wildyams

I'd like to take a moment to recognize Steve-o's favorite holiday. To commemorate the occasion I travelled over to Groundhog.org and PunxsutawneyPhil.com and found this pleasant piece of news:

"When it seems like too much with which to cope; The coming of spring brings us new hope.

Changing seasons is a wonderful thing.
Now it's Groundhog Day and we think of spring.

Will Spring come early or will it come late?
It's time for me to prognosticate.

As I study the sun
It's all about fun.
But I'm sorry to say
I see my shadow today.
When my shadow I see,
Six more weeks of winter there will be!" - Punxsutawney Phil, Feb. 2, 2005

For anyone who is depressed to hear this news, I'd like to leave you with a quote from one of my favorite movies, Groundhog Day:

"When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter." - Phil Connors

So to you and yours, have a very Merry Groundhog Day :grin

Tonight after work we went up to Farrell's for Miki's birthday. I drove up with Cookie, Dani, Milkshake and Miki and there we met up with Mr. and Mrs. Burbank and Matt and Kelly. Unlike last time, Miki's birthday was pretty much the only one going on there, so we only got to hear the bass drum and sirens once or twice, but it was still enjoyable. We had burgers and ice cream and played a bunch of video games and a good time was had by all. I wonder who's birthday will next precipitate a trip up to Farrell's...

Tonight I went to go see Carlos perform standup at The Comedy Store in Hollywood. Jen agreed to go with me and we planned to grab dinner a movie afterwards. The Comedy Store is on the Sunset Strip, and on a Saturday night it was a total nightmare trying to find a place to park, so we valeted the car at the Saddleback Ranch and walked over. The room Carlos was in was called "The Belly Room" and was fairly small and located upstairs at The Comedy Store, and there were something like 15 comics performing for the night. The place was absolutely packed, with standing room only, and the comics were pretty decent on the whole. Carlos did all new material, and I thought it was pretty good, and the crowd seemed to react pretty well. Carlos was also only one of about 2 or 3 comics who didn't knock someone's drink over making his way to the stage :lol

After about 5 or 6 comics, Jen and I left and had dinner at Saddleback, which was probably a mistake. That place was insanely crowded, as we knew it would be, but since the car was already parked there, we figured that would be a decent place to eat. The food was good, and not too expensive, but it was just crazy being in there trying to have a meal while people were riding a mechanical bull about 20 feet from us.

After dinner, we went to go see The Boogeyman at the Mann's Chinese, and that was an even bigger mistake than eating dinner at Saddleback. I had not seen any previews for Boogeyman, nor had I read any reviews for it, but I had seen that Sam Raimi produced it, and I have always had something of a fascination for the Boogeyman (based mainly on the short story from Stephen King and also, embarrasingly enough, from an episode of "The Real Ghostbusters" I saw on Saturday morning cartoons as a kid). Anyway, Jen and I were flipping through the paper and saw it was out, and figured why not go. Right from the opening shot, I could tell it was a mistake. Well, actually, at first I thought the movie had a sense of humor because the opening was so cliche'd; but I soon realized that was just how the whole movie was gonna be. The opening shot was of a run-down, spooky house in the middle of nowhere at nighttime with thunder rumbling in the background and a creaky swingset slowly swinging back and forth in the foreground, so right away I thought "uh-oh". By about 10 minutes into the movie I knew that it was most likely gonna be on my "Worst Movies of the Year" list, and by the end I wanted to see Alone in the Dark to see if it is really a worse movie or not, because I couldn't imagine it could be. I did laugh at quite a few points during the movie, but it was not what the filmmakers intended, so maybe it had some entertainment value though. Oh well, it was still a fun night nonetheless :grin

Ahh yes, it's that time of year again. The time of year when the movie studios take a giant shit on the movie-going public by unleashing their worst turds of the year all at once (which is saying something considering what summer is usually like). It's the time between when the deadline for getting a movie released so it can qualify for the Oscars (New Year's) and the Oscars themselves happen, and every year we get nothing but godawful crap at the theaters to choose from. You know it's officially that time of year when the top 4 grossing movies over the weekend all scored an average of 11% on the tomatometer with a combined 41 positive reviews between the 4 of them, out of a total of 352 reviews. Check it out:

#1 $19,500,000 - The Boogeyman - 8% "Boogeyman represents flat-out suckage. It is a haphazard assemblage of horror clichés, punctuated by the occasional so-loud-it-makes-you-jump noise on the soundtrack." -- Mike McGranaghan, AISLE SEAT

#2 $10,994,000 - The Wedding Date - 10% "There is not a single memorable joke or line of dialogue in it, something that even the dumbest of comedies usually delivers." -- Peter Howell, TORONTO STAR

#3 $10,400,000 - Are We There Yet? - 12% "The answer to Are We There Yet? is, yes, we are there -- in comedy hell." -- David Elliott, SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

#4 $8,900,000 - Hide and Seek - 14% "[An] idiotic, yawn-a-minute thriller." -- Rex Reed, NEW YORK OBSERVER

It's so bad right now it actually makes me want to go see Alone in the Dark simply because based on how bad the reviews are, it sounds like it might be a "so bad it's fun" movie or at least just a legendarily bad film. I mean, if you're gonna go see something that sucks, why screw around? Why not just go for all-the-way, Battlefield Earth-bad, right?

I've never really been motivated to send anyone hate mail before. I mean, stuff pisses me off, and people act like boneheads, but I'm generally pretty apathetic and/or not crazy enough to be compelled to actually send someone hate mail. However, reading about Wanita Renea Young really made me consider it. If you haven't heard of her, lemme clue you in. Two teenage girls in Colorado one night last summer decided it would be a nice thing to bake cookies for their neighbors and go around and deliver them personally at each neighbor's door. They went up, left the cookies on the doorsteps of everyone and rang the bell then left. Wanita Renea Young was one of those neighbors, and when the doorbell rang with her cookie delivery, she freaked out and had a panic attack. So what did she do? She sued the girls for $900 and won. As if this isn't sickening enough, the girls tried to apologize and pay her for her medical expenses (Young went to the hospital because she was so freaked out, although she was fine) as soon as they found out about what happened, but Young refused and sued instead because "[s]he said the families' apologies rang false and weren't delivered in person." Lady, can you blame the girls for not coming by your house to apologize after what happened when they dropped by to give you cookies?!

Anyway, back to the hate mail. I thought about it and decided I wasn't going to send any hate mail and my reasoning is simple: basically it would be totally superfluous. This crazy lady bought herself infamy for $900, and is probably gonna get tons of hate mail and death threats and who knows what else as a result already. I don't have to do anything to her. Hell, if you search for her name on Google there's already over 900 pages linked there that are spewing hate about her. Here's an excerpt from the #1 link to her name on Google: "I hope one day an escaped madman comes to your house and butchers you." I would pity the woman for what is no doubt coming for her if she hadn't gone so far out of her way to court it. So I don't have to send her anything, but I figured I could add my name to a growing list of people who disapprove and help spread the word about what a horrible person she must be.

No! Noooooooooooooooo!!!

:grin

Wanna know what's a bad combination to have? How's this: a lot of work to do with rapidly approaching deadlines and the flu. Lucky me, that's what I've been dealing with this week. I need a sick day badly, but I'm too busy and so is everyone else, so if I took a day off my crap would fall behind and probably not get out on time. Somebody cry me a river please :sad

Happy Birthday, old man. I hope your Sideways-esque trip was a blast :grin

Man, my blog has a kinda Conspiracy Theory-like feel to it, what with those pics of Mel Gibson and Patrick Stewart on it. Dontcha think?

On Saturday we got together for another one of our Halo-fests, and this one was, in my opinion, the worst one we've had. This time we made the switch from Halo to Halo 2, and that part was fine. Halo 2 is good fun, the game isn't too much different, there are just more options (new weapons, new vehicles, etc...), but the gameplay isn't too different. That wasn't really the problem. The problem is that it is a lot more complicated to set up, so it took a significant amount of time for everyone to figure out how to get the whole thing started. Then once we finally got playing, for some reason everyone was bored with what we'd been doing every other time (playing Capture the Flag), and people wanted to try the other games that Halo 2 had to offer. That in and of itself wasn't so bad, it's just that it meant that after each game (some were only around 5 minutes long), we would all get together and have a lengthy discussion about which map to try next, which game to try next, should we mix the teams up, etc... Usually when we've all gotten together, we've ended up playing most of the time we were there. This time we probably spent around 50% of the time we were together actually playing. The other games that we played were ok, some were better than others, but none of the games seemed to last very long (whereas Capture the Flag games usually lasted between 30 minutes and an hour). In any event, it was a pretty disappointing Halo outing, for me anyway.

Yesterday I slept in most of the day, then did some laundry and last night I went out to go see Carlos perform standup again at the Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip. It was rainy as hell so getting over there from Pasadena was kind of a pain, but overall I'm glad I went. The first comic who went was some guy who has apparently been on Mad TV before, and he was unquestionably the funniest guy of the night, in my opinion. Carlos went second, and I think it was kind of a tough act to follow, but Carlos did ok. After Carlos there were about 20 or more other comics that went on throughout the night, each only getting a couple minutes before they gave them the signal to wrap it up (the signal was a red neon sign in the back of the room, and since we were sitting back there, whenever it came on we knew the comics were coming to the end of their act). The most interesting part of the night was a guy who was heckled as soon as he came on stage by a really drunk guy in the front row. The guy was heckling before the comic even got a chance to speak. The comic handled it pretty well I thought, and had a couple nice insults for the guy, and then eventually security came and threw the guy out. Other than that none of the comics really stood out too much, but it was a fun time nonetheless.

I came across this awesomely hilarious website, Improv Everywhere, in which "agents" go out and perform "missions" upon the unsuspecting public. One of their missions was to set up a fancy bathroom attendant in a fast food restaurant. Another mission (which they apparently do annually) is to have a bunch of people ride the subway wearing no pants. Yet another one was to plan and throw a birthday party for an unsuspecting stranger they dubbed "Ted". But my favorite (and I haven't nearly read them all, they have almost 50) was "The Moebius" (apparently taken from some Star Trek episode). Here's the description of it:

On Saturday, March 22, 2003 Improv Everywhere agents created a living moebius strip in the Astor Place Starbucks. Seven undercover agents meticulously repeated a five-minute slice of time for twelve consecutive repetitions. Starbucks employees and patrons were frightened, confused, and ultimately entertained as they found themselves stuck, without escape, in the middle of a time loop.

Basically they had 7 people all decide to do a variety of activities in a Starbucks (some guy kept spilling his drink, another guy kept getting a phone call, a couple would have an argument, a guy would walk in with a boombox, etc...) and they would perform their variety of tasks, then after 5 minutes would start over and would perform the exact same tasks in the exact same order, over and over 12 times in a row (for an hour). Naturally a group of people repeating the same activities every 5 minutes would evoke a range of emotions if you were there to witness it, and it's quite entertaining to read about the reactions the onlookers had:

There was a young girl sitting up beside Agent Barrison and me. She first noticed Agents Todd and Dippold on the third time through and noticed me repeating, "The line for the bathroom is really long" as well. She was mostly just watching it all. Then as things continued to progress, she started rubbing her face and shaking her head and stuff - just looking really confused.

Her confusion was eased when she discovered someone else who was noticing what was going on. She and the guy down near Agent Winckler started talking and pointing out the series of events, saying stuff like, "Here comes radio guy again!"

She started laughing then and watching it all happen, kind of cueing it. Then she and the Starbucks employee talked and he said he had noticed it too. They were all kind of giggling and not sure what to say.

Really a fantastic website, I love to see creative stuff like this going on out there. Check the site out if you've got a minute and you're looking for something to make you smile.

Since I'm housesitting for my Dad this week and am over in Pasadena, I'm not sure if I'm thankful that I was not in Hollywood last night or if I'm bummed I wasn't there. Maybe a bit of both. Supposedly most of Hollywood, or at least where I live, flooded quite badly last night. I live on the second floor of an apartment building, so I'm not concerned that my apartment flooded, and there is another floor above me, so I'm not worried that roof leaked in there, so maybe it would have been interesting to see all the madness I keep hearing about. Then again, one of my co-workers (Lurky) just told me that driving near my place last night, he had never been so worried that his car was just going to float away in the water. He said that he saw a guy at a bus stop who had to stand on the bus stop bench because the water was only about 3 inches below it. He said that on Hollywood Blvd that there was nobody going west because it was so flooded (meaning that the north side of the street was flooded, and I live about a half a block north of Hollywood Blvd). I read the following in the LA Times today:

A cloudburst and clogged drains left about two feet of water standing on the Hollywood Freeway in Hollywood on Monday night, halting traffic in both directions at Santa Monica Boulevard. Hundreds of vehicles were stranded in the water, and traffic backed up for five miles in both directions, remaining at a standstill in spots even five hours later. The freeway reopened about 11:45 p.m.

That stretch of the Hollywood Fwy is the stretch that runs right near my apartment. All in all it was apparently nuts in Hollywood last night, but I missed it all because I went to my Dad's place last night and went to bed early and didn't hear any commotion at all. Like I said, I don't know if I should feel lucky I missed it, or bummed that I missed it :lol

"I could have killed 'em all, I coulda killed you. In town you're the law, out here it's me. Don't push it. Don't push it or I'll give you a war you won't believe. Let it go. Let it go." - Rambo, John J.

Well the Oscars weren't too upsetting this year until they got to the end. Martin Scorsese again gets passed over, and still doesn't have an Oscar for best director, while Clint Eastwood of all people now has two. Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg both have two each for directing, but Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick and still Martin Scorsese don't have any between them? Oh well, at least Cate Blanchett finally won an Oscar (even if it's for supporting). Jamie Foxx got the Oscar for Best Actor, which I can't really argue with; and Hilary Swank got the Oscar for Best Actress, which surprised me just because it's her second already. Swank's a weird actress, because when she's good, she's Oscar worthy (Million Dollar Baby and Boys Don't Cry), but otherwise she's... well, just see The Core or The Next Karate Kid and you tell me.

I'm not really sure what P. Diddy and Prince were doing presenting awards, and Beyonce Knowles was onstage probably more than Chris Rock singing all those damn songs (which I skipped, naturally). By the way, speaking of Beyonce, at what point does a celebrity decide that it's ok for them to drop their last name? Did she do it because she's so popular, or because she's not likely to be confused with any other Beyonces out there? What's funny (or embarrasing) is that there was no doubt a meeting and memos concerning the decision for her to from now on only be known as "Beyonce".

Here were some of my favorite parts of the night:

- Dustin Hoffman being either drunk or stoned when he presented the Best Picture award

- The fact that the Oscar writers got Puff Daddy to refer to The Polar Express as "a very hip and creative film" when he read off the teleprompters

- This guy who was pretending to be sleeping while they introduced his nomination

- The absolutely giant Amazonian women they had stand next to everyone who came on stage just to dwarf them (Prince was especially funny)

- Tim Robbins' hilariously gaudy diamond-encrusted peace symbol tie pin, sending a message of peace and bling-bling to everyone

So there you go, that's my Oscar wrapup. Congrats to the winners, tough shit to the losers. At least Ron Howard wasn't nominated for anything :grin

I don't know if many people saw the NBA All-Star Weeekend nonsense last weekend, but the game itself was boring, and the slam dunk competition was largely forgettable. Except for "The Birdman". For those who don't know (and until last week, I was one of those people), "The Birdman" is also known as Chris Andersen of the New Orleans Hornets. Anyway, he's basically a scrub who's tall and can jump (sort of), so he found his way into the slam dunk competition because guys who should be in it (i.e. Kobe, Vince Carter and LeBron James) are too high and mighty to stoop to entertaining the fans by entering it because they think it's beneath them. So as a result, we get people like "The Birdman" entering the competition, which is bad, except when it results in unintentional hilarity as it did last weekend. "The Birdman" put on what has to be the single-most embarrasing display of dunking I've ever seen, and it was all thanks to the fact that the NBA allowed players to repeatedly try to make dunks that they had missed on previous attempts. What happened was that Andersen kept trying to alley-oop it to himself, and kept missing; so for his two dunks (for which he received the lowest scores of anyone else in the competition), he took a combined 15 dunk attempts. This week on ESPN I found this great quote about the entire affair being a highlight of the weekend, which has now prompted me to post about it:

A Pantheon performance on the Unintentional Comedy Scale by Chris Andersen. Remember the scene in "One On One" when Robby Benson overdoses on greenies and makes a fool out of himself at practice? Now imagine if that happened in front of 20,000 people. That was actually the first time in my life that I've seen something spectacular in person, only I wished I was watching it at home on TV -- with the announcers' and players' reactions -- because I knew it was 10 times more spectacular for everyone at home. Looking back, I think the best part was that he started off the contest by telling the sideline reporter, "It's time for the Birdman to fly." Could somebody find me a time machine so I could travel back to the '80s and make that my high school yearbook quote?

"It's time for the Birdman to fly."
-- Chris Andersen before missing 47 straight dunks in the 2005 Slam Dunk Contest.

:lol I think the shit is funny. Anyway, for those of you who may have missed this miserable display of dunking, I have the video clips provided below:

The entirety of his missed dunks with announcer commentary and all: 44.8 meg link

All the attempts edited together one after the other: 11.4 meg link