This post is Nifty

HAPPY 50TH POST EVERYONE!!! IT'S FANTASTIC!!!

I was so rudely reminded that my posting habits have fallen behind those of others. So I make my triumphant return to the blogosphere to grace all with these words of wisdom. Think of my infrequent posts not as a failure to produce or an accurate exhibit of apathy, but more of a prolonging of the magic. Savor these morsels. They could save your life one day.

I must come clean here in a public forum. I have been watching Sex and the City. A close friend of mine convinced me to watch a few episodes with her during a visit a few months ago. As I had no other ideas of what to do, and with the promise from her that they weren't that bad and that there were a decent amount of boobies shown, I relented and watched one episode. I was vaguely familiar with the characters and overall storyline. And I have to admit it wasn't the worst thing I have ever seen. I further relented and watched another. And another. And another. And another. I was resigned to the fact at this point that I was going to have to watch all of them. It is part of my personality. Especially when faced with movies or TV, I must know all. So I went to task aquiring all the seasons of SATC. Once they were all aquired, I started the long trek through 6 seasons. The good thing for me was that all the episodes fall between running times of 20-30 minutes. Much better than attempting watching all of Oz. Between the hour long run times and the constant threat of man dangle an rape, SATC offered a cozier experiance.
My friend had warned me that the first two seasons weren't as good as the rest, but if I could slog through them that it would be worth it in the end. And jesus hopping saviour was she right. The first season was down right attrocious, and the second was only marginally better. The third brought more compelling (read: realistic) stories. And that's as far as I've gotten. I fineshed up the second and third seasons in a whirlwind 2 day marathon and burned myself out for a bit.
After watching that many episodes, I have come to a few conclusions. Firstly, I am missing a main component that would allow me to fully enjoy SATC to it's fullest. I don't give a shit about New York, New Yorkers, or their way of life. I don't give a shit about fashion or shoes. Most of the time I think that the fashion choices presented are ridiculous, ugly, or mediocre. And I really don't have much affection for Sarah Jessica Parker, or her charachter Carrie. That poses a problem as she's the main charachter and most of the story lines revolve around her in some way.
The good thing for me is that I'm over halfway home. The fifth season is way short, and I've already cut a decent chunk out of the sixth. Then I can be done with all this nonsense.

Hi Kids, do you like violence?

Welcome back!!! Driving home from Jula's last night we had hijacked Will's car and Ipod for our listening and driving pleasure. I set up the Top 100 hits of the 90's and hit random and let the bitch run. After knowing at least the chorus, if not most of the words to about 10 songs in a row I began to wonder how much of my brain is filled with song lyrics. I hope that the ratio is pretty low in comparison to capacity, and if not that the lyric part of the brain isn't choking out the cure for cancer or something.

Another 7 mini-reviews coming and then a recap of the past few exciting weeks.

51. Snakes on a Plane
Caught this one on HBO when I was down visiting K&K a while back and forgot that I had seen it. It was as awesome as when I saw it in the theater. Snakes + Sam Jackson is just awesome. And say what you will about ludicrous plots, at least every crazy stupid thing they do in the movie is backed up by some kind of previous plot points. As ludicrous as it all seems, in the bubbled context of this film alone it all makes sense. So that's good.

52. Longest Yard (original)
Burt Reynolds was a beefcake of a man in the 70's. That did little to salvage this turd. I didn't like it at all, but watched it out of necessity to count it towards the total. Though they did burn up a dude pretty fierce.

53. Comedians of Comedy: Live at the Troubadour
Funny stand up special featuring lots of subversive comics bringing their dirtiest stuff. Can't really go wrong with Oswalt, Cross, Galifinakis, Bamford, Posehn, Silverman, ect...

54. Wanted
While this should have been a 10+ out of the park hit for me, it really wasn't. I saw this with Alan and we both should have loved the shit out of it. Guns CHECK Hot Girl (Jolie) CHECK Crazy fights CHECK Cool Director who we both liked previous works by CHECK Over the top Action CHECK But when it was all said and done, neither one of us could pinpoint why we didn't love it but we agreed that it was missing SOMETHING. I gave it a 6 and ranked it as a "movie" I didn't hate it but it fell way flat. Which is to bad because the ingredients were there. The scary thing we decided was that because this film really was designed to be loved by guys like us and that we didn't, that somewhere along the line somebody missed a huge mark.

55. Shoot Em Up
I told Alan following Wanted that Shoot Em Up was the movie that Wanted should have been. So we went home after seeing Wanted and fired this one up. I loved it as much the second time as when we initially saw it in the theater. It's also bat shit crazy, has crazy gunfights, and some highly improbable plot points. But much like Snakes on a Plane, they cover everything with a plausible plot point from before. It doesn't matter that no baby smiles when listening to death metal, but when Clive Owen deduces that his mother must have lived close to a heavy metal club, and they go find an apartment above said club, it at least makes sense. Remember the aforementioned logic bubble that you must sometimes carry from movie to movie.

56. WALL-E
Awesome flick. Beautiful space shots, funny parts, nostalgia, and robots. We saw this one on the 4Th and the theater was jam packed with kids and adults. Most kids seemed to enjoy it, though the family in front of us should have never even left the house. A typical father/mother combo with two little girls. The oldest of the two couldn't have been more than three, and the other maybe two. Neither of which wanted to sit still or watch a movie. This didn't stop the family from plunking down for four tickets and some refreshments to see only about a third of the film before they left. Moral of the story, don't listen to a toddler when they see something on TV and say they want it. They really don't. Man up and be an adult and tell the kids to STFU sometimes.

57. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls
Well, everything I heard about this one said it was terrible and to just skip it. I decided that it couldn't be that bad and went anyway. I should have listened to the majority. It was really, really, really, really, really bad. Bad acting, bad plot, bad script, terrible accents, stupid fight scenes, dumb comedy, and an overall plot arc that was so basic that it didn't take a genius to figure out what was really going on about twenty minutes into the film. Really bad stuff.

I also was in Cincinnati this weekend taking in a few Red's games. On Sunday we decided to buy good seats down on field level. These seats were around $40 bucks a pop. So imagine my confusion when about halfway through the second inning a group of six older people finally made their way to their seats and began blabbering about the most inane topics I have ever heard of in my life. "It's so hard to find a job now. Job interviews are so much different. They wanted to know what my life goals was. To make a buck, ok." This was met with a guffaw usually reserved for bad dinner theater from the 1800's. The ladies then proceeded to debate on if the Washington Nationals used to be called the Senators and if they were from Washington State or Washington D.C. Here's a tip for those ladies. If your so concerned with making money, perhaps you should know who the fuck is playing the game you paid so much to go see. Or just shut the fuck up and not be dumb whores.

God Bless America!!!

The latest and greatest

48. Son of Rambow
I heard about this one a few months back on AICN. I never expected a small indie british film to be shown in theaters around here and had resigned to waiting to Netflix it once it became available, but it was picked up here for a one week theatrical run. Adie and I caught what turned out to be a rather cute and quaint story that was peppered with some good comedy and some messages throughout. The story revolves around two young boys who set out to make a movie after seeing Rambo: First Blood. They devise a story about how one of them is the son of rambo and are saving him from an evil scarecrow. It ended predictably but was a fun journey getting there.

49. Jonestown: The life and death of the People's Temple
The same night after we got back from the theater, I popped in this documentary that I had gotten from the library. I was familier with the basics of Jim Jones and his Kool-Aide drinking dead followers, but this doc shed some light on how they got to that point deep in the jungles of Africa. I didn't realize that Jim Jones began his preaching career here in Indiana, and split to northern California before heading off to the jungle. Jim Jones seems to remind me of L. Ron Hubbard, just with a little more drive of crazy. Both were charismatic leaders of "churchs" that ultimatly bilked the weak of mind and heart for all they could. Jim Jones was just a bit more driven by the crazy bug and ended up killing a senator before ordering his 900 followers to poison their children before themselves.
I don't think there is a slow enough or painful enough way for him to die. He got off easy with a bullet to the temple. Asshole.

50. Get Smart
An entertaining movie that struggles with deciding if it's a big action summer movie, or a quirky comedy that tries to stay true to the TV show roots. Steve Carrell does a fine job as the incompotent agent who can't seem to do things right but always seems to come out on top. The Rock is a bit underutilized for my liking. I guess if they fully commited to an action movie he would have been in it more.

Ideas

Well, in the 13 days since my last post, I have watched 6 movies. None of them blew me away, but most were entertaining. Just so I feel complete, here is the list, with a few comments about each.

42. Meet the Spartans
Another atrocity of a spoof movie. I don't know why I've been subjecting myself to these so much. Even more pop culture references than the last one. And they keep putting Carmen Electra in them as the sex kitten, even though she's old as fuck. Kudo's to her for getting steady work, but there has to be some hotter young starlet who would work for cheaper.

43. Semi-Pro

The next installment of "Will Ferral makes a comedy about every sport" There were some funny moments, and the same funny cast ensemble that gets used in most of his movies is back and shining in their bit roles. It was worth a one time watching.

44. Horror Business

This one was on Netflix Instant Viewing list. It was about independant horror film makers and the hurdles they must face in plying their craft. While this had the potential to cover a topic that I would find fascinating, they found some of the most annoying and dim witted film makers to focus most of their attention on, and then spliced together alot of crazy images and random old movie clips to fill it out. The highlight was an extended interview with Mark Borchardt of American Movie fame as he attempted to make a new movie. He is quoted in the film saying he wanted to finish it that year (2005) And I am happy to report that accourding to IMDB he completed his latest work a short three years late.

45. Hitman

Cashing in on successful video game franchises into movies has been a long and hard road for Hollywood. You could argue that they did alright with the Tomb Raider movies. I've never seen either one, but they did make two, so it couldn't have been that much of a loss for them. Hitman doesn't require you to know dick about the games and launches into a hitman for hire story that was very reminiscant to me of the Bourne series. There were plenty of awesome kills and over the top sex and violence to keep my adolescent brain intrigued, but it also did one of the things that I hate most in movies. They open the movie showing the Hitman breaking into his main rival's house and having a conversation. The rest of the movie is a flashback to what they went through together. So even if I thought for a second that Agent 47 wasn't going to live through the film, I knew from the get go that he at least survived until they get back to present time.

46. Wet, Hot, American Summer

I can't believe that I don't own this one. I will soon enough. We watched this one with a bunch of the Waycross kids that were stranded at our house for a few nights after the floods. Yes, it captures a lot of the quirks and situations at summer camps, bit it is also filled with raunch and hilarity. And a very solid cast.

47. The Aristocrats

Another one we watched with the Waycross crew. They wanted something funny, and I threw this one in. I think the boys enjoyed it, and the girls may have been slightly less enthusiastic about a film dedicated to the grossest things people can come up with, mostly which involve vagina's in some derogatory way or another. I loved it just as much as any other time I've seen it. It also reminded me of when I saw this in the theater with Joe. There was obviously some young couple a few rows ahead of us on an early date for them. They may have read about this small independent documentary and thought it would be good culture to take in. Neither of them were prepared for what was unleashed upon them. As they left shaking their heads in disgust, I could only rest happily with the knowledge that neither one of them would regard the other the same ever again.

So that catches me up on my movie count for the year. We survived the great flood of 08 with minimal damage and heartache. Right in the middle I turned 27, which is awesome. 27 has been my favorite lucky number for a long time. Duane Ferrell wore number 27 for the Pacers in the mid 90's and I was a fan of his. He wasn't the best player or the most accomplished on the team. Mostly a bench player, I really liked how he played and adopted him as my favorite underdog player. He only played for the Pacers for two seasons, but via a quick wikipedia search, I find that he played for three teams for 10 seasons in the NBA, and is currently working as the director of player programs for the Washington Wizards. You go Duane!!!

Anyhoo, back to 27. Now that I'm my favorite number in age, I feel that this next year will be an awesome one for me. Of course it helps that I'm getting married during this favorite year, but I also think it'll be good for other reasons.

On the kitteh front, Rouge came home tonight. Either she changed a lot from the last time we saw her, or Adie picked out the wrong picture from the internet, because she looks nothing like the picture Adie pulled off. But whatever, she's a kitten and a girl and she's here now with a name, so she's not going anywhere. Gambit had been playing pretty hard for about an hour before Adie came home with her, so I thought maybe he would be pretty chill once she got here. But oh no, that was hardly the case. He chased her and tackled her any chance he got. I let them go at it for about an hour so they could get used to each other, but then decided that enough was enough and locked up Gambit in the bedroom so she could chill a little and get used to the house. Initially, she seems a bit more laid back and chill when she's not being harassed by Gambit.

So the house is now complete and our family has doubled in size in the past three weeks. Alan is in the air on his way home for about three weeks. Tomorrow we are taking our Kansas City BBQ judging class. But I'll save that story for once we have been certified.

Waiting....for pizza

The desperation is setting in. The walls seem as if they are inching closer in the night, waiting to silently crush me into powder, only to be snorted up like some kind of makeshift cocaine.

No matter how much I try, I fall farther and farther from the land of promise.

Of course I am refering to my movie quest. I have so many in the house that I've never watched. I just bought three more movies, on top of the 10 I downloaded this weekend. Torrent style.

I'm nearing the 110 mark. They keep piling up without a dent being put into them. And that doesn't include the Netflix and Library movies that I have readily available.

I've been reading a blog written by a guy who loves horror movies. He lives in LA and has ready access to many of the major studio's as well as a nice video store and home collection. He decided that he would watch a new horror movie every day and blog about what he thought. Not entirely unlike what I am attempting with my blog. But he does it EVERY DAY. And only horror movies. But he has a love for the medium and is devoting the time to it. Some would call him a madman that is entirely to wrapped up in his hobbies.

I say kudos's to him.

I watch alot of TV. I DVR reruns of Scrubs even though I have seen them all like 3 times. I'm currently watching one on TV as I type this. If I took even half that time out of my day and used it for the movie goal, I'd hit it easily.

And that's what I'm going to do.

Triple Play

-I have fallen behind the pace on my movie count. No specific reason for it, but there are little things that are pulling my attention away from the quest. But yesterday I fired it up and took in 3 films.

1.Wire in the Blood: Synchronicity. Another fine performance from this BBC series. Entertaining and interesting. I'm glad I don't live with the fear of a random serial killer stricking in Bloomington.
2.The Vanishing. A French movie that was probably a lot more scary back in the 80's. The "twist" ending wasn't much of a twist by today's standards, but was entertaining enough. Again, glad I don't have negative encounters with sociopaths and psycho's.
3.Iron Man. We went to the theater for this early summer popcorn flick. Ian and Adie knew even less than I did about the Iron Man back story, and I knew very little. But the flick did a good job of explaining everything easily, and had enough of crazy shit blowing up to keep us all entertained. I'm surprised that the studio gave Jon Faverau 140 million to make this movie without him doing any kind of big blockbuster work before as a director, but he did excellent and set himself up to make more of the awesome comic book movies. It doesn't hurt his cause that the film as already gross'd 210 million domestically.

- We went to Julia's for the Memorial Day weekend. It's always a good time up there, and this weekend was no exception. They decided to have a "small" get together on Sunday. Their idea of small still includes around 20 people, with enough food then to feed about 50. I did get in a game of croquet which was marred by my overzealous need to "send" Julia's ball down the hill. In my attempt to do so, I nearly crushed the side of my foot with the hammer. That sucked. I then later played in 5 games of volleyball. I'm proud to report that I did ok by my standards. I served a few that weren't out of bounds, and I made a few hits that didn't hurt my team.

- We get to pick up Gambit tomorrow. He's getting his harblls cut off as I type this, and will be ready to recover in his new home. Rouge is still a bit under weight, and will probably be ready by next week.

- GTA 4 is one of the main detractors from my movie quest. I'm amazed at the amount of detail that has been poured into it. I think I've played it about 30 hours at this point, but only completed maybe 15% of the game. And it's always nice to be able to disgust Adie with whatever depraved thing I make Niko do.

Stuff and Junk and Things

- Adie and I went to get kitteh supplies yesterday. Yes, we finally pulled the string and went and adopted two kittens from Nashville. They are still to small to bring home, but once they reach 2 pounds they can be fixed, and then brought home. So, we went to PetSmart to get all the necessities. Adie had her heart set on a specific box that had a lid and a special scoop notch and whatnot on the inside. Well, we couldn't find it and had to settle on one that was a step below. And she was seriously bummed out about it. But lo and behold as we were getting ready to leave, what was magically on display in the middle of the store, far away from the rest of the litter boxes, but the all powerful purple deluxe edition shit box. What a great day it turned out to be.

-Here are the adoption pictures of the little scamps. Gambit is on the left, and Rouge is on the right. They will be coming home in the next few weeks.


- I was driving around town the other day running some errands when I noticed a man approaching me riding on his motorcycle. I wouldn't have remembered this if he hadn't been wearing an oxygen tube with a tank strapped to his back. And of course no helmet. That guy has the biggest set of balls, but the smallest brain I have encountered in a long time.

-I'm heading to Louisville for the weekend. On top of seeing Kristen and Kevin, we'll be catching 2 Louisville Bats games. This will mark my first baseball games of the season. Many baseball bloggers have wagered that if the Reds played their AAA farm team the Bats, that the Bats would win hands down. So it should be a good time. They are playing the Indy Indians this weekend as well, so there is a bit of a hometown boy in me that will feel a bit bad about rooting for their demise, but I'll get over it. We also may try and make it to Churchill Downs to mourn the loss of that dead chick horse. If mourn meant bet on other horses and then leave without a second thought. That's what mourn means right? My vocab has suffered recently.