an Unstoppable movie

Justin:  As you know every Friday night is Movie Night and yesterday was Nic's choice.  She went with the Denzel Washington Chris Pine runaway train thriller, Unstoppable.  Here's a synopsis from IMDB:

With an unmanned, half-mile-long freight train barreling toward a city, a veteran engineer and a young conductor race against the clock to prevent a catastrophe

Wow, this movie was superb!  A very tense and well written thriller was a nice change of pace for us.  A lot of action movies these days go even beyond the hyper realistic and this movie felt very real to me.  The term "blue collar" comes to mind.  I kept thinking this movie was "Speed" on a train but really it was its own beast, and that's a good thing.  I highly recommend checking this film out it's a great time at the movies.  And one of the best thrillers of the year.

Nicole, thoughts on your choice for the night?

Nicole:  Judging by the fingernail marks I left in Justin's arm, I'd say the movie was pretty intense. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, and I felt that it was a believable movie. I liked it a lot and I'd say this is a movie that I would see again.  That doesn't happen often for me, so I would take that as a good sign.  Go see this movie!

The List

Justin:  I thought this would be fun to share with everyone.  The list takes its cue from one of my all time favorite TV shows, Friends. 

The idea behind the list is the top 5 celebrities and personalities that our significant other would let us get it on with.  Now I have a hard time with this because I swap out people ALL the time and never really get "set" in my ways.  In other words I haven't pulled a "Ross" and laminated it.  I thought every now and then, Nic and I would share one of the five from our list.  Also I think it will help Nic flesh out the rest of hers cause I think she has 3 or 2 that I know of and it will help me in picking and making my choices final.

There's no rank in the list, just the order that we think of them.  So the first person that comes to mind for me is:

Tina Fey is smart, funny, dorky, and that's sexy to me.  She was the funniest person that was a part of Mean Girls.  When Saturday Night Live wasn't funny, it's Weekend Update with Tina and Jimmy was their saving grace.  After she left, she went on to 30 Rock, one of my favorite shows in the last 4 years.  It's that sort of awkward comfortableness she owns that makes it ok for you to laugh.  And a girl that makes me laugh goes on my list for sure. I want to go to there.





On to Nic's pick!

Mid Ohio Food

Justin:  Hi!  And how was the weekend for all of you?  This past weekend Nic and I attended the Mid Ohio Con in Columbus.  More on that nerdy goodness here.

The reason for the awesome post is: FOOD!

Since we got one of those fancy extended-stay type of hotels, we had a whole kitchen setup.  To save money instead of buying junk and eating crap [wait til we get to Sunday], we decided Saturday night to make dinner.

After the show we went to Kroger and picked up a few things.


We had crab cakes for appetizers and decided on making stuffed shells with spinach and ricotta cheese!

 I think I'll leave it up to Nic to tell you the process...I just stood there and looked pretty. [just kidding...I was sitting]


Nicole: While, we probably spent about the same amount of money buying our food, it was so much fun to make and have a real meal together!  We knew exactly what was in our food, we could adjust flavors to our exact liking and of course, we could make left overs for the next day!

The process was really easy, you cook some shells, make a little spinach and cheese mixture, stuff the shells after they have cooled and top them with sauce and bake in the oven.  Even though we didn't make the crab cakes, they were still very good, and I'm glad we decided to get them.  They were a great appetizer to stave our hunger as we waited for the shells to bake.  We also got a few Mediterranean salads to enjoy.  It was an overall great dinner and I'm glad we had a kitchen at our fingertips.

Justin: Hi again!  So didn't that look awesome?  It tasted awesome, for realsies.

Nic's friend, Melanie, told us about this hot dog joint in Columbus called Dirty Frank's.  Wait, me eat hot dogs?  It gets better, you can get any dog there vegetarian!

So for our "celebration" dinner on Sunday we decided to eat there and holy crap was it good.  I got to eat a chili dog for the first time in like three years.

Granted it wasn't a real hot dog, it was a veggie brat, and it was chili with no meat but damn, it tasted just like one!  I also had the Amy's Boston Dog, which was a hot dog with Boston baked beans, onions, and cheddar cheese.  We also split something called "Tater Tot-chos", which is nachos minus the "na" and replaced with "tots".  YUM!

I really dug the heck out of the place and it has character.  They even poke fun with some of the menu items.

Nicole:  When Melanie told me about Dirty Franks, I almost dismissed it right away because, hellooo, it's hot dogs, Justin can't eat there.  But my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to check out the menu and BOY was I glad I did!  There are soooo many different hot dog options to choose from, you could get almost any of them as a veggie dog and they also had veggie brat and italian sausage options as well.  After checking out the amazing menu, I knew we had to go and luckily, it was only about 5 minutes from the convention site.  It was amazing!  I would definitely love to go back there and try a few of their other dog choices and maybe some of their unique slushies as well.  If you are ever in the downtown Columbus area, I highly recommend this place!

Happy Halloween!!!

Justin: I hope you guys had a Happy Halloween yesterday!  Nic and I were at the Detroit Fanfare convention Halloween weekend so dressing up started a day early for the company we were amongst.  You can read more about my comic exploits here.  Check out these awesome costumes we saw:

On day two of the convention it was Halloween so kids and adults were dressed up and artist were even handing out candy.  Nic and I both got dressed up for the event.  Here's what we went as:



 

I had a great time this weekend, we even got to visit Nic's cousin in Ann Arbor the night before the Fanfare and had some awesome cupcakes and veggie friendly cuisine.

What was the experience like for her?  Well let's ask Nicole...

Nicole: Well, over all I enjoyed Detroit Fanfare!  It was awesome how many costumes there were and since it was Halloween weekend, I was more inclined to dress up myself.  I didn't feel the pressure to be dressed as a super hero or feel like people were judging me because I was dressed as Spongebob.  I actually got a few good compliments from it!  The Con was great though, it was very busy, the aisles were full, and it was in the hotel.  This proved to be great because since this was a smaller venue and I wasn't sitting at the table with Justin like I normally am, I was able to go up to our room at any time.  I was able to grab a nap during the day and catch up on my sleep.  I had a good time and the convention went so well that they are moving it to a larger location next year!

Friday in Ann Arbor was great!  I was officially the first relative on my side to visit my cousin in Ann Arbor and I would definitely say I would love to go back and visit!  There were so many different food places, along with lots of veggie friendly options and we capped the night off with amazing cupcakes and a few eps of The IT Crowd.  If you have never heard of The IT Crowd, you need to see it, NOW!  It is hilarious british humor and I can't wait to be caught up with all the seasons.

The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz

Justin:  Nicole's a big reader of books and I read comic books and graphic novels.  I thought this would be a fun new segment to discuss with each other and you fellow blog readers to get us to open up and challenge our literary tastes.  That way if she sees a graphic novel I like and posted about she might want to read that and vice versa. I told her once a long time ago that I wanted to read more books as a way to whet my appetite for writing my own stories.  In fact, one of the things we used to do when we were developing those feelings was we would read to each other.  We would each take a chapter or two and usually it would be a funny book or some kind of diary and read it to one another in bed.  IT was a great way to open up conversation and ultimately feel so comfortable with each other.  Also I dig the sound of her voice, especially when she would laugh.

I was never really a fan of Baum's tales of Oz until my favorite artist, Skottie Young was going to adapt it for Marvel Comics.  His take on the characters have been really inspiring and this adaption has made giant leaps forward into the realm of children's comics.

It is also the first graphic novel that Nicole ever read...and thus began her descent into geek-dom.  I thought this was a great way to introduce her to the graphic novel format because of its source material, easy to read panels and wonderful illustrations.

Here is the synopsis from Amazon:

The premiere American fantasy adventure gets the Merry Marvel treatment! Eisner Award-winning writer/artist Eric Shanower (Age of Bronze) teams up with fan-favorite artist Skottie Young (New X-Men) to bring L. Frank Baum's beloved classic to life! When Kansas farm girl Dorothy flies away to the magical Land of Oz, she fatally flattens a Wicked Witch, liberates a living Scarecrow and is hailed by the Munchkin people as a great sorceress...but all she really wants to know is: how does she get home? 

So that's my Read This pick for the month, week, day, what have you.  Hopefully Nic can share some of the books she recently read and we can get kind of our own little Oprah's Book Club going on here.  Happy Reading all!!


Nicole:  I love that Oz the first graphic novel I read, it was really good and made me want to explore other graphic novels and comics.

Justin mentioned that I am a reader of books and he's right.  In fact I am currently reading the whole Oz collection.  I'm about halfway through and I love it! There are so many short stories in the collection and it is really neat how they all intertwine with each other.  I am both excited and sad to finish the collection because I want to know know what happens but I don't want this amazing tale to end.

I look forward to the rest of the Oz graphic novels that are coming out as well :o)

We Like This: The Social Network

Justin:  I figured I'd talk about the weekend since it seems all I ever blog about is the movies we watch.  And Nicole blogs about the important stuff, like how romantic I am haha.

Nicole and I had a busy weekend...separate from each other.  She was playing mom this weekend.  Nic was off taking pictures for her younger sisters homecoming and hanging out with one of her good friends from college while I was stuffing my face and celebrating my sister-in-law's birthday.  Also Nic got a haircut and uhhhhh she looks amazing.  I probably told her that once.....every 5 minutes.

 On Sunday we got together to watch part of the 11th Annual Mustang Stampede at St. Rita High School.  We also ran into some old friends from high school, it was like being in band again.  Oh the..good...times?

In the evening we caught a showing of David Fincher's new film, The Social Network, which we both really dug.  If you live under a rock and don't know what this movie's about, it's the story of the people responsible for the rise of Facebook.   I won't get much more into it because that's the set up.  That's all you really need to know.  It's the facebook movie.  I honestly didn't know what to expect.  It wasn't funny or even dramatic but it was a character study of this unique persona, Mark Zuckerberg.  You don't dislike him, but you don't like him.  Its a very tug of war concept with how you view this character.  We both were pretty engaged in the story and admitted to watching it again.  I think the Oscar race has officially begun.  I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up seeing this at the AMC Best Picture Showcase come winter.  Go see this movie!

The Bank Job

The true story of a heist gone wrong... in all the right ways. 

Justin:  We are on a bit of a cops and robbers kick as last week was, The Town and last night's movie was The Bank Job.


Here's a synopsis from IMDB:  Martine offers Terry a lead on a foolproof bank hit on London's Baker Street. She targets a roomful of safe deposit boxes worth millions in cash and jewelry. But Terry and his crew don't realize the boxes also contain a treasure trove of dirty secrets - secrets that will thrust them into a deadly web of corruption and illicit scandal.

I think Nicole enjoyed the film and when I saw this in theaters I thought it was such a well done movie.  Some times interweaving plot lines and character arcs get messy and complicated but this movie tells the story from all angles but manages to keep it together and not fold under itself.  I highly recommend this movie.  Another thing I loved about this movie was the film's poster.  It's sets the tone and look that the film was going for, tense and polished.