Saturday: There's a limit to how much fun you can have at the mall

I've been looking forward to the new Ghibli movie coming out for a while now, and so I wanted to make sure that I caught it when it opened.  While looking up show times earlier this week, I saw that the theater was showing a documentary about the National Gallery's Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, so I figured I catch that as well. The original plan was to start in the morning, but I went with the alternate plan of "sleeping in" instead.

That meant that I started with the Leonardo movie, and then had a two hour delay before Arrietty. This NYTimes review largely sums up my thoughts as well.  I'm glad I saw it, but there are some fairly major flaws that keep it from being what it could be.  Afterwards, I went to Kuru Kuru again, to finally get something to eat:

My favorites.

Next on the "waste two hours" schedule was the bookstore, but I think I might be reaching a saturation point with books.  It seems like a book has to be increasingly good or interesting looking for me to add it to the already giant pile of books I have.  This is probably a good thing, since I'm already seriously out of bookshelf space in my apartment.  I was a bit thirsty, so I figured I'd waste time at Jamba juice:

This confirmed what I've always thought about JJ: it's way too expensive and pretentious a place.  Still, it's next to a Starbucks, so it definitely tastes better than burnt coffee.  Had I actually been thinking, what I should have done was buy a new set of Set at the nerd toy store, and then grab a random table and played Set while waiting for the movie.  Hindsight, I guess.

Arrietty was as excellent as I was expecting.  Compared to the loud and crappy computer animation that gets churned out all the time now, this movie takes the time to capture how animation can be real art.  The goal of a cartoon shouldn't be to create a world of special effects that allows a lion to dance and sing and look realistic.  The goal should be to tell a good story with the help of beautiful pictures.  Like this one:

One interesting fact: the average age at Leonardo was probably around 55-60.  The average age at Arrietty was about 10.  The people at Leonardo had to rustle bags of food, talk to their friends, and send text messages throughout the entire film.  The kids at Arrietty sat quietly, with only the occasional, "what's that?" stage whispered to a parent.

After finishing the day of movies, I picked up groceries for the week.  I don't have a firm plan at the moment, but I bought a bunch of mushrooms.  I'm definitely on a soup binge right now, and so I think I'm going to use tomorrow to make a mushroom soup.  I also grabbed a flap steak, which I think I'm going to slice and quickly pan fry to go with the soup.  If nothing else, I can turn it into a beef and mushroom soup.

• Since google thinks I like Tanzania, I feel obligated to post this recipe/travel thing I got in my mail.
• Cops are crooked.
• Or, occasionally drunk.
• Or, alternatively, working for a major political campaign, while being secretly gay, and then threatening to deport his possibly illegal immigrant ex-boyfriend.  Wow, really? You'd think at some point he'd come to the conclusion that some of that is a bad idea.
• Puppy haet kitty!
• I really like old airplane advertisements.