Spent the evening with Matt, Luke T-Barr, and Bryan, starting at Cafe Istambul, on to the Asian Film Festival at the DMA, then to my house to watch “Death to Smoochy.” Let’s break down the narrative into edible chunks, shall we?

Cafe Istambul: After a ridiculous amount of debate over where we would eat, we settled on Cafe Istambul, a great Turkish restaurant. Of course, I was the only one of the five that had ever been there. I ended up being 10 minutes late, which was rather good, as 15 minutes after I arrived, I got a call from a helplessly lost Matt. Glad I had my cellphone with me. I was able to give directions and guide them to the restaurant with minimal fuss. Glad we thought to pad our timing schedule!

Anyway, the main point of the dinner’s hilarity came in the form of a wooden sculpture of a sailor, draped with prayer beads. However, judging from his jollyness and obesity quotient, he rather looked like a Buddha.

Matt: Why does Buddha look like a sailor?

Me: He’s like Barbie. He comes in different varieties.

Matt: What, like My-Size Buddha?

Luke: Malibu Buddha! Or just “Malibuddha!” Comes with a “Nirvana Playset.” It’s just an empty box.

If laughing burns calories, I probably burned more than I took in this evening.

Film Festival: Monty, Japanese film connaisseur, told the guys that “The Life of Lily Chou Chou” was one of the best movies ever. Monty is on crack. After enduring two very painful hours (out of 2h40) of “art”, we walked out. With the evening shot, we needed something else to do. So we decided to meet at Blockbuster, then go to my house.

The Journey: Let it be known that I have no sense of direction whatsoever when it comes to navigating Downtown Dallas. After about two minutes of driving, I stopped at a light and held my cellphone out my window and made frantic jabbing motions at it and at Luke, who was behind me. He had my cell phone number, but I didn’t have his. He quickly caught on and called me, wherepon I wailed “I have no idea where I’m going!” Over the phone, Luke attempted to remedy the situation with his nifty directional skills (of which I have none) and managed to find Central Expressway, our ticket out of the horrors of Downtown Dallas. W00t.

Blockbuster: both “Death to Smoochy” and “Donnie Darko”, our two choices, should have been in the “New Releases” section. Apparently, some moron at Blockbuster doesn’t know how to alphabetize, so we were left very confused when we didn’t see either one there, especially as I had rented both from this location in the past. But T-Barr asked an employee, who assured him that both movies were there, so we went back to double check. Both were way out of order, among the E’s. But we rented our movie, and we were happy.

So hurrah. And now I’m going to sleep.