They EAT Death? What Does That Mean, Anyway?

It's been a low-key week in Romania. Io's been off-duty at the hospital, so we've mostly just hung out at home. Our biggest event during the week was a car-trip to Auchan, which happens maybe once a month and is an exciting opportunity to buy heavy things like ten-liter packs of water without having to haul them home by hand.

[Editor's note: there was an entire paragraph about Romanian shopping carts here. Be glad I edited it out before publishing this post.]

In an effort to reassert American dominance, I made hamburgers for dinner the other night. My in-laws' only exposure to American hamburgers has been McDonald's, so I think they were not really looking forward to this. Once they saw what an actual hamburger is like they were pleasantly surprised. And the burgers weren't even that good, to be honest -- I need to monkey around a little more with the available Romanian ingredients to get this working. But that will give me something to do.

On Friday night Io and I went out to a movie. The local theater (by "local," I mean "a 30-minute bus ride away") was showing the latest Harry Potter flick. Ticket price: $1.60.

You get what you pay for. The theater was semi-heated, and for some reason (I think because it features balcony seating, although for this Friday-night showing of a Hollywood blockbuster the only people in the theater were me, Io, and two homeless guys who had paid for tickets just for the shelter and the bathroom) the screen was way high up. And the print was terrible, it looked like they store the film in a barrel full of sand and broken bottles when they're not using it.

I did learn something really important from the movie, though, which is fuck Harry Potter. What a terrible film. I can't believe people actually like these movies. My friend -- I use the term loosely, now that I've seen Harry Potter -- Saeed continues to claim that Harry Potter is better than The Lord of the Rings. Who knew that such insanity existed?

The movie was a poorly-scripted, boring, confusing, slow-paced mess. It's one disjointed nonsensical scene piled on another, and every time the heroes are put in any sort of difficulty, the solution to their dilemma literally appears out of nowhere, with no explanation. It's like they'll spend 30 minutes of screen time trying to figure out where their stolen magical sword has been taken, and then suddenly trip over it while out walking in a random patch of forest in the middle of nowhere not even looking for it anymore, with no explanation for why it's there.

On top of that, the premise is pretty much a straight ripoff of LOTR.

J.K. Rowling Writing Harry Potter and the Deathy Hallows

A Play In One Act

by Ryan Williams

SCENE: An English castle. Mega-millionaire author J.K ROWLNG enters, along with her EDITOR.

MEGA-MILLIONAIRE AUTHOR J.K. ROWLING: What should the plot of my next book be? I know: a group of companions goes on a cross-country journey to destroy a magical piece of jewelry. It's a race against time to stop a powerful evil sorcerer before he dominates the world! Our heroes are outmatched and have to continually run and hide from the sorcerer's powerful cloaked minions.

EDITOR: Brilliant! Although we might want to differentiate it a bit from Lord of the Rings.

MEGA-MILLIONAIRE AUTHOR J.K. ROWLING: How about, the jewelry is magic and makes whoever is wearing it increasingly evil? And that causes the fellowship to break up?

EDITOR: That should do it.

MEGA-MILLIONAIRE AUTHOR J.K. ROWLING: They should also have to force an unwilling troglodyte to assist them.

Exeunt Omnes. Finis.

Nice job, Mega-Millionaire author J.K. Rowling. You definitely deserve the gazillions of dollars that people like Saeed keep giving you.

Buck Rogers' Twiki says: "Bidi bidi bidi...Harry Potter sucks."

After the movie, we walked around downtown Bucharest for a while, and I saw Dracula's License Plate. We eventually stopped in at a restaurant for dinner. It was I think supposed to be an American-themed steak-house, with waiters who were wearing western shirts and cowboy hats (really). I had chicken in "Colorado sauce," which turned out to be alfredo sauce, and Io had duck.

But then came dessert: traditional American PAPANAS!

Woohoo!

We close with this photo. When I was taking Io's picture in front of the theater, this kid ran up and was like, "Take my picture! Take my picture!" I have no idea why. It's not like I could give him a copy of the picture or anything, since we were out on the street. But I took his picture anyway, which seemed to make him really happy. So here you go, kid: you are now famous in California People of Windsurf U.S. Vaya con Dios.