8/21/15:
Another month, another You! The Musical! This month’s title: Cowboys of Atlantis!

Naturally, this featured the sheriff and his deputy putting down a plot by the mermaids to take over Atlantis with their army of jellyfish. “Little do they know,” the mermaids sang over and over again. Meanwhile, the sheriff has a whopping grudge against said mermaids for killing his pa and his uncle. He repeatedly sings a song called “Those goddamn merpeople are fucking tricksters.” (They did a great duet together of these two during the climax.) A third mermaid is against this whole idea and wants to be a lawwoman.

Meanwhile, Mayor Starfish is throwing the 100th anniversary of Atlantis 2, and wants to give high fives all around! “No!” Nobody likes how he sticks to people’s boobs, even though he’s gay and makes sure everyone knows he’s not enjoying that. He sings about how you can be anything you wanna be in Atlantis--he wants to be a fashion designer--and the mermaids get the mayor to turn against the sheriff by saying that the sheriff dogged on his dream. The mermaids get deputized.

The mermaids set up an ambush for the lawmen, and are saved by the third mermaid when she pees on their jellyfish bites. “You been a-thwarted.” “They didn’t hit our faces!” “Do you know how hard it is for girls to aim? You’re welcome!”

The mermaids are towed out to Alaska and the lawmen and new lawwoman are given the key to the city.

Memorable quotes:
* “Sea water this early? It’s only 9 o’clock!” “It’s been a rough Wednesday!”
* After spotting two octopuses having sex, the sheriff calls out his own real life name as being good in bed. Someone else was all, “That sounds a bit fishy!”
* After not being able to find regular paper underwater, “I’ll just use the sandpaper.”
* “I dont know if I want to be a law--oh, there it is.” --a mermaid’s commentary as she gets a star stuck to her boob.
* “We’re hermaphrodites! I have a weiner!” --the other mermaid tries to come on to Mayor Starfish

In random news, my instructor Brian is in this show and he has gone on to us about the importance of not hopping onto someone’s back at random during a show and causing injury, which has totally happened to him. Sure ‘nuff, someone hopped on his back and I could see the fear on his face...eek!

8/22/15:
I took the day off and spent it at the movies, doing a double feature of movies I figured would be mildly interesting to so-so: American Ultra and Ant-Man.

American Ultra:

Okay, so you probably got the plot from the trailer: loveable, nervous, stoner loser Mike used to be a governmental assassin who got retired. He also apparently got brainwashing to give him panic attacks and vomiting if he ever tries to leave the town of Liman (hah, get it? Lie Man!), West Virginia. Which is a shame since he wanted to propose to his girlfriend Phoebe in Oahu. He has a lovely flower ring that I would totally be down with. Anyway, Mike thinks Phoebe’s awesome and that he’s probably holding her back in life since he’s such a schlub who can’t even not burn dinner. This is most likely true, but not for the reasons he thinks--without getting into spoiling, I’m just gonna say that Phoebe is aware that there is more to Mike than this provincial life.

Anyway, some hot young turk (Topher Grace) named Yates is throwing his weight around and decides to have Mike assassinated because he keeps trying to leave town, which to me seems quite mean. Victoria, the lady that ran Mike’s training program before it got shut down (he was the one success, and it looks like she’s slid down the political ladder after this), gets a “courtesy call” to let her know of Mike’s impending death, and she runs down to Liman to activate Mike with code words. He has no idea what she’s talking about until he spots two guys tampering with his car, and they come after him. Mike throws his ramen in one guy’s face, stabs another in the carotid with his soup spoon, and next thing you know he killed two guys in a total blur. He calls Phoebe in a panic and they end up getting arrested, and then assassins come in and shoot every single cop in town. So Mike and Phoebe go on the run and try to hole up at his dealer’s while Yates calls in everyone he can for a supposed disease outbreak, blocking all the ways out of town. Mike freaks out that he’s secretly a robot (which is not unreasonable to think under the circumstances) and otherwise ends up having to off various people.

Here’s the things you need to know about this movie:

(a) Mike and Phoebe’s relationship is genuinely touching and sweet and you root for them.
(b) I don’t think the CIA works like that at all, which makes the plot kinda ridiculous after awhile. Particularly Yates, who is godawful and somehow has a shit ton of power for some reason.

So: emotions good, plausibility kinda terrible, though I did enjoy Mike randomly killing people with household implements.

Ant-Man: Like every other nerd, I have sworn to watch all of the MCU stuff, even though this one I was REALLY not excited to see. I really only dragged myself in because it was convenient to double feature. It’s...okay. Paul Rudd is charming and having a good time in it. I was not overly thrilled with the members of the Pym family, who are generally kinda snotty and jerky, and I was seriously debating walking out of the movie at some point. It got a little better, and I’d move it up to “tolerable, has its moments.”

The plot of it is that Hank Pym, a scientist/superhero working for SHIELD back in the day, has a suit that can shrink you down to ant size, and he’s figured out how to give commands to ants. He and his wife, Janet, a.k.a. The Wasp, used to go on the world’s tiniest missions until she shrunk herself down to infinitesimally small and presumably dead to complete one. (I can’t explain this for shit and I’m not gonna try beyond this.) Anyway, he won’t let his daughter Hope in on the superheroing because she’s all that’s left, and she’s annoyed at it. Hank has managed to piss off SHIELD for not giving up his secrets, pissing off his double-crossing former mentee Darren Cross (who poached his company) for not giving up his secrets, and he’s probably just pissed off everyone he’s ever met, really. Not a pleasant dude even if the movie doesn’t get into wife-beating like the comics did.

Anyhoo, Hank decides to target Scott Lang, a modern-day Robin Hood burglar just out of prison and unable to hold a job down, by passing on “hey, you can rob this guy’s house” through the rumor mill that eventually leads to Scott’s gossipy but super charming roomie Luis. After thwarting a fingerprint lock and an ancient safe (by giving it the Titanic treament), he breaks in and is all, “what the hell is THIS?” Of course he leaves with it anyway, puts it on, and gets a bizarre tiny surprise.

This is all a setup by Hank to hire(?) Scott to do a job: break into Cross’s facilities and steal his “Yellowjacket” suit, which is the same sort of thing only more violent and is gonna get sold to HYDRA. Hope teaches Scott how to fight, but isn’t allowed in the suit because sexism. Luis and Scott’s other criminal friends are recruited for the giant/tiny heist. There’s also a scene where Ant-Man whups the Falcon, somehow.

It’s mildly amusing, but suffice it to say my mind wasn’t blown. I did enjoy the toy train fight and giant enlarged train and ant at the end. But I still left thinking, “They’d rather make a movie about a tiny guy who talks to ants than Black Widow. Good lord.” I can only assume they did it for the lulz.

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