Monthly Archives: August 2005

I recommend

Watching Layer Cake and Oldboy. Both came out on dvd in the past 2 weeks. LC is an english crime story. The main character is a high class drug runner and has a plan: sell enough to retire and get the hell out. On his last job, the shit hits the fan. Oldboy is a Korean revenge movie. The main character is suddenly obducted and held prisoner for 15 years….and then released. He has 5 days to figure it out. There’s a pretty wild twist (that I predicted) that was actually pretty good. It’s subbed for the purists out there and a pretty good english dub if you don’t like reading. I recommend both movies.

Speaking of movies, the Ong Bak DVD transfer freaking sucks. They didn’t spend anytime cleaning it up, scenes are dark as hell or too bright and/or washed out looking. Rushed out with next to no care which is a shame.

And if anyone is curious, the image above is of a Korn concert somewhere in Germany I think.

Entertainment Update

Today Ong Bak and Season 2 of Nip/Tuck came out on DVD. I picked up Ong Bak (it needs to be seen just for the fight scenes alone) and was going to get both seasons of Nip/Tuck to get a bonus $10 off, but they didn’t have any season 1 sets. So I was put those bad boys on my “to get sometime in the future” list.

I also got this thing called an iGrip which I saw Bagels buy like 2 weeks ago. It’s meant for an ipod, but you can put you phone/keys/sunglasses or whatever on it and it doesn’t slide around. It’s seriously one of the greatest inventions ever. It’s like a thin piece of rubber that has a sticky bottom on it that holds it in place (you can move it wherever it’ll stick, it doesn’t leave any residue behind). So you put you shit on it, and it won’t move. I mean it. You can whip around corners and your phone won’t move when it’s on this grip pad. I copied Bagels and put it on the center arm rest. For 6 bucks everyone should have this thing.

So I went to see the 40 Year Old Virgin with Bagels and Kyle and about 30 minutes in we’re evacuated. Seriously. Good ol’ Palisades mall. The movie shuts off, emergency lights start blinking and a recording comes on and tells us to basically get the hell out. So we did. But the rest of the mall didn’t seem to be alert to what was going on. We went into Barnes and Noble for like 20 minutes and see that they gate is open and basically nothing is wrong. We go back in and get our money back. But that’s it. No explaination, no apology and most importantly, no free shit. So fuck that noise, I’m going to write a letter to Lowes and bitch. I should get some coupons out of it. That’s the goal anyway. It was a shitty experiance really. Now I’m never going to make it back to the theatres to see it. Gotta wait for the DVD as Transporter 2 is next on the lists for movies to see.

There’s some good stuff coming out on DVD real soon. Actually September is going to be insane in terms of releases. Burnout 4 (!!!!) comes out on the 14th or so, some quality looking movies look to be released, Season 3 on Nip/Tuck starts on the 20th (I can’t fucking wait. I mean it. It’s been a year since season 2). Korn has their new album looming which will by the sounds of it come out in October or November now…good times.

After 8 months of playing, I quit World of Warcraft. After putting in about 30 days of game time I just had to stop. I plan on going back for the expansion pack which hasn’t even been announced yet so it’ll be awhile. I have some pictures I’ll put up when I get around to it.

Things that go bonk.

After bitching about my insurance, I showed dad the paperwork and he said basically what Jon said in his comment below. They charge more than what they can get from the insurance company to try and get the most they can. Somewhere amist all the bullshit it says that the doctor has agreed on $240 as payment in full, so it looks like I, in fact, don’t owe shit. HOLLA BACK. But I still stand behind the fact that insurance companies suck ass.

So I was pulled aside from work today, something that makes the mind reel in various directions. But in this case it was for the better. I’m getting a promotion! That means I get to have the spiffy title of coordinator and a pay raise. Damn right. That now means I need to change my resume. It also means I have to do more at work, but at least it’s something new and…I get paid more.

In the bad news catagory, our friend Kevin Kage was robbed by airline banditos. Of the American Airlines kind. So fuck American Airlines for stealing a copy of Madden 2006 for the PS2. Let that be a lesson Kevin, keep the valuable shit in your carry on when traveling through the air.

Health Care

Insurance companies are the worst companies on the face of the planet. If this “Explaination of Benefit Payments” sheet is saying they are only paying $58 of the $450 of the physical I had earlier this month, I am going to flip the fuck out. Then I’m going to drop this absolute joke of a benefits program from work like an A bomb on Hiroshima. I’m so annoyed right now I can’t even describe it.

Blur

The last 3 days have basically been a blur. Had a lot of fun, saw Kyle kick his own ass over the course of a day, and had more than a few laughs.

Big thing was the System of a Down show on Tuesday at Continental Airlines Arena. We tailgated for most of the show and went inside in time to see Mars Volta play their last song. When they finished they got a big pop so it sounded like they had a good show.

It took a good 25 minutes for System to get on stage so they got up around 9:15. They had a curtain with the Mezmorize logo on it go around the stage and started with BYOB. Classic “silloutte” intro to start the song and then they drop the curtain and the place went nuts. We were way the hell up on the second teir (section 211) so our seats were neither bad nor good. Biggest problem was we were above the lighting rig and a portion of the stage was blocked off from all the hardware up there.

But System pretty much rocked the place. Some crowd interation but where we were, there was some nasty reverb/echo going on so you couldn’t tell what they said. Simle set with some rugs on the ground, a crazy light rigging that was done really well and a light board above the drummer. They played all of their big hits and at times the crowd was deafening. Just the whole place singing along and looking down the General Admission area was huge. They broke it into 2 sections and the first section had about 3 pits going while the one in the back had 2. By the end of the show a super pit formed between 2 pits so the swirl of people was like 50 feet wide. While they were beating the hell out each other, we were literally bouncing up top. You could feel the whole top level move up and down with all of the people jumping around. It was almost like being on a boat, the sensation was really weird.

The worst part was that System didn’t play an encore. What kind of shit is that? The biggest complaint for me was that the show seemed like it ran on a timer. They just ripped through their set. Any interaction they did do, was during a song with the “breaks” between songs being 10 seconds at most. The crowd was with them 110% and they did their last song, said thanks, mulled around stage a bit and then got off the stage. Everyone starts chanting and cheering and the house lights came on! No one seemed suprised and just walked out. I didn’t think you could even do that. It was only like 10:45 at that point.

Even with that it was a good show…but Korn is still way better.

Into my mind

I’ve never kept any kind of journal before, and seeing how blogging is basically a public journal, the idea seems weird to me. It’s not as fruity as keeping a locked notebook under my bed (which is where I keep my comic books and massive amounts of dust) but the idea of it is kinda creepy. Like, how many of the people I know look at this? I know with AIM it’s like second nature to check peoples profiles from time to time (okay, everyday) but that’s just a normal thing. Same thing with checking away messages. But this shit tends to be more personal, more like looking into someones mind. Lord knows there are some fucking wack jobs on livejournal.

I never really thought of it before putting up this site, but it seemed liked the best idea to make something that’s mine and is easy to update. My original site was made from the ground up with the noobest of abilities so while it worked, it was a bitch to update and I couldn’t just port it over to a new server. All the links and shit pointed to specific things (I built it all wrong really) so I had no choice (more like desire) to try and move it. I gotta try and change the above image to something cooler….ah I’ll get to it.

So I got my xbox loaded up with some music cd’s and everything seems to be running all good. I just hope nothing breaks in it (the dvd drive I replaced already gave me a scare last night). While I was ripping music, I watched Boogie Nights. I think it’s the same director as Showgirls (you gotta see this, it’s hysterical and has more nudity than I even thought possible. Bonus that it’s Jesse from Saved by the Bell) and Robocop. What a weird movie. At just under 2 1/2 hours it was too long, but it was a cool idea. Mark Whalberg represents to the fullest and it also marks Heather Grahams biggest roles at the time it came out. Not sure if I would recommend it though. There’s a lot better movies out there.

I plan on having the script done in the next 2 days. Gotta hit that goal. I don’t see it being any longer than 20 pages and anything outside that really isn’t a short film. I should be able to bang it out in a day. Another for revisions.

Had a great time at Dave and Busters for Kevins bachelor party this weekend. He gets married this Saturday. What’s with everyone growing up lately? I miss the days when you didn’t have to worry about shit and the biggest responsibility you had was brushing your teeth before bed.

One last thing, I’m gonna start a Quote of the Day. It probably won’t be everyday, but if you see a random quoted line (unless I point it out as the QotD) that’s it. So here’s the first one.

“Hey Rico! I don’t see no snake!”

What’s goin on

Some what interesting week. Lots of work, had my yearly physical (I was told I have beautiful veins by the blood lady. Weird how often I’ve been told that), did some serious chattin with Kyle and Bagels….and I got my New and Improved XBOX back today. Fuck you Sony.

I’ve been trying to get dad to get XM and he’s had the Roady 2 for awhile but never got it installed. Talked to some car audio dude in Glen Rock today and he told dad it wouldn’t work for some stupid ass reason. Something about interfering with the AM antenna, which makes no sense because it uses an FM modulator to broadcast to the stock radio. I might just try and install it myself when I get the chance. Might look a bit ghetto but I bet it will work.

I just realized I’m really tired. My mind is swimming with shit right now…I gotta get cracking on a script that I’ve been mulling over for the past few weeks. It should feel good just to get it out of me. I found a new contact at CBS I’m going to try next week too. Got a busy weekend coming up too, we’ll see how that goes…..