Category: Review

The Nation’s Capital of Fun!

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Today, I went to Six Flags America because my boyfriend’s dad’s company had reserved the entire park for a family fun day for all employees. I think it’s nice for companies to spend money on nice things like that for their employees. Personally, even though I sometimes feel weird about companies spending their money on employees in crazy ways, I think that letting employees and their families have a fun day at Six Flags once a year is a nicer and better use of money than flying people around first class everywhere to stay in presidential suites and eat at really expensive restaurants.
That’s just me.

Anyway. Our group was me, my boyfriend, two of my closest friends, and my younger brother. I was actually pleasantly surprised that my brother agreed to come with us, because he said no thanks the first time I asked him a few weeks ago. I know that he just started college, so I figured him wanting to spend time with his new friends there combined with a very natural teenage aversion to spend time with his big sister who feels a compulsion to embarrass him as much as possible to make up for my parents not being able to.

Snickers ad on the side of a wooden roller coaster
Fun Snickers ad I saw when walking into the park

I had so much fun!

It was a really warm and beautifully sunny day today. We arrived at the park at about 11:00 AM, and we set off immediately for a roller coaster before the lines started getting too long. We rode Apocalypse, which is a stand-up roller coaster and does little things like blow fire and smoke near you. (Whoa there.) This was decently fun, but it did shake us around quite a bit. We thought this was the “headache coaster,” as my brother warned.

We were mistaken. The “headache coaster” is wooden roller coaster Roar. Wooden roller coasters tend to shake a lot, and Roar is no exception. I still have a bit of a headache from how much that ride thrashed me about in my seat. It was pretty painful. I will not be riding that again simply because I was really uncomfortable with how much my head hurt afterward.

After that rough experience, we took it easier with High Seas, which is your standard swinging ship ride. While it’s a great deal tamer than the roller coasters we had just experienced, it gave us just enough of a thrill, too. The moment of zero gravity you experience when you’re at the top of a rotation is pretty fun, but can be harrowing for more timid riders. (Like my friends, who I spotted clutching each other for dear life.)

Having settled down and calmed our heads, we went on The Mind Eraser, which loops around quite a lot but was not as jolting to my head as Roar was. We liked this roller coaster quite a bit, especially since it didn’t hurt us as much as Roar did…

We had some time, so we stopped to watch the Pirate Hunters show. I was very skeptical of the show that promised humor and stunts, but the show actually delivered really well. The jokes were REALLY funny. The risk that a lot of these shows take and fail with is being too campy or trying TOO hard. I think Pirate Hunters tried pretty hard, but they had a lot of really good jokes and were not afraid of laughing at themselves. They incorporated some popular culture references into the jokes, and while sometimes those seem really poorly executed, theirs were great. (“Yes, I started from the bottom. Now I’m here. Now the whole team’s here!”) Great job. I underestimated them. The stunts and physical humor were okay, but also better than I expected. (“Parkour!”)

Photo of myself with my friends and the cast of "Pirate Hunters"
From left to right: “Quartermaster”, “Chef Linguini”, Jen, Molly, “Captain Dante”, Me, “James”

We also did some bumper cars before heading off to lunch. (Although I was lapped a few times, I think I was able to bump into my friends more than they were able to bump into me or each other. That’s a win in my book!)

The company sponsoring Family Fun Day also had a great lunch spread ready for us. I ate a hot dog, a hamburger, potato salad, pasta salad, fruit salad, chips, and a cherry-flavored ice pop. And some delicious orange Hi-C to wash everything down on this hot hot day. Omnomnomnomnom.

We obviously didn’t want to go on any roller coasters after gorging ourselves at the lunch picnic, and it was really quite hot out, so we headed straight for Shipwreck Falls. This is the ride you go on if you want to be drenched. Avoid this ride if you do not wish to be soaked. This was maybe our first actual line that we encountered, since it was a hot day. We sat in the back, with all of us being a little worried about our shoes (which we were required to wear), socks, jeans, etc. Since we were sitting in the back, we got the FULL BRUNT of the splash of our little boat PLUS the splashing of water falling off the bridge above us.
Needless to say, I was soaked through and through. Since we were already as wet as we basically could get, we decided to stand on the bridge upon exiting, because the bridge is where you REALLY feel the entire wave of water that is splashed up. (I don’t think you have to ride the ride to go up the bridge, since it’s up by the exit, but mostly only people who are leaving the ride wait there and get WHOMPED ON by water.)

Soaking wet, we walked about to ride another water ride, since we were already as wet as we could get. We rode on Renegade Rapids, which is a significantly less wet ride and this park’s version of the rapids ride where you sit in a big circular raft and get bumped and splashed by rapids. We may have worried some people stepping off our raft, since we were still drenched from Shipwreck Falls.

Then we headed for The Joker’s Jinx. I have to say that my favorite roller coasters were in the Gotham City area of the park, because they didn’t jerk me around and were fast and fun. Joker’s Jinx loops and twists a lot, but was a good deal of fun and helped my hair dry! Score! XD Also, this coaster launches you out at the start rather than having you make a slow ascent, so you go from 0 to 60 mph in about 3 seconds. This startled the bejeezus out of my friends, who decided they did not want to ride Joker’s Jinx after all.

Then we went on Ride of Steel, the Superman ride. This is the tallest roller coaster in the park. It is the type of roller coaster that has a very high ascent and a very steep descent. Very fun but also very smooth, since it didn’t really thrill you by jerking you around corners and twists, although you weren’t completely upright the entire ride. There were bends and turns, but the ride felt very nice and smooth. I’m only sorry that my friends got a bit scared and wouldn’t ride this one with us either.

Our last ride of the day was Batwing, the Batman ride. The line was quite long here, as it was nearing the end of the day and I guess it’s a popular ride anyway. You sit down in your seat, but then the seat reclines until you’re horizontal, and you make your ascent with your back facing the peak of the ride. Then you are flipped around and you soar over the park, getting dangerously close to the ground with nothing between you and the grass but the air and your restraints. It’s a really fun ride.

All in all, I had a super duper amazing great time. I’m glad I got to spend time with my friends and my brother and my boyfriend, and I hope they all had as much fun as I did. 🙂

Leaving the Park

The Heat

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I went to see The Heat on a whim this weekend. When I first saw the trailers for the film a few months ago, I didn’t think too much of it. Buddy cop movie with Sandra Bullock playing some kind of twisted version of her Miss Congeniality character and Melissa McCarthy, who seems to be getting typecast as this type of brash, less than savory character in many of her silver screen roles. I thought it would be funny but didn’t think that many people would care. It has, however, gotten some good press, and I’m hearing everyone from my younger brother to Harry Shum Jr. recommend the film to others.

SO. Buddy cop film where the twist is female cops. I laughed and laughed. Since it’s the feature debut of a screenwriter, it’s only right that the jokes are great in this movie. I was tickled pink seeing Tom Wilson, best known for playing Biff Tannen et al. in the Back to the Future trilogy. (I was somehow watching The Heat with 2 people who had no idea what I was talking about when I pointed this out. What. Buttheads.) Bullock and McCarthy are also pretty safe bets as far as comedy goes. Their roles didn’t challenge them to portray characters they haven’t portrayed before (Bullock as the uptight and therefore unlikable and therefore lonely Ashburn; McCarthy as loud and brash and messy Mullins) but they are reliable characters that play a reliable foil to each other.

Plotwise, The Heat was pretty predictable. I wasn’t disappointed by the predictability moreso than I was disappointed by how the movie seemed to actually try quite hard to catch you by surprise. Oy.

When a movie like this focuses SO HARD on the two leads, the other characters get really… just blah. You don’t really know why they’re there or what to do with them. I got a little giggle out of seeing “Gina… Jessica Chaffin | Gina’s Boobs… Jessica Chaffin’s Boobs” during the credits and all (and yes, they did merit their own credit line, spilling out of Chaffin’s top for an agonizing minute) but some of the characters just flopped around wanting and deserving more but not getting it: Wilson’s sad and pathetic Boston PD chief, Marlon Wayans as the wannabe romantic opposite to Bullock, Spoken Reasons as the hilarious small-time drug dealer.

I really liked The Heat. I felt like there was potential for much more, but it was really funny. This was a good feature debut for director Katie Dippold (who writes for the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation). There is no reason why anyone should doubt the hilarity of a buddy-cop movie that stars women instead of men. Women are funny, end of discussion.

Coffee Town (2013)

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CollegeHumor recently made a feature-length film titled Coffee Town. I didn’t have any clue about the movie until I saw a little post on the Tumblr Radar, which I’m assuming they had sponsored for promoting the film. Otherwise, I hadn’t heard very much about it, but I entered to win free tickets to view an advanced screening, since the film doesn’t premiere for another 2 weeks. (It’s available for rent on iTunes right now, however.)

Disclaimer: I was able to watch this movie courtesy of CollegeHumor. I am not being paid to write the review but the screening was free for me and a friend. (Information about screenings and the possibility of attending for free at the end.)

Description:

CollegeHumor’s first feature film!! Coffee Town is a workplace comedy for the generation that increasingly doesn’t work out of a traditional office. When a 30-something website manager who uses local café as his office learns of plans to convert the space into a bar, he enlists the help of his two best friends to help save his freeloading existence. Directed by Brad Copeland (Arrested Development), the film’s all-star comedy cast includes Glenn Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Steve Little (Eastbound & Down), Ben Schwartz (Parks and Recreation), Adrianne Palicki (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) and Josh Groban (Crazy, Stupid, Love).

Review:

This movie was much funnier than I thought it would be. The trailer gave me very low expectations for the movie. I also had some kind of pre-conceived notion that a feature film produced by a company that specialized in short web content wouldn’t be very good.

I was very wrong and I’m happy I was wrong.

There aren’t many movies that I can immediately name that have had me laughing throughout the majority of the length of the movie like Coffee Town did. I was also laughing out loud a lot, which I don’t normally do so much at the movies. (I am an inside-my-head laugher.) Even though there weren’t very many people at DC screening (I’d say 20 people tops) everyone was cracking UP.

I think part of the movie’s success comes from the fact that it didn’t take itself too seriously. It is fully aware of how ridiculous its jokes are, which allows them to push the jokes a little farther than “safe” while still be really funny. These are the kinds of jokes that you normally don’t laugh at in a cinema. It’s the same kind of humor that you find on CollegeHumor.com, but feature-length.

The movie blasted by. I didn’t even realize that an hour and a half had passed when the credits started rolling. That’s always a good sign, when you don’t feel the time passing during the movie. It didn’t seem like a streeeeeeetched out Internet video. It was just good jokes throughout the entire movie. There’s the little romantic subplot with the girl, which didn’t matter much, and the movie knows that. They don’t try very hard on that and I appreciated that. They used this subplot as an opportunity for more humor, which they took full advantage of. CollegeHumor definitely did a great job of taking advantage of every possible moment for comedy.

I didn’t care much for the characters, but they just managed to be not-annoying enough to make me think they weren’t funny. Normally, I really hate those dumb characters in comedies, with no redeeming qualities and who serve no purpose other than to screw everything up. But the characters here toed the line very carefully and managed to be hilarious.

I personally thought Josh Groban shined in this movie. My friend was surprised to see him acting, but he was really funny. I think I can chalk that up to a good screenplay, but the protagonist (played by Glenn Howerton) definitely was overshadowed by the other, more interesting characters.

If you are at all intrigued by this movie, I highly highly recommend you try to check out a screening near you. The screenings left are:

  • Atlanta, GA (Midtown Art Cinema) – July 17
  • St. Louis, MO (Plaza Frontenac) – July 18
  • Minneapolis, MN (Lagoon Cinema) – July 19
  • Chicago, IL (Logan Square Theatre) – July 21
  • Detroit, MI (Main Art Theater) – July 22

Get tickets for a free screening of Coffee Town and/or We Are the Millers here. You have a really good shot, and I think it’s worth it to try.

The movie was well-worth my time.

Snack Pack Pudding: Apple Pie A La Mode

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This is a bit of a random review, but I am writing it for 2 reasons:

  1. This pudding was one of my go-to foods during my post-wisdom teeth extraction recovery period.
  2. My dad bought it, and I saw the flavor and was extremely dubious. My first impression was quite wrong.

Disclaimers: I am not being paid to write this review, and food tastes REAL good when you’re having trouble getting anything down at all.

Snack Pack Pudding: Apple Pie A La Mode

Snack Pack makes puddings and jellies that you may have seen while grocery shopping. These are usually NOT in the refrigerated section, because some kind of magic keeps them okay without refrigeration. (It says so on the package.) (Not the part about magic.)

My dad brought home some jelly and pudding while I was incapacitated and unable to eat solid food last week. I saw banana creme pie and apple pie a la mode and raised my eyebrows as much as I could muster at him. These were some weird-sounding flavors for pudding. I am usually really suspicious of foods that are ambitious and try really hard to taste like non-traditional flavors. (Those yogurts that taste like desserts? Why can’t it taste like yogurt?)

He had me bring it along with me to school while I was on campus working. I had one for a light lunch since I was still just a bit queasy and…

… it was so good. Wow. The layers in the pudding actually do represent different flavors:

  • The top, cream-colored layer was meant to be the “[à] la mode” part, aka the ice cream-flavored part. It tasted like standard vanilla pudding and not like anything too crazy. I like vanilla pudding, so I was pleased.
  • The bottom, caramel-colored layer was meant to be the apple pie part, and it was tasty without being, again, too ambitious. It has a hint of cinnamon but isn’t overly apple-y or pie-y.

Did it actually taste like apple pie served with ice cream? No, of course not. And personally, I really didn’t want it to. There are certain expectations at play when you are tasting apple pie and the texture is pudding-y, and when you are eating pudding and it doesn’t taste like chocolate, vanilla, or other traditional pudding flavors.

I will definitely be eating this again. I have one more cup in my fridge (although remember, you don’t need to keep it in your fridge) and I am saving it for a rainy day.

Well, would you look at that. It’s raining outside.