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tomdo98@aol.com |
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Archives
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June 2007 Archives |
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06/29/2007 High School Reunion 2003
Before I actually went to my high school reunion, I used to have this reoccurring dream where I missed my high school reunion altogether. I'd either get lost trying to get there, there were some acts of nature preventing me from getting there, or I just missed the whole thing because I was late or went on the wrong day.
It turns out I made it just fine to my real high school reunion but it ended up being really lame. First of all, if Frasier, Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, and a bunch of other sitcom clichés have taught me anything, it's that your high school reunion is supposed to be some big fancy bash. Everyone is supposed to dress up in a suit or a tux and it should be similar to a way back prom and maybe held in the high school gym. Before I knew about any of the details at all other than the date, I went out and bought a brand new suit from the Men's Wearhouse. I wanted to really pimp it out and look sharp and successful. Later on, a post card with the details of the reunion came in and I find out the dress code is "summer casual" and it would be held in some outdoor place where they normally serve BBQ or something.
Check out what everyone is wearing in the group photo below. There are a lot of shorts, sandals, and blue jeans. I was so mad that the organizer decided to keep it casual. The night before, they had some "event" at a bar (more like a happy hour). I wanted to wear my new suit so bad that I just wore the suit pants there with a nice shirt. I sort of wanted to just bust out with the jacket and tie anyways and be overdressed but decided against it. Being overdressed is always better than being undressed but you can also feel like a real jackass if you're wearing fancy pants and everyone else is in shorts.
So the reunion was on some weird, small outdoor patio. There wasn't much of anything going on. There wasn't any dancing or cool "remember when" events. There was this really crappy slide show that kept showing the same people over and over. My original artwork for the senior sweatshirt was on display. That was kind embarrassing because I feel like I can do much better now. The place wasn't decorated at all. In my mind, I felt like I should see a bunch of late 80's high school memorabilia like old pep rally banners or other things that might remind me of high school. I guess no one keeps that kind of stuff but they could have at least faked it or asked people to bring things.
I think I graduated with like 300 people and only about 50-60 people showed up. Maybe that's a good average. I was making pretty good money at the time since I was still traveling and consulting and would have been happy to donate a good chunk of change to make the reunion much better. There were some people that were unemployed or seemed like they were kind of poor so perhaps not everyone could chip in much.
A good portion of the people that made it still lived either in the exact same city as my high school or pretty damn close. I talked to one guy that traveled from Minnesota but that was about it.
I probably could have made the best of it but I brought a date and she was having zero fun so we didn't go to any of the after parties or anything. Maybe Reunion 2013 will be better.
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06/27/2007 Amusement Park Horrors Part II
So just as a follow up to my Amusement Park Horror blog yesterday, by brother sends me a link to a girl that died at Euro Disney on a roller coaster yesterday. The roller coaster functioned completely normally and without incident.
Here's a portion of the article from cnn.com:
"PARIS, France (AP) -- French police are investigating the death of a 14-year-old Spanish girl who lost consciousness while riding a roller coaster at Disneyland Paris, park officials say. The cause of the girl's death remained unclear. A preliminary inspection of the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster ride found no malfunctions with the machinery, Disneyland spokesman Pieter Boterman said Tuesday. The girl boarded the ride Monday at the theme park in Marne-la-Vallee east of the French capital, and when the ride stopped, her friends found her unconscious, Boterman said. Medical teams at the theme park tried to revive her, but by the time the ambulance arrived, the girl had died, he said. Police opened an investigation, and an autopsy was planned for Tuesday, he said. Disneyland authorities immediately shut down the ride, and it remained closed Tuesday. Boterman said the park was waiting to hear the cause of the girl's death before determining whether to reopen it. The ride is at Walt Disney Studios Park, one of two theme parks at Disneyland Resort Paris. The complex, which opened in 1992, was formerly called Euro Disney." I guess the girl had a pre-existing condition and the stress of the roller coaster, whether physical or mental, was too much for her body to take. That is in my professional medical opinion.
I get a little scared when I ride a ji-normous roller coaster but god forbid I get scared to death. My GF was so scared when we rode the Dungeon Drop that she started boo-hooing in front of a crowd but she ended up being ok and wanting to ride more scary rides. I was scared off of my ass on the Dungeon Drop but I wasn't going to be the only wuss not to ride it.
the Dungeon Drop in the now defunct Astroworld
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06/26/2007 Crazy Ass Calvin
My GF didn't think that bug bunny video was funny but I'll bet she'll agree that THIS is comic genius.
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06/26/2007 Amusement Park Horrors
Every time I'm in line for an amusement park ride, I marvel at the ingenuity of its architecture. The bigger the ride, the bigger my marvelling. For example, looking at the Texas Giant at Six Flags in Arlington can boggle the mind. At the time it was built, it was the largest wooden roller coaster in the world. The entire thing looks like it was made with 100 million 2x4s and 100 million bolts. Of course the pieces of wood are a lot thicker and longer than 2x4, but there's quite a bit of them.
the Texas Giant Arlington Texas
Now I know buildings that are as tall as the Texas Giant require heavy structural detail. It needs a solid foundation. It needs all it's supporting metal beams in all the right place. It needs whatever but I know it needs a lot more work, inspection, and heavy duty material than the Texas Giant. Of course a building is meant to support hundreds or even thousands of people at the same time and not to mention tons of office equipment. A roller coaster, on the hand, just needs to support like 2 or 3 roller cars full of about 20 people. But then again, in the roller coaster, my body is hurling through the air at 65 mph so I need it to be just as safe or safer.
For the most part, amusement parks ride seem pretty safe when you consider how many people ride them and how many times they are ridden everyday all over the country. I think they get stuck all the time but they don't often jump the tracks or kill anyone anymore or very often at all. I can't even remember the last time I've heard any national news about faulty amusement park rides or at least it didn't stick with me.
That was until last week. Last week, there was an amusement park accident that is probably the most gruesome real life accident I've ever heard of in my life. A group of people were riding the Superman Tower of Power in Kentucky. There is pretty much a version of this ride in every big amusement park in the country. It's a ride that lifts you straight up to the top of a tower like structure and then drops you straight down. In Astroworld it's called the dungeon drop and it used to be called the Texas Cliffhanger in Arlington, TX. As this ride was coming down, one of the cables frayed and wrapped around a 16 year old girl's feet and severed them off at the ankles. One lady was quoted as saying, "When I got up there, the lady she was just sitting there, and she didn't have no legs. ... And she was just there, calm, probably in shock from everything."
It just goes to show that you just can't check everything in this world. I'm sure the ride inspectors are very diligent about checking things like if the motor is functioning right and the gears are well oiled but I wonder how often they checked for cord tears? It will probably move to the top of their list but then next time, there'll be some issue about a rusty bolt flying loose and knocking someone's eye out.
We certainly can't live our lives always worrying about mechanical malfunctions. If that were the case, I'd never ride an airplane but I do often have thoughts like, did that jo schmo inspector do a good job checking the landing gear, the fuel tank, the left engine, the right engine, the navigation console... It's not like you can get any of those things wrong while you're 35,000 feet in the air.
I'm sure I won't stop going to amusement parks. Two years ago I rode a Tower of Power like ride for the first time. That little adrenaline rush is probably just not worth the anxiety of worrying if I'll come down without any feet so I doubt if I'll ever ride that particular ride again. I think I'll stick to traditional roller coasters and take my chances that it won't jump any tracks.
Superman Tower of Power
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06/22/2007 B-Rabbit Bugs Bunny in Rap Battle With Elmer Fudd
This is comic genius. Bugs Bunny shuts down Fudd in a rap battle a la 8 mile.
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06/22/2007 Why Did It Take Me So Long to Learn the Value of a Dollar?
At the ripe old age of 32, I think I finally understand the value of a dollar. It's not that people haven't been giving me great advice ever since I was in college and left college for the real world. I guess I just chose to ignore them out of sheer arrogance.
No young person likes to be told, "You'll understand once you get older." It's so condescending whether or not it's true. They're basically calling you a dumb ass and talking down to you and they're telling you you can't stop being a dumb ass until more years pass by then you'll become as wise as them.
I made 40,000 at my first full time job at 21 years of age. My bosses at the time kept saying, "Man, if I made as much as you do at that age and put money in my 401 K, I'd have at least a million dollars by the time I retired." In my mind I was probably thinking, who wants to be a millionaire at 62?! I'll probably make my first million by the time I'm 30 so I think I'll just spend every penny I have right now.
Here I am at 32 and I have yet to become a millionaire. Once that reality set in, I did eventually start contributing to my 401K plan at work but only for the past 2 years. Even if I don't want to wait until I'm 62 to enjoy some money, it's still my money. It's like a savings. If you need to take money out of your 401K or borrow against it, it's fine as long as you pay the penalties. I should have always saved money in that manner because it becomes pretty much unnoticeable once you've been doing it a while. As long as you do things in small increments, it doesn't affect your life. For example, I started off just contributing 4%, then I moved it 5%, now I've moved it up to 8% and I'll continue to increase it until I max it out. In anything you do with your life, as long as it's gradual, you won't even notice it. If I changed my diet from 2500 calories a day to 1500 in 1 single day then I'd feel like I was starving all the time. But if I just cut it down 100 calories every 4 months, then my mind probably won't notice it all. I just won't super-size anymore!
401K contributions are just the beginning of my youthful foibles. Before I made $40,000 at my first full time job, which is basically about $20 an hour, I never made more than $6 an hour part time. Upon hearing that I was going to go from making about 6k a year to 40k, I thought I had really made it to the big time. Welcome to the show! You're rich. I immediately made a bunch of purchases before I even got my first paycheck. I bought a bike, a couch, and a bunch of other crap at the same time. I also moved into a multi bedroom apartment by myself that had a bunch of space I didn't need. What's worse is that I put all those retail purchases on my American Express card which doesn't let you hold a balance for much longer than a month. In addition to the new crap I bought, I already had a healthy amount of credit card debt that I accumulated while I was in school and don't forget about my student loans that all of the sudden needs to be paid for the first time. Right from the starting gate I was sort of screwed. I wasn't rich at all. I can clearly remember prepping a lot bill payments at work, going to the mail room and dropping it off, then realizing that I couldn't even pay all these at once and then going back to the mail room bin and fishing my bills out. I had to time it just right so I could at least use Americans Express's grace period before they started dinging my credit report. How humiliating is that?
Now you think lesson learned right? Not in the least. I graduated in 1997. The dot com/Y2K stuff was starting to blow up in a good way in the world and if you were an IT guy, the world seemed like it was going to be your oyster. I jumped from that 40 k job to a 60 K job and then to a 93 K job. Now I'm really rich right? Hardly. Don't get me wrong, it's good money if you manage your money right but I sure as hell didn't. The 93K job required that I travel all the time so I didn't have a real stable, cheap life. When you travel that much, you get bored and it makes you want to spend more than ever. I was going to strip clubs and then started exponentially buying even more useless crap. I bought new furniture, a satellite dish, my infamous Boflex, a new car, and a bunch more stuff. I had a lot of high interest credit cards and I ran them all up. These credits cards were as high as 27 percent APR. When the smoke cleared I owed almost 25K in credit card debt. When you owe that much money, everything you pay on that credit card is pure finance charges.
I was going paycheck to paycheck. Between buying new things, paying the minimums on my credit cards, and spending money going out with friends, I essentially saved no money. It's pretty preposterous to make that much, pay no money in gas or food because you're traveling, and still have no money saved. But what did I care? I would eventually make some great software or web site and still become that millionaire right? Wrong.
I eventually got into so much debt that I was starting to dip into money I got from my expense checks from traveling. I started to use the float from my expense checks to pay for my credit cards and fun spending. After a while, I started losing track of how much I owed my company's credit card and I thought I was going to be in big trouble. It's one thing to not pay for your own credit, and a whole other level of irresponsibility to default on your company's credit card.
Eventually I got my dad to help me pay off my debt. He took my high interest credit card debt and started transferring them to his credit cards to get promotional balances and I started paying him a single sum of money. I paid off the 25K in credit card debt. Lessoned learned right? NOT!
Over the next few years, I ran up that debt again to almost 18K. It makes you feel like such a retard to make the same mistakes over and over again. I've paid that down to just about 8k after cashing out about 3 months of vacation. Now I'm ready to be all grown up. I want to live credit card debt free. I want to buy a house. I want to make my salary feel like my salary and not pay finance charges all my life. I don't make the 93K plus bonus anymore but I don't really "need" it. I just have to live smart, be a smart consumer, and make good decisions for my financial health. |
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06/20/2007 Character Pics Posted
Click on the character pics posted on the right side to see some sample pics of my friends. |
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06/19/2007
So that Joe Francis guy who created the Girls Gone Wild Franchise is either a shrewd, genius of a business man (not anymore but more on that later) or a dirty shyster. I'm generally a night owl as I sleep around 2-3 am in the morning every day and one of the most repetitive commercials that come on are the ones for the Girls Gone Wild videos. I'm a sucker for a good infomercial as is evidenced by my thousand dollar Bo-Flex machine and my Cool Music compilation CD. For those of you who don't know, the GGW series started out by simply filming women showing their breasts at events like Mardi Gras. It eventually evolved (or devolved depending on who you are) into filming women at wet-shirt contests and at the lake. Then the series would just coerce women at clubs to show their boobs and after a while you wondered if they were real, random people or just paid porn stars. Later on, the series couldn't find any more natural women to pose naked for them for a string of beads so they just staged women having sex together or by themselves. They try to pretend that they are sexy college co-eds but I'm not buying it.
I admit, back when VHS was still popular, maybe in the late 90's, I ordered a GGW video. I'm not proud of it, but I did. The draw for me was seeing real people at Mardi Gras, never having been to Mardi Gras myself. Seeing women on the streets flash their boobs sounded kind of cool. It was easy to order because they had a website.
Three or four weeks went by and I got a video. Great. It had the Mardi Gras footage and all that jazz. After a while, the video gets really repetitive. They're a lot of different women but some of it is filmed from far away, and they don't do anything much different than lift their shirts. After watching about an hour of this video I decide I'm bored of it.
I don't think about it again until the next month when another video appears in my mailbox. Those bastards! It's a freaking auto renew subscription. Maybe it's my fault for not being more observant when I was ordering the tapes to see if there was some auto renew fine print. But fine, whatever. I watch the new tape. It's really dull and has a LOT of filler of some girl by herself taking a shower. I can't fast forward through the boring stuff fast enough. I decide that the last thing I want is a subscription to this. Who buys porn as a subscription anyways? You choose something and you move on. I log back on to the web site and to my dismay, I learn that you can't cancel online. What kind of Mickey Mouse crap is that? You can order online in about 2 minutes but you can't cancel online at all. I search the FAQ's section of the website and learn that the only way to cancel is to call a long distance number. Not even a 1-800 number. Obviously they have the technology to let you cancel online. Hell, why not just allow customers to send them an email. They do this on purpose for lazy people like me.
Now I don't like calling porn companies and talking to some operator and telling them that I'm done being a perv and I want to cancel my pervy subscription. And I especially don't want to call a long distance number. I can't remember if I had a national calling plan on my cell phone back then. I tell myself, well, I'll just call them later.
Took me months to finally muster up the energy to call. Month after month, I got the crappiest VHS nudie videos I've ever witnessed. There were less and less "real" women and more and more of their hired girls just doing porn. I like porn as much as the next guy but I'd rather pick and choose that stuff in my own time rather than getting it forced fed in my mail box every month for 20 bucks.
I hadn't thought about GGW in a while, other than when I see the commercials but I made a comment about it to this guy I work with and he's like "Yeah! I ordered it too!" And then I'm like, "It sucks doesn't it?! They make you call some long distance number to cancel." And he's all like "Yeah. I tried to cancel like 3 or 4 times but the phone would keep ringing and no one would pick up. I didn't know it was a subscription either!" So it's good to know I'm not the only one who got duped but this is apparently how the GGW creator, Joe Francis, made his empire.
Sort of recently, Francis has had a lot of legal troubles. He has been accused of contempt of court and tax evasion which can get him up 10 years in prison. There has also been a lot of accusations that some of the girls he filmed were underage but I don't know if he's going to court for that. |
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06/18/2007 Nerdy Stuff Blog: To Wii or Not to Wii
That's probably not an original headline but that was the best pun I could think of. For some reason I get desired future purchases lodged in my brain. It happened with my boflex, my ipcod, my lcd tv, and a myriad of other things. I usually have this little conversation in my head and it starts off asking me, "Do you really need this?", "Aren't you trying to save money?", and "It's too expensive."
First I answer my voice's question with a question and say, "Who really needs anything?" Then I might say to the next question, "Yeah, I really do need to save more money and I'll be better at it after I buy this one thing." And the third answer might go something like, "Well, I can get it interest fee if I apply for their store credit card and pay it off in 12 months."
And so it went for my latest frivolous purchase, the Nintendo Wii. I have been hearing random things about the Wii for the past few months. I knew that they were still very hard to find as compared to the Playstation 3 and the X-Box 360 which are basically in overstock. I knew that my Dad, who works at a major retail chain, was able to find one for my sister and a friend of his but he said they don't even stay on the shelves for a day. I had heard my GF's boss tell my GF that she should get a Wii because it's so much fun.
Growing up, I've always played video games, from the coin op games to the home video games. Here comes a nerdy blast of fresh air as I name all of the consoles I've ever owned. Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, Sony Playstation, Xbox, Gamecube, Gameboy Advance, and the Sega Dreamcast. I haven't bought any new game systems in a while just because they're too expensive. The Playstation 3 comes in a at a whopping 600 bucks so I've just been playing on my old Xbox for a while now.
I kept daydreaming about how fun the Nintendo Wii could be for weeks. Could I really swing my arms like a baseball bat or tennis racket? A boxing game sure sounds like a lot of fun. One weekend, I decided to just "look around" at Fry's. I wasn't sure how much they were these days and if there were still hard to come by. I get to Fry's and sure enough, they're out of stock. Oh well, I didn't really need it anyways. Later on, I check the internet to see how much they are there. Most places sell it for almost 400 bucks. That doesn't sound right. I heard they run about $250 so I'm not about to pay $400. I guess I won't be getting a Wii for a while.
I get the Austin American Statesman everyday and almost every day, Fry's puts out a sales add. One morning, while sitting on the can and reading the paper, I see Fry's is advertising a Wii bundle that comes with an extra controller and the Legend of Zelda game for $350. Could it be? Is a Wii in stock? I start going through my line of questioning again, "Do I really Need it?" and "Isn't that expensive?" "Screw it," I answered. But now I had another dilemma, how fast would it sell out? Will it be there after work? I decided I couldn't take any chances and rushed through my morning get ready ritual and headed to Fry's. I went to the Wii section. No Wii's to be found. I asked the sales guy, "Any Wiis?" He directed me to a shopping cart full of about 12 Wii's. They stay on the shelves so briefly that they don't bother to take it out of the large boxes they were shipped in. They just rip the tops of those boxes off and leave them in the cart.
I buy the Wii and rush to work. I leave it in my car all day and worry that the heat might melt the circuitry. It doesn't.
The Wii turns out to be pretty cool for certain types of games. The sports games are fantastic to me. I always figured they'd have a tennis game but they have so much more. The golf game seems very realistic to me. You hold the Wii remote like a real golf club and the speed of your stroke affects your chipping, putting, and driving. The Wii baseball game is also pretty fun as you hold up the Wii remote like a bat and swing for the fences. I haven't decided if I think the bowling is fun. Boxing is also great as you hold you can move you body side to side to dodge and you hold a Wii remote in each hand and punch out your lefts and your rights.
The Legend of Zelda didn't really utilize the remote that well and played out like any other adventure game on any other console which isn't a bad thing but isn't unique. My gf also bought Super Monkey Ball which contains about 50 mini games that are sort of fun for multiple people once you learn how to play each game.
The sports games are what I love though. There's not a really a wide selection of sports games for the Wii yet. Online I noticed they have a Madden, a Tiger Woods golf, and some racing games. Throwing a football with a Wii sounds pretty damn hard and it could be fun too.
All in all, I tell the voice in my head that it was a fine purchase because I'm sure to have many hours of daily fun on my Wii. |
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06/15/2007 This Is Why I Don't Gamble on Basketball Anymore
The only sports betting I dabble in lately is football. This is because there is very little garbage time in football. Garbage time is when the game is basically out of hand and the it doesn't matter what the players do because the end result is essentially a foregone conclusion. The reason there isn't that much garbage time in football is because they don't want people to get hurt so both teams basically run out the clock. In basketball, players jack up shots in garbage time because there's very little risk of people getting hurt and it's really boring to just stand in one place and dribble the ball.
Now why is garbage time so irritating to a gambler? The line last night in the San Antonio/Cleveland game was 3 points. That means San Antonio has to win by 3 points. San Antonio was up 4 points with about 1.5 seconds remaining. We know without a doubt who the winner is because it is physically impossible for Cleveland to score two more times in 1.5 seconds without any time outs. They would have to inbound the ball full court, make a shot, get a steal, and then score again by throwing a full court shot. Absolutely impossible.
So anyways, San Antonio is up by 4 with 1.5 seconds left. Let the celebration begin right? Well almost. Cleveland throws a full court inbound pass and a Cleveland player shoots a 3 and makes it. Time expires, game over, the San Antonio Spurs are the world champions.
Meaningless shot right? Not if you're a gambler. If you're a gambler that last, meaningless three is the difference between heartbreak and elation. San Antonio needed to win by 3 points if you bet on them. They were up 4 so that last three means they only won by one. That means you won if you bet on Cleveland.
As a former compulsive gambler, I've seen that happen a million times in all sports but never as much as basketball. Now you might say, it goes both ways. Well of course it does but part of the fun in sports gambling is thinking that you're smart. Smart enough to figure out who's going to win and by how much. That last three makes gambling on basketball like gambling whether the coin is going to go heads or tails. It's too much stress and probably takes months off your life.
There are no field goals for fun in professional football. No hail marys if you can't come back just to see how deep you can throw the ball. Once you lose, you lose, don't mess with the score. |
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06/14/2007 Search Engines Hitting Tommybear.com
For the most part, my limited readership come from people I know or links from myspace or comments I make on other people's blogs. Once in a while, I get random hits from people looking for other things in search engines.
Apparently, the biggest referral I get comes from people looking for reviews on getlistenup! You know, that weird device that looks like a walkman that lets you eavesdrop on other people's conversations. I talked about it being funny to get but I was never really interested.
It could be a game with my most loyal readers to recall which blog or blogs caused these search engines to stop at my doorstep without looking it up.
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06/13/2007 Pop a Shot
I was playing pop a shot with my friend Cyndi (shown below) at Fast Eddie's last night. She's pretty good and definitely better than me but she's not a prodigy or anything. I almost beat her with a three at the end yesterday but one of the less inflated balls got stuck on the rim and wouldn't roll in or off and so I ended up barely losing that game. It's my fault for throwing a brick but it still sucked.
Just as a curiosity, I decided to look up how much a pop a shot cost. I found this really cool one below and I liked the way you could fold it up and put it to the side. Then I found out the price. The one below costs $1,300!
If that one costs $1,300 I wondered how much a coin operated one cost with a moving basket. $6,000!!
Of course I can always buy the toy, cheapie ones, but it's hard to tell what the quality is like. I don't want a rinky dink one hogging up space. The one shown below is just 99 bucks. I bet you the balls are all plastic and the thing falls over a lot. Maybe when I get a house I'll buy it.
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06/12/2007 11 Quick Fire Movie Reviews
Bobby **1/2- I never knew anything about the events leading up to Bobby Kennedy's death. Mildly interesting and entertaining to learn something about an era before my time. Huge cast making up a story about how people's lives revolved around Bobby Kennedy but not actually about Kennedy himself.
Knocked Up ****- By the writer and director of 40 year virgin which I think is one the all time funniest movies. Lived up to the hype for me. About a man who accidentally gets a one night stand impregnated and then follows it through.
Little Children **- This has been out for a while. Kate Winslet does the same superb job she always does and shows a little skin as a bonus. The creepy, sex offender guy that got nominated for an Oscar is also very good. About infidelity in suburbia.
The Secret Life of Words *- Tim Robbins is in this super boring movie about a guy who has been burnt saving a friend whose wife he cheated with and the nurse that takes care of him. Set almost completely next to a bed.
Diggers *1/2- A movie about the life of professional clam diggers. I always thought a big commercial ship retrieved my clams but apparently these guys come out with a big scraper and do it by hand in tiny boats. Has the red headed girl from six feet under in it. Well acted and well done but nothing really happens.
Music and Lyrics *1/2- Super silly movie with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. Don't expect much and watch it only if you love these actors. The movie is about the relationship that develops as Grant and Barrymore try to come up with a new song for an established pop star.
Alpha Dog **1/2- A lot better than expected with Timberlake as the lead. A story about a bunch of kids getting in over their heads as two of them settle a grudge.
Breaking and Entering **- I liked about 2/3rds of this movie. From the makers of the English Patient and stars Hugh Grant and Juliette Binoche. This movie is about a man who finds out who's been ripping off his business at night and then secretly infiltrates their lives with an odd motive. There was one device in the movie where I just couldn't suspend my disbelief.
Hannibal Rising 1/2- Not at all like the other Hannibal movies. This is about a young Hannibal living life in what appears to be 1930's England (total guess). Hannibal has a tough adolescence and grows up to be a viscous murderer. Also stars Gong Li.
Are We Done Yet? 1/2- Ice Cube once again tries to prove to us that's not that ole Compton ganger banger from NWA. He's just a big ole cuddly teddy bear with new home owner problems like the rest of us. I can't believe there's a sequel and this movie isn't funny at all. Maybe he should go back to his Boyz in the Hood acting roots instead of Next Friday.
Last Kiss *- Zac Braff in a movie about one last fling before he gets married. He's just a dirty cheater looking for a second chance with his fiancée and this movie, like his character, has little redeeming values. |
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06/12/2007 Interventions Don't Seem To Work
I commented once that the show Intervention on A&E is really interesting. That's the show where the producers pretend they're doing a documentary about addiction and then at the end, they spring a surprise intervention on the subject. I don't think it's such a great show anymore.
What I've noticed is that interventions work best on alcoholics and sometimes people who are addicted to painkillers. They don't seem to work at all for people who are on really hard core drugs like crystal meth, crack, and heroin. Abusing alcohol and painkillers usually starts off as a very subtle thing and then slowly escalates to being a "problem" and sometimes the abusers really don't realize that it has become a problem. When an alcoholic walks in a room filled with all their friends they are truly surprised. You need a shock to the system to get a good intervention to work.
On the other hand, when you do crack, meth, or heroin, you knew you were messing with a fucked up drug from the very start. You might have thought you would give it a try just one time and you never realized you would become some low-life junkie, but you know basically know at that point how people who know you have a problem perceive you. When you do meth and your best friend tells you, "I wish you wouldn't do meth", you're probably thinking DUH! I wish I didn't do meth either but now I love the stuff and I'm just hooked. A lot of the these addicts also just act like total jerks to their family and get mad because they don't like to get lectured and have no desire at all of quitting. Some of these idiots feel like they've been betrayed when they're in their intervention and get mad because they feel like people are abandoning them. They're not supposed to "love you to death" (quote from the show), Stupid.
I used to think that rehab clinics had some special secret medical thing they did to help people recover from addiction. I thought maybe they had some special detox drug that they give people. They have some things to ease your pain but not very much. When they give heroin addicts methadone, they're just replacing one addiction with another. And they're not about to give a strong drug like a painkiller to someone who is already suffering from a different drug addiction. Rehab clinics basically try to help you through programs and group therapy.
I think it's easier for a person who is an alcoholic to go cold turkey then it is for a person on heroin to go cold turkey. I know there is a range of withdrawal symptoms for an alcoholic but if the movie Trainspotting tells me anything, it's not even close to the physical withdrawal felt from trying to quit heroin.
At the end of show, they tell how rehab went for the person and how long they've been sober. Most of those people don't complete their full rehab and just leave or get kicked out because they were causing a disturbance with other guests. Some go through rehab and then go meet up with their good time buddies and fall right back into their old routine. Some just go to get their family off their backs and and go right back to their addictions when they walk out. I want stories about redemptions. |
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06/09/2007 Light Bright Toy
I wonder what it means when my niece picks up a toy, notices that it doesn't light up or make noises or do anything, and then declares that it's broken. The toy was in fact not broken. It just wasn't electronic in any way or had any mechanical gears to make it do anything other than what your imagination might have it do. I guess she didn't like the idea of having to make it walk by holding it upright and moving its legs with her hands. She wasn't interested in having to make it talk by doing a ventriloquist impersonation. I wouldn't say she's incapable of using her imagination, it's just today's toys don't make you.
Maybe the Quakers back in 1492 (made up date) who played with figurines made with sticks tied together with string and dressed in corn husks would laugh at my childhood toys which included Transformers and He-Men. They'd probably think the devil made a toy that could transform from a truck to a robot.
Just recently I had a random memory of a toy I used to own. It was called Light Bright. If you break down what it actually was, it does seem like a pretty ridiculous toy. It was basically a cube with a light bulb inside of it. There was a grid on the outside where you would put a paper template and then poke color pegs in it to make shapes and pictures. The color pegs were clear and the light bulb would light them up. You were supposed to have a sense of satisfaction once you completed with the template and turned the lights off. I checked to see if Ebay had them. There was a bid for one that was about 9 bucks. I almost wanted to make a bid for nostalgia but then I decided it is a pretty lame toy.
Update: I have been told by Lisa that they STILL sell Light Bright in stores today so it's not such a hard to find relic and some kids can still be entertained by basic lights on black paper. |
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06/07/2007 SOL Beer
This is the beer I drank when I was on vacation in Mexico. They didn't give us our own bottle like the one in the picture. They had really large containers behind the bar and then they would pour the beer in a paper cup. It was all you can drink because our hotel was all inclusive.
The beer tastes like any other light beer to me but I bought a six pack the other day to simulate vacation in my living room.
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06/05/2007 On the Lot: Fart Jokes and Political Correctness
I was catching up on the third episode of On the Lot last night and there were two 60 second short movies that made me laugh out loud. One movie had a guy that was supposed to be a NERD but all the judges found it offensive because they thought the guy was retarded. I thought it was pretty funny just because I thought of him more as a social misfit than a guy with a birth defect. You be the judge:
This one just makes me laugh out loud. I find calling it the "Replication Theory" genius. It's also funny when the old lady mumbles, "They don't allow shampoo on airplane," just to discredit the guy.
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06/04/2007 My Blue Belt In Jujitsu
Back in High School, I got a first degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. It took me just a little over two years to get it. I thought I was real hot shit back then. I had always wanted a black belt since I was a little kid watching Bruce Lee movies and the Karate Kid. Not that I knew the difference between Jeet Kune Do, Karate, and Tae Kwon Do. I didn't care what I got a black belt in, I just knew that I wanted one.
I've been a little disillusioned in the past few months about my TKD black belt ever since I was watching this TKD demonstration during Chinese New Year. The demonstration had about 7 kids who were probably all below 10 years old and they all had black belts. These kids were not prodigies either. They had extremely sloppy form. I believe one was even a second degree black belt.
In 1.5 years of taking Jujitsu, I finally move from White Belt to Blue Belt this past weekend. A black belt in Jujitsu takes anywhere from 5-8 years. It's going to be hard to stay focused and devoted for that long if I do indeed want to achieve that goal someday. For a while now, I've been obsessing about getting my blue belt just so I can finally move from beginner to intermediate and feel like all my hard work has paid off.
It's going to be a very very long time before I even sniff at a Purple Belt (the next belt in succession) so I'm going to have to create a new goal in my Jujitsu career. I'm going to see if I can get "tournament ready" but it might be too grueling a process. My cardio has never been that awesome and I just might not be good enough.
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06/01/2007 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself Game on Adultswim.com So I was watching a cartoon or something on the Cartoon Network late at night and they had a commercial for a game on their Adult Swim website. It's just a free flash game but the premise is kind of funny and edgy. It starts of as a guy in his cubicle saying "If I get one more meeting request I'm going to kill myself!" Of course as soon as he says that, a meeting request pops up on his computer. In the game, you're supposed to find enough ways to kill yourself in 5 minutes. You can either smart off to your co-workers and have them attack you, or interact with the environment by doing things like cutting yourself with a paper cutter or putting metal in the microwave. http://www.adultswim.com/games/fiveMinutes/index.html
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06/01/2007 Dancing Thang That's Thang dancing below. This is the funniest things I've ever seen him do. My friend Sean, Thang's brother, had a wedding at a hotel. Next door, there was some other organized event going on that consisted primarily of African Americans. For some reason, Thang and some other people from the wedding went inside while they were all dancing. I followed them into the ballroom and next thing I know, Thang is dancing with this really tall girl and everyone in the room is watching. He becomes the center of attention. He's dancing all crazy and fierce which is funny enough, but to finish it off, he does a really hard booty vibrate and deep knee bend that sends the crowd in a frenzy. Luckily, I was able to get this picture right after he finished his move. He has never EVER done that move again although I've begged him to for years
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