Brian Bentley

Review: “Night at the Museum”
Run time: 1:49

I will say that if you told me Ben Stiller would be in a movie with Robin Williams, Ricky Gervais, Owen Wilson Steve Coogan and Dick Van Dyke I would expect it to be a rip-roaring comedy, but instead “Night at the Museum” is a fun family friendly movie. This is not your typical Ben Stiller movie, but he does play the type of character he’s carved out a niche for himself - bubbling guy with some sort of personal trouble.

This time he’s Good-hearted dreamer and single father Larry Daley, but despite being perpetually down on his luck he thinks he’s destined for something big. When he accepts what appears to be a menial job as a graveyard-shift security guard at the Museum of Natural History, extraordinary things begin to occur and amidst the chaos, the only person Larry can turn to is a wax figure of President Theodore Roosevelt.

I enjoyed the movie and the effects are excellent. If you have kids you’ll enjoy it, too.

And yes, we went to a movie on New Year’s Eve. Everybody be safe and have a Happy New Year.

Rating: 3 out of 5

We just got back from a week in beautiful Maui with my family, and it was just what we needed. Christmas morning brought a wonderful whale watching trip, and several good pictures (I did take the video camera and will YouTube that soon). The majority of the trip involved laying by the pool, relaxing, snorkeling off Black Rock and more relaxing. About 80 pictures are posted here.

Miscellaneous notes from the trip:

- There were far too many speedos for my liking.

- We saw Matthew Perry and Kevin Pollack lunching with a female friend at the Hard Rock Cafe in Maui on Christmas afternoon after the whale watching trip.

- Several PGA Tour Pros in town for the Mercedes Championship (Tom Lehman) staying at our hotel. I probably should have lead with that one so the Perry sighting would be more exciting….

- While Hawaii is beautiful, 8 hours of air travel BLOWS. But I did complete the American Airlines Platiunum Challenge so now I’ll be eligible for some upgrades as the LA trips pick-up Jan 13. I’m pretty sure that means something to somebody.

- The 4 hour time change isn’t that much of a pain to deal with until you leave Maui at 3:00 in the afternoon Friday, layover in LA for 2 hours then get back to Dallas at 6:00 am Saturday. The 30 degree temperature drop and landing in a storm don’t help, either.

- We’ve already hit Chipotle today for lunch. :)

I hope everyone had a Merry Holiday of your choice and best wishes for a safe and happy new year.

I told you what the title was going to be so no busting my chops….

Level 1 is in the books. When I started this 8 weeks ago I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I still wonder that now, but with a sense of excitement to see where I end up with this is all said and done. I have had so much fun and met so many smart, talented people that you would think that some of it will rub off on me eventually. I want to say thank you again to my Level 1 teacher, Josh Funk, a brilliant improviser and helluva nice guy. The bar is set pretty high for Level 2, I must say.

There was another poker game with Kevin Smith this week and I went home a winner, in spirit and in my wallet. I have to reiterate that Kevin is such an approachable, down to earth guy. There were some returners from the last game and Kevin greeted us all as if we were old friends. Of course, he cleaned up last game so I could see why he might be so eager to have us back. This game went much better for me as I was able to work off my initial $100 buy in and leave with $260.

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“Shut Up and Sing”
Run time: 1:33

During a concert in London in 2003, Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines made her infamous remark about the President. “Shut Up and Sing” shows what happens when the Chicks walked off stage all the way through the recording of their latest EP “Taking the Long Way” with mercurial producer Rick Rubin.

It’s amazing to see things transform as the Chicks go from singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl in 2003 and announcing their tour, seeing the remark made in it’s full context in London, and the subsequent fall from grace of the most successful female band of all time (the had the #1 single “Travelin’ Soldier” at the time and it was completely off the charts the week after the remark). What I was truly amazed about was the footage shown after the London concert and how “the remark” was not a big deal. It was an unrehearsed remark made in the spur of the moment, and met favorably from the London audience, that was picked up by the American media and a whirlwind followed. From record burnings (9 year olds stomping CD’s and looking to mommy and daddy for approval), concert protests (a mother holding her 3 year old yelling “Screw ‘Em!” then asking her child to repeat her), and talk show rants (Bill O’Reilly recommends physical violence against them) the reaction is polarizing and somewhat unfair.

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…and what does that equal? You got it, I found a way to back into this number in the title dilemma. I am going to go ahead and tell you right now, next week’s entry will be titled “8 is enough”. It has a couple of meanings since it’s the end of Level 1 at Second City, and it will be the last week I fumble through using a number in the title.

This weekend (is it really a weekend when you’re there less than 24 hours?) brought the most celeb sightings to date. So here we go with the lightning round…

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First off, I realized weeks ago that I’ve painted myself into a corner with the whole “using the number in the title” thing, and quite frankly at some point I’m going to have to cry uncle and stop trying. Sure 1-13 should be easy, but I’ve got nothing for 14, not many people are going to understand a Quinceañera reference (get caught up here), and Sweet 16 is too obvious. What if week 16 sucks? I’m not going to lie about it just so the title works….and now I feel alot of pressure to win something next week so “Lucky 7″ isn’t a boldface lie, either. With all of that said, it’s the first weekend of December and this title works. So myah.

My driver made plans on Saturday night so I was in charge of my own transportation this week. She tells me “the date was a blast”, whatever that means. My silly driver.

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