Cholesterol: The stuff in food that makes it taste good.

I went to the 'Taste of Pinellas' event at Vinoy Park in downtown St. Petersburg today. Since I didn't have anything else planned I figured I would check it out since I hadn't been to such an event in probably a decade. I remember when my father and I would attend the 'Taste of Charleston' event when it was held at Charles Towne Landing State Park back home in Charleston, South Carolina. The Florida Blood Services bloodmobile buses were there, so I took the change to give again since I was about 2 months over due since I had been traveling, was sick for a while, and other convenient excuses. As incentive, they also gave each donor a $5 booklet of food coupons for the event, a Wendy's Frosty coupon, and a Chick-Fil-A sandwich coupon. At least I wasn't going to leave the area hungry! Though a bit warm, it was nice to walk around the waterfront park and take in the different smells and food. Most of the food consisted of fried offerings without really a whole lot of variation. I was hoping more for small samples at cheap prices as a means of being exposed to something new, but most lines seemed to center around the typically fared BBQ and pizza spots.

After the event, I didn't want to hang around for another 3 hours to see Pat Benatar perform, so I went to a local movie house and saw 'X-Men: Last Stand'. While I of course liked the first two a bit more, I thought the latest story was ok. I'm sure most of the people that want to see it have already viewed it, so I don't think I'll be spoiling anything. There were a lot of unexpected events and character deaths that didn't seem to add a whole lot to the plot or even character development. Some characters seemed to appear just to be killed off. I was hoping to avoid some of the cheesy lines that stain other potentially decent movies, but site gags and one-liners seemed to plague the story line as if the writers were hoping for a sound bite (such as the famous Arnie "I'll be back") that would be accepted by the audience. With lines like "I'm the Juggernaught bitch!", I figure they were stretching things too much. Kelsey Grammer did a good job as a diplomatic character called 'The Beast' that looked more like a 'Bluebacca' that could speak English. Since I was tipped off by a story on Digg just before the release, I stayed until the end of the credits to see a quick teaser that added one last bit of shock value. If you didn't see it, then I suppose you'll either have to go see it again or try to sneak in during the rolling credits sometime. I was never into comic books, but I think I might actually enjoy going through some of the X-Men series books if they were released on DVD in .pdf format sometime. Supposedly that was the last movie for the series, but there are planned spin-offs such as a Wolverine movie and even one concerning a young Magneto. Anyway, I still think it was a enjoyable enough of a movie.