Not surprisingly good-- nay, I expected it to be good: the original movie "The Producers"
Gene Wilder blew me away in this movie. I always liked the man, and found his uniquely quirky humor to my liking, but this movie was Gene Wilder at his finest. I really loved it. I expected it to be good, but had no idea I would enjoy it so much.

Surprisingly Bad: the latest version of "The Producers"
Nathan Lane is perfectly cast--I knew it before I saw it that he would rock the role. But Matthew Broderick was HORRIFICALLY BAAAAD! I ache it's so bad. Cheeeesy, and not in a good way. Maybe his work in this role on Broadway reads well on stage; but in the medium of film, it makes me want to throw the fuck up. Mortifying. I am SO GLAD I saw the old one before I saw this one, or I may have skipped the original altogether. This newest one was so hyped, I expected it to be at least good. But no...just goes to show that if you spend enough on marketing, you can make anything look appealing, even this tripe.

Friday night we had dinner, I tagged merchandise and did some packing for my vending, picked up some games at GameStop for the PS2, played some, watched TV, and head to bed. Not much of a date night.

Saturday I had a lot of errands to run for the hafla, more packing and loading the car, and head to the venue early to get the sound system cabinet open and start setting up. Then we were underway! My new student troupe, Nomaditude, was performing their debut! They looked so lovely, and I was insanely excited for them.

The show was a test of organization. The first act didn't show up at all, the third act came late, and the fifth act's music wasn't working. Luckily, we have som kick-ass talent and professionalism with most all our acts, so smooshing things around worked out well. Hasani graciously agreed to open the show (what a fabulous way to begin!), then my gals took the stage.

Wow.

They....made me....so freakin' proud! *beam* Not only did they have great energy, and had all their staging down pat, but they smiled the whole time, and didn't "watch" the leader. Considering the group had just formed two weeks prior, they had gotten their costumes two days prior, and had only one rehearsal away from the mirrors (and only two run throughs aside from that with everyone in attendance!), this was far more than I could have possibly hoped for. They obviously all worked hard at home, and worked very well together. Afterward, they were all beaming smiles, telling my how much fun it was, and they are already looking forward to the next time. :) I will be putting their video on YouTube soon, for them to see, so you will be able to see it, too.

After the hafla, we head home, had burgers, played some more of our game (finished it actually--lame game), and off to bed.

Sunday morning I had a troupe meeting (went very well--I am so blessed...can't believe it :), then Chris and I were going to play the X-Men game we got. But, yet again, the Playstation was giving us the Disc Read Error from hell. For the third time we cracked it open to try and realign the laser, with no results. So we looked up some other ways to take it apart--including removing the laser assembly, and realigning and cleaning other portions of the machine. But yet again, nothing. It had finally given up the ghost. And us with 6 new games (major used game sale on right now!). So two of our three hours had been completely killed trying to fix the console, and I was sick of it anyway--disc read errors are more common than not with my old PS2, and I wasn't going to stand it any more. We deliberated about whether we really wanted to prioritize buying a PS2 right now, and decided that yes, we really didn't want to be without one, particularly with the new games burning a hole in their cases.

We hit the bookshelf for old games we aren't playing, to put toward some trade-in money, and ran out to the GameStop yet again. We got a good trade-in deals on several games, plus a bonus $10 for having more than 5 games to trade in, so paid only a little over $70 for the $130 system. Not bad at'tal. But that plus a quick stop at the grocery store meant I had to dash immediately out to teach my workshop at Delilah's studio as part of BellyCon Week.

I had 6 students signed up, plus Delilah stayed for the first part of the workshop. The ladies were absolutely burnin' with the fire--they were thrilled to be taking their first tribal workshop, and at the end, were gushing about taking my classes once they are done with their parade commitments. I really enjoyed having them--smiling and quickly absorbing the moves and concepts I threw at them, willing to try new things. And the sunshine and cool breeze blowing through the doorway made the studio even more pleasant and lovely to teach in. At the end, Delilah suggested I come teach at her studio, though as nice as her studio is, teaching 6 classes a week is plenty. :) All-in-all, I had a fun time.

Back home, Chris had waited patiently for me to return and open the PS2 box. He didn't even peek inside the entire 3 hours I was gone, waiting for me to come home and do the honors! He is so freaking sweet to me!!! So I got the pleasure of breaking the seal and cracking into the new game console. IT IS SO SMALL! I had no idea. I mean, I knew it was slimmer, but didn't know it was...like...barely bigger than the DVD sized boxes the games come in. It's miniscule. And happy happy joy joy...no more stupid disc read errors. We spent the rest of the evening trying out some new games.

I had long wanted to play Hitman, which I understood to be a great series (and I love this style of game, where I get to be a superspy!), but the dual-control stick action was confusing, as was shooting with R2. So we switched to Splinter Cell, which I had also long wanted to play, and was a lot more fun. I only got to play a little bit, tho, before it was bedtime.

That was my weekend. Voila.