"Literally"

This weekend was a huge letdown, and it started off so promisingly. Day by day:

1. Friday - after work, I was meeting friends Keith, Luke, Steve and Dave at the South Side Works for the 6:30 showing of The Dark Knight. They made it around 6:18 (they were coming from Grove City) so we went into the theater (I had bought tickets on Tuesday of the week) and the only seats seemingly left were in the first three rows. However, Luke came up huge and found seats in the last row. Sitting through the previews was torture (although Bond previews are always sweet, even if the name of the movie is Quantum of Solace).

When the screen came up, I got goose bumps...literally. And this is not literally in the figurative sense. I'm gonna rant a minute here. Go look up "literally" in the dictionary, like on www.dictionary.com . They now have two definitions: (1) the literal definition and (2) the opposite definition, also known as "figuratively". You know, like "I literally ate 8,000 pounds of hamburger this weekend." No you didn't; you figuratively ate that much. This is just unconscionable to me, that in the dictionary it has two diametrically opposed concepts for the same word. Unbelievable.

Anyway, the opening scene is the scene that they had been showing sporadically in theaters for the past year, the bank heist with the Joker leading the way. This confirmed what I and many others had thought since first seeing the Joker on screen: he was going to steal the movie.

Here's my personal rundown of the movie: Heath Ledger, Heath Ledger, Heath Ledger. Obviously I need time for it to digest, I need to see it again multiple times, but it may be my favorite performance from an actor ever. I mean, it stole the movie that much. Every scene without Joker onscreen, I was waiting for the next one with him on. I just fell in love with his portrayal. It was creepy, scary, yet hysterical at the same time. He was a manic psychopath and it was extremely entertaining to watch.

I will say this: I liked it better than Batman Begins. I thought Begins was excellent and really raised the bar for comic book movies. Knight stands alone without the necessity of the "comic book" tag. The other performance, I thought, ranged from below average to fine. Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine did their thing, Maggie Gyllenhaal is obviously a better Rachel Dawes than Katie Holmes (about this there is NO debate), and Aaron Eckhart was very good as Harvey Dent. Disappointing for me was actually Christian Bale. He's usually good in everything (including the first time he filled the role of the Caped Crusader) but this movie, I thought he lacked depth. His Batman was a one note character, almost grunting his lines and generally being ticked off at the world.

This movie really explored the concept of good vs. evil in an interesting way. I felt that, at times, there were political and biblical overtones, but that could be my penchant for interpreting everything that way. Overall, this movie was fantastic. Equally fantastic was the shrimp and bacon club I had at The Cheesecake Factory after the movie. Seriously, if you have never tried it, get it the next time you go there. I could eat them all day; literally.

2. Saturday was a HUGE bust. I was supposed to get Dish Network installed. I had already had my problems with Verizon Online, so I was hoping this would go smoothly. I did not.

I set alarms for 7:15 and 7:30 so that I would get up and get a cup of coffee if I felt like it. I didn't, so I moved out to the living room, waiting with my phone for the Dish guy to call. My service window was from 8-12. I sat there reading all morning; I literally read thousands of pages of this book this weekend. At 11:20 a.m., he called saying that his first two jobs were in Beaver County and that he was on his way. At 2:30 p.m. the Western PA office called and asked if he was there yet. He was not. At 4:00, they called and said he was backed up, and we needed to change it til tomorrow. Whatevs. I did nothing the entire day.

3. Sunday, I woke up early to go to the 9:00 a.m. service at the South Hills Bible Chapel (www.biblechapel.org). It's a non-denominational church that teaches a lot of the same things that I've grown up believing (with less emphasis on the process of sanctification, which is big in the CMA church). I went, and they are doing this summer series on the "B-sides of the Bible". The concept is tied to Beatles songs, which coincidentally were the A-sides of their respective singles. B-sides are the lesser known sides of singles, and that was what they were trying to capture in this series, short books of the Bible that get overlooked. Yesterday was about the book of Jonah, and other books that will be examined this summer include Obadiah, Nahum, 2 and 3 John, and Philemon. They are trying to preach a book a week. It was a good message, and I was even able to get over the cheesy packaging of the message (side note: this is a pet peeve of mine, when churches try to spice up the Bible. As if people won't be as interested because the Bible is boring, they need to attach some type of relevant cultural significance to sell what God has to say. Luckily, like I said, I was able to get past that here--hoping I didn't offend my pastor and friend Dan here, but I don't think he does this, which I appreciate and makes Bakerstown Alliance the best church to which I have ever been--literally).

After church, I went to the information center to get info on men's Bible studies, appropriate Sunday School classes, and small groups. The guy who was greeting me was none other than former Steeler lineman and current Steelers color guy Tunch Ilkin. I talked with him a bit, it turns out he's the director of men's ministries there, and he gave me his cell number, telling me to call with any questions or to meet him this week and talk. So I might do that.

Anyway, this church was visited; it was two I had found that I wanted to try (the other being USC Alliance). They are each about 10 miles from my house, so not that far.

Then, I waited around for the Dish guy again. He came at 2:30, asked for my landlord permission form that I didn't have, and said he couldn't install it. I told him that my landlord lives in NYC, its hard to get stuff to/from him, I could have forged it, I could have gotten a friend to be my "landlord", etc. Nothing worked for him; he didn't "need" more accusations of house damage. Whatever. Dish and Verizon Online lost my business to Comcast now. Even though it costs freaking $108 to install! Something needs to be done about the cable business.

Here's to literally another week without cable or internet. I am hoping that the next discs of The West Wing get here shortly for me to continue watching.

*I hope you appreciated my brazen use of the word "literally" in this post. I'm going to continue to use it in both the correct and incorrect manners. If you use the word incorrectly, I won't call you out, but consider this a lesson. IT CAN'T MEAN FIGURATIVELY!