Friday: Living in the future is wonderful

It's really the little things that build up until you realize that you live in a fantasy sci-fi world that would have seemed insane just a few decades ago.  However, before you start, it's good to eat a big breakfast:

The french toast wasn't super great, the bacon was wimpy, and the potatoes were kind of light on flavor.  In any case, eating breakfast after a week of waking up at 6AM and not eating anything substantial until like 7PM is a glorious thing.

First crazy thing: staying in a hotel that has its own fake lake, despite being across the street from the ocean.

The black boxes in the middle were where I tried to crop out a chair reflection, and didn't have enough inputs apparently.

Next: seeing sea creatures in an aquarium and taking the equivalent of six rolls of film willy nilly.  I only have pictures of the cute sea creatures in this post.

"I refuse to sit still, so this picture is the best of the thirty you took."

I'm 99% sure these seals were choreographing this.

See?

Then, just because: panorama shot of Long Beach harbor, including the hotel I stayed in, the Queen Mary, and the cranes for the port, which according to the movie I watched at the aquarium, is the fifth largest in the world.

Simple horizontal version.

Ring version, because I like these.

It was then time to fly home, on what was possibly the best plane I've been on, ever.

The green light is the standard power outlet available at each seat.  I didn't use it, but only because of the next cool thing.

The best inflight entertainment ever.

I had my choice of something like 300 TV shows, 100ish albums to listen to, and 90 movies to watch.  This gave me a chance to catch up on the summer movies I could have gone to, but was too lazy to see.  Quick reviews:

• The Avengers: basically as good as everyone claimed.  Well written, well acted, nice pacing.  I kind of want to go back and watch the non-Iron Man movies that I skipped.
• Dark Knight Rises: I thought it sucked.  I know that lots of other people think that these Nolan Batman movies are the greatest stories ever, but they're just simply not Batman.  My Batman is the BTAS Batman, who is constantly driven, and constantly fighting evil and corruption.  He doesn't slack off and take an eight year break and then blab his secret identity to every other character in the movie.  This movie also had another horrible flaw: being an hour too long, and filling that time with useless boring crap.  In any case, I'm going to go with Mask of the Phantasm being the best Batman movie ever, if for nothing else than for this bit from Alfred that encapsulates the concept of Batman better than anything else I've seen.
• (The first half of) The Amazing Spider-Man: Not bad, although I only saw up to the point where Uncle Ben dies because the plane landed.  I'll have to catch the rest someday.  I'm not really happy with the Dr. Connors being friends with Peter's parents, but I've never liked the Lizard much anyway.

After landing, collecting bags, navigating the taxi stand, I arrived home to this:

Well, not quite that.  It turns out though that you can order pizza online using your cellphone while taxiing from the runway to the gate after the plane lands.  Then, if you get it for delivery, the pizza will arrive at your apartment just a few minutes after you get home.  This may or may not have made the security guard think I was a wizard.

Finally, through the magic of "lying to computers," I can post this blog post a day after it should have gone up, and still make it look correct.