Saturday, January 26, 2008

Just Saw Manhattan Go Through the Wringer



The Spouse and I finally had a chance to get out of the house and catch a flick with some new friends. Fortunately they were both huge JJ Abrams fans and I convinced the Spouse that the movie Cloverfield would be great to watch on the big screen.

I have 2 words about that movie.... WHOLE CRAP!!

It was really really good. If you had given one of those Tokyo dwelling Godzilla fearing Japanese a camcorder back in the day this is the movie you would have ended up with, except I'd be watching it with subtitles.

Not gory but super super intense. I was more worked up about this one then 28 Weeks Later (what a let down that one was).

You might not truly care about these escapees from a Hollister/Abercrombie & Fitch photo shoot, but you certainly don't want to see them bitten in half and exploded from the inside out. Well, maybe you do.

The movie takes itself super seriously, which is vital given the concept. The best thing is the director didn't feel that he had to explain anything. Not one thing. What is the monster? Why is it there? Where did it come from? What the heck are those Deer ticks from hell? And on and on it goes. If the movie took the time to slow down to explain these things it would one, not be believable, and two, slow down the frantic pace of the movie to a crawl.

I for one am dying to find out what it is and all that but a sequel would be lame. A second video, a movie done from the perspective of the troops, some scientist and his young son trying to figure out the beasts motivation, with the President shrieking that he can't nuke Manhattan while his Generals all declare the city lost. Yeah, that's been done. It would be cool if the President got into jet and flew right into the monsters mouth blowing it up.

I could totally make movies.


Tuesday, January 15, 2008

UFO's in TX

You know back in the 50's when they were seeing these things in Arizona and stuff and couldn't manage to get footage of it you could explain it away due to the fact that no one had cameras or camcorders to any extent.

But in 2008? Please! Every shlub has a camcorder in their cellphone so they can be taking footage as they call CNN, FOX news and a host of other media outlets. ANd they were flying around for weeks and no one got anything? OK.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Saturday, December 01, 2007

For Rover




How I love this stuff

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Legen........wait for it........DARY!

My dad used to fly into a rage every time he saw the original!

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Beat an 81!!

Yeah I pretty much stink at US Geography. I received an 81 (B-) on the 50 states.

You have to draw them by connecting the dots and then fill in the bubble of the states name.

Good Luck



Oh and do the Freerice.org thing and beat my score of 44 after 400+ questions.

Just for my ego's sake.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Is your vocabulary better than mine?

Lets find out.

Go to http://freerice.com/index.php

And play the game. For every right answer you will win 10 grains of rice for the starving masses, thanks to the UN and some donors. It also keeps track fo your vocabulary score.

I am currently at a score of 44 and I've donated 4940 grains of rice (I've answered 494 questions)


Give it a shot!

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Vanity Cards for Battlestar Galactica

The little end clip for the production companies of shows are called vanity cards. Wired.com had this posted exhibiting the 2 seasons worth of vanity cards.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Friday, November 02, 2007

Chezzitttsss!!!!

Wow I'm out there.

Proteinstar is out in the world wide web. More so than my meatspace alter ego.

Prepare yourself for a major addition to Exostra. The bathroom is nearly done.

Well, it feels good to be back on the blog. I'll be right back.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Superprank

Mr. Shoop's getting married! We wanted to help explain some of the upcoming evening athletic events.

Friday, August 31, 2007

The Computer is Down...I repeat...

The computer is down!

I am posting this at my local library. shudder.

My power supply (I think) is shot and I can't find my spare. I'm sure it is in one of the many unpacked boxes. Be prepared for a deluge of posts once it is up and running.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Since I'm on a Family Guy Kick

This is the sole reason I don't defend myself against The Spouse's Righteous Rage, even when Little Tikes furniture is hurtling though the air.



I might make my beat down worse.

That's not a moon! It's a sportsbar!

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Since China now controls their weather

and will ensure that the olympics will be rain free I thought I'd look back at a great little routine by Stewie.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Halo 3 Movie

Now I know this was old news. Halo 3 movie, executive produced by Peter Jackson, all effects by Weta. How the movie companies said no is beyond me. IDIOTS.

But Weta went ahead and made a ton of props and the original director, Neill Blomkamp, went and made a ton of live action shorts for the new Halo 3 game. Microsoft footed the bill.



Tell me those Hollywood suits aren't going to be knocking in Neill's and Peter's doors begging for a piece.



Thursday, July 05, 2007

Couldn't have said it better myself

The following review, by a dude named Vern has some language but is nearly identical to my current way of thinking regarding the Transformers movie.

Ahem, go ahead Vern.


Vern vs. TRANSFORMERS - One shall stand and one shall fall...

(edited first two paragraphs forr the sake of length)

So it's fitting that the movie begins in "QATAR - THE MIDDLE EAST." (Need to establish location and tell the audience you think they're idiots at the same time? Try subtitles!) An American army base is attacked by a big robot. These guys are apparently trained in a similar manner to the soldiers from THE HILLS HAVE EYES REMAKE 2, because they all just run away and don't fight. When you see all the military hardware fetishistically on display it seems kind of weird, because the robot doesn't look like it has a chance. But then some tanks fly through the air and you find out later that all but the handful of main characters were killed and nobody knew it was a robot that did it.

At this point I was trying. I secured my brain safely in a locker at the Greyhound station like you're supposed to and I attempted to lower my standards. I am a guy who enjoys Brian Bosworth movies so why not enjoy this shit? Plus, if I'm gonna watch a Michael Bay movie again it might as well be one about robots. They won't joke as much as Martin Lawrence and they'll either look cool or funny. At least the effects are in good hands. And ever since I heard Michael Bay was hired for this job I thought it was tailor made for him. The dude is obsessed with sports cars and has never felt a human emotion, how could you do better than hiring him to make a huge expensive movie where the main characters are cars? It's like God made up The Transformers just to get some use out of Michael Bay.

But Michael Bay told God to fuck off, and he went and made a movie about people. After that opening attack you get literally an hour of kiddie movie horse shit about Shia LeBeouf being a nerd and trying to hit on the adult car mechanic Maxim cover girl with a troubled past from his high school. He buys an old yellow Camaro which turns out to actually be a robot from space in disguise. I don't know if I need to explain this to you guys, but Transformers are robots from space and you know those Cirque Du Soleil type weirdos in the car commercial who contort themselves into the shape of a car? It's like that, they crash land on earth and are worried people will make fun of them so they pretend to be cars and planes and shit to fit in. Anyway, for the first hour of this movie his car is alive but mostly is not a robot, he just causes a ruckus by driving around doing donuts and playing funny songs on his radio.

I have learned while this movie was being made that many grown adults grew up on this toy cartoon and hold its characters and concepts deep in their hearts, and were concerned about their portrayal in the movie. And I myself revere the filmatic language, and was worried that I would get dizzy and confused by Michael Bay's double-flip-off approach to editing and camera movement. Well let me tell you, he probaly blows it on both counts, but both are entirely irrelevant. By the time the movie gets to a second robot or action scene it's already way too late to turn things around. This painful first hour shows that the movie's main problem is the same one as BAD BOYS 2: constant, embarrassingly unfunny jokes. Is it too difficult to take anything seriously anymore? Everything's gotta be wacky: Shia has a little dog with a cast and he feeds it painkillers. He rides a pink girls' bike and crashes in front of the girl he likes. A robot pulls his pants down so he's in his boxers. Anthony Anderson eats a bunch of donuts. Bernie Mac's mom flips him the bird. A fat guy dances. When robots attack later, there are lots of half-assed "jokes" about little kids saying "cool!" or comparing it to ARMAGEDDON or thinking a robot is the tooth fairy. The "jokes" are more rapid-fire than a DTV Leslie Nielsen movie, and with an equal or lesser success rate. Even in that opening robot attack they don't have the discipline to take it seriously for 60 fuckin seconds, they have to have the guy from TURISTAS who looks like Johnny Knoxville on the phone arguing with a cartoonish Indian operator (ooh, topical) while Tyrese keeps yelling something about his left ass cheek. The music sounds like John Carpenter or TERMINATOR but the composer seems to be the only one making any effort to create drama. Everybody else is assuming the effects people will put that in later.

For a movie produced by Spielberg it's surprisingly low on awe. People are supposed to be surprised to see robots, but they always turn it into jokes. There's not one second in the movie where you believe people are really reacting to seeing robots. In JURASSIC PARK or in WAR OF THE WORLDS or many other Spielberg movies, you believed these people really were having their minds blown by what was standing right in front of them. In TRANSFORMERS they say things like "It's a robot. You know, like a super advanced robot. It's probably Japanese," and you're supposed to laugh.

And half the time nobody even notices the robots. I should mention there is one other robot in this part of the movie, a little bad guy robot who makes wacky troll noises while hacking into the Pentagon computer. I think he's supposed to be the cute comic relief character, a bad idea since there is no drama or tension to relieve. He crawls around, over and through hundreds of humans waving his many limbs all over and making loud grunts and power tool noises without ever once being detected. Either these robots are invisible or the people in charge of our national security are even more incompetent than anyone ever imagined.

So you got this hour of waiting for it to get to the god damn robots, and then when it happens you realize you don't like them that much more than the people. Admittedly, they are the one thing that makes this more watchable than the other Michael Bay movies. From the ones I've seen I think this is his worst movie, but it's bad in a more fascinating way, like a $200 million version of that tv show "Power Rangers." After a good hour fifteen of failed jokes, the probably-meant-to-be-serious introduction of the good guy Transformers is finally laugh out loud hilarious. They just look so fucking silly posing and saying their names and they talk in voices just like the old cartoons, so it almost seems like one of those meta-ironical type movies like FAT ALBERT or THE BRADY BUNCH where TV characters come to life in the "real" world to show how goofy they are. And this is one of the great "did I really just see that?" moments when one of the robots says something along the lines of "Yo yo yo wussssUUUUUUPPPP Autobots REPRESENT!" and I don't think he was eating robotic chicken or watermelon but I swear to you on my mother's grave that he started breakdancing. And I'm sure black stereotype robot was in other parts of the movie but the next time I was sure it was the same character was at the end when Optimus Prime was casually holding his broken-in-half corpse like it was the pieces of a plate he dropped.

But before it gets to the fighting, buckle up for a whole lot more "comedy." There's a section, probaly originally planned as a sitcom pilot but then used as part of the movie, where the robots hide in Shia's backyard. They break things and say "funny" lines and try not to be spotted when Shia's parents look out the window. This seems to support the "Transformers are invisible" theory because they're fucking 50 feet tall and shaking the earth with every step but nobody sees them. In fact, they might be like the Velveteen Rabbit or whatever the children's story is where only a kid can see them and adults can't because they don't have the magic of childlike innocence in their hearts or whatever. Anyway, Shia is able to get into his bedroom and his parents accuse him of jerkin off, and you can imagine all the "comedy" "gold" they are able to squeeze out by riffing on that one. I think it's supposed to be funny to see the serious Transformers characters involved in this sort of wackiness, but since they have not yet portrayed in a serious light there is nothing to contrast it with.

At this point the movie is beyond feature length and then they introduce a new villain, John Turturro as a Men In Black type agent under the mistaken impression that he's being funny. His performance is over-the-top enough to fit in in a movie like SPACE JAM or ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE, that is what they would like to do with his talents. And it keeps cutting away to a parallel storyline about a team of NSA analysts (all shaggy-haired twentysomething hipsters) and secretary of defense John Voight and Anthony Anderson playing Kevin Smith's character from LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD and a giant alien cube discovered in ice by Shia's great great grandfather. And all the robots are here on earth to find a pair of glasses, which are in Shia's bedroom in a backpack, so it should probaly have taken 30 seconds of screen time to get to them instead of 90 minutes. There is a part that I almost think I might've dreamed but I remember it so vividly, where there is a cartoon BOING! sound and then there's a long shot of one of the robots proudly pissing all over John Turturro. This guy has toiled away in independent film for decades, done so much great work and in order to get a pay check he has to get R. Kellyed by a fucking cartoon robot. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be funny or if it's supposed to be sexy but it failed on both counts. And then all the sudden Shia's car/robot/pet gets shocked and dragged away on cables and the score turns into violins like it's SCHINDLER'S LIST. It is an understatement to say that this heartwrenching music is not earned. It's like if Jennifer Love Hewitt's character in GARFIELD found out she had cancer and we were expected to get choked up.

Towards the end the movie starts to be more about Transformers. But if any of the filmatists were interested in turning them into actual characters they must've been too busy running errands or something to add that into the movie. Optimus Prime is pretty funny because he speaks almost entirely in platitudes. My guess is they didn't have time to write or record dialogue for him so they just used a key chain where you push buttons and different Transformers soundbites come out. His voice is awesome, the only thing resembling gravitas in the movie. He is shamelessly corny and old fashioned, while every other element of the movie is trying to be irreverent and self aware. So it's so out of place you gotta laugh any time he speaks.

I guess this is the part that people wanted, the BIG ACTION SEQUENCE where robots chase a boy carrying a cube over buildings. Some robots do flips and fight each other. The effects are obviously very expensive and somebody worked a long time on making them, so way to go, E for Effort. But I think the Lord would agree with me when I say Jesus Christ, if this is what you guys consider exciting action sequences I don't even know how to relate to you anymore.

Imagine you took apart a whole bunch of cars, mixed the parts up and welded them all together into a giant ball maybe 15 or 20 feet in diameter, then rolled it down a hill. Shoot that in closeup and you got every fight scene in this movie. I'm sure the Michael Bay style is a huge contributing factor, but I'm pretty sure you could've shot these fights with a stationary camera like a boxing match and I still would have no clue what the fuck was going on. I am no expert on robotics but to my untrained eye, these robots look like shit. Their designs are so overly complicated you can't tell which part is which. One robot (I think a bad guy robot, but not sure) goes flipping through the air in slow motion and while staring at it I was not entirely sure which end was up. There are scenes that are close on Optimus's face while he's talking where I could not even make out a face. I never knew which robot was which or who was a good guy or bad guy or what vehicle was what robot. Luckily Optimus has a shiny blue part on him, occasionally I would see shiny blue and know that hey, that's Optimus! I spotted one!

What Michael Bay has already done to action editing and staging he has now done to character design. If Walt Disney really was a frozen head he would probaly be driven out of hiding to bite Michael Bay's nose off for what he has done here. I don't think the animation is very good either, they all move too fast and seem kind of weightless and don't know how to stand still, but it's kind of pointless to even get into that when they just look so god damn ugly and confusing that even in slow motion they disgrace the many talented artists who were roped into working on this shit. If you're gonna make us wait two hours for a big dumb robot fight at least make robots that we can tell apart or can distinguish what they are doing or which part of their body is the head. In a Godzilla movie I can tell which one is Godzilla and which one is Mothra without studying it frame by frame and comparing it to charts and diagrams.

In the interest of balance, I will say some nice things about the movie. There's a part where the Transformers are in car form and they are driving around, they are all brand new and shiny stupid looking vehicles and it's shot like a car commercial. That was pretty funny. Also, it was nice that the horrible rock music only came on about four or five times, not constantly like in the cartoon version. The military stuff, sometimes that reminded me of the old '80s action movies, all this military hardware they were showing. The constant ludicrousness of every single aspect of the movie makes it less boring than many bad movies, like a GHOST RIDER or a NATIONAL TREASURE. And, the, uh-- I guess I haven't seen a side wheely in a movie in a while. I don't know. I'm sure there are other positive aspects.

I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that left me this befuddled that it actually existed. Now I know how your parents felt when they took you to see TRANSFORMERS THE MOVIE. "Well, I guess this is what kids like now. Huh." I mean look, Moriarty's main argument was that the movie "delivers" and you can't argue with a movie "delivering." But fuck man, I guess I don't know what "delivery" is then. To me, this was an awe-inspiringly awful mess from start to finish, with no good characters, no sense of tension or drama, an asinine plot, badly told, full of constant, annoying attempts at humor, muddled action sequences and effects that hurt your brain trying to look at them. If you people are complaining about something like SPIDER-MAN 3 being too silly and then giving this one a pass, I don't know what the fuck is going on. The best "characters" in the movie are the robots during the 5 or 10 minutes when they're trying to be serious, and those scenes come off campier than SHOWGIRLS. I haven't seen FANTASTIC FOUR 2 but I can't imagine it could be THAT much more moronic, poorly executed and groan-inducing than this one. I mean this one really is off the charts, it's a record breaker. It probaly required alien technology to make it like this.

I know it's not fair to drop the B&R bomb, it's like comparing people to Hitler in political discussion. But TRANSFORMERS is honestly approaching BATMAN AND ROBIN proportions of horribleness. You can't say it's as bad, because the lighting is nice and nobody's wearing rubber fetish costumes or pink gorilla suits, but it's a similar type of minding-numbing machine gun barrage of moronic, inept garbage. And it goes on for almost 2 1/2 hours, longer than some interrogations.

So in a way, that does explain to me why some people might enjoy this. Some people like to be whipped and peed on. And it's an instant camp classic. I know people who get a good laugh out of shitty movies like INDEPENDENCE DAY, and I will definitely demand that they see this shit on video, because it makes INDEPENDENCE DAY look like 2001. It's so full of quick cuts and preposterousness I'm sure I missed all kinds of things. They were already onto the next scene by the time my brain processed the fact that I had just seen a Mountain Dew machine transform into a bad guy robot. Hopefully he will be the main villain in the sequel. But he'll be defeated by a good guy Nike truck. I can't see enjoying this on anything other than an ironic or anthropological "human beings really made this!" type level. No matter how it plays this summer, this movie is so full of bad taste and "what the fuck?" moments that I do believe it will live on. Ten or fifteen years from now, when some theater in a college town plays it as a double feature with ROADHOUSE, it will absolutely kill.

Did the movie work on my crowd? I'm not sure. Some of the lame jokes got laughs. Some got none. There were parts obviously meant to be crowdpleasers where you would hear one person clap or laugh in the back somewhere. There was definitely alot of sarcastic wooing and clapping. But there was also some applause at the end, which I'm gonna assume was sincere. We have already seen enough reviews to know that some people can enjoy this. I talked to a guy who loved it, said it was the best movie he's seen this year, that it knew what it was and was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and what do you expect, it's The Transformers, it's a summer blockbuster movie, it's awesome. I'm glad he enjoyed it, but none of those arguments hold water with me, and I can't help but be sad that this is what we are willing to accept as entertainment. BATMAN AND ROBIN knew what it was and was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and what did we expect. And if just because it's Transformers it's allowed to be inept, moronic garbage, then why are we going to see a movie based on Transformers in the first place? I know DADDY DAY CAMP is gonna be awful but I don't expect these same people running out saying that was awesome because what do you expect, it's DADDY DAY CAMP.

And I know I made this point in talkbacks, and so have others, but it bears repeating. DIE HARD was a blockbuster/popcorn/summer/event movie. So was ALIENS. And TERMINATOR 2. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. STAR WARS. JAWS. ROAD WARRIOR. PREDATOR. ROBOCOP. TOTAL RECALL. THE MATRIX. LORD OF THE RINGS. You people who like your BATMAN and SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN and SUPERMAN and James Bond and LETHAL WEAPON... these are all big event movies, many of them timeless, many of them clever, well-crafted, some of them masterpieces. I am not being pretentious, I am not expecting too much, these are mainstream, crowd pleasing movies and they are what you used to hope for when you went to a summer movie. You can't realistically expect a movie as good as ALIENS every time, but that's better than resigning to the idea that "summer movie" equals "horribly made infantile disposable pap" and being excited about it anyway. If a summer movie is meant to be like TRANSFORMERS, then why the fuck aren't you people embarrassed to be going to see summer movies? At least have the decency to admit that it's a strange, possibly deviant hobby.

Everyone expects this movie to be a huge runaway hit, a moneymaking juggernaut. It happened with ARMAGEDDON and INDEPENDENCE DAY and I lived through election 2004, so certainly I can see that happening. But man oh man do I not get it. Women, especially, I have respect for, and I cannot understand them getting any sort of enjoyment out of these goofy cartoon junkpiles wrestling each other and saying things like "One shall stand and one shall fall!" If this is accepted as good entertainment then we're another step closer to the world of IDIOCRACY and the hit movie ASS.

If America loves this movie, I want a fuckin recount.

But what about my Michael Bay loving buddy? Did he like it? I wasn't sitting near him at the screening and as the movie went on I started to get concerned about what I was gonna say to him afterwards. I hoped he was having a good time, and I mean, I cannot comprehend his love for the other Bay movies. So I couldn't predict what he would think. But at the same time I could not actually picture him walking up to me with a straight face and saying "That was awesome!" And I couldn't guarantee that if that happened I wouldn't shake my head sadly, turn and walk away, our friendship forever weakened by a feeling that we just weren't from the same planet.

The credits roll. I find Mr. Armageddon. He smiles and says, "That was a piece of shit! That was fucking garbage! Terrible!"

So thank you Michael Bay for bringing the world closer together. We can have peace some day. We just can't have good robot movies.

--Vern
http://www.geocities.com/outlawvern

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Fool Me Twice...Shame on...um...

Saw Transformers again tonight. Time for the full on review.

The first time I saw the movie it was with a theater full of fanboys. The kind that know that Frenzy should be a tape, but don't mind so much that he is a boombox. The kind that mind the fact that the character that was a unique character that actually spoke, not clacked and clicked like some psychopathic digital tribal language translator.



I still think he was the Jar-Jar of the movie.

When the movie ended there was silence and we all left, regardless of scenes (credit scenes) still playing. A general sense of unease.

Second time was 2 days later at a 4 pm showing on the 4th of July. General audience, it got a round of applause at the end! It was for the eye candy.

Moving on. The scenes with Bumblebee, Sam and Megan Fox (whatever her characters name was) were good. The scene where the Autobots stated their names and purposes? Lame, Jazz is just too over the top, I like the touch where he does a little breakdance move when he transforms. But the whole urban ghetto thing was just too much in that intro scene. Rachets comments on phermone levels was well done, and funny. The scene where Ironhide offers to destroy Sam's parents, retarded.

Subtlety is best but not Bay's strong point.

In fact that whole backyard garden scene was a waste of celluloid, and terribly edited. You could see entire scenes that had been removed. The rendering time spent on that could have been spent on slowing some of the combat scenes down to the point of being able to observe them.

Which is one of my biggest issues with this movie. The action. One, it slows down to near a crawl by the halfway point. The action that does occur happens so fast its only a blur. Barricade and Bumblebee, a mere blur, you can see absolutely nothing. The camera has to pan back to Barricade to show that he lost. Prime and Bonecrusher. Did you know Prime has a sword in his arm? Did you know he used it to cut off Bone crushers head? Well I had to watch it twice to really get that scene. Sure its well rendered, sure the lightning is great and real. Only it happens so fast you can't enjoy it.


After that its a blur of red, blue and tan metal as they tumble about. Whenever the animators take the camera at a distance the scene is amazing. The scene when Blackout annihilates the army base in Qatar was sick. Looked like it was straight out of Mechwarrior. Loved it. The battle between Optimus and Megatron? Ugh.



Now there they actually fight, smack talk a little. Now its a bit cheesy since its animated from the 80's but still. I can follow it. If only the focused on the scene more, gave it a few minutes to develop, get some dialogue going.

Megatron escapes from the Hoover Dam after being imprisoned for decades. He just flies off? Um, the Megatron I know would have leveled that human edifice with a massive blast from his cannon, which we see 1.5 blurred seconds of in a fight with Optimus. Now that would have been cool.

I still despise the Sector 7 addition. Lame. I hate the concept of the modern military so easily discovering a method to hurt them. Hate the complete and utter lack of character development in any of the transformers. And the Decepticons? Man, zero development. Big helicopter that kills, big tank that kills, big truck thing with venus fly trap that kills, etc.

How about the scene were Rachet brings Prime the two halves of Jazz and says he couldn't save him. Prime is there holding Jazz like a hotdog and coke talking about how they lost a friend but gained new ones. He sounded like the king in The Holy Grail after the brides father "dies".



How the heck is a 20 foot tall Autobot taken out by fire extinguishers? The way they caught Bumblebee was completely lame. A sweet ion cannon type device would have been cooler. Heck, they were reverse engineering all of Megatrons parts. (he was a super advanced nonbiological entity how did we get vaccuum tubes from that guy and not super awesome particle beam weapons?)

It was seriously like a couple of high school kids who only knew about transformers from seeing a display at Toys R Us made this movie. Zero interaction between the autobots, almost zero interaction between the decepticons.

After seeing it a second time I can say, that although it wasn't TINO (Transformers In Name Only) it wasn't close to accomplishing all that it could. It was a mile off.

sure hope they hand the franchise to someone who can manage some character development. Like how about, hmmm...SPIELBURG! Get out of the executive producer role and do something like direct a movie.

Great visual effects, good use of Peter Cullen. But that's about it. I give it 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Transformers

Just got back from the movie. Went and saw the 9:15 showing.

Liked parts of it, love other parts and down right hated a few scenes and directorial decisions.

John Turturro as a Sector 7 agent was absolutely retarded. Awful.

That stupid boombox Frenzy Decepticon was the freaking Jar-Jar Binks of this movie. Hated him.

The autobots were cool. The scene at Sam's house retarded. Prime and Bonecrusher, cool. Prime and Megatron? Aborted and weak.

Tune in Wednesday when I see it again and have more time for a full review. So far my feelings run this way.

Cool movie because it has Transformers. Should have been a thousand times better for having Transformers in it. Leave out the dumb humans.


Saturday, June 30, 2007

HEY!!

Feel free to comment on my witty witticisms! I don't mind! Makes me feel like I'm being read. I know I'm not and absolutely no one reads this but if you would post once in a while I would feel like someone does.

Thanks

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Hey Look Over There!

Theres a new blog in town. Created by everyone's favorite neuronal jelly!

Go and see me build a house, well first wreck a house and then build it.

Check out Exostra (it's Latin check that out too)

Friday, June 01, 2007

Our Tongues Can't Repel Flavor Of That Magnitude

Best line all month. Someone tape this for me.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Top Secret? I played with this thing 5+ years ago!

Microsoft is unveiling a new top secret project "Milan" Which is now called Surface, for obvious reasons.

It's a smart coffee table sized touch screen interface thing. Manipulate objects with your hands, cut and paste text with your fingers etc.

Anyone remember the sweet desk I played with at MOMA about a zillion years ago?




Yup that's it!! Man the internet has a long memory. Well at least Microsoft will be able to put on in each home.

And if you look to your right...

You can see our brand new addition to this fine establishment. After combing the highways and byways of this fine interspace, I've discovered an interesting bit of html code. Look to this playlist as it will change over time, reflecting the waxing and waning of my auditory tastes.

Right now I'm doing the funky rock thing, ie Talking Heads and Flaming Lips. I surprised Lemon Jelly didn't make the cut. Well, I'll rectify that in a upcoming playlist, you just can't miss a remix of William Shatner doing slam poetry.

Enjoy! Oh and don't forget to shut it off before you watch one of my movies.

I missed it!!!!

On May 29th, 1453, Constantinople fell to Mehmet II and the Ottoman Empire, over a thousand years after its foundation, and serving nearly that amount of time as the sole capitol of the surviving Roman Empire.

So here's to the last Great Siege!!! A 54 day extravaganza that ended because some dumb Italian (Venetian) left the door open.



So I think I might use this as an excuse to remember the fall of the Roman Empire, look next year for an "Istanbul was once Constantinople" Party!!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

If only some concept guys had locked Lucas in a closet




The 3 prequels might have been amazing instead of craptastic.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Steam Punkish movie?



It has many elements of a sweet Steampunk movie, granted the name is not nearly Steampunkish enough.

Professor McGrundil's Magnificent Contrivence for the Circumnavigation of Tergiversation and Verity.

The compass has something to do with telling the truth...maybe. Anyway, that's a much better Steampunk like name for it.

Either I'm Growing Up or Dying Inside

We're soon moving into a new home, a great home. One with 400 more square feet than my current home, one with a ridiculously small amount of closet space.

And so we are downsizing. Which means...Yard sale.

So I took my vintage 1967 Battleship game and put it on the alter of reduced storage capacity. I also put my 533 card collection of Star Trek the Next Generation cards, and my Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game by Games Workshop. I had only finished painting the elves. My prized collection of Dorito Star Wars hologram cards and some forgotten Warhammer figurines I never painted. My mint unopened Star Wars Pez Dispenser collection, and my Star Wars Limited Edition Trading card game, along with some Star Wars Galaxy trading cards. Sensing a pattern?

And assortment of video games I no longer play, and some ancient Viewfinder slide wheels.

All to reduce clutter, and to buy me a sweet grill!! I think any extra cash will go towards

WAVE 6!!!!!!!!!!


Which just showed up at Walmart!!! My wait is over!!! Samurai archers here I come!!!!


The yard sale will be this Saturday baring any rain, which I hereby prohibit. There will be no rain allowed this Saturday. Just to be clear.

Come one come all and buy my precious things that I have so lovingly kept these many years and am being forced to let go by that most dire of circumstances. Lack of shelf space.

Friday, May 25, 2007

It Must Be Declared

That the Great and Illustrious DredBen, Consumer of 7 White Castle Sliders, Purveyor of Endless Amounts of Nintendo DS's, Capable of Winning a Land War in Asia, has begun his weekend Battle Royale Extravaganza in the quiet New Jersey countryside. The Pine Barrens will shudder as the festivities rage throughout the night.

and I sit, in my dark office, typing about it on Blogger.

Crush Your Enemy, See Them Driven Before You, and Hear the Lamentations of the Women.

Have fun buddy, I'll be at the next one.

It's Memorial Weekend!!

Just finished watching the season finale of Lost. Whole crap was that awesome!!! Can't wait till next season!! Much better finale than Heroes, it pains me to say it.

It's a pity that this region remains completely depleted of all Wave 6 Heroscape units. Wallymart, Toys R Us, nobody stocks anything but endless rows of Wave 5, pretty much reviled as the worst wave yet. However, it is my good fortune to have come into possession of a single pack of ZOMBIES!! Woohoo!! And at 60 points a piece I think I might need to pick up a few more!!

School is almost finished. I love teaching but those kids are sucking me dry. I really needed this long weekend.

Sorry this post stinks but I just don't have it in me to make a super cool one.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

It has come to my attention...

That there is a far more appropriate name for the fiance.

One that was used in abundance during Zombie Plague games and when else did she blow herself up? Oh yes, that card game with the cowboys I completely forget it's name.

She is now....wait for it....MERRYDEATH!!

Congrats on a fine fine name.

Thanks Rover for the slap on the head, see ya tonight, can't wait to see those mobile workstations.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

A Huge Momentous Life Changing Event

No, I haven't started the semi-annual toe cleaning extravaganza. My buddy Shoop has just popped the question to his now fiance, Unibomber. Are we excited? Absolutely.

Now the big question on everyone's mind is....WHAT TO DO FOR THE BACHELOR PARTY??!!

I'll start dreaming up t-shirt designs immediately.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

A dictionary I can love

Man it looks like something Data would use. The sweetest dictionary/thesaurus ever!!!

I'll use this for everything, move over Roget!!

GIANT NAZI ROBOTS!!!!!!!!!

Agh! This is the coolest thing I have seen in weeks!!!!!

WEEKS!!

The coolest!!! Giant Nazi Death Robot fighting at Pearl Harbor!!

Just scroll down and click on the movie.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Way less creepy

Same band only way less creepy. This one was a huge dance floor anthem that was done by The Knife back in 03 than redone by a dude name Jose Gonzalez for acoustic guitar. They plugged it into a Bravia LCD commercial with 250,000 superballs, not one lick of CGI. I'm serious, that's 100% real.

Um...wow.

Discovered a new band. I do that on occasion. This one's Swedish. And well wow.

They're called The Knife.

If I had to sum up their sound in a sentence it would be this. They're as if Bjork dropped acid and then was promptly eaten by a computer that was slightly psychopathic.

If that wasn't crazy enough their latest video was directed by some Japanese director who greatly desires to create the most disturbing Target commercials even seen by man.

Just watch...


I love them but that video is twisted. I mean seriously, Aphex Twin needs to look out because those forcep clasping mini's are creepy.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Friday, March 23, 2007

Best Week of Work Ever

As some of you know I have the esteemed honor of shaping our future and just wanted to let everyone know that I felt that it might be possible for our future to not be as nearly bleak as first anticipated. I'm now only reasoning that our future will be slightly more depressing than the dystopia seen in Children of Men. DVD comes out SOON!!

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Whatever this is, it sure the hell ain't Lexington

(torn page)...ome weeks since we've seen anything that resembles Middlesex. We have hiked for miles and have not seen a single living soul, nor farmstead or road . Samuel is becoming more and more concerned about our whereabouts, he is certain we are no longer in the Colonies.
February 23rd, One thing is for certain I am glad the weather is more fair. The clime is altogether wonderful. Last night we marched through the last of what seemed an endless stretch of woods and have come upon a pleasant stream. Samuel Thompson and Joseph Nevitt have scouted out downstream to see if they can find any sign of habitation. We have added some sort of odd deer to our provisions. It did not run when we approached it. An easy hunt, although the meat was bitter and had an odd smell.

February 24th, Our scouts have returned. Samuel and Joseph told of a small stone fortress on the banks of the river only a few more miles downstream. It seems to be protecting a land approach to a natural harbor at the streams mouth. They saw no one and were careful not to be seen. We have decided to make ourselves known and see if the inhabitants are friendly. A decision that Timothy Burnap was strongly contrary to. Yet, Timothy has always been contrary ever since that musket ball took his ear at Braintree.

February 25th, We took a day to prepare for our revealing. We are certain now that the tower is inhabitated. We have seen a lone individual pacing the battlements, he could be Pequot, but the others highly doubt it. I suppose I should agree as what we know mainly comes from our fathers since those savages where finished years ago. But who else would be carrying a bow?

February 26th, We have revealed ourselves and have been welcomed inside! The fortress is merely a simple empty tower. Rain stained canvas is all they have to keep them covered and their provisions dry. The Indian is clearly not an Indian. His name is Syvarris and Joseph is certain he's French, but with those ears I doubt he's from anywhere near Europe. I think he might be a Bulgar or something Turkish. His accent is horrible to hear but we can understand one another. He had been trying to tell us about a doorway for several hours over dinner, smoked eels, but he finally gave up and went to pace on the battlements. Sleep will come easily tonight.

February 28th, After a few days of getting used to that high lisp of his Timothy is sure he understands Syvarris completely. Timothy told us that we somehow slipped out of our world and left our bivouac on Cambridge commons and have entered a new world. He states that the same happened to Syvarris and to several other groups from other worlds. There was a brief row about this when Samuel called him a liar but after talking further with Syvarris and then meeting some of these others, the debate was pretty much ended. In the middle of this little scuffle Syvarris interrupted and introduced us to some new lodgers. He was very careful to say that they were friends and although different would help us get home. Picture a whitewashed Franklin stove crossed with a butterchurn and add limbs. Syvarris brought in 3 men in steel suits, all in white. We were a bit astonished but we all loved to play as knights as kids, so the real surprise was when we discovered that they were empty.

March 1st, You get use to the voices after a while. Completely serene, like chimes in an empty room. And no matter how difficult a situation became, no matter how many of those blue skinned savages leapt howling out of the woods they never lost their nerve. Every shot from their weapons hit their mark. Believe me they had guns unlike any we had ever seen. No smoke, no wadding, no balls. Just a flash of blue and the enemy was chunks of meat and a lingering crimson mist. And they rarely ever missed. We knew we were nowhere near Middlesex.

March10th, Syvarris has come to us with news of dangerous portent. Several rival factions have levied troops and were marshaling to war. Our fortress was a key position and vital to using the river to ferry troops and equipment to the upper marches. He said that we should brush up on our Latin. I can't tell you how I confuse my ablative and genitive cases in the first declension nouns. Was it matellarum or matellis? We joked and spoke in Latin for the rest of the evening, Joseph was actually quite good as he was planning on becoming a priest, well before meeting Sarah Ross anyway.

March 11th, The morning mist has cleared and there is no doubt this will be my last entry. How we got here I have no idea. I don't even know where here is. We are stranded in some isolated tower with a long eared lisping gent with a bow and three walking, I can't even think of what to call them. We all miss home and now there are 3 large groups of very angry individuals camped just outside of rifle range.

You won't believe this but we count half a dozen Roman, that's right, Roman archers. Helmets, armor, arrows, the real deal. Syvarris is certain the same event that brought us here also pulled them from their time. There are many other individuals, all different and very angry. There can be no doubt, Syvaris tells us, that we will fight today, and he is uncertain what the outcome will be.

We were eating a hasty meal of venison sausage and dried fruit when Syvarris let lose a volly of arrows from the battlement. War had never been quiet where we came from but the sound of agony is the same true no matter what world your in. A shriek of pain declared his aim was true. He shouted down to us that we should get up and bring all of our ammunition with us. He continued to loose arrows out across the battlement.

The three suits of armor quickly made it to the top of the tower while Joseph, and Samuel hauled wadding and bags of musket balls up the ladder. I had just looked up to see how our archer was doing when his head just disappeared. He toppled right into the dying embers of our breakfast fire, scattering pans and smashing crockery, his bow still in his grasp.

By the time I had made it up to the battlement the entire phalanx of Roman archers had been blasted to pieces across a low ridge. The 3 suits of armor took aim at some Asian looking fellows and blew one of them all over his comrades. The other two charged for the gate. I could hear their feeble blows against that huge door. 2 of the armor suits took positions above the door and I heard this wet pulping sound as one of them was blown to bits by those blue guns of theirs. Yet in moments both of these mighty beings were cast back from the crenellations, their armor peeled back and sparking. The both joined Syvarris in a broken smoldering heap. The last one turned and began firing upon this dark knight, and it was truely a knight. He was mired in one of the many streams leading to the fortress and his armor suddenly blossomed titanic gaping holes. You could see clear through his body. He stood for a moment and looked at the morning light streaming from his chest and collapsed into the creek, water running over and now through him to the bay.

In time soon this remaining suit of armor was struck by a unseen assailant, the shattered remains of his torso and head blasted out of the tower wall. His legs slumped against the cold sweating stone. It was only us four remaining. A blue angelic being flew at the tower, massive lance in her hand, we all four took aim and it dropped like a stone.


We saw that three man like individuals on a low hill seemed to be casing all the casualties on our side and so we took aim and fired. It wasn't long until Joseph and Samuel were no longer with us. Grievous wounds those weapons inflicted, as if they had been hit with cannons.

March 11th, noonish

So it is only Timothy and myself. This will most likely be my last entry. We have decided on a rouse, the gunmen on the outside are lethal and we will be killed if we try to attack them from the tower walls. We will open the door and lure them inside and hopefully dispatch them quickly when they enter the tower. We have rigged the door to open on it's own and we have each two rifles. We can not figure how to use the suits weaponry and they are very heavy.


Timothy is pulling the rope, if we die it will be with a gun in each hand. To hell with this place.


The Mon Arac parchment seems to only to have suffered damage to the first third of the writing. Several other fragments have been found that seem to be part of this same piece but extensive fire damage has made any true conclusion difficult to substantiate. It is clear that both the remaining individuals were slain just prior to this last entry as has been witnessed by Sanctioned Temporal Witnesses. The location and time which is stated as being 102.45.21 have been marked as historically significant and forbidden to both recreational viewing and temporal tampering.

Aevum et Spatium Derigo

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Holy Paragon of Alternating Current!!

It was merely an interesting movie until it name dropped Nikola Tesla and brought in Gollum!!!! Whole Crap did that movie immediately register on my "This movie is about to rock my shorts-dar" And it did...well I think the snooty Hugh Jackman should have either taken over the world with an army of gimpy clones or started the largest haberdashery ever seen on the face of the earth. But it still rocked!

Haven't seen it? Well, it's got Micheal Caine, of whom we are well pleased ever since he was so nearly crucified to death in "The Man Who Would Be King".

Do yourself a favor and engross yourself in some Kipling.

Monday, March 05, 2007

A Title is born

The new addition to the Proteinstar clan has now been named. He will hence forth be known as 7 of 3.

If you need to question the origins of such a name you are neither geeky enough or knowledgeable of my son enough to warrant such information.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Who Doesn't love Blip-Hop and Stop Motion?

You have to love stop motion on the white board!!

Monday, February 26, 2007

If you don't watch it don't talk to me...

Simply put Heroes on NBC Monday nights at 9pm is the best 1 hour of television ever created by mankind. Well if Spock and Kirk got into the ring with Vader and C3PO, that would be the best 1 hour, more like 15 seconds of screaming, ever but moving on.

If you missed it you need to go online to NBC.com and watch the entire episode. It was that good. If your confused because you don't understand the plot, or the characters, or why some guy can go all Chernobyl than your a total lamer.

Still working on the nickname for my little broodling. I'm thinking something like Cygnus. That would be sweet. Only because it's the sweetest super huge spaceship teetering on the edge of oblivion name ever. And why wouldn't an 8lb lump of 50% of my genetic material die to have a sweet name like that? With that said I haven't named the others in my clan. Perhaps we here in The Battle of Hastings only name the males. It seems likely and I'm sure I can use precedent to support it.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

At Long Last!

He has arrived!

The one ordained to play Heroscape and BattleLore with his father well into the night.

The one who will perfect the Sicilian Defense, and then Lead the Fellowship to Victory over the Lidless Eye.

And his first thoughts...



Well, not to far from the tree huh?

His moniker will be forthcoming.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Move over UNIVAC!!!

Capable of over 64,000 processes in a single instant!!! Unbreakable codes! Simulations that took Blue-Green years to complete are finished in a flash! Genetically tailored medicines! Everything from Bio-tech to Physics will see huge gains! Makes my Compaq look like a doorstop. What is this thing? It's called a quantum computer and it might already be here.

Monday, February 05, 2007

NYC COMICON!!!!

After Gencon this might be next...

Sunday, February 04, 2007

It's been a while...

Well thought I'd brush some dust of this old blog and see if anyone still reads this thing. It would be interesting since no one really read it to begin with.

Things of note...baby is almost here. I'm accepting male name suggestions.

Other things of note...I'm working on a large scale zombie boardgame, chance of completion...zero.

I finally hooked up my home stereo to the PC, funneling an endless stream of mp3's straight to a system worthy of playing them.

I sold my Atari 2600 and Genesis...sniff. Sold my Battletech manuals and sourcebooks. This massive sell off of equipment and gear is all in preparation of my master plan.

I find it interesting that the voice of Optimus Prime is the voice of Eeyore.

There's a nice podcast from a Heroscape designer here He reveals that there will be a brand new master set with all new terrain and units!!! WOOHOO!!!

OK thats it.

Proteinstar out

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Just because I resemble it...




I don't mean the band...I mean the genre.

In summation:

"Euros have indirect competition to maximize efficiency and earn favors of the king.

Ameritrash has nukes." -Mixo

MLK

Spoke with some of my students the other day about the significance of Martin Luther King and his sacrifice for social injustice and so on. I asked what they thought about him and if they thought his death was meaningful. They said they could care less about him and that he was an idiot for getting shot. These are inner city African American's saying this. I was a bit shocked to say the least.

Well, I appreciate the day off anyway.

In other news, the website Pandora.com has awesome streaming audio. Check it out.

Sunday, December 31, 2006

TMNT!!



Behold the glory of radioactive goo and an exuberance for all things ninja!

I wonder if they'll have Krang?

Friday, December 22, 2006

Rap I can Laugh with Rather than at

The filth and dreck I'm forced to stomach at school is mind numbing.

I wish I could force the kids to watch this.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

OH IT'S HERE IT'S HERE!!!



DID YA SEE IT! DID YA!!!

YEAH MY LITTLE PONY RIGHT THERE!!! COMIN' AT CHA!!

OH YEAH, SPEILBURG'S NEXT TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE!!

after the Wuzzles.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Friday, December 15, 2006

Hey Guys

Just a few cool things I've been playing with:

Check out www.microbeworld.org
Sweet website with a daily podcast detailing the days recent outbreaks of horrible diseases around the world. Pneumonic Plague in a diamond in Africa is the latest gem. Pneumonic of course being the respiratory version of the Bubonic plague.

The other is even better. Although one might question it's legality...might.

It's called www.gomusic.ru A Russian mp3 webstore. The great thing is that the mp3's sell for $0.15. Entire albums go for $1 or $2. How can you beat that? I can by 8-10 albums for the price of one!!

Is it legal? Well Verisign is doing their online credit payments. Although the US has requested that another similar website be blocked by the Russian government, this one is still operating so I guess it's cool. It certainly is cheap!

Oh and the MP3's are great, the selection is both broad and deep.

There ya go.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Machine Guns in Space!

An asteroid will pass within the orbits of our geosynchronous satellites in the year 2029!! This near miss will alter its trajectory to a potential catastrophic impact in 2036!!! This massive rock hurtling at hereto unknown speeds is appropriately named Asteroid 2004 MN4!

Several estimations have approximated the impact as occurring 680 miles off the California Coast in the Pacific Ocean. Dum-dum-duhhhh!!!

So we are now trying to design manned orbiters to land on Asteroid 2004 MN4 in order to push it further away. Steve Buscemi and Ben Affleck have officially signed on to the project. Nasa is reported to be in negotiations to request better lander designs by Micheal Bay, specifically a larger, "more awesome", machine gun.

Friday, November 10, 2006

A Sneak Preview of the Limited Edition BMBP Shirts!








Not shown are the Ultra Exclusive T-shirts suitable for only the victors of HeroScape , Diplomacy, and War of the Ring.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Birch Mountain's Final Days

I couldn't be more excited. The Birch Mountain is about to tie the knot. And an extravaganza of such masculine excess is about to happen this weekend that it will blot out the entire neighborhood in waves of testosterone induced glee.

I'm particularly looking forward to spanking everyone in a massive game of Heroscape, followed closely by further spankage in the realm of Diplomacy, although I believe Dred Ben might give me a run for my money as he seems to rock my world every time we but heads in WWII. I'm hoping the 30 year differential might give me a edge.

And Weapons and Warriors!? I can't wait to see those little orange balls go flying! I call the trebuchet!

Long live Birch Mountain! Long life his wife to be! We need a name for her!

I think thats going to be one of this weekends shirts. Long Live Birch Mountain.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!

Nope not me being weird. That's Paul, probably ripping the quill out of the scribes hand as he pens his last few thoughts to the confused church of Galatia. Galatians 6:11

That line screams authenticity, probably more than many I've read in the Bible.

Or how about how he wishes that the Christians who started this whole debacle about circumcision would go and finish the job and CASTRATE themselves!!! Galatians 5:11-12

He must have had some temper, I think he might have been a bit more tempermental than Peter.

Paul was the bomb.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

I think I'm getting the hang of this...

I just finished a weeks worth of lesson plans in a single night! w00t!

Monday, October 16, 2006



Sir Francis Drake is now the employee of Electronic Arts!!!

He is specifically working for Mythic Entertainment down in Fairfax VA.

He's the new concept artist for Mythic's Warhammer Online Game which will kick butts three ways till Sunday or otherwise known as KBTWTS.

The second best part is the friends and family plan that EA has, hopefully i'll get some subscription free playing in soon!!!

WhooHOO!!

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Funniest Video Game Themed Cartoon Ever

If you are easily offended by animated squamous characters that curse at video game characters then do not click this button.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

My New Anthem!



All hail the glorious new declaration of Nerdom!

Monday, October 09, 2006

The Lineage will not die with me

No it will continue until my descendents are more than the sand on the shore. Well, perhaps not, but at least it will extend one further generation. The Spouse is carrying our First Born Son!!!

No baseball and football for this little sion of the Clan, but Euro-games and Sci-fiction will nurture and support him in his growing years. He will become what his father has striven to be.

A GEEK.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

I'm finally a Biology Teacher!

After recovering from Gencon the Spouse of Proteinstar and myself fell into a bit of a morass. All our vacationing and Genconing were really just elaborate attempts to mask the fact that I, Proteinstar, was still without a job, and that it looked as if the Spouse would be working again. This time with our 3rd broodling due in Feb. To say the least, the week was grim, to say the most, it was absolute hell. Up until Wednesday the 16th of August. I received a message from a local High school principal offering me a teaching job in their Science dept. Praise God!

I've since taken the job and gone through several days worth of traning and such.

So we have begun a new facet of my life, that of the teacher and educator.

And so let me leave you with this excerpt from a fantastic little book:

"Each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are."

-The Farthest Shore
Ursula K. Le Guin

So my advice to us all is carefully choose the acts you make, or you may wind up frozen in a place and time that is not to your liking and your acts will have left you with no other.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Girls in chainmail?! A dragon poster 2 stories tall? Sign me UP!

What am I talking about you might ask? Only the 4 best days in Geekdom.




That's right..Gencon. Which stands for Geeks Encouraged to Not Care about Other Normals.

I couldn't possibly tell the many sights and sounds that I witnessed. An exhibit hall so large it could have swallowed a Walmart whole and still have room for a 7-11 and a Hardees. A hall stuffed to the gills with board/card and Roleplaying games. Huge displays and massive layouts dominated the hall. Wizards of the Coast displayed a Dragon that was basically lifesize.

The ventilation was thankfully adequate enough to remove the inevitable Geek Reek that would have stripped the flesh right from our bones.

The females of the Gencon though were an interesting breed. Most happen to be of a Goth persuasion. And since they felt no threat from any of the geeks in the facility, all of them too wrapped up in some hyper-rare copy of a Evil Superman card to even realize the body they plowed into was a girl, that they feel they can wear whatever they want. it's like all the males are simply some exotic form of fungus and that the most revealing attire will result in nothing more than an annoyed grimace as the geek realizes that the person wearing only fish net stockings and a thong is blocking his view of Apollo from the original Battlestar Galactica.

Let me just clarify and let you know that the person wearing the stockings and thong was a chick. Yeah I was pretty shocked. Soon shock gave way to stupification when a girl sauntered by in only chainmail. It didn't take long to become numb to the thousands of girls in corsets so tight it looked like they might burst clear out the top in a fountain of well thats enough.

Played a ton of games.
Here's me about to pluck the liver out of Sir Francis Drakes champion.

G4 was there hawking their videogame stuff.

That was kind of cool, got to play a bunch of video games and such. There was a pretty sweet pirate game that a liked.

Collected about 3/4 of a ton of swag. That was sweet. Demoed games in order to get free games, that was sweeter. And I sold $20 dollars of my Magic cards in order to fuel my obsession.

Speaking of Magic, I played in a Two Headed Giant Tournament with Fistzilla. Oh, I should give a rundown of who went.

Proteinstar (myself duh), SirFrancisDrake, DredBen, Fistzilla and 25 Year Scotch. The five of us drove 9 hours or so to Gencon and loved it. The drive back with a Crave case (should call it a Grave case) of 30 White Castle burgers was amazing. Amazing that we made it back at all.

You don't need to see my identification.

Oh yeah, Magic tournament. Long ... long ... story but the short of it was I got spanked like a red headed stepchild, or circus monkey, pick your prefered idiom.

Bought more games than I could physically carry.

Ate a steak so good I nearly considered regurgitation, just to do it again.

I'm not going to post any images of the ladies of Gencon, because I um..didn't take any! yeah, Didn't take any pictures of the girls.

But I did take a picture of this...




Which effectively makes me a dork of the highest caliber.










Although not nearly as dorky as these tools!!


WOW...good pun huh?

Well the event was awesome, Fistzilla couldn't wake me with his Snoring of Fury although SirFrancisDrake was overcome by it's sheer power and I have a ton of games to play.



Although I'm going to have to find a way to get that chainmail underwear burned out of my brain.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Back from New Orleans

This isn't a real post. Sorry. It's a fake one, deliberately left here to give you the false impression that I seriously consider myself a blogger. Perhaps some day I will renew my blogger vows but until then I remain apostate and aimless.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Day 1 7:35 pm

(pay no attention to the changing tenses and punctuation, and well pretty much everything regarding this tripe of a writing assignment)

Meredith laid her head back on the sticky vinyl bus seat. The dull throbbing rumble of the engine pulsing through her skull, massaging the troubles of the day out through her mouth as she sighed. Work and more work she thought, if only she could get home and shower in time to see Pancho. She flew against the seat in front of her, dropping ungraciously onto the filthy bus floor as the bus lurched suddenly in a violent deceleration. She scrambled to pick up her purse and scattered belongings, along with a dozen other complaining riders, as the bus groaned and shuddered to a halt. As she stood she felt glass crunch beneath her shoes, and then the complaining refocused into groans and cries of help. She stood shocked to see a minivan buried into the front of the SEPTA bus, blood and shattered steel twisted into Gigerish forms. She pushed open the side emergency door which fell onto the oil slicked asphalt with a crash. Without a backwards glance she carefully lowered herself to the ground, the steel door rocking and crunching safety glass under her weight. She looked down the street past the front of the bus and it's recent minivan addition and her shock turned quickly to stark terror.
People were running in every direction. Distant screams and much closer gunshots shook her from her paralysis. The entire street was choked with cars. Cars upon cars piled up on each other, the occupants and pedestrians all wrestling and fighting in some ghastly urban gladiatorial match. She turned and ran up a side street and deep into a nearby development. A phone and a ride out of here is what I need she thought.

Passing house after house, whose lights were all dark she came up to a small bungalow style home with its two front bay windows invitingly lit, the lamps in the family room showing a pleasant enough environ. Apparently five other individuals thought the same thing as she joined a small group of people clustered on the front lawn.

"I really need to use the phone in there," a young man, she later learned his name was Jason, said. The others, in no particular order, introduced themselves as Matt, the Spouse of Proteinstar (a name she found rather odd), and another girl named Sarah. As she spoke briefly with them a warm arm came about her shoulders, she started and was shocked to see her own Pancho smiling at her. "How on earth did you find me here?" She said. "I work for LoJack, what kind of question is that." He responded with a wink. And with that they all made for the house.

The group headed for the front door, while Matt walked over to the parked Buick Lesabre to see if anything was in it's trunk. It was clear to all of them that this terrorist attack, which it had to be, froze all of societies niceties and allowed a sort of surviorist mentality. The Spouse of Proteinstar (hereby known as SP) Sarah and Meredith all searched the kitchen and family room for materials that might help their stay at the house. Meredith discovered a small shoulder bag full of live grenades, much to the shock of the group. Sarah and SP began boarding up the front bay windows with the family room endtables that they had smashed for the wood. Pancho found a baseball bat and started to walk down the hall to check out the rest of the house while Jason moved to the side door to check on Matt's progress out in the garage. Jason was just in time to her Matt shout "There are people in the backyard!! I mean a lot and they don't look right at all!" he headed up towards the open garage, hoping to find something to protect himself with or the keys that Buick.

Pancho heard a crash of glass and window frame as something solid fell through the bedroom window. Standing in the hallway swinging his bat menacingly he made sure Meredith saw his brave stand. Another shattering clatter was followed by a loud thud as another body fell into the computer room. He could make out the dim form of a shambling man lurching his way across the carpeted den.

Suddenly a filthy stinking man swung out of the gloom at Pancho from the bedroom. His body covered in gore, his mechanics overalls hanging on him in tatters. Pancho swung his bat like all those lessons from T-ball and the pulpy remains of the mechanics skull splattered the far end of the bedroom. The body shuddered and fell against the door jam, sliding down the wall in a oozing, fleshy heap. A second stinking body leapt out from the computer room, this one wearing only her bicycle shorts. A single blow to her head and she crashed into the old Pentium sitting in the corner, diskettes and Mountain Dew cans scattering across the floor.

The girls screamed as Pancho leaned out of the hall with his face covered in a crimson hood of gore, his teeth gleaming in a frenzied smile. "Got two of them!" He shouted "Whatever they are!" Jason piped up from the side door, "Their zombies!" as a hideously mangled corpse shouldered its way into the door. Barehanded Jason grappled with it, trying to prevent it's ingress. Filthy nails tore deep furrows in his arms, blood welling up in their tracks. Blood stained teeth snapped at his neck as he tried valiantly to force it out of the house. Meredith ran to his aid wielding a baseball sized weapon of unfathomable power. Suddenly the zombie lashed out with horrendous power throwing Jason back into the family room. And with that it took several steps into the house, arms thrashing and teeth gnashing in a fury. More crashes in the bedroom and computer room announced the arrival of several more decaying fiends. Pancho's maniacal laughter and the sickening crunching of pulped skulls announcing the demise of those intruders.

Sarah tried to squeeze past Pancho and grab some equipment in the bedroom, even as a foul shambling form, half resembling a local TV anchor, turned his gaping maw towards her, his eyes white and glazed.

Jason threw himself at the zombie again. "Git out of here you lousy ArggghhhhaaaahhHHHHHH!!!!! His battle cry suddenly turning into a shriek of horror as he found it's teeth buried in his throat. Blood fountained out in a geyser of sanguine gore. He stumbled backward, flaps of tissue tearing away from his neck as the zombie snapped at him. Clutching the rapidly decreasing flow he fell hard against the coffee table, his eyes went dark and his last sensation was the soggy warm shag carpet against his cheek.

The woman continue to barricade the front windows and searching for weapons or anything that might help them. Meredith stood in shock as the decaying corpse turned it's dead gaze towards her, stepping back she hefted the green orb of destruction in her hand. He shock increased as the body of Jason picked itself of the sodden carpet, his throat a red ruin. "Aw Jason's one of them now!" She shouted. Pancho yelled from the bedroom for her to throw the grenade. She looked down at the bomb and quickly looked up at the two shambling forms trying to negotiated the glass coffee table. And with that she pulled the pin like in the movies.

SP was running into the family room with her newly found rifle when Meredith disappeared in a shower of gore and tissue filled chunks of denim and cotton weave. Half of her was instantly vaporized in the explosion as her grenade went off prematurely. The rest of her was blasted throughout the room, pelting zombie and human alike with her remains. A fine red mist descended from the ceiling, right between her tennis shoes, which SP noticed had moved an inch.

The family room was a wreck. Streaks of blood splattered on every surface, which after the explosion were shattered and smoldering. Pancho ran out of the bedroom and nothing but shock registered on his face. "You traitor! His traumatized mind made him shout." And with that he attacked the remaining zombies in the bedroom.

Maria took aim at Jason, and noticed out of the corner of her eye that the shattered ruin of Meridith's corpse was trying to crawl from out behind the TV where the largest portion had been thrown in the explosion. She takes aim and fires several rounds at the zombies, taking the one that had been Jason out. It's headless form falling in a heap. With a click she realized she was out of ammunition and heard matt shout from the garage that he had found some hollowpoints in a cigar box. With that she ran out the front door, shouting for him to meet her at the Buick. Pancho runs back into the den which has filled up with several moaning forms, his club of ash swinging.

One zombie falls with it's had a caved in ruin, but in his backswing a festering corpse latched onto his shoulder. The thick cotton of his rugby shirt shredding like tissue paper, his flesh torn from his shoulder like a KFC chicken leg. Blood spurts from his wound as he stumbles backwards from the assault. He bit his tongue in a rage as he swung at the fiend his wild swinging missing the grotesque thing completely. It;s mouth hanging agape it lunches at him and a sudden moment of absolute mind shattering horror rips his arm completely from his body, the dull thud of the bat falling against the desk echoing in his ears as those inhuman hands shatter his rib cage and disembowel him in a flash. Death was instant and he fell backwards into the bookcase he was desperately trying to search. His abdomen and chest a gaping hole, the room a charnel house. The keys to the Buick glinting on the second shelf.

The horde continue to grow in the backyard, the hastily erected barricades in the bedrooms collapsing under the mindless bulk of the dead. SP hefting her hatchet and Matt with his newly reloaded rifle the mentally prepared themselves to reenter the house of horrors, where moments earlier they had heard pancho's last moments and it nearly unmanned them.

Meanwhile Sarah in a rush forces a zombie back and splits it's rotting head like a melon in the bedroom. She rushes out only to be trapped in the hallway by the shambling corpse of Jason and Pancho who lurches out of the computer room. The stench of entrails and gristle nearly drives her mad as she faces these two one time acquaintances, both now only desiring to peel back her skull and feast on her brain. She forces Jason back with a savage blow and seeing her escape runs into the family room after the staggering zombie. But with a savageness that she never expected from this stumbling form he grabs a hold of her thigh. A violent twist and horrific mound of tissue and jean is ripped from her thigh bone. She can't even cry as she falls into the smoking remains of the family room. Right into the waiting, and blasted form of Meridith whose fleshless visage is the last thing she sees. SP is running through the front door as three zombies descend on Sarah, her sceaming quickly becoming a low gurgle as organs and shattered ribs torn from her chest. SP freezes in the doorway as Sarah then regains her feet, her torso a ruin. SP attacks the remains of Sarah with her hatchet and finds the teeth of her friend sinking deep into her face. She stumbles back and grasping hands pull her into the waiting mob. Matt halts his entrance into the house as he sees the ghastly sight in the family room. Several zombies all resembling in some terrible way the 5 people he had met that evening trying to escape the nightmare that burst into the bar he was drinking his sorrows away at. If only he could drink this away. Firing a few rounds into the growing mob he has the satisfaction of dropping a few of the lurching forms. Until a dreadful click echoes from the chamber, he's out of rounds. He darts into the kitchen, dodging and weaving through the slow gore covered dead.

Throwing open cupboards and closets he finds a chainsaw tucked under the kitchen sink of all places. Rushing out he barrels through the first zombie, saw severing it in a flash. Two, three, four zombies go down before they can even turn their decaying gaze on him. Then the lights go out. Floundering in the dark, the last thing he needed was a power outage. But what would you expect, this horrorshow must be happening all over the city. Stumbling out of the house he finds a handlamp in the garage and makes his way back.

He has a flash of insight, he has searched everywhere for these keys except the computer room. He darts into the backyard, zombies are pouring through breaches in the 6 foot wooden fence, he can see a dozen zombies tumbling into the neighbors pool. Charging into the computer room through the window, two zombies turn slowly towards him. With a flash and a roar the nearest zombie is flung into the corners of the room, limbs and torso sheared to bits. Matt steps confidently towards the last pitiful corpse. When his chainsaw jams on a chunk of bone. He backs up trying to clear the jam and the zombie lunches at him. Arms and teeth snapping and thrashing at him. He blocks and fends with the unresponsive saw, his confidence melting as the zombie backs him into the wall. Zombies start pressing into the window, nails and fingers starting to catch in his hair. "Agh, if only I had cut this mop!" He panics. The chainsaw roared to life in time to sink itself into the zombies chest, bone and flesh splattering him and the room. Yet it's arms seize both of his and with a strength unimaginable, both his arms are ripped from his torso. The chainsaw falls, still thrashing the chest and now abdomen of the zombie, but with little effect except managling it's already horrific form. Matt stumbled against the wall, his twitching gaze taking in the maddening image of his limbless torso. He turns to escape the clutches of the fiend but catches his foot on the still whirling saw. With a flash of red his foot is flung into the corner and he falls flat on his side. Lying on the remains of at least 4 bodies his mind thankfully breaks down and he finds it's not unlike having to much to drink and passing out in the alley.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Finito!

Ah yes I have crossed the proverbial finish line. I have finished my student teaching, and boy does it feel good.

Good like, I can feel my body liquifying and slowly seeping onto the floor beneath my office chair, my limbs pooling in a fetid and flesh toned pool next to my CPU and among the many coils of cable wound around various action figures and forgotten science fiction paperbacks, their covers missing from zealous overuse.

If I had an emoticon for that I would have used it. But in a word I feel R E L A X E D .

Just listened to a Lou Reed vs Suzanne Vega remix, gotta say I was underwhelmed. Godfather of punk vs pop goddess of the 80's aaaannnnndddddd blah. Bummer.

Just updated the GUI for UrbanDead and boy Rover you are gonna be so jealous! Just wait to you see what Malton looks like now!!!! WOOOOO!

Now I'd like to see Lou Reed vs Billy Bragg, now that would be a sweet mixup. Maybe even the Smashing Pumpkins doing Bragg. Cool.

The Bro of Proteinstar and I have started yet another game that we will not complete but at least we try.

Can't begin to tell you how much I like The Smith's. Not sure where I even discovered them or why I would get wrapped up in a band that lasted 5 years in the mid 80's from Manchester. But they are seriously the bomb.

Wow PS3 will cost $500.00, you can write me off. Now the Nintendo Wii (stupid name) is going to be $100.00. Now thats something I can get into.

Well I'm done.