Kim emailed me on Friday afternoon that she rented a movie for us to watch on Friday night.  I asked her what movie.  She said: "surprise!"

So after a very awesome meal at Smith and Wollensky's wit Ben & Kate and Gibbs & Sarah, we got relieved the babysitter (first day!) and got Jackson into bed.  I then looked at the redbox container sitting on the dresser.  The movie?

That's My Boy.

I asked Kim what on earth possessed her to rent this train wreck of a movie.  Not only did it look terrible, but the reviews were terrible too.  But we were invested - specifically we were invested one dollar.  I reluctantly agreed to watch.

And hoo boy was the movie bad. I assume it was made solely because of the passing resemblance between Adam Sandler and Andy Samberg.  Regardless, it is full of things that even 16-year old Evan wouldn't have found particularly funny.  They keep knocking people out by hitting them over the head with full beer bottles!  Awesome!  Adam Sandler is great at getting laid despite being generally repulsive!  Double awesome!  Huge black stripper!  Hilarious.  I give the movie a solid 2 out of 10, which met my expectations.

I picked a new movie for last night, but it wasn't easy given the selection at the Redbox.  I went with Warm Bodies.  A different riff on the zombie genre - it involves a zombie who falls in love (after eating the brains of the girl's boyfriend) - which leads to a cure for the zombie population (love or something like it).  There are a fair amount of plot holes and things that don't make a lot of sense.  But the movie was at least interesting, and I do like zombies.  I give it a 5.5 out of 10, which also met my expectations.

The best thing we watched all weekend was the first episode of Ray Donovan.  The hype for the series is everywhere, and I thought the first episode was pretty solid.  His wife is already getting to Anna Gunn levels of annoyingness though.  I'll let you watch for yourself.

So now, for the second time in 3 days, Kim has put on the Lifetime movie of the Jodi Arias story.  And if there is one takeaway - aside from the fact that Jodi Arias is pretty attractive - is that the guy she stabbed 27 times in the shower and then shot in the head when he was already dead - really, really had it coming.

He just kept sleeping with her, leading her on, telling her he didn't want anything serious, then sleeping with her again.  Then citing religion as to why he had to break up with her.  Then sleeping with her.  Then noticing that she slashed his tires and breaking into his house to put up weird pictures.  Then sleeping with her.  He really had it coming.

I was also surprised at how graphic the Lifetime movie is in the stabbing scene.

Kim has also raised the theory that the guy turned into a zombie after dying, and that is why she had to shoot him.

The other movie we watched this weekend was Flight.  My takeaway from the movie was that Denzel is a great pilot when he's high and drunk and everyone should just leave the hero who saved 104 lives alone to live life how he sees fit.  Kim said that I had the wrong takeaway from the movie.

Interviewer: What's your prediction for the fight?
Clubber Lang: My prediction?
Interviewer: Yes, your prediction.
[Clubber looks into camera]
Clubber Lang: Pain!

Tonight will be a perfect storm of exactly that: pain.

But Evan, its Friday night.  You just had a rough week of work and should be ready to party!  Afraid not.

Kim has been sick all week with some form of ultravirus.  I think that's the technical term.  She lost her voice, her throat hurts, and she isn't herself.  She hasn't been at work all week. She still isn't better.

Additionally, Kim's mom left this afternoon.  For good.  No more free nanny who Jackson loves.  No more person to hand Jackson off to at 6:30 AM when he wakes up.  No more person to change Jackson when he puts out a mean dump.  Its all on us.  The honeymoon is over.  It was a good six months.

And of course, on the day that Kim's mom leaves - we get an email and call from daycare.  He has a 101 degree fever!  The first time he's been sick ever.  Kim took him to the doctor and he has an ear infection (and at that point a 102 degree fever).  We bathed him and tried to make it normal.  He wasn't buying it.  He started balling and wouldn't even take his bedtime bottle.  He's now sleeping and we have no idea what to expect for tonight.  Or what to do.  I guess we feed him if he starts crying.  At 3 AM probably.

We're supposed to go into NJ tomorrow too, to visit Kim's family. We'll see about that.  If I am 60% functional tomorrow morning I'd be very surprised.

For the first time since Jackson was born - so 7.5 months - Kim and I saw a movie in a movie theatre.  It was caused in part by our terrifying realization that her mom is leaving in two weeks.  Better take advantage of her while we can!  We saw a 10:15 showing last night.

As it was opening weekend, I expected a large turnout.  We did have to get in line to enter the theatre, but it wasn't too bad.  As the previous showing exited the theatre, one guy sort of yelled at us to not watch it, as it was "whack."  This actually caused two people to get out of line in front of us.  Kim wondered how on the fence they had to be such that a random comment from a stranger caused them to leave.

I also noticed one guy talking to his date / girlfriend / friend and indignantly questioning why the movie didn't explain how The Purge reduced crime.  I figured that this guy was a moron, as the trailer pretty adequately explained why, and the movie likely did too.  I would be proven correct.

Mild spoilers follow.

The premise of the movie is a pretty good one, right up my alley as I love alt-universe type things.  After the U.S. is on the verge of anarchy, with super high crime, unemployment, etc., a new government is formed and they institute "The Purge."  For one twelve hour span a year, all crime is legal, including murder.  You cannot use WMDs or commit crimes against certain high ranking officials.  Everything else is fair game.  All emergency services are suspended during this time.  The idea is that human beings are innately violent and crazy, but if you let them blow off steam during that one day, they'll be productive and law abiding the other 364.

Kim raised the good point after the movie whether it was "all crime," so you could like rob a bank.  I said that banks probably bought super security to prevent such a thing, but maybe it was just "violent crime," since it wouldn't make sense to be able to like embezzle funds from your company or enter into an antitrust conspiracy on that one day and be immune from consequences.

Anyway, as you could see from the trailers, there is a family that has a good security system, but their weird / creepy / annoying son decides that when he sees this homeless man running around outside asking for help, he would let him in.  Of course his leads to all sorts of shenanigans when the pack of rich kids chasing him come knocking, and the movie turns into a home invasion murder fest with fairly predictable scare points.

Overall, the movie met my expectations.  There were of course a few things I didn't like - too many near misses (someone about to be killed who is saved at the last minute) and too much social commentary about the income gap.  I GET IT THE KILLERS ARE SPOILED RICH KIDS.  But the story was executed well enough and the ending didn't rely on the lazy twist I thought it would.

For the first real going out movie in around 8 months, it was not bad at all.  It probably will be another 8 months before we see another.

After soccer last night, I was out at a bar with a partner (who is a bit older than me), a paralegal (who is 23 I think) and an ex-paralegal (24 I think).  One conversation in particular made me realize how old I am.

It centered on our high school days. I was talking about how I didn't have a car and asked people to pick me up.  I mooched.  Cell phones came up, and I realized we didn't even have cell phones when I was in high school. We had pagers!

The paralegal's mind was blown.  He asked whether they were text pagers, and I confirmed that, no, they weren't even that. You just texted your number and maybe some other numeric message (e.g., 911) and hoped the pagee called you back.

He was amazed.  Its weird to think that I didn't even have a cell phone in college.  I had a landline and AOL Instant Messenger.  Whereas kids these days have had cell phones (and not just razors, but smartphones) for as long as they can remember.  I remember when I was working at Kaplan in 2004 and my teacher trainer got a Sidekick (pictured above).  I was absolutely amazed because it had the full real internet on it, wherever he went.

Today, I get pissy if my iPhone (an iPhone 4, so I'm still a luddite) has issues with a mobile version of a site v. the real one.  It was less than two years ago I had some weird phone that was sort of a smartphone but not really, and as late as 2008 I was still using a Razor which had a screen that didn't work.

So on my way to New Orleans a couple weekends ago I had to get to Newark Airport.  If you live in the city, flying out of Newark is much worse than Laguardia or JFK.  The trip is significantly longer and more expensive.  But my flight to New Orleans was already pretty pricey, so I bit the bullet.

Sort of.  I didn't take a cab (which would be like $90) or a dial car (probably $70 after tolls and tip).  I decided I would take NJ transit out of Penn Station, which would cost a subway ride ($2.50 paid in pre-tax dollars) and a NJ transit ticket ($10 I think).  Given that the Harrahs where I had never won at was down the street from our hotel on Canal, I figured this was a prudent play.

I had to take the subway to Penn Station during rush hour.  This meant the always jam packed six train to the E.  The six train is the only subway that reaches the Upper East Side.  The Second Avenue Subway, if it ever gets completed - see the recent quip in Mad Men about how it is nearing completion - will somewhat change that. But for now, the six train is the way to get around, and it is a debacle in the morning.  I had to take it.  I shoved my way into a car, bookbag and all, and zoned out as per usual.

At some point I decided to take a look around.  I noticed that one of the two seaters near the door had what appeared to be a homeless man laying down on it, sleeping.  I also noticed something more concerning.  A knife - probably a steak knife - was lying on the seat directly behind his ass.  I saw that other commuters noticed this too.  I think everyone who saw it wondered if he was one of those crazy homeless.  Would he wake up and do something that we would never forget?

The train eventually reached my stop and I got out.  I briefly considered grabbing the knife and chucking it onto the track.  I thought that the risk of him waking up and going crazy was too high.  I also considered notifying a police officer or station attendant.  But I figured that stopping the whole train during rush hour would make people more annoyed than anything.  So I did nothing and went about my business.

When I told Kim she said I should have called the police or done something, and that if something happened - i.e. the guy stabbing someone - I would have felt awful.  I discussed my points above and said I am not sure if I would feel terrible about it.  And I'm still not sure.  I mean, I would feel kind of bad and wish I had done something, but I'm skeptical of whether its my duty to do so.  It seems to me like its a pretty gray area.