- We stayed at the Olympic Club in Centralia for our anniversary. It was the only McMenamin's hotel that had any vacancies on the holiday weekend. Not surprising, it's in beautiful Centralia. The hotel itself is fine. It was formerly a hotel for railmen, and is appropriately old-timey. Our room was just big enough for our bed and a sink. We shared bathrooms with the rest of the guests. Although we were kind of worried about that, it was no problem. There were plenty of them, and they were always clean. The Olympic Club itself has a movie theater (with second run movies, ala the McMenamin's trademark), a very small bar, a much larger bar, and a billiards room with several tables. This part of the hotel is very cool, with lots of tables and the usual McMenamin's charm.
The town of Centralia, however, is somewhat devoid of charm. It's trying, it's really trying, but the downtown is half-empty. There are a few shops here and there, only a handful of which have anything of interest (to the lady, not me). There's a pedestrian mexican place, and another restaurant that was kind of disappointing. I always find it off-putting when servers try to convince you their food is great, then ask you to confirm their opinion. We spent a lot of time walking around, doing nothing. It was relaxing.
- While in Centralia, we saw all 3 movies playing at the hotel: "Sex and the City," "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the blah, blah blah," and "Wall-E." We had seen "Sex" and "Indiana Jones" already, but "Wall-E" we had not. It was really good. I don't usually like kids' movies, because they ignore the grownups forced to watch along. But Pixar movies are always different. I thought Wall-E had a great message for kids, was funny and sweet, and most importantly, had a compelling plot. I enjoyed it, although I understand the right-wingers don't. Something about humanity devolving into a race of corpulent zombies makes them feel bad about consumerism. Huh.
- My parents are in town right now, and leave tonight. It's kind of odd to have them back, since they moved away a couple years ago. I have nothing else to say about that.
- We also managed to squeeze in a movie this weekend, "Hamlet 2." It was pretty good, overall. There were some definite flat points, but Steve Coogan was hilarious, and managed to make what otherwise may have been lame into something funny with his performance. The film is about a high school drama teacher who tries to save his department with a blockbuster play, a sequel to "Hamlet" he wrote himself. The premise? What if Hamlet, using a time machine, was able to make it so everyone DIDN'T die at the end? It's one of those movies with a great premise, that could have flopped enormously in execution. While I don't think it was the best thing I've seen, I certainly got a lot of laughs out of it. I give it a "B."
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