Well, I am both shocked and appalled. We watched Reign of Fire last night. I was reading when Will started it, but put my book down for the intro, and again (for the duration of the film) when Christian Bale first took off his shirt. I'm very shallow. But that isn't what shocked me. What shocked (and appalled) me is that this movie has no right to be any good, but it was. I really enjoyed it! It was funny, fairly well-paced, not too cheesy, and had cool dragons.

Backing up a bit: We decided to try out NetFlix. Our first batch of DVDs arrived on, I think, Thursday. We didn't watch any that night, as it was Sean "Baby" Smith's birthday, or Friday, as we were going to the Kodak to see The Nutcracker (more on that later). Saturday evening, after a very long nap, Will asked if I'd like to give Brave Two Zero a shot. Gee, watch Sean Bean as an SAS operative? I don't know... Unfortunately, the movie was a very good example of how not to tell a story. It had tons and tons of potential, but just was really crummy. Oh well - it had a nice shot of Mr. Bean's ass. When it was over, I was pretty much ready for bed, but Will wanted to watch another movie to get the bad taste out of his mouth, so to speak. I told him to watch Dagon, as I knew it was based on H.P. Lovecraft stories, and have not been impressed with any of the "interpretations" I've seen so far (namely The Haunted Palace). He was very excited about the movie, though, as he'd seen an internet teaser for it that was excellent. He wanted to show me the trailer on the DVD so that I'd know why he was looking forward to the movie so much. Let's just say that the trailer blew, and leave it at that. He was almost prepared to skip watching the movie, but I made him start it so that he could see if it was worth the original trailer he'd seen. Well, the movie was excellent. I just might brave the reading of some Lovecraft one of these days.

Backing up again: Friday night. I got dressed up real pretty and entered the Kodak Theater on my sweetheart's arm. We hung about in the lobby for a few minutes, checked out the facilities, and then were ushered to our seats. We were in about the tenth row, a bit to the right. I was very excited, as it was an American Ballet Theater performance. My father's been in their orchestra (the NYC one, not the one that played at this performance) for 20-some years (since before I was born, which I think would make it 26) and I've been to more ballets than I could ever dream of trying to count. We sat waiting for the lights to go down and talked about our childhoods in theater - his father was the director of the National Symphony. We have so many memories that are of nearly identical experiences, but are from opposite viewpoints. It was really neat. Then the house got dark, and the conductor came into the pit. Had I known it was Charles Barker, or ever seen Kevin McKensie's choreography before, there's a good chance someone else would have had our seats. I truly had a wonderful time, but my god! No one has tried this hard to ruin Christmas since The Grinch, and Scrooge before him. As my dad, said, Kevin McKensie just never got over the leg warmers. (Full review and explanation of final comment to come, I promise.)

Up to speed: It's Monday. It's very cold, and I'm doing this instead of the cleaning and wrapping and addressing I should be doing. I suck.