The weekend...

The wedding on Friday was excellent. It was at the Boatshed, which is always a good venue for a party. While it was still light we lolled on the verandah & watched stingrays skate around the lagoon.

The ceremony was short & simple, we were serenaded by four guys harmonising (brilliantly) songs in English & Tokolauan. There was a slight gremlin, when the sound system failed to play the designated "Here comes the Bride" music, and the singers were put on the spot to come up with something appropriate... then the PA coughed into life & the lovely bride bopped in to the always appropriate "Weapon of Choice" by Fatboy Slim.

Joke... it was some duet by Barbra Streisand & someone else... can't remember...

The food was excellent, the company engaging. The speeches... well... the highlights were the groom's cockney father telling a series of vignettes that all ended with "... and so I smacked 'im in the 'ead". Hilarious! And the father of the bride starting to tell stories of the stag night & the strippers "Careful Rich", the best man wisely advised....". I so didn't need to know the bride's father enjoyed a lapdance...

We partied till the small hours.

Saturday came (quite late). My Saturday night alone was STILL in jeopardy at this stage. T was still going to party with her sisters, but camp was off & there was a chance I'd have not just M at home, but also I might be babysitting her younger cousin as well.

But as happens to many last minute changes of plans... the cousin had by now made other plans, and M stayed overnight at her friend's. I did have to fend off last minute exhortations for me to attend a barbecue at the friend's house too. Fortunately, by that stage I was half way through painting our lounge & could justifiably beg off attending. Also... Wilma stayed with me, so I had some company anyway.

And yes! I spent the afternoon painting over the hideous dark red & black floral wallpaper that adorned the top half of our lounge, including half the ceiling (the bottom half is painted wood panelling & needs a bit more restoration before that gets done). By the time T got home about 5pm the next day, I had two coats on & we decided it wouldn't need another one. It is a resene colour called Blanc, and it is so much lighter than it was before. The wood panelling will be painted a colour called Tea, and there is a small shelf that runs around the top of it, which will probably be a dark colour called Diesel.

Which brings me to the in-house entertainment for the evening... on the dogwalk, Wilma & I swung by the local DVD store & picked up The Chronicles of Riddick, and on a sudden whim... Porn Star, the Legend of Ron Jeremy. As always happens when I'm renting a slightly dodgy sounding film, Porn Star wasn't in the documentary section & I had to go & ask for it. In front of half a dozen customers who are also neighbours. They had it in the drama section...

So... Porn Star... Ron Jeremy is this fat, hairy, pig nicknamed "The Hedgehog" who has made his career in the adult film industry (there is a hilarious bit where some hot adult film actress has just been told who she's working with & she just guffaws, and says "I told you already, I'm not having sex with that fat, hairy, fucking pig!" Go girl, I was thinking.) The documentary was pretty boring really, too many frat-house appearances where fat, nerdy, drunken frat boys swoon over the guy.

Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis was one of the talking heads interviewed...

Oh... and Ron sports a heroic endowment & despite being grossly fat, is limber enough to perform an unnatural act upon himself. Actually, when you hear the term "70s porn star moustache" I think this is the guy who is being referenced.

He also craves a mainstream acting career, and can actually be seen in many real movies (for instance, Killing Zoe), getting swiftly killed in a variety of manners (the best was a Troma film, where a mutant thrust a large crucifix through his mouth & out the back of his head).

So that was Ron Jeremy...

The Chronicles of Riddick was OK, kept me awake. There were some technical problems with the DVD & I missed a few sequences in the middle of the film. It's Vin Diesel of course, reprising the character from Pitch Black. In this instance, he's (not very) evil, fighting evil, saving the universe from some very unsinister villains.

Along for the ride are Dame Judy Dench, playing a CG effect, the lovely, but under-used Thandie Newton, playing Lady MacBeth, and our very own Karl Urban, playing a cut rate MacBeth to Thandie.

The whole thing has an air of CG tosh, cut-rate Star Trek about it. But I mean, it's OK. Vin is decent in it.

It was back to family fare on Sunday, we watched the first half of The Prince & Me, which is the ever watchable Julia Stiles doing Cinderella. And later, we started to watch In the Cut, which is a thriller directed by Jane Campion, with Meg Ryan & Mark Ruffalo, and some surprisingly explicit sex scenes... (not so far, involving either of the stars). I suspect that Stiles doing Cinderella will be the better of the two films.