On Friday, a bunch of us went to the movies.  It was a bit of a hassle getting it organized.  We had six people coming from four different directions and no idea if the movie would be sold out.  In the end, we all got tickets, everyone arrived on time and we not only got good seats,  but before the lights dimmed, Andy and two of his kids walked into the theater as well.  They sat right in front of the rest of us.

The movie was "Enchanted".

Josie had seen it two days earlier and she really liked it but was miffed that the princess wound up with the wrong guy.

"Patrick Dempsey is not the wrong guy." I told her.

"Yeah, Prince Edward was soooo HOT!"

"So's Dr. Dreamy!"

"who?"

Never mind.  Anyway, I liked the movie but when it was over, I had to agree with Josie.  The girl chose the wrong hunk.  Patrick D. is as cute as they come but his character was Dr. Dullsville. 

Prince Edward, on the other hand, was proof that James Marsden should be an A list star!  Not only is he gorgeous and talented (singing and dancing in Hairspray) but his Prince Edward is right up there with Capt. Jack Sparrow as a brilliant comic character.

The movie was very enjoyable and cute but I wouldn't have given it four stars.  Four stars means it couldn't have been any better, and while Enchanted was really good, it could've been even better;
1.  More Prince Edward.
     Heck, give me an entire movie about Prince E!
2. Give the leading man some personality.
    He was a suit.  Why'd Giselle fall in love with him?
3. Mine the relationship between the little girl and her Dad.
    The single Dad trying to make a strong, self sufficient woman out of his princess loving little girl was a comic gold mine, abandoned after one brief scene. 
4. Way too much about the Evil Queen and her henchman.
    Who gives a rat's ass about this crap when we could've been hanging around with Prince Edward??
5. Not enough Nancy.
    This was a tough, New York career gal who left it all behind for the sake of romance!  Who was she? Did she even know that she yearned for a charming Prince to sweep her off her feet until the moment she saw Edward?  I was very hopeful that she would be the one to dispatch the Queen, but she was completely underutilized.
6. The Dragon.
     I know this was a movie for six year olds, but even they thought that dragon was too cutesy.
7. Susan Sarandon.
    You want to see a brilliantly funny turn as an evil witch, watch Michelle Pfieffer in Stardust.  Susan Sarandon is no Michelle Pfieffer.
8.  More Prince Edward. 


Saturday, we headed down to the gym for an early game.  The Mavericks were playing some DivI juco from Missouri.  Usually we don't play teams that are that far out of our league.  The Gophers are recruiting a player off of that team and the gym was full of Gopher coaches and fans.  The only time I've seen the gym that full is if we're having a tournament.  It was a surprisingly fun game.  We expected to get our heads handed to us and instead we stayed in it all the way down to the wire.  At one point in the second half, our Mavericks were down by 12, but we hit a couple of threes and suddenly it was a three point game.  Cortez missed a dunk with two minutes to go that would've brought us to within a point. He had made a dunk earlier in the game and gave the kid who had tried to stop him a look that said "who's house do you think you're in?"  The bottom line is that if we'd shot better than 54% from the free throw line, we would've won the game. 

Sunday, we headed out to Jay's brother's house on Lake Francis.  Tim and his boys wanted to share their duck hunting catch so they had a whole crowd of us out for dinner.  There were three kinds of duck, along with potato dumplings, lots of veggies and pumpkin bars for dessert.  It was all delicious.  Dinner was served early so we weren't out as late as we thought we would be.  We drove home while the moon rose, huge and orange in the western sky.  It was a perfect ending to a great holiday weekend.