Speaking of Movies…An Avatar Adventure

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A friend of mine asked if we wanted to see the Avatar at an IMAX theater in 3D. Being a tech geek of sorts I was all in on this one. I went online and reserved a few tickets Thursday because being opening weekend we knew it might be tough to get in.

We had an adventure in the morning with car problems that started the day off in a crazy way. Cassie’s car has been having coolant issues, so she decided to take mine because she thought it might break down. If you leave a car outside here (as mine was) you have to scrape the frost off the windows before you can drive. It is so cold that when you drive the windows frost up again. Cassie had to pull over a few times due to the fact she couldn’t see and was swerving all over the place. She had only gotten a few blocks away so I had to get out of bed, into my robe and sandals and then pull her car out of the garage that hadn’t been ‘frosted’ to do an early morning rescue and swapped cars. She ended up being late, but safe and luckily her car didn’t break down as well on the way there…have I mentioned winters in Colorado are so much fun?


Car antenna being attacked by cold

I put a downspout on the rental house and ended the day driving to Denver with Cassie. We left our house at around 5pm. We encountered traffic jams and we took a wrong turn that almost took us to DIA. It was a good thing my friend had saved 2 seats for us. “Top row middle” was the IM I received on my cell phone. We ended up being about 10-15 min late.

Top row middle means that if you want to sit down you’d have to scooch past about 25 people. We decided to just hop over the chairs instead. We put our 3D glasses on and….wait…there was…No magic? WTF? Cassie hadn’t ever seen a new 3D movie and was thinking it wasn’t too cool. In fact it was blurry. I asked my friend Clifton to see his glasses…Oh..WOW. Apparently we got the wrong glasses.

I had to jump over the seats again and go to the lobby. Told them we had the wrong glasses. The guy sez “Let me see your ticket stub”. Of course when I got in the door man didn’t give me back my stub. I told him that “I don’t have it.”. Of course he rolled his eyes and replied “Well then how am I supposed to know which 3D glasses you’re supposed to have?”. Well….that was a good point and it makes you wonder how many types of 3D glasses do they have?! Turns out they have 2 types and since the ones I was holding weren’t the right ones that left…the other pair.

He reluctantly gave me the other pair of glasses. I went back to the theatre and hopped over the seats yet again. Finally…I got where I wanted to be.

The movie was pretty cool. It was a lot of ‘cartoon’ looking scenes blended with ‘real life’ scenes. They used the science fiction to mask the real life issues we face. Things like environmental destruction, how we use force to destroy and get what we want at any cost, and our lack of caring for indigenous people, plants or animals. I was surprised to see the film makers paint the military as an evil force. You usually don’t see that side of things in American films. Instead we usually get Transformers types of films that are meant to recruit people for the armed services and to buy new Camaros by showing ‘kick ass’ scenes. This was the anti-transformers.

One thing Cassie of course noticed was the couple of smoking scenes in the movie. I thought it was kind of odd as well. Why would a scientist/biologist (the character played by Sigourney Weaver) be smoking in space? In a cabin where they have to pipe in oxygen to stay alive no less. For one thing, most scientists and people in other highly esteemed professions (like doctors) don’t smoke. You would be hard pressed to find 3% of the highly educated, wealthy group smoking. For another, this is supposed to be set in the future. Do you think many people will be smoking in the future? Hopefully not. And the risk of fire or blowing up your spaceship would be way too high. Makes you wonder if the tobacco industry was involved in financing this movie…hmm

Technologically it was far beyond what Transformers achieved and Avatar has a decent storyline too. When we got done watching the movie we snapped a picture with some of the people waiting to see the next showing.

Cassie with the ‘correct’ 3D glasses and a guy dresses as one of the ‘blue monkey cats’

Afterward, we went over to Dave and Busters and had a snack and talked about the movie, the day and how our lives are always such an adventure/

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Casi Casi -Almost Cassie?

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The other day I happened upon this list of movies filmed or set in Puerto Rico. I thought this was so cool, so I set out to find some that looked familiar. I didn’t realize that so many famous movies were set there. Movies like Lord of the Flies, Jacob’s Ladder, even the new one The Men who Stare at Goats.  Some I did know were filmed there like  Captain Ron, Feel the Noise and El Cantante as well as the upcoming Rum Diary movie.  

popcorn

I was interested in checking out a few of the other lesser known movies and found a movie with a name that intrigued me: Casi Casi which means literally “almost, almost” or more closely in English to “just barely but not quite”. The reason this title caught my eye is because when I say my name in Spanish when introducing myself “Cassie” sounds exactly like “Casi”. Most Spanish-speaking people look at me strangely, as most English-speaking people would look at someone strangely if they were named “Almost” as in “Hello, my name is Almost, how are you?” So, instead I usually introduce myself in Spanish with my formal birth name of Cassandra. And people relax a little more. “Ahh, Cassandra… que bonito el nombre” they will say, or “Oooh, Cassandra, la mujer de las telenovelas”. Apparently there were some Spanish soap operas where there was an protagonist (or was it an antagonist?) whose name was Cassandra. Usually Cassandras in these types of shows are somewhat psychic as well so kind of mysterious…Here’s an article about the Mexican actress Anette Michel who plays Casandra in the telenovela Pasión Morena.

Anyway, I wanted to see Casi Casi and so headed off to the local library to see if they had it. Which they did! Britton and I watched the DVD about a week ago and thought it was pretty good. It’s a low budget movie, but has a simple story line about a bunch of high school teens who get in trouble when rigging a school election. It is classic Puerto Rico with some of the slang Spanish (the whole film is in Spanish with English subtitles), games (dominoes), clothing (the kids wear the traditional uniforms),  salsa dancing and they even take a trip to old San Juan. It really gives the flavor of contempory Puerto Rico from the teenage perspective.

I thought it was a fun, cute movie with a great title 🙂 Check it out.

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Today I went to jail

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While technically that it is true (I did go to jail), it’s not what you might think. As part of our Leadership Weld County group, today’s outing consisted of learning about our public safety organizations such as the jail, Sheriff’s Office and Police Department. So, I did go to jail, but only for a visit. I thought the jail presentation was the most fascinating. They did a demonstration of how to extract a misbehaving jail inmate.

We also got to watch someone get tased! Wow. Just wow. I hope I never get tased. I asked what would be the criteria to tase someone. They said that it depends on the amount of danger that could occur to the police or sheriff. Only if the behavior of a person is at the same level of danger as a taser can they use it. If it is misused that could be reason enough to lose their job. I was happy to hear that! Similarly for using guns (we got to go into a SWAT vehicle and see their guns! scary), they should only be used if life is threatened since it is considered “lethal force” whereas the pepper spray and tasers are considered “less-than-lethal”.

At the jail I found it strange when we were in the area to watch the jail inmates. They could see us somewhat through the darkened glass and were making funny faces at us and making signs. I felt weird because it reminded me of being at the zoo, only instead of animals they were people. I also thought about how it would feel to be on the other side of the glass as a prisoner. The sheriff deputies talked about how so many of these people live in poverty and so being in jail is somewhere actually a little better for them to go. They have 3 meals a day, they are relatively safe, they have health care, and a warm bed. It may seem like a lot to us to give up our freedom, but to many of them, it’s actually better than how they usually live, especially for those with mental illness and/or substance abuse issues on top of poverty. They said that 80% of the inmates in there were return visits! If that’s not a case for prevention and rehabilitation in jails and prisons, I don’t know what would be!

We also got to visit the fire station and I got chosen to sit in the fire truck! I felt like a happy little 3 year old boy :-).  We also saw the paramedics. Both the fire department folks and paramedics talked about how they are becoming many people’s first line of care in treating even fairly minor health issues because they don’t have health insurance. Yet another facet of the health care debate that I don’t think many people who have health insurance consider. When the paramedics and firemen and women are out answering these calls, they can’t help you in a true emergency. It was also interesting to discuss the amount that Medicare and Medicaid pay out for these rides and whether or not the cost of paramedic rides should be covered in the same way that fire and police services are (pre-paid with our taxes).

In my line of work at the health department I mainly work with women, so it was interesting to see the jobs that are mainly done by men. Overall, quite a fascinating day and a totally different world than my daily reality.

In a fire truck
Sitting in the fire truck

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