Pete Takeshi is flying out tonight--he finished training rather early today, as it ended with a couple of tests. We went to Baja Fresh in San Carlos for lunch, and then drove back down to Redwood City to catch a movie at the Century/Cinemark. Pete's been watching some bad movies lately, though I think we may have broken that trend with Body of Lies, which wasn't terrible. He was thinking of watching Max Payne to resume the trend, but I objected. Since he was interested in watching Burn after Reading, we saw that instead. It is a very dark comedy; none of the characters are likeable. The one you might sympathize the most with is the Hardbodies gym manager, who is an ex-Greek Orthodox priest. (He didn't explain why he left.) But even he is a bit of a loser, since he doesn't have the courage to confess his attraction to or get a date with Linda. Brad Pitt plays dumb well; it makes you wonder if he is a dumb blonde in real life.

Is it a good satire? It does make fun of many different kinds of Americans, as well as the CIA.
I think it does it job, which is to make people laugh. We even laughed at the shocking 'Tarantino' moment... I didn't think of the characters or the story as being real, so I didn't have any emotional attachment to what was going on. M reaction isn't bothering me. The woman behind us, who had been laughing at everything else, didn't laugh at that part. I'll have to think about the humor of the movie some more, but I can say that the movie is of no permanent value. (See Steven Greydanus' review here.)

We went to Cleo's Steakhouse for dinner ($19.95)--the selection of meat wasn't bad, though it was slow in coming--but once the restaurant got more crowded they brought out different meats. It is true that the salad bar has a limited selection, as KK told me--nothing comparable to the Brazilian chuscarrias in Boston. (And the drink menu is rather small, too.) Espetus is probably better, but you also pay much more... Someone needs to try Pampas. Would I go back? I'm not sure... $20 seems to be a bit too much for dinner, even if it is Brazilian BBQ. (How hard can it be to replicate at home? heh) If Sarge is interested in going to Cleo's, I'd probably take him... haha.

Apparently Pete's still waiting for the pilot to arrive. United! How much longer will it be in business? Well, it's been good spending time with Pete. The last time I saw him was 2 or 3 years ago, when I went to Syracuse to pay him a visit. He recently changed jobs, and is living closer to NYC now. It's too bad that our group of Christendom classmates don't live closer to each other...