Friday 6/5/15:
We had the Craft Center party this afternoon--which involved a lot of people hitting water balloons with sticks and trying to shoot water balloons with water guns. A good, wet time was had by all.

After that, I went to the Comedy Spot and caught the "Tune-Improv" show, which is people singing various made-up songs while dressed up as various characters in different genres. It was interesting, though not as compelling to me as watching You! The Musical. After that they had a show featuring some stand-up comedy, some sketches, and some improv. The improv--featuring Nip Pals again-- was my favorite. The sketches were ... well, some were good and some were weird/disturbing. As for the comedians, one of them I wasn't too into and it felt like the biggest thing of his act was his Dippity-Do hair, but the other guy was pretty good.

Saturday 6/6/15:
Mom came into town today to go see the Vacaville rabbit exhibit. I let her loose with the camera and we were there taking 400 more pics for hours and hours. She loved it.

Sunday 6/7/15:
Didn't do much today because we were tired. We finished off watching the entire season of "Grace and Frankie" at my place, and then she started watching episodes again while I packed for the week.

Monday 6/8/15:
All we did today was watch movies (it was 105 outside). We saw Tomorrowland and Spy. I loved the former, not so much the latter.

Tomorrowland was really cool. Tomorrowland in the movie is some alternate Earth in another dimension that the greatest inventors of the 1800's found and eventually colonized as a free place for scientific development to go on without politics. Over the years, certain awesome genius types are invited into the place, such as George Clooney's character, Frank, who got invited in after making his own jet pack at the age of 10 in 1964 and hauling it on the bus to the World's Fair.

They planned a few times to reveal Tomorrowland to the world, at one point creating little pins that kind of make you feel like you're there (note: while touching the pin, you see Tomorrowland around you, but physically you're still in your own world, walking into walls and water and tripping on things), operating as a commercial. However, the reveal never happened and most of the pins were confiscated. Except Athena, the kid-robot recruiter for Tomorrowland, who kept some and has been passing them out to potential folks over the years.

The movie mostly takes place in our time with Athena's last recruit, a super optimistic techie teenager named Casey whose dad works for NASA and is soon going to be out of a job because the space program is going to hell. She is actively trying to ah, stop the dismantling process, and when all she hears about at school is how the world is going to hell, wants to know how to stop it. Nobody has an answer to that question. Anyway, after spending a night in jail for her NASA antics, she finds a "T" pin in her stuff that wasn't hers, but when she touches it...anyway, you probably saw the previews, but that's when that "commercial" starts playing. Casey smartly finds an empty field in the middle of the night to explore this thing in further so she won't run into things as she runs around Tomorrowland, but the battery runs out just as she's about to be welcomed in...Dammit!

Looking for pins on the Internet (which I ended up doing myself), she finds a place in Texas and heads out there. Bye Dad! Anyway, the store owners there know of the pins, but then start pulling out their ray guns and threateningly asking her about the girl that gave it to her (Casey has no effing idea who they're talking about) and shooting up their own store, and then Athena runs in and...well, store go kaboom, and the shop owners were robots, and Athena and Casey end up driving away. Athena (rather forcibly) eventually drops Casey off at Frank's house. He certainly doesn't want to let anyone else in, but she figures out his dog is a hologram and other things and manages to get into the house. And soon after that, they get pursued by more killer robots, and Frank is like, THE most Crazy Prepared person ever in that house. It's awesome.

Anyway, eventually Athena shows up again, and we find out why Frank is cranky-ass and bitter about Tomorrowland. Which is to say (a) he had a crush on a robot back in the day and (b) he eventually got thrown out of Tomorrowland--as did Athena herself, apparently. So they go to crazy lengths to get to the Eiffel Tower and blast their way out of there to the place, where they find out...

HERE COMES THE SPOILER ALERT, IF YOU CARE. JUST GONNA WARN YOU RIGHT NOW.

Anyway, Frank invented a doomsday countdown machine and the world is going to end in 58 days. He also has some kind of pirate signal to Tomorrowland Radio, where the head of Tomorrowland started broadcasting some kind of "you're all gonna die" subliminal messages (or something) to Earth in hopes that people would wake up and do something about it. Except we didn't, and we all started embracing Apocalypse Culture and expecting the world to end. (Brad Bird and company are really, really sick of apocalypse movies, just so you know!) Anyway, at this point the leader is all "Fuck 'em, let 'em die" about it all, and battles ensue, and folks fight to shut that broadcast off.

I'm thinking the following about this plot point, btw:
(a) Well, sure, if you broadcast that sort of thing, the general non-genius population is going to feel overwhelmed and "fuck, we can't do anything about it, might as well lay down and die."
(b) Hey, I know, why don't we change what message we're transmitting to something optimistic, then?
(c) Also, hey, Tomorrowland peeps, y'all could help too!

Anyway...I am a complete downer as a human being and I really liked the optimism of this. Go figure. I want to own this movie and watch it when I'm down (again, probably after work). And get a pin. It was really cool. I literally ran out and got the book Before Tomorrowland (a prequel) afterwards. I haven't written the review of it yet, but in all honesty...it was so-so. Oh well.

As for Spy: I have never watched any Melissa McCarthy things before because I reasonably assumed there'd be a lot of shitty jokes about fat people in her work. Yup, that was certainly present in this and it bothered me. Ugh, I just hate that shit.

Anyway: Susan Cooper is the Mission Control for the hunkalicious Bradley Fine as the CIA's James Bond guy. She's secretly in love with him, does everything for him, and he gives her...the world's ugliest cupcake necklace. (Apparently it's Kwazy Kupcakes--from Brooklyn Nine Nine?) Anyway, after she watches him get killed on the job via spy contacts, she really wants to get his killer--who's also outed a few other CIA agents. Since nobody knows Susan as an agent publicly, she goes undercover...and is given the worst bad-hair-cat-lady-fugly covers ever. Blech. She's also getting tailed by temporarily-quit-again CIA agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham), who is completely fucking insane. Her bestie Nancy (who's English--why are English people working for the CIA? Just wondering) operates as her Mission Control as Susan worms her way into being around Bradley's killer.

Look, overall it's pretty good on the spy stuff, and Susan not being too stupid most of the time to rather smart, and she gets to beat people up, which I love. And the ending twists are good. And definitely watch the credits, especially for the "Operation Clean Jerk." But...overall, I'm not as into this flick as other people are going to be.

Tuesday, 6/9/15:
Mom likes to talk about Filoli a lot--it's a fancy house with gardens that you've seen on movies and in television a lot. She talks about it so much, especially in the last few months, that we ended up going there on Tuesday. I can't come up with much to say about it, other than it was perfectly lovely and has really neat gardens and I bought some cute baby cactus. Fuzzy pettable cactus and flowery red cactus.

After that, we went to Buck's of Woodside, which you really need to see if you are ever in the area. And definitely go read ALL of the website. The fellow who owns the place sounds like an interesting dude who knows all of the movers and shakers in Silicon Valley because they all go there to eat and make deals. He has random stuff ALL over the walls (and scavenger hunt lists for the kids) and I even found a geocache in there. Definitely read his blog as well.

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