A Hard Day's Basterds

I do so love spending a day in the city. Especially days like today, where I have my goals in place, but they're spread out enough so I can accomplish several side quests.

First and foremost was to finally see Inglourious Basterds. Quentin Tarintino's latest opus has been in theatres for almost a month now, but because I was off on vacation and far from theatres, I didn't have a chance to see it until now.

What can I say about Inglourious Basterds? It's awesome. It's fantastic. It's thrilling. It's got Tarintino's trademark over-the-top with everything. However, there were enough scenes that made me go "Meh," so I'm not ranking it as highly as Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill. I give it 3/4 nibs. Full review coming in the days ahead.

I also had to succumb to the hype and pick up one of the Beatles' remastered albums. I just had to pick up A Hard Day's Night. People usually get a charge out of hearing me tell the joke about how, during my time in Japan, I used to close the karaoke bars...and in Japan, that's really difficult to do seeing as to how karaoke bars are open 24/7. But the detail that I usually leave out is that it was songs off A Hard Day's Night that I would belt out. That's how I really discovered the music of the Beatles...a little Hard Day's Night, some Can't Buy Me Love...I found that all of their early stuff was the easiest and most fun to sing.

Plus, as is well-documented, the album doubles as the soundtrack to the film of the same name. I have the DVD of the film...it really is a great film. Very funny, and of course, fabulous music.

But yeah...no DVDs on this trip to the city. We're at a point right now where there's not much in the way of blockbusters that I want to pick up. All the summer blockbusters are going to start coming out on DVD next month, in anticipation of the Christmas shopping rush. And I usually have a list of discount bin stuff that I snatch up, should we be in a blockbuster lull, but the discount bins at my usual haunts seemed strangely empty. But that's OK. Because today, my usual DVD budget was earmarked for another purpose.

I bought a bookshelf!

See, it's like this. I have my extensive DVD collection, and I keep most of it in a bookshelf. It's one of those cheap, particleboard, assemble-yourself bookshelves that you can get for around $50 at most department stores. At around this time last year, the bookshelf became officially full. And ever since, I've been keeping my DVDs in neat little piles all around my apartment.

So today, I bought a second bookshelf. It's another cheap, particleboard, assemble-yourself bookshelf that you can get for around $50 at most department stores. Getting it home, though, required some engineering. As I looked at the box, I started fearing that the bookshelf would be too big to fit into my car. So, I ran over to the hardware department, bought a cheap tape measure for $2, and then ran out to the parking lot to measure up my car and make sure it would fit. Once I had the numbers, and with some clever arranging, I figured that yes, it would fit. And lo and behold, it did!

It's now lying on my apartment floor. Assembling it will be my lazy Sunday project.