Pirates, Birthdays

1. One of the fun things we did during the four years in Santa Cruz was get together with our homies K and L and go see movies.  They taught us the art of smuggling vodka in to the theater and mixing it with soda from the concession stand.  We'd normally have dinner and drinks beforehand as well.  This practice led, in some cases, to highly inaccurate appraisals of movies.  For example, L and I were particularly intent on reducing the world's alcohol content one evening and concluded that the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie was "really good."  In fact, it is one enormous hallucination that was somehow funded by Disney.
2. That leads me to the discovery of the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the almost-straight-to-video one that Johnny Depp made in between laughing himself to the bank.  I got it off of Netflix out of morbid curiosity and it is almost as weird as the third one.  Weirder than the content, though, is definitely that Disney continued to throw money at the project; it's like the Republican party funding some weird naked art experiment because they didn't have anyone on staff look into what the project was before they wrote the check.  There are big-name actors, good special effects, and pretty lavish sets given the context of an already-concluded plot; it's the most unnecessary franchise reboot ever, which is definitely saying something.  I only regret that K + L are not here to watch it with us over about seventy-five bottles of red wine.
3. Speaking of birthdays (huh?), yesterday was B's!  She continues to get better-looking, which I would have said was impossible.