. Fascinating 3D. And the other scene was in Funniest Home Videos. Bog Saget was blowing bubbles. Bubbles. Uh... huh. I was, probably 9ish when this was on, and even *I* realized that this 3D was completely unnecessary.

Sadly though, 3D movies are becoming more and more popular. And the only thing I see anyone getting from it is a headache. The worst part of the movie? Bubbles. That's right. Bubbles. There were bubbles in the damned movie. It was like my flashback to Bob Saget was actually a foreshadowing. Geeze. Mind you, my eye prescription is over two years old, and I technically only have one contact, since the other broke. That probably hindered my ability to see most of the 3D. But the glasses did make the movie look clearer, and I could see the bigger 3D moves.
By the end of the movie, I had a major headache that lasted the rest of the night, and was kind enough to make sure any medications would not affect the pain. So nice of that headache.

The movie was... well, I do love seeing dancing. lol. The plot was predictable, and kind of dumb. It's one of those plots that get done so often, you could at least try to do a good job at redoing it, but no dice. On a happier note, Adam Sevani, who played Moose from Step Up 2 was one of the main characters, and he was my favorite one in 2. And Camille from the first Step Up movie was in it too, which was cute. I didn't really like any of the new characters, but a few of the folks from Step Up 2 made an appearance, which made the movie better.

So after the movie, we went to Mickey D's. On the way there, I got a phone call from Sara, asking if I wanted to go camping. She had apparently forgotten my intense fear of bugs. She was telling me that the campsite was supposed to be really pretty, all I could think of was bugs. She said there was even a lake to swim in, all I could think of was mosquitoes. lol. Bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs. I had to pass, but I did tell her to NOT forget her bug spray. *shudder*

On the way out of McDonald's, there was a weird looking bug on the window. I almost didn't want to leave, for fear it would attack me once I was outside. What the hell happened to the normal looking bugs?! After so many years of avoiding the outdoors, apparently I've lost touch with what's "normal".
I did manage to suck it up and make my way outside.
I took a picture from outside too. It's fascinating and terrifying, because the window gives it reflections.


So yeah, when we got back to my house, we decided to watch the previous two Step Ups, so that we could compare them. All in all, I think we were in agreement, the Step Up movies are from best to worst in the order they came out. The first one is still the best. And Step Up 3D was probably the worst.

When we woke up, we used some of the extra money we had to go to Party City and get Jordyn a birthday tiara. She was turning 14 the next day. 14! She's almost in high school. Little Jordyn!! Geeze.

Then, after I dropped her off, I was caught. The $3 theater is a theater that plays the movies that have just left the main theaters. And um... they happened to be playing the A-Team in an hour... so yeah.... heh.

Here's the theater. It doesn't have stadium seating like most of the other theaters.


I normally sit around 4-6 rows from the front, because any farther back seems pointless to me. Sadly, many others think this too, so any other audience members end up near me. A whole empty theater, with ten or so people all grouped together within two rows of each other.


At the last minute though, I chose to do something I'd never done before:
I moved to the front row. Normally I decide against it, because well, the front row is too close, you have to physically move your head at times in order to see the bits on the sides of the screen. But, I'd seen the A-Team in theaters about 5 times, and watched it not-so-legally on my 'puter at least a dozen more times. I wanted a different experience. It was lovely. Hehe. I'd have taken a picture of the movie, but there were others watching too, and my camera has a bright orange light before it takes a picture... would have given me away. lol.




The next day, I found out that the same $3 movie theater was playing the Secret of Moonacre. I'd never heard of this movie until an ED Forum contest, where my buddy Annina posted some lovely pictures of a room in the movie.
I thought it looked, well, lovely. And there was a discussion about the movie and whether it was available on dvd, and I thought "well, maybe I'll catch it on a movie channel some time." This was all back in May, so imagine my surprise when I saw an advertisement that it would be in theaters just a couple days after I initially looked at show times at that very theater. Fate! Or something. Ha.

I looked it up on imdb, and found that the actor who plays Lyra in The Golden Compass also played the main character in Moonacre. It also listed release dates, and showed August 12th (limited) as the US release date. So yeah, huh. I lucked out.

Heading to the theater that day, I was stopped at a light and had to take a pic. Makes enterprise (a car rental place) look majestic, no? lol.


Alas!! The way I get to the theater normally is not the way I'd gone the last two times, because I had to take a detour to Jordyn's both of those times. So when I came to the street I was supposed to turn on, I turned, but second guessed myself because I hadn't seen it from this area in so long... so I turned again... and ended up on a road I hadn't seen in about four years. The picture above shows a movie theater. Well, it's supposed to. But you can't really see it behind the trees and the restaurant. It's the most expensive theater around here, $25 for a 3D movie. I think normal movies are closer to $15. The only reason I remember the 3D price is because that's the last time I'd seen a movie there - four years ago, to see the Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D. Yep.

So... I was afraid I was lost, and would have to turn around to find my way back. Luckily though, turning a couple of times, I did end up back on the road I was supposed to not have left in the first place. Hooray! And I get there just in time. Double hooray!! But surprise, the theater that has advertisements all over the place claiming every movie is $3, lied. This movie was five. And I only had $4 on me. Dang it!! I was forty minutes from home, no way I could go back for a dollar. So I apologized to the lady at the register, told her I was a dollar short, and moved aside for the next person to step up. Luckily for me, the very nice lady next up handed me a dollar to cover the difference. Phew! I thanked her profusely, and hurried inside.

The movie wasn't bad. I liked it. The main actress is... enchanting to me. She's the main reason I liked The Golden Compass so much. And it was the same for this movie. Plus, Ioan Gruffudd was in it. I remember him from Fantastic Four, and he's just as cute as I recall. Hehe. And it's always nice to see Tim Curry, though I still always compare him to Franknfurter. lol.



Okay, that's it. As in... that's it! I've caught up. NYAH HAHAHAHA!! Tomorrow I'll probably give an update on junk, and there might be some more pictures sitting around that need to be put somewhere, but yep! I'm done! Yeehaw!!!