Lots of food, lots of beer, Iron Man 2 and almost no sleep

Last night, my wife and I met our friend at the Hollister Brewing coming for dinner before heading over to the theater to watch Iron Man 2.  I kinda went off the deep end by sharing a side of duck-fat fries and some pickle chips, and ordering the tri-tip sandwich with bacon clam chowder, a pint of Pope IPA, a pint of Table 42 Red, and finally a stout float, which was weird but I'm a believer now.  Yup, all of that talk about exercise and dieting chucked out the damn window last night, but it was worth it.  Maybe from now on I will only order beer if there is ice cream in it--full throttle calorie maximization.  At least I was not the only one to have a beer float, as The Friend of the Donist also had one, but his had the beer with 8.5% alcohol content, which is crazy strong.  His was slightly better than mine though.  Ugh, I'm still full.

Dinner rocked, and we staggered over to the movie theater to check out the movie I have been losing my marbles over seeing, Iron Man 2.  I absolutely loved the first Iron Man and how the film faithfully developed one of my most beloved of childhood superheroes--I even went so far as to watch the first movie to prep for the sequel and it still holds the magic for me.  We then plopped down our $9.25 for the movie ticket...wait a minute...what the what???  $9.25 for a fucking movie ticket?  Holy guacamole, you have got to be kidding me!  This is part of the problem with ever more expensive movies not making back their costs.  Hell, we did not even bother to go see Alice In Wonderland in the theaters, since we could buy the blu-ray and watch it naked in the comfort of our own home for $19.99...clothing would indeed be worn if The Friend Of the Donist were to attend that screening thank you very much.  $9.25?  Damn.  At least the theater was only about half filled so there were no running moron commentaries.

For months I had avoided watching any trailers for Iron Man 2 and only looked at the final scores of the reviews that I found and tried my best to avoid any spoilers on the movie.  For the most part I succeeded.  As for the  movie itself, what did I think?  I actually loved it with an admitted few things that kind of bothered me.

What I did like were the actors.  Robert Downey Jr. was of course just as great as he was in the first movie, and I really could not see anyone else portraying the title hero.  Mickey Rourke was great as Ivan Vonko and would take command of every scene that he was in, and it seemed as if he were having a great time getting into his character.  I still liked Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts.  Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury has me biting my nails until the Avengers movie, and Don Cheadle as Rhodey was good, but at times he almost seemed as if he were not entirely into his role.  The other show stealer besides Rourke was Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer, Tony Stark's competition, and he was phenomenal as the wide-eyed overly enthusiastic business man, who liberally threw around the business lingo that I hate/love oh so much.  My wife hated Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanov, but I thought that she was good and loved her for very different reasons.   Mmmmmm....Scarlett....mmmmm.

Lots of food, lots of beer, Iron Man 2 and almost no sleep