What a pathetic Friday night...

I went out to dinner with some friends, that was good, but we got done early. So what did I do? Did I go home, get dressed in one of my favorite party outfits and go out? Nope. Call some friends over? Nope.

I went to Wal-Mart!

Around the corner, they've built one of the super-mega 24 hour Wal-Mart behemoths that everyone hates but shops at anyway. I've been in there before of course, but never that time of night on a Friday. Seems there's a lot of people who live their week just to get in there on Friday night and spend their paychecks.

The place was freaking packed with a wide variety of samples of the human species. If you want to study human, Wal-mart on a Friday night is the place to be. Lots of them just got paid and cant wait to get in there and spend it. And by virtue of having a department store and groceries under the same roof, you can get some really interesting combinations on their carts. Two 100 count packs of mini-sausages, a 6 pack of white t-shirts, a copy of Crocodile Dundee on DVD, whipped cream, a watermellon, and a hedge trimmer. I wanna party with that guy!

It was all fun til I went to check out. Those have to be the slowest moving lines in the world. It could be because the cashier speaks one language while there's at least 4 native tongues represented in every line at any given time. And dont you hate the way stores always put stuff in the checkout lines at eye level for little kids that they know is going to make them lose their freaking minds? I shoulda went clubbing, it would've been nowhere near as exhausting.

New Movie: Flightplan

In general I am not all that crazy about advertising and print mag shoots. They don't pay much, the agency guys all just promise they'll make you famous while they try to get in your pants. However, you can score the occasional perk if you tease them a little bit!

In this case there's a local ad agency guy, whom I'll call Marty. He tries to dress like a hip black guy, but Marty may very well be the whitest man on the planet. He reminds me a lot of the Rick Moranis character from Ghostbusters. Nice guy overall, but he really needs to just be himself.

He scored some passes to the press screening of the Jodie Foster movie that is to be released this weekend called Flightplan. He invited me out, and I had nothing better to do so I went. If you've never been to one of these, let me tell you something very important: LEAVE THE PHONE IN THE CAR! The security guys are so paranoid about picture phones and leaking pics from these previews that they practically give a full cavity search.

Anyhow, we got in, squeezed into a couple of seats in a theater packed with old women who smelled like mothballs covered by cheap perfume. Is this Jodie's target demographic now? Certainly seemed that way. The movie wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. It's the story of a mom who gets on a plane with her daughter and then somehow manages to lose the daughter while in flight. Or is she just nuts and the daughter never existed to begin with? It reminds me of another movie which I saw last year and cant remember the name of off the top of my head.

It was an ok time, see if it you're a Jodie fan, otherwise this one can definitely wait for DVD.

Hurricane Katrina

I have a lot of friends who live along the gulf coast. Fortunately all of them are safe and sound. Not sure about their houses, businesses and the like, but the material things can be replaced.

One of my childhood friends is a line worker for one of the power companies and has been down in Biloxi looking at the damage. I've been there several times visiting the casinos and was actually considering a trek down there later this month to check out the new Hard Rock in hopes it might have a much lower "blue hair" factor than the others. From what he describes, it'll be at least months before most of them can re-open. Many have the casino barges themselves totally destroyed. He also says it'll probably be at least another 4-6 weeks before teams can even get on site to begin assessing the damage and making plans to rebuild.

I dont even like to think about New Orleans, the news media has beat that to death. I cant imagine living in those conditions, but then I cant imagine staying put with such a storm headed my way.

It's easy to get caught up in all of life's problems and stress over things like jobs and finances. But all it takes is mother nature to come along and remind us of just how small we really are and what's really important in life.