Thank You for Smoking.

Our secret meetup took place at Tinseltown this evening where Jamie, James, Jen, Leslie, and I indulged in watching a comical movie called "Thank You for Smoking". We were going to catch a double feature at first, with "Transamerica" being our second movie, but we opted to dine out at a fancy establishment across the street called Wild Rice for some modern Chinese cuisine instead. But before I move on, I must mention about how we got in to the theatre to see the feature movie!

True to ourselves and our ways of circumventing systems and defying authority, I went ahead and bought a single ticket to gain entrance and went to open the exit doors from the inside to let the others in. Once I got in though, I was faced with a slight setback. There was a guy cleaning the glass housings of movie posters on the wall and I had to wait for him to clear out before letting the rest of my troopers in. When the coast was clear, I walked towards the exit doors and quickly pushed the doors open to let them in, but just as we were walking back in, the window cleaner crossed my path. Fortunately, when I turned back, I saw that my entourage took cover in the ladies room! The window cleaner didn't even seem to notice.

The movie itself was just hilarious. I thought it was worthy to get on DVD when it comes out.

Wild Rice turned out to be a quaint restaurant and lounge where people got together for social drinks. It's a hot venue for gala opening parties for film festivals too. In addition to the Shanghai sweet & sour sticky ribs, golden fried crab & taro root cakes, and Chinese vegetable spring rolls that we shared around the table, we complemented it with a bottle of their house white wine and a bottle of "Fin du Monde", a beer from Quebec!

So why did we dub this evening's gathering our "secret meetup"? Well, because it was planned with such short notice, this social event wasn't even posted on our Vancouver Social Club message board. Only those "in the know" were in the know!