The Sneak

Every Tuesday night at the City Theater near Boom, there is a sneak preview called the Sneak that a lot of Boom people attend. I've always wanted to go, but never have, mainly because I was usually in the Tuesday night show. Finally, I made it.

You have no idea what the film is going to be until it plays, which I admit made me as giddy as a kid at Christmas. The film were blessed to watch was Tokyo Drift: Fast and the Furious 3, and it was such a fun night. What a wonderful piece of shit. I love terrible movies-done right-and this one was perfect. Best of all, the Sneak crowdy is a little rowdy, so they laughed at all the right places and cheered for all the lame "heroics" the main character attempts.

It was a great night at the Cinema.

Granny Franny

Greg's grandmother passed away abruptly a couple days ago, so he decided to have an Irish wake on her behalf in the theater tonight after the show was done. Brendan sang an old Irish song and we drank Jamison as we told stories about our grandmothers. At first I was a little weirded out to attend such a public mourning, but it turned out to be a really cathartic evening for all of us. The stories were funny, touching, sad and wonderful.

I've now lost all of my grandparents, with Grandpa Jack passing away this year. They're all gone. I really miss my grandmothers and it's a real bummer to me that Erica will never get to meet them. It was fun to talk about to them, to remember them, and how much I was lucky enough to have them touch my life in so many ways. From my Grandma Grace always making you be the one to say goodbye on the phone to my Grandma Gowland always feeding you mostly gross food that you had to eat or you'r insult her, it was great to live with them again for a little while in my mind. It even reminded me of a conversation I had with my Grandma Grace right before she died that I did not share with everyone.

The weekend she died, she called me. It was a Friday or Saturday night, and it wasn't a long conversation. At that point, she was in the hispital after her lung had collapsed on her and the emphysema was really taking hold. It was the only time she ever initiated the end of a phone call. Usually, and I think this is a Midwestern thing, if you call someone, they always let you end it. So, while I always had great conversations with my Grandma, at some point, you run out of shit to talk about. Then there would be a small awkward pause as I realized there was no way she would ever initiate the end of the call. This time, she did.

"Well, you're the last one. I guess I've talked to everyone." (she'd already called my brother and my sister.)

"Ok, goodbye Grandma."

"Goodbye."

I never forgot her saying that:

"I guess I've talked to everyone."

She sort of sighed as she said it. She was done. We were never to speak again. She died two days later.

Groc!

Last night during Heineken Late Nite, we all wore soccer jerseys to celebrate the World Cup. The show was a really good time, one of those nights where everyone is having a legitimate fun time and everyone seems "on", and then we went to the SugarFactory where a Batman and Robin themed club was taking place. The Dj's were in Batman and Robin costumes, episodes of the 60's TV show were shown on the screens, and right on the lip of the stage was a shirtless Greg wearing a Batman cowl and dancing in his usual horse-on-roller-skates fashion. At one point he was dry-humping a ampstack on the side of the satage, just slowly grinding, his face driven into the amplifier mesh as he quietly and deliberately went to town.

As Brendan and I watched this from the balcony, he said "This is your life right now."

Sidenote: decorating the walls of the club were these homemade foam exclamation bubbles depicting what you would see when Batman would hit his adversary on the TV show. One said, "Pow!" Another read "Blamo!" Bla-mo? "Zapo!" My favorite was "Groc!" Not sure what that means really. Is that the Dutch equivalent of "thwack"?