It's the crazy ones that have the really good pills.

So Monday was a relaxing day in which we knocked out several movies. I had Drew pick out some fluffy ones from the home collection to go in between the more serious ones...



First up was a documentary we'd had at my old theatre called Gay Sex in the 70s, which I'd been curious about. I thought Drew might be a more suitable audience rather than D, so I put it on the queue. It was decent...the only aspect new to me was the geographic breakdown of New York City's gay community in the 70s...I've been to those infamous piers--and they are just a little bit different these days! Neither Drew nor I knew about "the trucks," part of the inordinate amount of anonymous sex going on at that time. That was some scary shit.

Then we watched Kontroll, about the ticket takers on the Budapest transit system. It's fiction and I like it a lot. Drew enjoyed it but he didn't like the ending. He thought it happened too rapidly and with barely any sense of a resolution. (I've written about Kontroll previously so I won't go into it too much).

Then it was time to lighten things up so we revisited Adventures In Babysitting. Very creative for what it is, especially considering Chris Columbus helmed that one. Yikes.



Drew had suggested 20 Centimetros, about a woman saving for her operation to get rid of, well, not her Angry Inch, but rather her nine inches. Oh, and she's narcoleptic so occasionally she passes out and when she does, she has Broadway musical numbers for dreams. Cute.

D came home about this time and the BBQ continued to cook. We popped in Little Shop of Horrors and then finished off with Closer for dinnertime, the latter two everyone had seen before.

The next day was Fort Worth, and we started with the Water Gardens, which only recently re-opened in March. They'd been closed for nearly three years after four people drowned in the Active Pool. They said the Active Pool now has a railing, but we sure didn't see one. There was a gate, but it was open and you could walk right down to the center. Perhaps the pool itself is more shallow now? It just didn't seem much different, if you ask me.



Anyhoo, the gardens were nice and the place is much smaller than I recall. (Not having been since about the age of ten, this makes sense).

Lunch was at Joe T. Garcia's, which is an insanely famous TexMex place in Fort Worth. I'd heard about it but never been. Even Hillary stopped by last week as part of her campaign trail. It was decent, nothing to write home about and I was kind of appalled they take cash only. (Considering the ridiculous amount of business they do...)

Then we stopped by the Modern Museum of Art just to walk around the outside. They were changing two of the three main exhibits and the third sounded, well, like we could miss it. We kept driving and popped down to the Japanese gardens, which were wonderfully empty. I need to go more often on Tuesday afternoons...



One of the best parts of these gardens will always be feeding the giant koi. Drew got a kick out of it even if, as he put it afterwards, it was almost kind of disgusting. "Feeding frenzy," puts it mildly.



We then went down to the Fort Worth stockyards and poked around the retail area which was vaguely depressing and icky. But we also found a little snack shop and had Blue Bell Ice Cream (which you can only get here and I believe Oklahoma) and two Dublin Doctor Peppers, which are made here and use real cane sugar, tasting about a thousand times better.

About that time it was nearly 4:00, which is the second time of day they drive the cattle down the road.



It's just as exciting as it looks. They do have really impressive horns, though.

And then we finished off the day with beers at Billy Bob's. This is a huge attraction for the area--it even has a rodeo pen. Drew and I milled about looking for an electronic bull (in retrospect I'm not sure why we thought they had one) and we found ourselves in the actual rodeo area, surrounded by signs that informed us yes, you can ride a REAL GODDAMN BULL FOR $2.50. Our beers were $2.25 and obviously, we were both really out of our element, so I could be wrong, but all signs pointed to the contrary. (And it's only on Friday and Saturday nights. And no, even if they HAD had an electronic bull I wasn't going near it. I think Drew was wanting to sample some local color...)

They did have a giant fake bull, and you could take a picture on it with a friend for $8. So it doesn't seem right that you could get on a real fucking bull for so little, but I'm just reporting what I saw. We figured out that for $20 you could get hammered on seven beers and still ride a bull. Now that's a honky tonk. Oh, and the dance floor had a rhinestone-encrusted saddle hanging from the ceiling. The country mirrorball, if you will.

Only for Drew would I have gone there.

We played several games of pool and finally made it home in time for D to make us his pineapple burgers off the grill.

Very tired and very unwilling to return to work...