Entry 628: Vengeance

S and I had some rare free time this weekend, so we watched the BJ Novak movie Vengeance. I think I liked it. It kinda Fight Clubbed me. That is, my immediate reaction after watching it was meh... But then I found myself thinking about it later and coming to the conclusion that it was actually pretty good. S didn't like it. It had its problems -- e.g., casting Ashton Kutcher in a serious role* -- but overall I bought what it was selling, and I was legit surprised by the ending. I was wondering halfway through how everything was going to wrap up, and I didn't see it going the way it did.

*That guy is the anti-Bryan Cranston for me. When I'm watching Breaking Bad, I can't believe he's the same guy who played the dad on Malcolm in the Middle. When I'm watching Ashton Kutcher, I can only think of him as Kelso from That '70s Show or the stoner in Dude, Where's My Car, which is basically the same role -- very handsome man, though.

The main problem with the movie was the cost. I wanted to see it in the theater, but we didn't have that much free time, and it's only streaming on Peacock, which is somehow not one of the seven (literally) services to which we subscribe, so we just broke down and paid $20 to buy it -- so ridiculous. Despite all these streaming services, S and I have so much trouble finding movies we agree on. Partly we have different tastes -- I'm not going to sell her on any of the Todd Solondz films I've been meaning to see, for example -- and partly she watches too many movies on her own, so there's only the crumbs left for us to watch together. We were debating just scrapping the movie altogether, but I knew if we did that, I'd end up watching football all day, and last week when I did that she got kinda salty about it, so I wanted to put in some quality together time. $20 is too much to pay to watch a movie in my living room, especially since it will be $5 in a few months, but it's not too much to pay for marital harmony.

I thought about doing that thing where you sign up for a service and get the free trial and then cancel, but my experience with iFit really soured me on that tactic. In fact, I'm so skittish about that type of thing I almost fell for an obvious scam. I got an email from "Geek Squad" telling me my credit card had been charged $325.99 because my service had been auto-renewed. The thing is, S really did buy some sort of Geek Squad service a few years, so I thought that's what it was, and I immediately called the number to try to cancel it. But then as I was talking to "Tim," who could barely speak English, I thankfully came to my senses and checked the email, and it was from some random gmail address. Of course. I was only on the phone for about 15 seconds, and I didn't give any personal information, but still, it's kinda embarrassing to even get duped into calling. Usually I delete those emails immediately. Oh well, no harm, no foul.

Alright gotta wrap this up soon, so a few quick bullets, and then that will be that.

• The Mariners are on the cusp of making the playoffs for the first time in 21 years, and I'm so nervous they are going to blow it. They lost three games in a row this past weekend to the suckass Angels, and I had a nightmare about it. They won tonight though so that's good.
  
  
• The Seahawks lost this weekend also -- they got crushed because they are pretty lousy -- but they somehow beat Russell Wilson's new team, the Denver Broncos, last week, so I'm good for a while.
  
  
• Speaking of football, Lil' S2 started playing flag football. He's not bad. He dropped the few passes that were thrown to him, but at that age if you can get your body in position to make the catch and get your hands on the ball, which he can do, you're ahead of the game. There was not a single completed pass the entire game by either team.
   
• I've gotten really into watching Key & Peele skits on YouTube. I like their music sketches. This one cracks me up and so does this one.
  

Until next time...