Well... It wasn't an entirely wasted evening: we got to have a good time making fun of the movie afterward.

G.I. Joe is shiny, but it starts out with the intelligence and verve of a mildly athletic eight-year-old and gets dumber as it goes along until it's pretty well drooling and spewing on itself on the logic and story front by the time it reaches the Big Ending. Pretty, yes, but I suspect the script was written by the folks at Hasbro who failed at the design of Pokemon cards. The cameo appearances of half the male cast from The Mummy couldn't even save this clunker. And the "sidekick" really shouldn't be that frickin' incompetent. And, if the girl is your best shooter, why is she sitting on the sidelines being knocked off motorcycles instead of shooting things like... say... the slowest RPG in the known universe at it "speeds" toward the Eiffel tower to deliver its load of metal-eating "nanomites"? When did a particle accelerator become the size of a glass mini-keg and what the F are those levitating "particle beams" doing to that green nuclear fish...?

Also:

Ice floats, stupid!

And no matter how you try, there is no place to "hide" a nuke sub half the length of Manhattan and its full complement of "shark" mini subs in clear polar water while you have your face off with the bad guy just so you can reply to "you and what army?" with "My army!" as the sub heaves into view at your back.

Although Arnold Vosloo whistling "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" was amusing.

Oi... I need chocolate....

So... Christmas was nuttily merry this year, if in a low key way. The hubbling and I had a lovely dinner with cmpriest her hubby, and their bud Alex, then went off to view Alien vs Predator: Requiem--review of which see Cherie's blog--which featured the comic book world's least competent Cubicle Predator On Call taking on the hybrid Alien-Pred in a tiny town in Colorado that truly needed to be nuked.  Large amounts of silly, and a shit-ton of not-to-be-taken-seriously was had as well as admiring the famous Spain and Howard. 

Prior to that we had entertained my Mom for a short interlude on the 23rd which resulted in new towels and a nifty backrest thing for moi--it looks like someone hacked the middle out of an Aeron chair's back--so I can now sit and type for endless hours without my usual aching back.  (thanks Mom!)

Christmas itself was presentless, partially due to my being a total dead-thing since Thanksgiving, then having gum surgery last week.  And partially due to the United Parcel Service telling me the package I'd paid extra for expedited service on had been accidentally shipped to Portland.  After it arrived in Seattle.  In fact, the package did NOT go to Portland, and was delivered on Christmas Eve to our mail drop, but I was not aware of this, since I assumed the first info--which went uncorrected until late Christmas Eve--was true and didn't rush to the mail drop before it closed at 3 on Christmas Eve (besides which I was out with the fabulously entertaining Ms Priest.)  So, no Prezzies for Jim which let him off the hook for having gotten nothing for me, either.  C'est la vie--at least C'est Moi vie.  (Thanks UPS--you useless sacks of protoplasm.)

And it snowed in Seattle, just in time for Cherie to come get us from the boat for the afore mentioned Christmas Feast.  So we drove up to Cherie's place through a gorgeous--and not yet totally mushy--dusting of snow that was a mere memory by the time we exited the movie theater, making the drive safely un-icy.  Perfect!

Except that Jim, the real-life Cubicle Predator On-Call, had to WORK.  But at least he didn't have to go to Colorado and kill aliens.

And this afternoon I got copies of the British versions of Greywalker and Poltergeist! Yay!