"Sea Turtles..."

OMG!!! Am I having a FANTASTIC vacation!!!

As of today I'm no longer calling this a mini-vacation and referring to it as a full-on vacation because DAMN! :D

Okay, so when's the last time I checked in? Saturday?

Okay...

My baby hoped that she would get to play with me Sunday and Monday. It turns out that while we had Monday off for Memorial Day, she had Monday off for Spring Bank Holiday! How cool is THAT?!!

Unfortunately, though, she wasn't able to come online Sunday. :( But that's cool. Sort of... I mean that as far as I'm concerned, I get that family and friends need her, and they were there first, hehe. But what's a bummer about that is the fact that just when she thinks "Okay, back to normal now," something ELSE seems to pop up. :( I kind of just wish her life would settle down and behave itself! (Don't MAKE me pull this car over! lol)

But I got a Consolation Prize Sunday night -- after I was pretty certain that my baby was asleep and not likely to come online -- which was seeing PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END with Brian!!!

O... MG!!!

We had basically been waiting to see POTC:AWE since they announced a second and third movie, lol! (Like everyone ELSE in the world, apparently, lol!)

And it was WELL WORTH the wait!!!

Okay, here's my non-spoiler-y review:

I think THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL is one of the most perfect movies made! No exaggeration! There are a handful of movies that I can pop into the dvd player and watch over and over and over, and CURSE is one of those! (Some others include SERINITY, BATMAN BEGINS, THE IRON GIANT, CASINO ROYALE, THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER, either of the DAWN OF THE DEADs... just to name a few at random.)

But even from the first veiwing, I felt that DEAD MAN'S CHEST was... missing something. It was exciting and funny and even a bit scary! But it was just... missing something.

And (duh!) what DEAD MAN'S CHEST was missing (so OBVIOUS now that I've seen it, lol) was AT WORLD'S END!!! POTC:AWE is just as thrilling and scary and funny as the second movie, and just as emotionally rewarding as the first!!!

It is exactly what I hoped it would be!

But that's me. I'm not trying to predict how anyone else will respond to it, just sharing how I felt about it.

Before the credits had finished rolling (you know, it's a PIRATES movie, so you GOTTA stick around until after the credits, hehe!) I was certain that I needed to come back and see this again Monday night!

Brian agreed, hehe.

So Sunday night I played a level of the Ps2 PIRATES game, then Brian & I popped in the first movie and watched it. And then I HAD TO check iTunes to see how much the soundtrack cost.

$9.95!!!

So I bought it, hehe. And while Brian passed out watching CURSE, I burned a copy of the soundtrack for my car and loaded all three of the PIRATES soundtracks onto my iPod.

Brian has this habit of playing background music on a loop on the living room PC, and since he was asleep by the time I finished loading my iPod I went ahead and let the PIRATES 3 soundtrack start playing. (I wanted to surprise him by letting him to wake up to the music, hehe.)

The third soundtrack is arguably better than the first!!!

I should explain... There are some albums that I can listen to over and over again, hehe... Evanescense' FALLEN, 30SecondsToMars first album, and the soundtrack to THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL are a short list.

The soundtrack to AT WORLD'S END is now on that list, too!

It's weird, but just as perfect as movie as CURSE is, the soundtrack is as perfect an album to me!!! Likewise, just a perfect a movie as WORLD'S END is, so is the soundtrack! And interesting coincidence, I think.

Blah.

Anyway...

So Monday...

I did my laundry! YAY! (I hate doing my laundry, lol. I'll often put it off until I have nothing more to wear, rather than make those 3 trips down the stairs and to the laundry room and back. I SO can't wait to finally own my own house and be able to simply walk down the hall to do my laundry, lol!)

And just about the time I finished that, Brian was awake and we continued our analysis (from the night before) of the PIRATE movies and screenwriting in general.

He got the hankerin' for some barbeque... Did I say "hankerin'?" I meant "desperate, obsessive NEED," lol. So we stopped by Smokey Mo's and picked up a couple of pounds of hickory-roasted cow.

All the while I keep checking to see if my Gnomey Goddess is online, but she isn't. :(

Jumping ahead in time, for a second, I woke up to a SLEW of messages from my baby!!! :D Turns out she got called into work yesterday, even though she was scheduled to be off. Poor thing! x o x o x o

After stuffing ourselves full of tasty, TASTY beef, I re-listened to a podcast Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio did last year, talking about writing the first 2 PIRATES movies.

I was hoping to get a couple of clues about the third movie -- you know, something that I wouldn't have caught back then, but that made sense now, after having seen the third movie -- but they had PLENTY of interesting things to talk about just covering their career to date (they were the final writers for the first SHREK movie, btw, as well as Disney's ALADDIN and THE MASK OF ZORRO and many other good flicks) and the second movie in particular.

Btw, if you're interested in listening to this podcast, you can download it at here, or from the Creative Screenwriting Magazine blog -- just scroll down to the "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Q&A" section, or you can get it free from iTunes in the podcast section for Creative Screenwriting Magazine.

OH! I forgot to mention that while Brian and I were talking about writing, we made some significant progress on this one screenplay of his that we had shelved for a bit earlier this year!!! That was really COOL! We had gotten to a point where I really wasn't able to help him, so I broke off and wrote a bad horror script and waited until he was ready. Then yesterday I was talking about my most recent approach to development and just started throwing out ideas for his movie, and he liked them! So we kept going until the ideas petered out, but we were left with a new and fresh approach!!!

So YAY!

So after listening to Elliot & Rossio talk about DEAD MAN'S CHEST it turned midnight in the UK (meaning that my baby was well asleep... or so I thought) and Brian and I set off to see WORLD'S END again!!!

I say "or so I thought" because the time-stamp on one of the messages I got from my baby was after midnight, her time. :( So I had just missed her. SORRY, SWEETHEART!!! x o x o x o

However, unaware of this, Brian and I had a magnificent time watching the movie again!!! He enjoyed it even more the second time (a certain surprising event in the movie had sort of annoyed him immensely on the first viewing, but he was able to enjoy the movie as a whole this time) and we agreed that we were finally sated, lol. We both caught different things on this second viewing, as well as noticing things that the other had spotted an pointed out from the first viewing.

MOVIE-GEEK BLISS!!!

Back at home, we finally christened a deck of pirate cards I had bought back around the time of the first movie (2003) and drank and played Poker and chatted and just had A BLAST for hours!!!

I should explain: I'm a bit obsessed with playing cards. I have many, many decks with a variety of themes. I don't get to play cards much, except on the computer, but when I see a particularly cool deck and I have the money, I snatch them up. Where ever I go, I always have at least one deck of playing cards with me. (My battered-and well-worn decks travel with my in various satchels or backpacks. The prettier decks stay at home.)

I've got 2 BATMAN BEGINS decks, my pirate deck -- which has the Jack-Rackham style Jolley Rogers on the back -- this cool see-through deck I bought a couple of Christmases ago in Dallas, and when I bought CASINO ROYALE on dvd I got the limeted-edition set that includes Casino Royale playing cards (and a single Casino Royale Poker chip, hehe).

And, like I said, I almost never get to use them, lol.

But finally last night -- after some 4 years of unuse -- Brian and I broke out the pirate cards and played! (And drank. We finished off a bottle of "Captain Morgan's Private Stock" Spiced Rum we had been nursing for a couple of months, hehe.)

It was fun! :D

Then to top this whole adventure off, I got to wake up this morning (well... noon, hehe) after 10 hours of sleep, after my body had happily slept off any hangover I should have had, lol!

Have I mentioned that I love NOT waking up to an alarm? :D

AND TODAY HAS JUST BEGUN!!!

I still have today and tomorrow left of my vacation!

And Brian's off today, as well, and has said that if I wanted to break in my cool see-through deck he'll be interested in playing some more Poker tonight!

But right now, no more talky! Ray Jay must EAT!