First things first: Happy Birthday Brendan and YGB!! Here's the traditional dancing bunny:

Anyway, as evidenced by the title, I saw 300 this weekend. More on that later.

Saturday I went to the Sutro Baths, which I had passed by many times, but never visited. That area stirs a painful (literally) memory, as the hill that runs by the ruins is the exact place where my IT-band first started to hurt when I was doing my marathon training over two years ago. But the ruins themselves are very neat, and have really nice views of the water. The day was pretty clear, and we could even see the Golden Gate bridge through the fog. Pictures here. I had a hard time contending with the light there, so I'm not super happy with any of the shots, but oh well.

Saturday evening we took out Brendan for his 27th birthday. First we had dinner at Market Broiler, where I explored my love/hate relationship with crab: so much work, but so good. Afterwards, we headed to The Saddle Rack, which was an interesting experience. Early in the night, it was a strictly country-western club with all country music, and a dance floor filled with middle-aged couples in cowboy hats. As it got later, they started to play more mainstream country, and some classic rock. As the clock ticked past midnight, the music shifted to normal club music as the hat and boot crowd left, only to be replaced by the bump and grind crowd. Brendan, Matt, and Justin all gave the mechanical bull a spin, and those pics are up on Facebook.

Despite going to sleep at 2:15 am (pre-time change), and despite the clock leaping forward an hour, I was up at 10 to meet Buddy at Planet Granite Sunnyvale for some climbing. I tackled the 11a I had been eying in the Ice Box, and also did a few 10as, a 10c, and a 10d that verily kicked my behind. Afterwards, we had a late lunch at Maru Ichi, and headed over to catch an afternoon showing of 300.

So, back to the movie. 300 can be summed up in one word: gratuitous. Gratuitous:

• Violence
• Boobies
• CG
• Growly shouting
• One-shot characters that serve very little purpose
• Abs. I have a theory that it was some intern's job to paint in everyone's abs in every frame.
• But most of all, gratuitous use of slow-motion. If the movie were played at normal speed, it would probably be about 30 minutes long

That all said, it was definitely entertaining, and the battle scenes are very, very cool. Visually, a stunning movie, but don't expect too much in the way of plot or clever dialog.

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