Thursday night, we made the trek out to see the latest Indiana Jones movie. Opting against the midnight movie on Wednesday because of the movies’ length — at 2+ hours we’d have been home at 3 am — we went instead for the 6:15 PM show on Thursday. This avoided the mad rush of the evening shows, or so we thought.

In all actuality, it avoided people in general. There were less than 20 people in our theater, and five of them were in our group. For Indiana Jones! I can only assume that the evening shows were busier, because if the 6:15 show is a reliable barometer on the Omaha area’s interest…yeesh.

As I wrote earlier, I loved the movie. But clearly I was in the minority in our group.

Jack Bauhaus thought it was cheesy, and singled out the scene where Mutt swings through the jungle like Tarzan as the scene that put things over the top.

Dick Herculanum was lukewarm about the movie, giving it the faintest of praises by saying it was “better than Transformers”.

Brother of Dick Herculanum disagreed, saying that he actually liked Transformers more because at least it was entertaining. “If I’d come to this movie at midnight, I’d have been really pissed because I could have been asleep. Since I came at 6, at least I can go home and be pissed about it while I play Xbox.”

Nicole, too, was dismayed. “At least now we know how Han Solo wound up with the rebellion. Indiana Jones got sucked up into a flying saucer with aliens and because of the nature of space he never aged.”

Like I say, I’m in the minority apparently, but that’s alright. You bet.

Sometimes I think people just want to be miserable, and want to be disappointed. They want things to be terrible, because that way they can complain. Specifically, I’m talking about movies, and more specifically, I’m talking about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Its a pulp action movie, and anyone who expected more than that was at the wrong flick. For that matter, anyone who expected more than that from the other three Indiana Jones movies was at the wrong movie. Some will say that it wasn’t as good as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and you know what? Yeah, it wasn’t.

But isn’t that a little like saying Led Zeppelin IV isn’t as good as Led Zeppelin II? Being not as good as pretty much the greatest movie ever is not something to be ashamed of, just like being not as good as pretty much the greatest album ever is not. Both are great, but one just isn’t as good as another.

I wasn’t exactly sure what had just happened, so I continued driving. At the next corner, I turned around, and by the time I got back to the intersection where Dick had jumped out, he had already convinced not only Continental but also his wife to jump in the car.
Suddenly, the six bottles of PBR we had purchased to take to the party were not enough. Instead of three apiece, we’d each get one bottle, and we’d have to fight over rights to the remaining two. However in the midst of driving around looking for the address Gilby had given me, we managed to end up just a block from Continental’s house. His wife got out, wished us a good time, and walked the block to their house. Meanwhile, the three of us headed out to the party.

MU: “Ultimate? Ultimate what?”

CF: “Ultimate Frisbee, silly.”

MU: “Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?”

CF: “Because its not called that. It’s just Ultimate.”

Using an adjective as a noun is dicey, particularly when describing a game. As Continental said on Sunday, people would think you were nuts if you played a game of “Awesome”, but no one even thinks twice about a game named “Ultimate”.

The lesson, as always, is that you shouldn’t let frat boys name a game. If you do, it winds up being called “Ultimate”, which is completely ridiculous. However, a