The Best Movie of the Year...

This past weekend my $10 ticket to the Thursday night show of "The Dark Knight" was a portion of the $20 million that was earned just in opening night screenings of this killer movie. As of this afternoon it was the highest first weekend ever for a movie beating out Spiderman 3 and Pirates 3. I was astounded an amazed at the way the move exceeded my expectations. My wife who has never and I repeat never stayed up past like 10 o'clock when a movie was on theatre or at home was wide eyed and engrossed at 2:45am when the movie was over. I won't drop any spoilers since I know several people who still have not been able to go yet to the movie. But I will say I was very impressed with the lack of gore especially with how freaking crazy Heath Ledger (The Joker) is and how many people he kills or in a court of law would be blamed for. I felt like I was watching and old school Alfred Hitchcock flick or something where you didn't need to see something happen to know it did and that can totally freak your mind up.

I also wanted to give a shout out to the newest facebook application "Pieces of Flair". I am totally stoked at the idea and the process of showing of your flair. Office Space is seriously top 20 favorite movies of all time and easily top 10 in comedies. I love that all these kids on facebook (the ones younger than me) are using this application and I can't help but wonder how many of them have actually seen the movie that spawned this app. I have no real insight into this phenomena just making a statement.

From Russia With Love, Dr. No - Ian Fleming (10 out of 10) The Bond books continue to impress I can't stop reading them. I have been alternating these out with other books though so that I can spread them out a little. Dr. No was the first book that closely resembled the movie that was made from it. The only real difference is that in the book Dr. No puts Bond through a gauntlet of deadly items ending with a fight a giant squid and including a crawl over hot metal and deadly spiders in the dark. After escaping he buries Dr. No in a pile of dirt not that crazy nuclear meltdown he somehow escapes from in the movie.

Walking With God - John Eldredge (4 out of 5) Another great book by the author of "Wild at Heart". This books goes through a year of his life and reads like you are reading his journal while he explains a few additional items. It was great and once again it was perfect for what my wife and I have been going through in our work and marriage. Whenever she reads it I will get her to giver her insight on her blog linked to the right.

Overflow of information...

Since I have not Blogged in awhile I really don't know how this one will go. As I told one fellow blogger this week I couldn't figure out what was keeping me from sitting down at the computer and putting my thoughts into words. First off I would like to say that my grandmother passed away since I last blogged and she was a longtime reader of the blog so that she could keep up with her oldest grand kids life and marriage. She was a wonderful woman and was loved by many here is her picture taken back when my boys, my wife and I spent the week with her a few years ago.

She was loved and is already missed very much!

In a related note number two of the Baltimore five got married this weekend. Jeff Jones took the great dive this weekend in Birmingham where he married the lovely Kimberly Burns. We had an absolute blast this weekend having the whole gang together again for a weekend. There were eight of my long time bros together for a weekend of debauchery that was well worth the drive and the tough mornings that f0llowed late nights of catching up and 18oz canned PBR. They were married off without any issues despite the amount of worry that went into the rehearsal dinner and the wedding trying to keep all the groomsman's pants on.I also made a great purchase a week or so ago on eBay. I don't know if everyone has one of those items that you just search for every month or so and never find, one of those items on my list was an old coffee cup that my grandfather used to use when they owned the marina in Tennessee. It is a beautiful specimen of glass and humor

I hit "Buy it now" really without even checking the shipping and handling. I don't know if I am going to drink out of it yet or just keep it on the shelf but at least now I have it.

I have two blogs that I would love for everyone to see

http://www.happywatching.blogspot.com/ - Sara Beth Eady's Entertainment Blog

http://blogs.usatoday.com/popcandy/ - Professional Blog about cool stuff that I always find interesting.

I got a serious list of books this time since it had been almost 2 months since the last post:

Bringing Down the House - Ben Mezrich (3 out of 5) The book that inspired the movie 21. A good bit different than the movie but still follows the same general story line. A crazy story of a kid who makes alot of money counting cards in Vegas with a group of MIT students.

Snuff - Chuck Palahniuk (2 out of 5) Interesting new book by the author of Fight Club. It's about a Porn queen who is trying to kill herself by having a 600 person gang bang. Yeah I know it sounds really crazy but it's more the events surrounding the said sexual event.

The Grapes of Wraith - John Steinbeck (4.5 out of 5) Great book about how the industrial revolution affected tenant farmers and what they had to go through when they were forced off their land since it was cheaper to use a tractor to cover 20 different families land than have the families all farm their smaller tracts separately. They left the Midwest headed for California looking to find a place and found way too many people doing the same thing.

Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever - Ian Fleming (20 out of 20) The original James Bond novels are outstanding! I love the movies and wanted to check out the books and I was floored. The stories are much more believable and are more like the Bond I always wanted. In the books he is not the womanizer that they make him out to be in the movies, there aren't any crazy watches or "gadgets" just yet and the bad guys are outstanding. Also on another note I picture Daniel Craig when I read the novels and I can't decide if that makes him my favorite Bond, discuss.