Knee-jerk review: "F9"

1. At this point, it's all fairly ridiculous, isn't it?
2. Two of the characters actually go into orbit, people.  It's totally crazy.
3. No matter the role, Michelle Rodriguez is just always so surly looking, like someone just killed her dog.
4. There's this weird structure where the action grinds to a halt for these gag scenes with Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris trading comic insults.  It sometimes seems like they're in a whole other movie.
5. Vin Diesel gets a crazy sequence where he goes into superhero berserker mode and fights off, like, a whole squadron of soldiers with his bare hands.
6. Bonus points: the movie has a lot of fun with some giant electromagnets during a lengthy set-piece car chase.  This is why we see these movies.
7. John Cena is pretty terrible here, making us wonder if he's better served in parts with a lighter, more comic sensibility.  He can be pretty funny.
8. We do appreciate the effort to expand the story tapestry and go back to Dom's youth to explore the death of his father, which adds a nice Shakespearean vibe to the whole thing.  That said, it's completely ballsy to ask audiences to believe that two auto racer brothers became estranged, followed totally different life paths, yet ended up both becoming James Bond-style super spies.  What?!  (And no, it doesn't work to hand-wave all of this insanity away by suggesting Kurt Russell's Mr. Nobody character engineered the whole thing.)
9. If you only watched the more recent Fast movies, packed full of machine guns and electronic gadgets and world travel and melodramatic villains looking to rule the world, you'd assume this was a franchise about secret agents.  Let us remind you: these characters started out as Los Angeles blue collar street racers.  Did we mention these movies are nuts?
10. To us, the best one is 2011's Fast Five which starts with a prison break and ends with two cars dragging giant stolen banks vaults down a city street.  It's the Goldfinger of Fast movies, just the right mix of realism and wacko.
11. Paul Walker's absence throws everything off kilter (although in the world of the story he's still alive, just off-screen).  He and Diesel's bromance was the heart of the franchise.
12. As over the top as all of this is, we cannot deny the movie's soul.  Over and over, throughout the entire franchise, the characters (most of whom are not related) talk about the importance of family, risking their lives for each other, ending their adventures with communal dinners and cold beer toasts.  Lots of Hollywood movies involve some sort of makeshift family, but few wear that notion on their sleeve like these movies do.

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Observations from a Minor League Baseball Game

The Cheese Fry family recently visited a local Double-A baseball park to watch a game.  It's been well over two years - if not more - since our last visit, and while the kids grumbled and whined about going ("Three hours long?!") there were conversations on the way home about where to sit on the next visit.  The consensus seemed to be the outfield grass, which is fine with us - it's half as expensive as the infield seats.

* It's not a baseball game unless you eat a steamed hot dog ($5) wrapped up in that paper foil sheet and slathered in enough room temperature mustard to make your fingers yellow.

* All baseball games require multiple discussions of how long it will take sun to move behind the upper deck and give you the sweet relief of shadow.

* Our row was completely empty, at least 20 seats curving out to the right in our section, but we had one guy sitting right next to us.  Why?  Also: who attends a baseball game all alone?

* We don't what that mascot was supposed to be.  Sort of a giant beaver, but also orange and yellow and shaggy like a Muppet.  Whatever it was, it wore a number 2 jersey.

* There's a low-key ritual involved with baseball field preparations that can be soothing to witness.  Raking the infield, drawing the chalk lines, hosing down the infield dirt, placing the bases.  It's a ballpark reset. What's happened before doesn't matter.  What's important is now.  What happens next.  On the diamond tonight, which is being freshly assembled and cleaned and groomed just for us, anything is possible.  Anything can happen.

* We still don't fully understand the difference between the OBP and the batting average.

* At any sporting event, people-watching of course can be just as engaging at what's happening on the field.  While we secretly judged the bad tattoos, the inappropriately dressed teen girls, and the couples who didn't look like they belonged together, the winner on that evening surely went to the two old timers sitting right behind us who didn't shut up for seven innings.  Their loud running commentary most notably included a discussion of Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle and shooting skill.  They also had comments about a player named Luken.  "Why not just drop the N and go by Luke?"

* Honorable mention to the huge group one section over.  This was the boisterous relatives and friends of one of the visiting team players, all of whom cheered and shouted whenever he was on the field.  (To his credit, he hit a lead off double.)

* An post-game fireworks show allowed us to sit on the outfield grass.  Thick grass, but clipped very short.  Scratchy, not soft.  And yet, not as flawless as it might look from a distance.  We saw some divots and bald spots.

* Another baseball game essential food item: the bag of salted peanuts ($3.50).  Nowhere else can you make that big of a mess on the floor and then just walk away with a shrug.

* Scoreboards have come a long way in our lifetime.  Gone are the crude message boards made up of incandescent light bulb grids.  Now it's all gigantic flatscreen TVs.  We particularly marveled at a real-time update of the opposing pitcher's ERA as he gave up several runs in the middle of the game.

* Not a fan of the row of urinals without privacy barriers, people.

* Whoever ran the sound board was earning their paycheck.  An endless, wall to wall string of audio drops, music cues, and sound effects.  Is that person following a rigid script or just selecting on the fly what to play and when to play it?  Bonus points for the "Price Is Right" loser cue after a strikeout.

* Stadium was maybe half full, so the half-hearted attempt to start the Wave fizzled quickly.

* We often daydream about what sort of song we'd want played for us if we were a player walking up to the plate.  In those 10 seconds, how would you define yourself?  You could go the obvious route and play something hard and heavy like AC/DC.  Or you could go goofy, maybe play "Mmmbop" or "Margaritaville."  Or you could go instrumental and maybe pick the "Game of Thrones" theme or that Alan Parsons Project song "Sirius" that the Chicago Bulls made famous.  We'd probably end up picking some cheesy 80s song like "Your Love" by the Outfield.  The Outfield.  Get it?  Baseball?

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