Men In Black – Rain – Word

Last night’s date night took my wife and I to see Men In Black 3.  I was in distinct peril of having to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, something not exactly in my wheel house.  My wife correctly pointed out that we were due to see a movie of her selection instead of my normal blockbuster type choices.  I must be living right or something because the Marigold movie was only playing in a theater on the far side of Worcester and my wife did not want to make the extra effort in going there (Amen!).  Men in Black 3 was better than I expected and very entertaining.  Both Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones (Smith and Jones – never thought of that) looked a little tired with their roles, obviously just in it for the checks they got to cash.  The real revelation was Josh Brolin who was channeling Tommy Lee Jones as a young man so well it actually approached being scary.  An actor named Michael Stuhlberg was also extremely good in a small part as an alien who could see the future, kind of.  Good movie, well worth a watch.  Let’s talk about rain.  My wife comes from a country where it rains every day for most of the year but she has an absolute fear of getting her hair wet.  For that reason she always carries an umbrella with her if there is even a small chance of rain.  This past weekend while we were in New York City there was a slight chance of rain and she kept her bright green umbrella with her wherever we went, including the wedding and reception.  I joked with her that if she hadn’t had it would have poured.  Last night there were some serious thunderstorms just north of us so she was debating whether to take the umbrella into the theater with us.  I was fairly certain the rain was going to stay north of us so I jokingly told her that it was time to throw caution to the wind and live dangerously.  She was concerned because she just did her hair and trust me when I say – that is an immense decision point.  Well, I don’t have to say anything, you all know what happened.  She left the umbrella in the car and when we walked out of the movie it was pouring – I’m talking biblical, cow pissing on a flat rock kind of rain.  To her credit, she was more concerned with my walk of penance to get the car and pick her up at the door than she was about heaping derision.  She said we should wait in the theater’s bar (I love this theater) and watch the Red Sox game until the rain let up.  I have a seriously cool wife.  The biggest surprise of the night was that the Sox were beating Justin Verlander, the best pitcher in baseball.  The rain finally made its way to Boston causing the game to stop and we made our way home.  We were both content having enjoyed the movie, she also happy about being right about the umbrella and me happy as well that I didn’t have to pay too big a price for being wrong.  On the way back from NYC I finished the latest Terry Brooks novel, Knight of the Word.  It was enjoyable and contained the same characters from his earlier book so it was interesting to see there some of these ended up.  While I was reading in the office over lunch I actually pulled up Google Earth and followed the action in the novel on the map as it made its way through Seattle which was fascinating, especially using street view to see how accurate the author was in describing the locales.  I’m still not totally enamored of the series but it’s now a sunk cost and I’ll keep reading until the end – two more books to go.