Hooray for friends, and a movie review.

First off, I have to say that on Friday I was thoroughly impressed by my friends. On two occasions that night, a different friend each time, they kept me on track. First, after the usual Friday Night Magic, a bunch of us decided to stick around and do a draft as practice for Nationals. As a result of an unexpectedly prolonged evening, myself and others found ourselves quite hungry. I had not planned for this and had no food. As I watched many others partake of several ordered pizzas, I started making plans. "Well, if I just have the crust, that's just like bread...right?" and "I could use my indulgence right now...on shitty pizza." My friend Jeremy heard me ask if someone was going to eat their crust and called me out on it saying "isn't that, like, terrible for you?" He was right. And so I stuck to my guns and declined the pizza.

The second time came about because I hadn't yet done my jump ropes for the day, and it was now midnight. I started muttering that I might just skip it, what's one day? My friend Aaron immediately jumped on my case and said no! I had to do 1200 jumps before bed! He was right, and I toughed it out and stuck with it.

Friends rock, even when they're half taunting you to break your routine.

Now, a movie review. I went and saw Transformers II yesterday, which has been getting scathing reviews. I loved it. I used my indulgence for popcorn (nothing wrong with that Sean.) as popcorn at movies is part of the whole package for me. It was delicious. Also, the movie. Now that was an indulgence. So much fun.

I figured out what the critics have been doing wrong. Yes, the character development of the robots was slim to none. Yes, the human characters, while more interesting, spent a lot of time running from explosions. And most of all Yes, the plot was contrived, cheesy, and full of holes. Here's the thing to keep in mind though: So was the plot of every single one of those cartoons. And most other cartoons from that era. And you know what? I loved. You know what I loved about those cartoons? It wasn't the plot, that's for sure.

The plot in those shows, and in this movie, is like a corn chip. It is merely a delivery mechanism for the juicy, sweet, spicy, filling salsa. The only thing that those old cartoons needed to have happen for myself and other grown up children to enjoy them again, is they needed to look better. I feel pretty confident that this movie is exactly what I would expect if all my friends and I had grown up into film makers and said "hey, we can remake our old cartoons, but this time with cooler graphics, the robots can swear and kill each other, and there can be hot chicks in it too! How can it not be awesome!!!"

And awesome it was. So all the critics out there berating the movie for a lame excuse for a plot... just pretend you are 8 years old again. Then you might get it. It doesn't need to be deep. It just needs to be cool.