a busy weekend

Friday was the huge Tango 10-Year Anniversary and Halloween Party. This turned out to be a huge event with the CUT cover band preforming and Amy cranking out lead vocals on several songs. Not only was her cover of Blondie's "One Way" awesome but Amy looked incredibly hot in her slightly modified Star Trek TNG uniform that we had thrown together with the sewing machine a couple of night prior with the idea of her cosume being "Jean-Luc Picard's personal assistant. Maybe there would have been a lot less confict across the galaxies if all the Star Trek females wore skirts and black knee-boots with big chunky heels. I chose the traditional doctors lab coat and stethescope over khakis, shirt and tie. Simple but effective. Amy really needs a nurse uniform. Eithter that or a classic Catwoman costume. Rowrrr.

After the late night and some serious sleepign in, to start off a busy Saturday, Amy and I headed over to the Texas Pinball Festival to play some pins. An entire banquet room at a local Holiday Inn had been turned into a giant pinball aracde featuring games from all eras put on display by local collectors and vendors. The games were set on free play, so after paying your initial entarnce fee, you could play as many games of pinball as you could stand. It's a great way to either play a number of games on a favorite machine or sample games on machines that one has never seen before. Over the course of a few hours during the afternoon, we played a ton of games on all sorts of machines from the classic Cyclone and standard Roller Coaster Tycoon to the latest high-tech and very involved Monopoly pinball game currently available from Stern, the only pinball maufacturer left in the business. Of special interest was the Shaq machine from 1995 that featured a basketball goal that moved about the playfield and you could actually shoot baskets by shooting the pinball over various ramps. The machine that Amy and I found to be the most intriguing was a game called Spectrum from 1982. The game did not feature the usual pinball layout and had automatic feeds to the flippers. The goal was to shoot the ball into a series of coloured targets in an attempt to guess a randomly generated colour sequence code (4 spaces with 4 colours for 256 combinations), sort of like playing Master Mind on a pinball machine. I don't think we ever got the hang of it but it was definately different and the example on display had beautiful artwork in great condition.

After pinball we grabbed dinner at Litte Caesar's Pizza on the way into downtown Fort Worth. I'm really digging this $5 fresh-hot-n-ready large pepperoni deal where you can just walk in without pre-ordering and grab a large pizza. Very convenient in situations like this one.

After dinner we made the quick trip down 7th Street to the Wreck Room to see our friend's band, Man Before Mars play. They have a new CD out, so this was sort of their EP release party. It was their first show in months and was a little shaky. Our friend Rodney managed to break various drum components on two separate occasions.

After the show we headed out to the Ridgmar Movie Tavern to catch the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. For whatever reason, Amy is one of those people who is really in to Rocky Horror. She's never been part of a cast or anything, but she knows every line, and the floorwalker jokes that accompany them. She also hopes to have her own Columbia outfit someday. Tonight she had to settle for just wearing her Mickey Mouse club ears, which made her look uber-cute. The pre-show costume contest was rather interesting. Two girls dressed as angels thought they were a shoe-in to win when they started making out with each other. What they didn't consider was that one of the girls was dressed as a firefighter with nothing but the suspenders up top to cover her R-rated bits. When the girl-on-girl kissing threatened to win over the audience in the finals, those suspenders just happened to slip to the side to reveal all of the firefighter. Needless tosay she won the final vote in a landslide. Playing dirty perhaps but keeping with the spirit of the show. The show then commenced, rubber gloves were snapped and toilet paper was thrown. There was even a real-life time warp as we rolled the clock back an hour at the end of Daylight Savings Time in the middle of the show. It was a fun show and a perfect end to a busy pre-Halloween Saturday.

Threesome

Three years! Who would have thought?

Love you Ames!

Rolling Again and Two for the Money

Don't ever get hanmburger patties from Central Market. They'll ruin regular supermarket patties for you forever. We had some at Rodney and Stephanie baby shower number two last night and they were soooo good. Normally I can eat two burgers at a barbecue, but not these, one was just too filling.

Friday night Amy and I went and rolled at Don Carter Cityview lanes down in almost-Benbrook. It was good to go bowling again after a lengthy hiatus. Did I mention that last time out I spared the 7-10 split? :) There was considerable rust to knock off and break dancing teeny boppers on the next lane to avoid, but there were flashes of brillance interrupted by totally brutal frames, the kind where as soon as the ball leaves your hand you know it's going to be bad.

Saturday was get stuf done day. Sunday we played racquetball. Well I guess I should say that we chased the raquetball ball around the court for an hour. We played one real game and thanks to an end of game collapse on my part resulting in back-to-back aces, Amy won 15-12.

Later Sunday night we went to Milwaukee Joes for ice cream and then to the Rave Motion Pictures place at Northeast Mall to see Two for the Money. It was okay, nothing spectacular, nothing really bad. It started out really good but then when the central character goes on a skid of bad football picks, the movie kind of skids into a slump as well. It reminded me a bit of Glengarry Glen Ross in a way with all of the hard selling tactics, which is fitting since they both feature Al Pacino, a group of salesmen con artists, customers risking money, and a lot of machismo. Not nearly as effective, tense or stressful as GGR, but watered down version in the same general realm of movies.

Thumbsucker

Tonight Amy and I headed over to the Angelika in Dallas to catch a showing of Thumbsucker. It's a film about a high school senior who still sucks his thumb and his efforts to quite, grow up move on with life, come of age etc. The entire movie is scored by The Polyphonic Spree, so you can imagine that it has a whole uplifting peppy vibe to it and at the same time an underlying weirdness. It also has some of the airiness and pacing of Napolean Dynamite and Garden State but with a little more of a clear cut story. It's an excellent film even though keanu Reeves threatens to steal the movie. Yes, I used the words excellent film and Keanu Reeves in the same sentence. Keanu plays an orthodontist in this movie, and it is a role that I don't think anybody esle could have played. It is as though the role were custom written for him with a cross of Neo and Bill & Ted to produce an insightful yet short-sighted mystical orthodontist character. It works. Go see it before it leaves theatres.

After the movie, Amy and I went over to Campisi's from some pizza in the old Eqyptian restaurant location where they still have jukeboxes at the booths and bullet holes from ganster shootouts in the walls. The movie and dinner combo made for a great evening.

And Texas finally beat the Sooners.

Froo-Froo Mexican

Avoiding the TX-OU crowds in Dallas, Rodney and Stephanie met Amy and I at MiCocina in downtown Fort Worth for dinner. It was still crowded but was very good. It's pretty crazy, the restaurant is located across the street from my workplace but because my boss thinks it is too "froo-froo" (as he says it) this was my first time eating there. Worth the wait. They even gave me extra rice an none of the beans that I don't like!

I guess the bad part was that I had kind of a stressful day at work trying to get a proposal submittal out in time for FedEx, so I was sort of in a bad mood. Sorry about that guys.

State Fair

Funnel cake.
Frozen chocolate-covered key lime pie on a stick.
Bottled water.
Tater twister.
Lemon chill.
Root beer out of the giant barrel.

A good time.