Saturday, February 1, 2014

American Hustle Movie

    This evening I went to see the movie 'American Hustle' at the Grandview Theater in St. Paul. It's rare to see movies in St. Paul as there aren't many theaters in the city. It may have been a conman movie, but I liked how it was also funny in some areas. This included the interactions between the FBI agent and his boss, especially about the 'Ice fishing story'. The other would be between the conman and his wife, played by Jennifer Lawrence. I think Jenny was one big reason why I went to see it, along with the Oscar nominations. She was good in 'Winter's Bone' and I liked 'Silver Linings Playbook' as well. It was funny to me when she said 'I will have fun, it may be contagious' so I laughed. I wasn't sure if I would be able to get through the movie without a bathroom break, but I did. I liked it, plenty of twists and turns in the story. And it started with saying 'Some of this actually happened'. I like cars, so I liked seeing plenty of cars from the 1970s in it, since the story took place in that decade.
   In the afternoon I went to a basketball game at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, as I do mentoring at this school through my employer. Roosevelt beat Prairie Seeds Academy 72-59, after leading 30-25 at the half. I had to look up where their opponent is located, Prairie Seeds is in Brooklyn Park. The game was close throughout the first half, neither team held a lead of more than 5 points for most of the half. Roosevelt started the second half strong and had a double digit lead for a while but Prairie Seeds did narrow the gap. Roosevelt never trailed in the second half, and only briefly trailed in the middle of the first half. Near the end the Roosevelt lead widened again, largely due to Prairie Seeds being forced to foul to stop the clock and Roosevelt shot well from the foul line. Not sure who had the height advantage in the game. At some positions Roosevelt seemed to be taller, at others shorter. The program listed heights only for the home team. Roosevelt had 9 players on their varsity roster, just 2 were under 6 feet. Prairie Seeds had 18 listed, though it was misleading as 5 of them were listed as grade 9 or lower. I counted just 10 players who made the trip so their 'Traveling squad' must be smaller than the 18. It was a sparse crowd so one could easily hear what coaches said during timeouts. With one I heard the Prairie Seeds coach hollering at his players, saying they need to be strong and to run. In a later timeout, the Roosevelt coach asked them to look at how much time was left, and said to play like a team. There was just over three minutes left and Roosevelt was up by 7 at the time, so I'm not sure why this was said other than it is important to stress the end game.
   After the game, I drove over to Roseville and looked around at Har-Mar Mall. They have a Barnes and Noble bookstore and I wanted to get a coin folder for my US pennies, 24 in all. I also got a 'Keep calm and carry on' book. While there I recognized a song as usual, on my way to the bathroom. It was 'Turpentine' by Brandi Carlile. I like the lyric where she says 'Losing sleep and gaining weight, wishing I was 10 again so I could be your friend again'. I wasn't home for long after getting back from Roseville. When I got home I checked the paper for the movie times and saw how the movie I wanted to see started in less than an hour. I picked up a quick dinner from Super-America on the way to the movie. On 'Storm stories' after the 10pm news on WCCO the story was about the 2008 tornado in Parkersburg, Iowa, a town I traveled to for a football game in 2010.    

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