wildyams

My whole weekend has been really kick-back, just the way I like it. I got a ton of sleep this weekend, and really did little else other than sleep and watch movies. Speaking of movies, naturally I watched "Critters", and much to my joy it DID stand up to my fond childhood memories of the film! This could be because even as a kid I realized it was cheesy (unlike with "Ssssssss" and "Horror Express", which both genuinely scared me when I was probably 7 or 8, watching them on Elvira's show). I gotta reccomend this movie to Steven, not to be confused with Steve-o (and really anyone else for that matter, but mostly to Steven), for a number of reasons:

1.) M. Emmet Walsh has a pretty significant role in this movie as the local town sherriff. Its a small town with basically M. Emmet, one deputy on the night shift (who is best known for being in both "Benson" and "Lean on Me" with Robert Guillaume and a female dispatcher (played by the Landlady in "Kingpin" who's best line was "what is it about good sex that makes me hafta crap?"). M. Emmet's character has some classic scenes trying to convince a drunk crazy guy that martians aren't invading earth; being woken up in the middle of the night at home in his jammies to investigate some odd goings-on; trying to calm down the parishoners cause some intergalactic bounty hunters shot up their church; and first and foremost for being thrown out of a window by the aforementioned bounty hunters only to say "I swallowed my chewing tobacco." Plus, he's second in the cast credits (behind Dee Wallace-Stone, presumably because she was the mom in "E.T.").

2.) Billy Zane is in the movie, and he plays a guy who's supposed to be sort of like Ren in "Footloose": a 'big city guy' who has moved to the middle-of-nowhere countryside Kansas, and who brings his 'big city ways' with him (as evidenced by his ponytail and his silver 80's Risky Business-style Porsche with "2 GR8" on the license plate). Much like Ren, Billy Zane has good manners, but is disliked by the locals; but unlike Ren he doesn't organize a dance at a barn and is instead eaten alive by a Furby.

3.) The kid that looks like Willow, naturally.

4.) And last but not least (actually, this is probably the best reason to see the movie): Johnny Steele's song and music video for "The Power of the Night". See, the bounty hunters from outer space are shape-shifters, so when they come to earth they have to pick a shape that will help them blend in, so while they are en route to Earth in their space ship, they are flipping channels of TV from American broadcasts and come across the video by a rocker named Johnny Steele for a song called "The Power of the Night". One of the bounty hunters decides to choose Johnny Steele's face and body as his shape, and looks this way for the remainder of the film. That in and of itself is great enough, but for us the viewers we are treated to almost the entire Johnny Steele video as cutaways while the bounty hunter is "transforming." The video and the song are fantastically dated as Johnny Steele is obviously a rocker of the hair-band variety, and the video is replete with Johnny Steele outfitted in spandex-tight jeans, huge hair, and even a leap off the stage in slow motion while he kicks his legs behind him. If this isn't fantastic enough, later in the movie, the kid who looks like Willow is grounded and sent to his room, and when he gets there he turns on the radio and (you guessed it) "The Power of the Night" comes blaring out. Having done a little research into this fantastic song, I found that Terrence Mann, who played the role of Johnny Steele and the bounty hunter who copied him, actually formed a band named "Mann" that sang "The Power of the Night", and that evidently this song is nowhere to be found, much to my displeasure, since it's not on the "Critters" soundtrack, and since I can't find any evidence that Mann ever released an album.

So there you go. I give this movie four and a half out of five terribles.

This entry is partially a test and partially to explain why I haven't made an entry in a few days. Well, supposedly I'm no longer mooching my bandwidth from Jason, and am now instead mooching it from Dave, as my site here was moved from one box to the other. Hopefully the effect won't be noticeable to anyone Ok, now I'm gonna get back to work.

This entry is not about the fatal rollercoaster disaster that took place on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland today. No, this is about some people who were undoubtedly there when it happened. This is about the "Disneyana". Thanks to Daypop (which has become too focused on Bush and Iraq to be too terribly interesting to me any more, unfortunately), I stumbled across this article, which, much like "Trekkies", makes you unsure whether you should laugh or cry because of these people. Anyway, these "Disneyana" folk are people that essentially worship Disneyland. I mean for real. Check this out:

Anyone got an explanation for this new look of hers? (the link isn't safe for work, so I just put the text accompanying the picture underneath it)

Click for Link

Britney's stupid new look

By the way, here is where I was today: Foamy Pool Party

I stumbled across this "Which Fucking Glengarry Glen Ross Character Are You?" quiz (I was George Aaronow, in case you cared), and thought it was worth mentioning simply because of the description they give for Dave Moss (Ed Harris' character):

Cocksuckers pissin' in your face wanna break your rice bowl, you get humiliated by some jag-off cop, you get shit thrown in your face by some genuine shit, but you endure (for a while). You're a good fuckin' man.

Your Testosterone Rating: 100/100

This is probably stupid, but what the hell. Am I the only one who thinks its maybe a bad idea to tell little kids that there's a Santa Claus and an Easter Bunny or a Tooth Fairy, or things like that? I mean, sure they get a lot of fun out of things like that, but in a way that makes it even worse. What kind of message does it send to kids to lie to them right from the get-go, only to yank away their favorite things from them when they're "old enough"? Does this teach people that lying is ok because their parents lie to them at such a young age (when they're most impressionable) about the things that are arguably some of the most important things to them? Is it good to say "life is full of wondrous and magical things" only to then take that all away from them when they find out its all B.S.? As usual, I also wonder if this is something that parents have always done, if with other things, similar to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Certainly many cultures (hell, most of them) at one point or another believed in all kinds of things that we've supposedly proven don't exist or aren't true. It could be argued that we still do today, if you don't believe in religion or spiritualism. But have parents always used devices that they knew weren't true to either scare their kids or make them happy? Probably so, I suppose. I guess every generation or culture has their way of dealing with kids, whether its coming-of-age rituals or special holidays or "child psychology" or something similar (of course nowadays, we just use drugs, er, "medication"). I just don't know if I had a kid and I was raising it if I could lie to it. In the same way I couldn't take the kid to Sunday school or Temple or whatever else cause I don't believe in religion (not enough to tell someone "this is the truth and the way" or something, anyway), I don't think I'd feel right telling them that there was a Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. Man, I fucking overanalyze things too much

As you probably haven't noticed, there's a new addition to my blog, which is over at the bottom of the right hand corner. Its a little button that says "Help Brianna: Victim of the RIAA". In case you hadn't heard, this refers to Brianna LaHara, a 12 year old girl who lives with her single mother and her 8 year old brother in a city Housing Authority apartment in New York City who is being sued by the RIAA for downloading music with Kazaa off the internet. Her mother paid $30 for Kazaa, and Brianna mistakenly thought that was payment for downloading the music. In any event, the RIAA settled with Brianna for $2000, so to help her pay this amount, someone set up a website to help collect the cash for her, and that is where that image at the bottom of the right hand column goes.

Christ I have nothing to blog about, I was at work all fucking day! I got up a bit late (cause I was at work really late last night, and the night before, and the night before...), got to work, had a "lunch break" which consisted of walking to the Backlot Cafe (about maybe 100 paces from my desk), picking up food and carrying it back to my desk (I ate while I worked), worked till about an hour ago and came home. Exciting stuff huh? I just keep telling myself though, with this project I'm working on, one way or the other it has to be finished in about a week, and after that it HAS to slow down!

Of course, I could be digging a ditch instead, so life is good

"Oh I see, so what you're proposing is he busts in the room, sees her standing there, shoots her twice... moves the bed. Why would anybody do that?" - Steve Arlo

This is a perfect example of the downside to technology. I came across what seems like a really cool invention (and which has been seen in sci-fi movies for years): a holographic image-making device. Its basically what you would expect from that description, I'm sure, but check the link if you want to see images of it. Anyway, here is the description they have on their website, note my emphasis in bold:

The IO2 interactive heliodisplay, generates non-physical mid-air video allowing people or objects to move through the image. The image furthermore can be seen from all sides. This allows people to view information and their surroundings simultaneously creating an efficient, colloborative working environment not possible until now. Advertise in places never thought before. Educational simulations, boardroom presentations, teleconferencing and video games will never be the same...

Arrrgh!!! Advertise in places never thought before? Great, that is JUST what we need: huge holographic floating ads covering the skies.

I need to hurry up and just move to the middle of nowhere already while I still have my sanity

I came across this long but good article about the effects we all are having on the economy, the environment, our health and our general quality of life by being as fixated on the automobile as we are, and I wanted to share it here. A lot of what the article had to say rang true with me, being a guy who has tried, and failed, at living without a car. I take some comfort in knowing that in many ways it is not my fault that I can't get along without a car, and that big business basically assured that in a city like Los Angeles (and most other major cities which grew after the invention of the automobile) you need a car to get around and survive, as you can see from this quote from the article:

Public transportation was another casualty of car-mania. During the 1920s, the U.S. had about 45,000 miles of trolley tracks and buses used by more than 20 billion riders a year. But during the '30s and '40s, a company called National City Lines-with backing from General Motors, Firestone, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Truck and others profiting from the sale of motor vehiclespurchased and then shut down more than 100 electric trolley systems in 45 U.S. cities, including lines in the Bay Area and Southern California. In the late 40s, a federal jury acquitted the collected companies of conspiracy to control transportation, and the players escaped with $5,000 each in fines.

This led to what we have today, which is summed up perfectly here:

"You cannot get people out of cars because they need them to meet their basic needs because of the way weve built our cities," says James MacKenzie, a senior associate at World Resources Institute in Washington.

For a guy like me who really would like to see more car alternatives out there, or who frequently longs to know what living in an area or an era where cars are not the focal point of everything, I feel rather hopeless realizing that my options are either risk life and limb on a bicycle in such a traffic-heavy area as LA, move far away from my job, my friends and my family to some remote area, or hope that articles like this one do show a turning of the tide in the way people think about what role the automobile plays in our society and the toll it's taken on all of us.

Just a quick entry. My day was shit, except for some fine Mexican food for lunch (way out in Sun Valley). I am now packing up my stuff to head over to my Dad's place to housesit for the next week and a half (which will probably mean a BBQ is on the way, but we'll see about that I guess). Ok, not much else to say, but really, what else needs to be said?

Thanks to Matt for bringing this to my attention.

In case you hadn't heard, Ben Affleck and John Woo are teaming up to bring us a movie called "Paycheck," which looks like a cross between "Johnny Mnemonic" and "Total Recall" or something (check out the trailer, by the way, its hilariously awful). Since this movie involves arguably the worst actor and director working today, needless to say I'm going to be keeping as far away from this one as possible.

Except for the fact that we'll probably end up doing it here at work, of course

This is per Steven's request, and I'm sure Kelly will get a kick out of it as well:

So last night I went out to dinner with Dave and Jen and Justin at Houston's in Pasadena. I like going to Houston's, even though its pretty pricey, just cause the atmosphere is nice (its really dark with cool chandelier-like thingies) and cause the knife and fork ribs there really are "falling off the bone" as advertised. Since Cookie will no doubt be wondering about this, we all had the knife and fork ribs except for Dave who had to be different, unlike the cool crowd, and got a tuna steak, or something like that. I also got a salad (which Dave lamented not ordering as well, since the tuna didn't fill him up), the Jigglers split a bottle of wine while Justin and I went with cokes. Afterwards everyone except for Justin had an apple walnut cobbler thing for desert which was fantastic (Jen and I don't like walnuts, so we ate around them). It was a really tasty dinner and well worth the price. It was kind of a celebratory meal for me, because the insane project I've been working on for the last month or two finally is coming to an end, and yesterday was the first time I worked on something else, so I was definitely in the mood for a good meal with good friends

So here was my weekend: Friday and Sunday I did nothing (well, Friday I worked, obviously, but afterwards did nothing). Saturday was Dennis' (or 'Denis' as we like to call him) 30th birthday, and he decided to have it behind The Orange Curtain down in 'the OC' (that's Orange County to you and I). The first thing on the list for his birthday was go-kart racing at 10 am, so naturally I said I couldn't make that, cause I would be sleeping in (I wasn't the only one to skip this, so they ended up pushing the time back to 11). But after those guys were done racing (evidently Jon rules at that), I met them at Dave and Buster's for lunch. Lunch was tasty, and it was good to see everyone again, since it had been a while since I'd seen Steve-o and Jon and Dennis and everyone.

After lunch we went to play games in the arcade, where we discovered what a scam Dave and Busters has going there. See, you can't just put money in the machines, you have to put money on a "power card" and then you swipe the card on the games to get credits. But they don't tell you how much each game costs, they tell you how many credits it costs. And the dollar value of a credit is pretty uncertain, but its not something that adds up easily, like 1 quarter equals 1 credit. So essentially they've got their arcade rigged so that you have to stop and do algebra to figure out how much each game costs you (on top of that, they didn't have the number of credits required to play each game easily displayed, making it even more of a mystery). All I know is that everyone was given a "power card" with $20, and I, naturally, sought out the old school video games (of which there was only Street Fighter 2, Ms. Pac Man and Galaga) and for $20 it seemed like I was only able to play about 10 games or less of Street Fighter 2 (I woulda preferred Ms. Pac Man or Galaga, but they were occupied).

Anyway, after all that, Dave and Jen split, and Bob and Becky showed up, and we cruised around The Block for a while, checked out the shops, then debated going to a movie. Jon was really psyched to see "The Rundown" which was sneak previewing, and most everyone else wanted to see "Underworld." I was up for either, although wasn't really too enthused about seeing another movie starring The Rock after having to see "The Scorpion King", but if everyone else wanted to see "The Rundown", I woulda gone. Really I wanted to see "Matchstick Men" but most people felt that wasn't something they wanted to pay to see on the big screen. Anyway, I ended up going to see "Underworld" with everyone else except for Jon and Pierre who saw "Rundown".

"Underworld" was ok, I didn't really have high expectations for it cause I thought it looked crappy, but was kinda drawn to see it anyway cause I like vampire movies and werewolf movies (even though they usually suck too). Like everyone else I thought it looked like it would be a bad "Matrix" meets "Blade" ripoff or something, and it kinda was, with "The Crow" thrown in for good measure. Everyone I saw "Underworld" with absolutely hated it, it sounded like, while I somewhat enjoyed it. Could be because my expectations were low going in, I dunno, but it delivered more than I was expecting with some pretty decent effects, an interesting backstory, and some decent acting from some of the cast. Ultimately I didn't really like where the story went, and the end was pretty mediocre at best, but I would go see a sequel if they made one. I would be reluctant to recommend it to anyone though, since I definitely seemed to be the only one who enjoyed it at all.

Anyway, after the movie, some people went home and Steve-o, Juliet, Bob, Becky and myself all went back to Bob and Becky's place and hung out and chatted for a couple hours, which was really nice. Bob and Becky are getting married on December 6th, so we talked a lot about that, and we got a good tour of their place, which is really nice. After all that, I went back to my Dad's house and got to bed around 3 am, so all in all it was a good day.

I had a good night last night. After work, I picked up Rebecca and we went to dinner at Islands in Hastings Ranch. We had a good dinner and had a great conversation, mainly about addictions and addictive personalities, and also about social pressures, anxieties and whatnot (or "what have you" as Walter Sobchak would say). Aftterwards, we went to go see "Matchstick Men" at the Paseo, which we both really enjoyed. Interestingly enough, the girl who played Nick Cage's daughter in the movie is Alison Lohman, who, according to IMDB, is 24 years old. This is interesting because she was playing a 14 year old girl in the movie, and I actually would have never guessed she is as old as she is.

I saw this article today about how Arnold Schwarzenegger is converting one of his Hummers to run on hydrogen. While that is odd enough, the article points out something which I was unaware of: Arnold was the first person to ever own a commercial Hummer, which means he's responsible for all of those behemoths you see cruising the streets, and he's also no doubt a large reason that the roads have become infested with SUVs over the last decade or so. Its really disappointing to think that, though, because I'd like to believe that Americans are not so easily influenced by a muscle-bound action star (and this was well before he entered into the political arena), but I'm probably just deluding myself that this isn't the case even though its no doubt true, considering how star-struck we all seem to be. I know Madonna popularized the trend of wearing your underwear on the outside of your clothes in the 80s, and Gwen Stefani popularized the bare midriff look and all that, but there's a difference between passing fads in the fashion industry and a rather monumental shift in the automotive industry. Maybe I'm giving Arnold too much credit though. I sure hope I am.

I saw this on Fark and thought it was pretty fucking scary. Evidently some study has come out that shows that the level of a chemical that is used to coat products like furniture, cars and computers to make them fire resistant is showing up in the breast milk of women in the US. Apparently even at low levels these bromine-based fire retardants impair attention, learning, memory, and behavior. The thing that worried me about the study is that its not specifically about the breast milk, but just that this is evidence of how exposed we all are to random chemicals like this, as evidenced by how they build up in our bodies over time. So even though we may pay close attention to what chemicals we put in our bodies with the food we eat (which I really don't, I'll be honest), you can still get all crudded up with chemicals just by living a "normal" life. Great. The really worrisome part of the article, for me anyway, was this:

"The average level of bromine-based fire retardants in the milk of 20 first-time mothers was 75 times the average found in recent European studies."

Yikes

Last night I left work and went straight over to Dave and Jen's place so we could all go out to dinner. We decided upon Beckam's Place, even though I was under the assumption that they had a fancy dress code, but they seemed ok with the fact that I was in jeans and Dave was in shorts (and Jen was in what Dave called her "O.R. scrubs" as in "oh, are they?"). For Cookie's benefit, Dave took a picture of our food, which presumably he'll post at some point, but we all had prime rib (Beckham's speciality) along with its usual accoutrements: creamed corn, creamed spinach and Yorkshire pudding. Jen and I had Hearts of Romaine salad while Dave had the French onion soup for starters, and then Jen and I had some kind of hot chocolate surprise thing for desert. Jen and Dave split a half bottle of wine and Dave also had a Guiness and a coffee, while I had cokes. Ok, now that Cookie's curiosities about dinner have been satisfied, I'll get on with the entry.

Afterwards we went back to Dave and Jen's place and chatted for a bit till Jen got too tired and went to bed. At that point Dave helped me upgrade my Movable Type here on my blog to the newest version (2.64 I believe). Its added a couple cool things, and I'm gonna have to mess with it some more to really get all the features going, but the main differences for now are that there is now a search function on my blog (you'll see it located over there on the left); you can now post pictures in the comments (if you know how to do an image tag in HTML anyway), and I can now close the comments or simply turn them off on some entries. I doubt I'll ever turn the comments off completely, but its nice to be able to close the comments on some old entries like this one and this one where I get a bunch of idiots who find those entries on Google and feel compelled to leave stupid comments a year or more after I made the entries. The other cool thing is that now when I make an entry it pings 3 places instead of just one, but that's not something anyone would ever see. So anyway, there you go. My blog is no longer powered by an almost 2 year old version of MT

As promised, its time for another round of "What's More Terrible". For the uninitiated, the rules are simplicity itself: I give you two things, and you have to guess between the two which one is more terrible. I'm sticking with movies as a theme again this week (gee, what a shocker), but I promise they won't all be movie related. Today's terrible involves pairs of actors who seem to always be in the same movies together, like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, for instance. AFLAC and Matt Damon aren't an option though because AFLAC was in last week's terrible. This week's contestants are:

For those who aren't familiar with the movies these two pairs have done together, here's a sampling: The Coreys were both in "The Lost Boys", "License to Drive", "Dream a Little Dream", "Blown Away", and "Dream a Little Dream 2". Freddy Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard were both in "She's All That", "Wing Commander", "Summer Catch", "Scooby Doo" and soon "Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed".

Terrible.

Well, I just spent the day today with Mary, one of the most important people in my life pretty much since I graduated college. Mary is moving to Dallas, Texas in about a week, and I'm not going to see her again before that, so today was really saying goodbye. She'll be back out here for a few days around my birthday, and I hope to see her then, but really when a friend moves to another state, your friendship is never the same (unless they move back, of course). Mary and I had our share and more of rough times, but maybe that's to be expected with me I suppose, cause I'm not the easiest guy to get along with, as anyone who knows me will tell you (at least, I would assume they would). Mary moved out here back in March of 98 from Florida, and really liked it out here for a while. But LA can really wear on you, I know it has worn on me a lot the last couple years, just as it wore on me in my late teen years, and now that Mary's company is moving to Dallas and is offering to pay for her moving expenses, she's taking them up on it and flying the coop. We had a really nice day, with lunch at Pie N Burger (she'd never been before, and was impressed by the burgers), then just hanging out here at my apartment and talking all afternoon. We rehashed a lot of memories and talked about what the future holds for her out there in Dallas, and it was just a nice day. I'm very sad that Mary is leaving, but I am happy for her because I know she's going on to a great situation, and she just needed to get out of here. If I was in her position I might do the same thing. I'm sure Mary and I will keep in touch, but I definitely feel like a chapter of my life has ended. I'm gonna miss you Mary, give those Texans hell

I have extraordinarly little to blog about right now. I hardly slept at all last night, and I rotated my matress only to find its not very comfortable this way. I need a new matress since it wasn't comfortable the old way either, but I'd rather buy a whole new bed, since mine is only a full size and I want something much bigger. But since I'm planning to move sometime soon (hopefully), I would rather not have to move a larger bed, so I'm gonna hold off. Work was pretty busy again today. My project that won't go away just won't go away, so I'm stuck doing more stuff on it (just when I thought I was finished). But oh joy, I got more projects now too. Ah whatever, it beats digging a ditch. Well, that's pretty much it for now, I'm off for bed. Hey, I told you at the beginning of the entry that this wouldn't be interesting, so don't blame me.

Today is my sister Johnetta's 27th birthday, so I wanted to wish her a happy birthday. She lives in Texas, so unfortunately I can't see her today, but I got her a gift certificate to a day spa she's going to today, so hopefully she'll like that. I don't have much else to say that I didn't say on her birthday last year, but I found a link to a list of celebrities that were born on the same day as her, so maybe someone will get some entertainment out of that

Thanks to Jason for this. According to the Longevity Game, I should live till the ripe old age of 74, which is not bad considering I treat my body like shit