"Happy" Swearing.

Back in school, one of my teachers told me that dropping F bombs was a sign of low intelligence.  His thought (I think that it was a priest - but I'm not sure) was that when you were flooded with emotion, if you just went to one word, then you weren't thinking.  So, his suggestion was to vary what you say to express emotion.  So, for example, he suggested saying something like "George Washington!" instead of "Jesus Christ!".   I thought "Man, people would really look at you funny if you started doing that."  Obviously, I made it my mission to swear in the most creative ways possible.  (What can I say?  I'm the youngest of three - I thrive on attention.  Plus, I'm naturally a ham anyways...)

If you ever talk to some of my high school or college buddies, then they'll tell you that my random swearing really comes to a head when I'm playing video games.  Sadly, I still kept things salty during these times, but I will say that there have been some very creative uses of preexisting swear words.  However, since then, I have grown up a bit, and I have tried to clean up my cusses.  So, the following is a list of funny words that I like to use as opposed to real hardcore cusses:

• Lollygagger
• Lookie-Loo (Maybe "Lookie Lou"?)
• Silly Sod (Thank you very much, Monty Python)
• Falafel
• Nerf-Herder (yeah, I'm a Star Wars geek - does this really surprise you?)
• Dummkopf 
• Cheeky Monkey
• Wanka (a lot of British-isms...)
• Dude (but not dude, dude, or dude! - context is everything.)

You can use any of these.  Feel free to leave your best swears that I might be able to add them into my line up.

Splice ~or~ Well, There Goes 99 Minutes....

At the risk of turning this into a movie review blog (I know, I know, not a Mom-blog, not a movie review blog - what are you Diamond Shaft???), I wanted to review another movie for y'all.  Since I can't seem to get to a movie review without having a back story, here's the back story for "Splice."

A few weeks back, my buddy Skoot (you may remember him - he had one blog post a long, long time ago...) called me on my way to work.  He was really disappointed about a movie he saw last night with his mom and wife.  It was called Splice.  I had heard of it when it was out in the theater a little while back.  Basic story that I could derive from the trailer:  Sci-fi thriller where a couple of scientists create life and it turns against them.  Skoot also had a similar idea of what the film was supposed to be, but he was so disappointed in the movie that he spent the whole conversation (like 40 minutes) giving me a scene by scene break down of how bad the movie was.

After this diatribe, I said "OK dude, I'm totally seeing this.  It can't be that bad!"  Plus, Ebert loved it, Steven King loved it, and it got like 74% on Rotten Tomatoes.  So, I was totally committed to digging this movie just to mock Skoot.  Well, I was way off the mark.  This movie was *painful.*  Just pretty much from the get go things just didn't work.  At all.  Though I won't get into quite the nasty detail that Skoot gets into, I'll give you a bunch of reasons why splice sucks (warning - spoilers ahead):

• Adrien Brody was cast in the leading role.  Sadly, he seems to be going down the Cuba Gooding Jr career path.  1 - Win and Oscar.  2 - Do a string of shitty movies.  3 - Start giving hand jobs for crack money.
• There was a character in the movie that I think was the main character's manager.  But I'm not sure.  In the first scene I thought that he may have been their agent.  Then, he seemed to be their manager.  But then towards the end of the movie Sarah Polly tells him to "wait until the real scientists come in."  Which implies that he's like a hack scientist.  And not a manager.  WTF?
• All of the actors tried to be playing characters.  However, I wouldn't call them human.  It's like they were playing aliens who had a vague understanding of how humans should act.  So, right off the bat, there's not really a lot of emotional attachment.  (And may I remind you that this is Sara Freaking Polly and Adriene "I got the orchestra to stop playing cuz dammit I wasn't done with my Best Lead Actor Oscar speech yet, Dammit" Brody.  So, you'd think that some actual good acting would be there...)
• The tensions that should be there which really aren't.  There are like 5 conversations throughout the movie that are resolved with "Come on, dude.  Don't be a pussy."  
• So, Adrien Peterson's character is supposed to be this buttoned down scientist, right?  Well halfway though the movie, he decides (completely out of nowhere) that he wants to bone this creation.  This is after about 4 months of chastising Sarah Polly for not keeping her distance.  Coupla things wrong here, going from the least repugnant to the most:  1 - He's a scientist - you *really* should keep your emotions out of an experiment.  (Where did he hear that before?  Oh, that's right - from him!!)  2 - The thing that he plows is bald.  I mean, bald chicks are hella weird.  3 - The thing is about 3 weeks old - that's crazy young, even for pedophiles.  4 - He is *married*.  And not to the creature.  Adultery!!  5 - Sarah Polly has already told him that it's her daughter.  So, it's not like it's *his* daugher, but still creepy as hell. 6 - The thing is like 5 different types of critter (and a plant, oddly enough).  So, that's gotta count as bestiality.
• This critter has the most amount of Deus Ex Machina ever.  It's about to be drowned - Oh, it can breathe under water.  It's about to fall off a roof.   Hey- guess what.  It's got wings.  It's horny as hell, but Adrien Brody apparently is bad in the sack.  So, it's only other option is to rape Sarah Polly.  So, it becomes a boy.
• "I am in you."  If you don't know why that is ridiculous to the point of insanity, congratulations - you haven't wasted 99 minutes on this shitty movie.
• By the way, I just wanted to stress that Skoot watched this movie with his mom and wife.  Yep, a movie full of rape, bestiality, incest, etc.  Yay boy - it's a fun family movie.
• The critter is just a cat.  It dies no less than 4 times during the course of the movie.  But it just keeps coming.

There's an assload more.  But seriously... just avoid this one...  It's really bad.

Now, I will patiently await Ben's smack down on my review of why Splice is the best movie of the year.  (As payback for District 9 of course...)

Shane!!!

Not sure if you've ever heard of the movie, but there was a Western in 1953 called "Shane", based off a book of the same title.  No, seriously, check it out:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046303/

I know, I know, you're saying to yourself, "Phil, why they heck are you linking to a Western that's over half a century old?  You don't even like Westerns all that much!!"  Well, it's because I just watched it and there's a funny story behind *why* this particular movie was on my radar.  Before I get to the movie, lemme tell you the funny story.

So, it was the autumn of 2005 (I think, not sure) and the wife and I were on our way to one of my buddy's wedding.  At the freaking Ren Faire!!  How freaking cool is that?  It'll tell you - very freaking cool.  I was in the wedding party, so I got to wear a dublet *AND* both my wedding sword and a dagger that was given to me as a groomsman present.  *Really* cool wedding - and the reception was pretty cool too.  Didn't happen till the next day - but they had a Dragon wedding cake.  That is, not a cake with a dragon on top - a freaking dragon make of three layers a super-delicious cake!  Only bummer in the whole day was that I got into my only car accident in my entire life coming out of the Faire itself.  Luckily, the lady driving the other car was a bit too buzzed to want to call the cops, so I got off scott-free.  (I was behind her, and she stopped short, so I nudged her.  Both parties in the cars were OK and the cars themselves just exchanged a little paint.  So, I dodged a bullet there...)  But on the plus side, after the accident, we ate at Jack In The Box, which I  had never been at before and was a good as the corporate mascot would have me believe...

Anyway, I'm getting a bit side-tracked here.  The wedding took place at around noon and lasted about 30 minutes.  So, the rest of the day, we had to wander around the Faire.  Like I said before, very cool.  Anyways, we were at a show (maybe the flying Kalamazov Brothers?  Not sure - there were two jugglers to be sure) and really into it.  About halfway through the show, a guy who was middle of the front-ish section of the audience gets up and starts leaving.  So, ,the two guys on stage, with their tongues firmly in their cheeks, start trying to convince the guy to stay.  Stuff like "O, you don't like the show so far?  Don't worry it gets better!" and "Come on, I know that my partner smells, but that's no reason to stop the show dead."  Anyway, as the guy is about 3/4 of the way down the aisle, both of the performers shout "Shane!" in unison.  Joy starts laughing and I look at her with my head cocked like a dog to whom you are trying to explain basic algebra.

The conversation goes something like this:
Phil:  "I don't get it.  What's Shane?"
Joy:  "You know.. like the movie."
Phil: "....."
Joy:  "The movie Shane."
Phil:  "...uhh..."
Joy:  "You've never seen Shane?"
Phil:  "I've never even *heard* of Shane."

So, she explained that it was a cowboy movie from the 50s where a cowboy befriends a young boy.  There's an adventure, but in the end, the titular character (the cowboy) has to leave.  The young boy is left watching helplessly as he rides off into the sunset.  The only thing that the boy can do is to shout "Shane!" pleadingly as the titular (hehe - I love that word - titular!) character keeps riding.

Being the smart ass that she is, Joy picked me up a DVD of Shane for Christmas.  Haha....  That would be Christmas 2005, BTW.  Yes, it has taken me almost 5 years to watch the movie. But I have been busy.  Like, um, I've been writing a blog, which has kept me very busy....

So, that catches us up to this week, where I finally found some time to watch it.  (Not much going on when your body decides to wake you up at 4:30 on a weekday...)  All in all, a pretty blah movie, but enjoyable.  Kinda stereotypical cowboy movie - lemme give you a few examples.  The following actually happened in the movie, without the slightest bit of irony:

• Something exciting happens and a woman screams and faints.
• A bar fight breaks out and someone breaks a chair over someone else's head.
• There is a Swede in the movie and he doesn't get killed.  (How many cowboy movies have you seen where a Swede gets killed?)
• "The Law" is constantly referred to.  As in "Are you the law in the town now?"  and "The law is three days ride away."
• The boots are crazy reverbed out whenever anyone walks anywhere.
• Someone says a new bad guy just rode in to town.  The titular character says "Was he a gun slinger?"  The guy who saw him responds "I don't know."  So, Shane says "What did he look like?"  "He was skinny and had a black hat."  From this description, Shane concludes that not only is this guy a gun slinger, but he's actually Wilson, the baddest ass mofo that he's ever seen...

The one thing that stands in this film is how little the main characters care about thier son.  Here's the scene and you judge for yourself whether Child Protective Services should step in:

• A stranger shows up on the main character's property unexpected.
• Though he doesn't threaten them directly, the main characters are intimidated enough to pull a gun on him to get him to leave.
• This stranger has a gun which, when other jerks that the main characters do know are ruffians show up, scares them off.  The stranger seems to know how to handle a gun and has a bit of a shady past.
• So, the main characters invite him to stay for dinner, for some reason.
• The main characters has explicitly stated that their son it too young to handle a gun.
• The stranger teaches him how to handle a gun.
• When the mother catches the stranger doing this, the stranger proceeds to lecture her on why she's stupid for being worried about guns.
• (BTW, the stranger wasn't teaching safe gun handling; he was teaching the boy to quick draw.)
• When a gun fight is imminent the stranger convinces the father not to go (yay!) by beating the hell out of him (boo!) and when the stranger starts to lose the fight, he whips out his gun and pistol whips him, knocking him out (WTF?).
• Knowing full well that the stranger is heading to town to shoot and kill at least 2 armed men (and probably more..), the boy follows him.  The mother, seeing this, smiles as if to say "Boys will be boys!"

So, yeah, a little bit of WTF-ery comes in to play.  But overall pretty enjoyable.  Am I glad that I saved the DVD from like 4 DVD purges?  Yeah.  Will I save it at the next DVD purge?  Probably not....

I finished my first 5K!

There was running. I'm still upright. Success! That is all.

Turns out, hubby was laying even odds on my not even showing up today. I figured I had to or he'd look at me with that sad puppy face. Instead I got happy, cheery face when I finished the race. I'm really grateful that Phil and Sam came out and braved the cold rainy weather to be my cheering section.

Now on to our celebration lunch! I think that will probably be the best part.

I think that I may be turning into a redneck...

Take a look at my boots.  These are actually the boots that I wore out of my house today:

Yes, those are duct taped within an inch of their lives.  However, before I tell you what actually happened, lemme share with you a few other facts, and you tell me if you think that I'm coming closer to redneck status:

1. I worked at the state fair all night.
2. My job was mostly explaining gun safety.
3. I had a choice of what to do when the boot started falling apart, and I decided that this was the best possible solution.
4. All in all, I wasn't all that embarrassed.

Yeah....  I think that I may need to turn in my Yankee Card.  :-)

So... here's the story.  Every Autumn, the Raleigh Jaycees (the community service group of which I am part.) runs a few fundraisers.  I've fallen in love with one of them - the Haunted House, but I really dig the other - the Turkey Shoot at the State Fair.  Generally, I work the Haunted House more since they generally need more people day to day.  This year, the Haunted House was canceled since we could not find a place.  So, I picked up a few shifts at the turkey shoot.  Woo-hoo!

I worked on Wednesday night, wearing the boots above, sans duct tape since they were in mint condition.  No problem.  Tonight, Saturday, I was getting ready for the fair and I put on the boots.  I kept feeling like there was something wrong in the padding or something in the right boot until I left.  Then, I stopped for gas and noticed that there was a tiny crack in my boot.  Ah - the padding problem was that the sole was starting to come off.   No worries, it would last for one shift.  Boy was I wrong...

Since it was a Saturday night that I was going to the fair, I had to park out in the boonies.  By the time that I got to the gate, half of the sole had come off.  So, I was faced with a decision:  go back to my house and change or tough it out.  Then, I remembered that there's a role of duct tape at the turkey shoot.  So, I decided to keep going...  Long story short(er) is that I barely got the turkey shoot before 3/4 of the sole was off. So, I taped it back up.  Looked good, and held for the entire shift.  (OK, it looked lousy, but it was functional....)

Why was the left boot taped too?  It held for most of the shift.  But right at the end I noticed that just the front and back of the left sole was still attached.  And it held!  Well, it held until I started heading back to my car.  Then, the whole freaking thing fell off.  And I headed back to the turkey shoot to get the tape.

I'm still a bit confused as to what happened to the boots.  Granted, they are about 10 years old, but they just went downhill so fast.  I'm actually thinking that some of the hay at the turkey shoot got into the boots and started to dry out the glue holding things together?  I dunno.   I just know that now I need a new pair of hiking boots...

Phil's trip to court....

So, I hope that I'm not burning myself out with back to back blog posts, but I was planning on blogging about this topic and I wanted to get it on paper while it was still fresh.  However, I figured that it was bad form to just ignore the last month that I took off.  So when I started to write the intro of my previous post of "Sorry for being gone so longer", it just kinda spun outta control.  So, I made an executive decision to split the "Sorry for the lack of updates" post and the "court" post.

Anyways, today I went to court for the first time in my adult life.  Technically, I went to court once when I was a kid for when my parents were taken to court since they didn't pay some parking tickets that they got.  (The story goes that they had their car at a mechanic's garage for repairs.  Being in a city, parking space is at a premium.  When the garage ran out of room, they just started parking illegally.  When the tickets starting being issued, the mechanic just threw them away.  So the cops then sent a court date to my parents.  Since Mom was stay at home was too young to either be in school or stay by myself, I went to court with them.)**

Today, I was unjustly (read:  justly) convicted of a crime that I did not commit (read:  did commit, and kinda got off light).  So, the facts are that I was driving too fast, and I passed someone (in a turn lane) when they were going really slow and making a right turn.  This wouldn't have been a big deal, but I did it right in front of a cop.  D'oh!  I definitely deserved this ticket since I violated two of the three rules on driving that my dad gave me when he was teaching me to drive:
1 - Never be the fastest one on the road (which I clearly was).
2 - Don't be the asshole / let the asshole be right (the guy did cut in front of me and was going really slowly, but it was definitely an asshole move for me to pass in the turning lane).

(The last rule of course being if you shake more than twice then you are just having a good time.  A bit of explanation on this - we had a pee jar.)

So, I did my research on what to expect, I spoke to a few of my lawyer friends (and one that just has had a few brushes with the speeding tickets in the past), and was all prepared for my court date today.  Now, let's do a brief exercise on what happens when Phil's imagination has 6 weeks to run wild.

Here's what I had imagined to happen:
I was expecting to check in and then agree to plead guilty and then head over to the judge to make it nice and official.  Of course, this would be the epic showdown of the century, the DA would be a Jack McCoy type - I would be defending myself.  However, far from being a foolish client, I would ring of Atticus Finch, with truth and justice on my side.  Let's say that the judge would be a cross between Bowser (From Sha Na Na) and Chuck Norris.  (And while we're at it, let's throw in a pinch of Ang Lee's Incredible Hulk).  I would put the whole system on trial.  "You want the truth?  You want the Truth???  I'm out of order?  *You're* out of order!!!  The whole stinking SYSTEM is out of order!!"  The end result would be that I would get the ticket knocked down to 9 MPH over, so that my insurance wouldn't go up.  Then, I would have a nice scotch with the hottie prosecutor, who would throw herself at me.  Then, I would dramatically walk away saying "Sorry, baby doll.  I'm already spoken for", while twirling my wedding band.  Then, the honorable Chuck Hulk Na Na would come and sweep the hot prosecutor off her feet and they would proceed to have a torrid love affair, knowing that if this ever came out then they would surely have to revisit all of the cases where they were both involved.

Now, what actually happened:
So, I got up in the morning and suited up.  I was advised that if I did that, then people would probably just think that I was a lawyer.  But I figured that there were worse things to be.  I  headed over to the courthouse (which, BTW, their websites list two different addresses on two different streets, but I think that this was that the building is wide enough to span the whole block.. but I didn't check...).  First thing was that I had to go through a metal detector.  I guess that makes sense, but just kinda threw me off.  Then, I wandered around a bit until I found courtroom 1A, which is where I was told to go.    There were a few lines, but not a lot of people, so I picked one and hoped for the best.  Good news is that I chose properly.

When I'm called up, they ask my name, which I give.  Then I start handing them my official driving record, plus my ID and start to ask if we can get this ticket knocked down.  The lady looks up and smirks a little, and says that I should actually talk to a District Attorney about that.  I said "Oh, where do I do that?"  She pointed at a line with a sign over it that said "DA Line".  That made sense so I thanked her and headed over to that line.

(Funny side note... OK *I* think that it's funny, but that may or may not mean much...  When I had initially saw the sign, I read it as "da line."  As in - "Where should I go?"  "Go over there and stand in da line."  Putting periods after each letter may have made it easier to read, like so:  "D.A. Line.")

Anyway, I  head over to the line and I wait to see a kid, who's probably 5 years my junior, looking throughly bored.  He asks what I want to do about it, and I say that I'll pay it, but can we knock it down a bit.  Without thinking, he says "Sure.  No problem." and knocks it down to 5 MPH over the limit.  Even better, think I.  Though I still haven't handed my ID or my official driving record to anyone (I only mention this since it's clean and I paid $11 for it).  He makes a note and asks me to wait in a line around the corner.

So, I head over to the line and see that it's the place to pay tickets and not actually a courtroom. O well, I guess that the $11 (for the official driving report) is well wasted, but hey no problems, I got what I wanted.  So I'm waiting in the line and eventually it's my turn.  The lady behind the counter looks at me and asks what I'm here for.  I tell her to pay a ticket.  She looks at a piece of paper thoroughly confused and says "Margaret?  Are you Margaret?"  I tell her no, and she says that she doesn't have the paperwork, so I should go back to the DA to see where it is.

I head back and start to poke around, but the DA that I talked with like 2 minutes ago was not there.  So, I turn around and he's *right* there behind me.  He asks if there is a problem and I tell him that the lady doesn't have my paperwork.  He asks who he talked with.  Awkwardly, I say that it was him.  (You've gotta remember, I kinda stick out.  I'm 6'4", 230, full beard, and in a suit - BTW the advice that I got was pretty sound - pretty much the only ones there wearing ties were official types.)  So, he fiddles around for a few minutes, finds the paperwork and we head back to the pay line.

I wait until I get to the head of the line and this time, I actually pay.  So, all is good.  And thus ends my very boring trip to pay my speeding ticket.

A few things that I learned from this experience:
1 - Dad was right.  Don't be an asshole driver.  (Especially true when you are entering into a speed trap.)
2 - The court is ridiculously efficient.  Including walking to and from the parking deck, the whole experience took 34 minutes.  How do I know it was 34 minutes?
3 - I parked in a parking deck since I figured that it would be a little time.  The deck cost a buck every half hour, rounded up.  So, I just barely was pushed to the second half hour.  (And if I hadn't had to go back to get the paperwork squared - I would have made it!  Damn.)
4 - The court is really serious about proper attire inside.  On the courtroom door, there are no less than three signs explaining no hats, you have to tuck in your shirt, etc.
5 - No, I mean really serious.  There is an armed police officer, whose job seemed to be almost exclusively to tell people that if they didn't tuck their shirt in, then they would be held in contempt.
6 - The difference between a 14 MPH over ticket and a 5 MPH ticket is about $20.
7 - That doesn't really matter since the court costs pretty much screw you.  After I paid, there was an itemized breakdown of the court costs.  I glanced briefly and from what I remember, it read something along the lines of:
Screw you Cost:  $23
Piss Off Fee:  $36
Thank you, sir may I have another surcharge:  $17
Yes, of course you can:   $53
8 - As soon as you get a ticket, you will get flooded get mail from lawyers.  Holy cow, there was a lot of it.  Granted, my infraction was pretty slight, but I can't figure out exactly what a lawyer (who would have essentially doubled (or more) my costs) would have done differently.

All in all, not a bad experience.  Painful enough that will definitely discourage me from speeding any time soon, but not so painful as to piss me off for being too excessive.

**This is the official story that my parents told the very young child version of me.  I'm assuming that the real, real story is that my parents were running a meth lab/white slavery ring from our basement.

A little bit meta (No, Phil hasn't gone on sabbatical.)

Well, shiza!  Looks like I fell straight into a a nasty case of new-blogitis.  You know what I'm talking about. A dude gets a new blog, gets all excited and throws out a bunch of posts all at once and then all of the sudden te updates just stop for like a month.   Then, that dude is all like "I'm so sorry, I've been super busy, I'll do better, blah blah blah..."

Well, I can't exactly say that I've been all the busy - i'm just a lazy, lazy man.  However, I will try to update more frequently.  I'm doing this for two reasons:
1 - So that Ben and I will stop having this conversation:
Ben:  "So, is the blog dead yet?"
Phil:  "Fuck you."
Ben:  "Cuz you know, it would be ironic since I was the last update."
Phil::  "Fuck you."
2 - Actually, you know what?  That's really the only reason I want to update more.  Not so much to give back to the world, or even to have the same repetitive, expletive-laden conversation.  Mostly, I just want to spite Ben.

So, there you go.  I will beat back my laziness with spite.  And if that isn't the American way, then I just don't know why I even watch Fox News.

PS - I don't foresee my updates coming that much more frequently in the coming months.  Work is promising to be nasty until Thanksgiving and I'm the commissioner of a Fantasy Football league.  I do a write up once a week or so, and that takes a good deal of my creativity. (I mean really.  How many different ways can I bitch about random picks doing random things?)
PPS - Don't let that stop you from keeping your eyes there though!  The quantity may be going down, but that just means that the quality is going way up!!

cheap ploys

i refuse to fall into phil's trap...trying to get me to post by inciting me....

oh.

damnit.

well now that i'm here, i just want to note that my weekend was also awesome...why? Because i didn't get up before 10am either day, did not attend any performances aimed at small children, and didn't spend any time trying to direct 2 year old penises into porcelain bowls. All in all a very successful weekend. Though i didn't get to beat up any 2 year olds either, so i guess you've got me on that..

(and for when my future employers find this on google, yes i'm kidding about the beating up 2 year olds part. by which i mean kidding about it being a good thing, not kidding about not having done it. i haven't. honest. unless you pay extra for that.)

I realize this post isn't nearly as long or interesting as phil's, so please spend the next 5 minutes pretending to read what i haven't bothered to write below, and chuckling to yourself occasionally. thanks.

One heckuva weekend!

OK so I promised not to make this a mom-blog (OK Dad-blog) right outta the gate.  But this weekend has been such a whirlwind that I've decided to bend this rule a bit.  (Plus with the lack of updates to the blog, I find myself looking for things to keep the the readership appeased.  Readership is a two handed bitch-goddess. She gives with one hand with the higher self-esteem that comes with a complement from a good blog post and takes with the other - always demanding more more more!!)  So, I'll say this:  This is not a blog for Ben.  (Though if there were more updates recently, perhaps, I wouldn't have to go the easy route and blog about my fantastic kid.  I'm just sayin' Mr. Contributor....)

Now that Ben's gone, let's have a frank discussion about him behind his back.  That guy is a jerk.  A real knee biter.  Man, that felt so good that I may need to get a little more off my chest later in the blog.  Anyway, this weekend....

So, this last week, I decided to have a play date with some of Sam's friends from school.  Since it was going to be crazy hot and I am crazy cheap, I decided just to have a sprinkler party in our back yard.  Only one of his friends RSVPed, so it was going to be a really nice and small gathering.  Good news is that we should be able to get through this on the cheap.  Bad news is that we had to spend pretty much every spare moment cleaning to get the house ready.  (We kinda let it go in the past few months.)

Fast forward to Saturday morning.  Everything was ready; house was cleaned, Sam was super-stoked, I even got a new sprinkler cuz I thought that my old sprinkler was dying.  (Turns out that I just needed to clean it out with the tool that comes with every sprinkler that I just didn't know was there.  O well - two sprinklers!  you know that it was going to be a good party there.)  So, I just changed Sam upstairs and he was happily started butt-scooting down the stairs himself.  (He's been very good about the stairs for about 8 months, so I've been getting more and more lax while watching him go down.)  So, I look at him playing about half way down the stairs with one of his toys and he is bending down to play with the toy.  I'm guessing that everyone can guess where this is going.  About 3 seconds later he is all way way down the stairs on his face.  No serious injury, but plenty of tears and it looks like he's got a bloody lip.  We get his a snack (since it was snack time) and he's still crying.  Two minutes later, his friend shows up and all of the tears go away. I think that we need to have more play dates with his friend.

Lemme say that this play date was great!  The kids had an absolute blast with the sprinklers.  Then, I put a hose nossle on and they had a hoot shooting each other, the grass, and me with the water. They shared fantastically.  Then, it was on to hot dogs at lunch.  Again, went really well.  Each of the kids had two (2!!) hotdogs, and a good selection of fruit without too much fuss.  Sadly, we had to cut it off after lunch since it was nap time.  I'm not sure about his friend, but Sam slept about as well as I have seen this year.  Woot! 

Rest of the day was pretty uneventful, outside of a little potty training.  After Sam went down for bed that night, I watched "Better off Dead" for the first time straight through.  Since I  had Comedy Central for the past 15 years, I  had naturally seen parts here and there, but this was the first time straight through.  I didn't realize just how 80s that movie was.  But in a good way.  (Also, side note.  I caught a bit of Predator on Spike the other night.  *MAN* that was very 80s too.  Special effects, dialog, everything.  Never really hit me before just how dated that movie was. Still a great movie, But all they needed as a John Hughes cameo for me to have an 80s-gasm right then and there.)

And since we have a lull in the story time, let's talk about Ben again.  I mean, really?  Your initials spell out a file extension on an OS that you don't even like?  Nerd!  *AND* you wear glasses sometimes and contacts other times?  Make up your mind, sir.  We're at war...

And now we come to Sunday...  Now, *this* was a long day.  Started out with Sam staying quiet until about 7:45, so we got to sleep in a bit.  Then, I decided to really get in good with the potty training that morning.  I spent about 2 hours trying to get him to pee on the potty, but he wasn't having any of it....  I was getting more and more frustrated and then he said that he just wanted to wear a diaper.  Now, all of the books say to let them guide the process, so that's cool, except that I feel like I wasted the morning.  So, I change him into the diaper and excuse myself to cool out a little.

When I come back, Sam notices me, drops his markers than he's coloring with, shouts "Daddy!" and comes running at me.  This isn't all that uncommon and not cause for alarm.  Except this time, I am standing right next to the corner of the ottoman.  And Sam is so excited that he runs up, jumps into the legs and then just falls to the floor.  In the process, he knocks his cheek into the corner of the ottoman and now has a really nice shiner.  Ugh... I'm just hoping that CPS isn't called tomorrow when he goes to school.

So, we get Sam an early lunch and try to do an early nap since we're going to see the Wiggles in concert at 4 (and sometimes Sam will sleep right past 4).  He does a great job with lunch, but sadly really isn't interested in napping until about 2 or so.  Namely, about an hour before we need to leave...  So, it turned out to be a short nap that I  had to wake him from (it took about a minute of rubbing his back to wake him...) and he was all sleepy going into the Wiggles.  But the good news is that he was super-excited to be there and had a great time.

Now, let me say this...  The Wiggles were freaking amazing.  They were on-stage, high energy for a little over 90 minutes.  (Obviously, they changed out actors so everyone would have a rest throughout.)  But they are professionals, so what's the big deal?  Three things:
1 - They had a show earlier in the day.
2 - They had just come from Atlanta last night (where they also presumably had two shows in the same day).
3 - Most of the Wiggles proper are over 50.

Lemme 'splain about that last point.  One of the Wiggles, Jeff, is 57 years old. He on stage hanging on monkey bars upside down, climbing human pyramids, doing handstands, and just having a great time doing it.  Also, at one point, he pulled up his pant legs to do some silly thing with a hula hoop.  All that I can say is that dude's got stronger legs at 57, than I  have ever had.  It's like that episode of Scrubs where Kelso shows off his legs. 

And speaking of Scrubs, don't take my word for it that the Wiggles are Awesome.  Take Dr. Cox's.  For us, they only opened with Big Red Car.  They closed with "Hot Potato".  (Though, of course, they pronounced it "Po -TAH - to."  Aussies!)

And one other fun story about the concert.  On the ticket, Joy noticed that it said something along the lines of the cast can be changed out without notice.  We giggled.  I mean it's not like you can really replace one of the Wiggles.  They are kinda playing themselves.  (OK, you can't do that *again*.  Sam Wiggle replaced Greg Wiggle a few years ago due to medical problems.)  Sure enough, 2 minutes to curtain, an announcement goes out that Ringo Zawergfasdfsiewnce was going to be filling in for Murray Wiggle.  Son of a ....  The one Wiggle that Sam always goes on an on about is Murray.  Dammit.  O well.   The cool thing is that the Wiggles acknowledged that Ringo was different and kinda played at it a bit.  They started off with handstands and Ringo's timing wasn't quite right, as he was the last one to break the handstand by like 5 seconds.  So, after the song, Greg (who was sporting a shaved head look) comes over to him and says "Ringo, I know that it's your first day on the job, but you can't just hold the handstand longer than the guys who have been doing this for 20  years." 

All in all, *great* experience.  Well, outside of the whole $30 in "convenience" fees.  Freaking Ticketmaster BS.  I'd definitely recommend the live Wiggles show to anyone.  Well, anyone with kids.  But not creeps.  Creeps like Ben.  To whom I would steadfastly *not* recommend The Wiggles.  (Either live or on DVD...)

So, though this weekend was filled with a few downs, the ups definitely balanced them out.  Now, on to Monday!

New Dell Inspiron

Long time readers of the blog (read: like a month) know that a few weeks back the house got smacked with an electrical surge and knocked out a bunch of my electronics.  TV should be back online early this week and the router's been replaced.  The only thing remaining was the computer.  It was *probably* OK, but the fan was sounding a bit messed up.  So, it could have been a processor fan, the power source fan, the entire power souce, or a blown heat dector.  Since this computer was a cheapo desktop that I bought about 5 years ago, I figured that now would be a good time to do an upgrade.  The fact that this weekend was tax free weekend sealed the deal.

So, I headed over to best buy on Saturday night.  Apparentely *everyone* else in the greater Raleigh area did too.  They had the computer secrion fortified and you had to wait in line so that you could get an employee one on one.  Not exactly what I was looking for, but whatever.  Turns out it was kinda worth the wait.  I defeinitely appreciated the sales guy narrowing it down and then being able to answer a few technical questions.  (Sadly, still wasn't able to open the machine, but I wouldn't have been able to do that on my own anyways.)

So, tonight, I unboxed it just to take a look.  Now, as a heads up, this is the third desktop that I've owned, and they've all been Dells.  So I've got a bit of basline.  (I wasn't actually even trying to necessarily to buy a Dell... just kinda happened into it.)

So, here's the goods:
4 RAM slots on the motherboard (and they eacch have a port soldered in - for some freaking reason, my last Dell had 4 slots on the board, but only two ports soldered in - WTF?)
Can go up to 8 GB of RAM.
DVD RW Drive.
An Extra 5.25" drive.
Comes with extra ports on the motherboard (PCI, PCI Express, and PCI Express 16x)
Front, Side, And Rear Speaker outputs..  (I'm certainly not going to use them, but I guess that they are nice to have...)
Integrated Card Reader.

And the bad:
It comes with 4 1 GB chips of RAM.  I would have perferred two 2 GB, but we takes what we can gets.)
No more PS2 ports  Everything's USB these days...
The cover is screwed on.  (Damn, Dell, you guys used to do that in the 90s.  I thought that you had gotten past this - just a level would do fine...)
Only 1 Extra PCI port.

So, all in all ... a pretty good deal.  Now all that I have to do is get used to freaking Windows 7.  Which apparently was created by a bunch of jackasses, if their commmercials are to be beleived.

OK...  I just reread this post and it's high on the geek and not so much on the funny.  So, to correct this situation, lemme slip you one of my favorite jokes of all time.  (OF ALL TIME)  Ahem:

How do titillate an ocelote?
You oscillate its tit a lot.

OF ALL TIME.

Another College Joke? Isn't this getting a bit derivative?

Oh man..I set this post up with a good math pun, but I can't really think of how to play off "derivative".  O well, that's what the comments are for, I reckon.  Anyway, another college joke (well, not quite so much a joke as an insight in to who I am and what I do).

There were two college students, sharing a dorm room.  The first was basket-weaving major and the second a computer science major.  One fine day, in the wee hours of the morn, just before sunrise, they meet each other just getting back to the room.
 "Man, I was at a great party today.  Whole lot of fun.  Got *wasted*!  How about you?" asks the basket-weaving student.
"No, party for me, man.  I was at the lab all night." replies the comp sci major.
"What?  That sucks!  It's a Saturday night!"  says the basket weaver.
"Oh... it's not that bad... all of the comp sci students were there."
"How can you say it's not that bad?  That sounds horrible."
"Actually, I'm pretty happy with the night."
"What?  You've been up all night doing homework.  How can you be so positive?"
"Because it feels so good when it's done," says the comp sci major as he collapses into bed.

So, like I said... not the funniest joke in the world.  However, I do remember one of my buddies from college telling me it back in college and getting a kick out of it.  But that's definitely how I find myself operating these days.  Generally, I hate doing something while I'm doing it, but when it's done yay rah!  (That one there is for you, Skoot.)

Lemme give you an example.  Last week, a really nasty thunderstorm rolled through.  Hit so hard that I shot straight up in bed, which I haven't done since high school.  (I'm a pretty deep sleeper; just ask my college roommates, I actually slept through a fire drill once...  Ooops.)  So, the storm was really bad.  In the morning, all networking was out, phone didn't work (we have Vonage), my desktop was out of commission, and the TV kept rebooting.  (The TV that we had just hooked up like a week and a half prior?  That's the one!)

So, I had to spend the *entire* weekend getting things back up and running.  The networking was a pain in the ass, but finally we got out one the other end with a few new pieces of hardware to replace things that were blown out, a newer faster streamlined wireless network, and maybe a few repairs on the TV.  All in all, not too bad.  However, Friday - Saturday - Sunday were all pretty much crap.  (Just take a look at my FB update on Friday.  It was full of bad juju.)  However, come Monday morning, where all of my issues were pretty much at an end (save the TV, but we've got a plan for that), I'm happy as a cucumber.

So, while the process sucks, it feels so good when it's done.  And I wouldn't have it any other way...

College Joke and a running tale...

Here's a joke that I heard in college (though it is humorous, I should note that this is not CollegeHumor.com - my lawyers told me to say that):

A physicist, a biologist, and a mathematician are sitting outside and see two people enter a house.  A little while later, three people come out.  
The physicist says "Eh, the initial measurement was off."
The Biologist says "My God!  They must be reproducing!"
The Mathematician says "Well, if one more person goes in, then there won't be anyone in the house."

I told you that story to tell you this story.

So, I've been doing a bit of running over the last month or so.  In my mind, I had two options:  1 - Get up crazy early so that I can be back and showered by the time the youngin wakes up so that I help with the morning duties.  OR 2 - Wait until the youngin goes to sleep, and then go out.  The problem is the latter option is that by the time we get the youngin to sleep, I am pretty much wiped out.  So, I'd never actually go running.  Given this choice, there wasn't a choice.  I've been getting up at 5 and out the door by 5:10.  Eesh.

So, needless to say, there's not a lot of people on the streets.  When I first started, I generally only passed one old guy and maybe another guy with a dog.  I don't think that the former was actually exercising.  I think that he had a bad case of insomnia and just didn't have anything else to do.  :-)

Anyway, about a week in, I was running along thinking "Man, I wish that there were other people running.  It would be nice to see some faces every morning."  Then I happened to look down and see a coiled snake that had apparently just noticed me as well.  Well, needless to say I jumped into the air with a "Gah!!" and kept going.  Literally like 30 seconds later, I was passed by two somewhat amused ladies.  (I didn't hear them coming up from behind since I was wearing earphones.  Oh, Maynard - you inspire me!)  I always do find a way to make a good first impression.   Over the next week I saw the ladies pretty much every time that I was out.

Then, about two weeks later, I had noticed that there was another lady.  I thought "OK, good.  That'll be some smiling(ish) faces that I can see every day."  Then, I went on about a week hiatus.

Yesterday, I came back from hiatus (ouch - remind me not to take breaks in the future), but no ladies.  O well.  And today, I got all the way out to my far point, no sign of the ladies.  Then, when I turned around, I saw them bearing down the hill at me.  Ever see "The Warriors"?  Cuz it felt like that.  There were freaking 5 of them in the group now.  As the biologist in the above joke said "My God!  They must be reproducing!"

So, now if I can use my Mathematics degree, I can extrapolate that the ladies running group membership is growing on an exponential curve.  By the end of the year, their population will hit well over 1,000.  Then, we are all doomed.

(PS - Yes, I did think of the old joke about the ladies' running group.  No, I didn't think that it was appropriate to include it in the blog.)

The Weird Tour Chicago – A Cautionary Tale

As the name implies, if you take this tour, you should expect it to be weird, right? I guess everyone’s definition of “weird” is different. The description of the tour makes it sound like it will be cool – or at least so lame it might be cool – “Ghosts, Gangsters, and Ghouls of the Windy City”. As it turns out, I feel ripped off that I spent three hours of my life on this. If you read this, you’ll get to feel ripped off that you spent a few minutes of your time reading about this waste of my afternoon. You’re welcome!

The tour left from the Hard Rock Café in downtown Chicago at 3PM. This was probably our first mistake – doing this tour during the day. It might have sucked less at night…drunk…maybe… We arrive and find that our transportation is a black “short bus” with no air conditioning. It’s a 90+ degree day, but we bought some water and were still determined to have a good time. All six of us pile into the back of the bus and wait for the torture…er…”tour” to begin.

Our “tour guide”, for lack of a better title, is a self-proclaimed Professional Ghost Hunter though she’s never been paid. I bite my tongue and do not ask her if she understands what “professional” means. As the volunteer ghost hunting business isn’t very lucrative (go figure) Erica is also a sports reporter/production company owner. She claims that she did production work on The Dark Knight, but I’m guessing she’s also an occasional resident of one of the local Chicago asylums.

Generally on a tour, you travel about a city seeing sights and learning interesting facts about said sights. Our first stop was promising – the site of the Eastland disaster where hundreds of people died when the boat tipped over due to shoddy engineering. Whoops. We listened to her tales about ghosts supposedly seen and heard there with polite interest. One of the girls I was travelling with had to point out to Erica that we happened to be there on the anniversary of the disaster. Seems to be something an informed tour guide would have been prepared for, doesn’t it? We should have left the tour right then, but no, we gave her the benefit of the doubt and climbed back onto the bus.

Our next stop - the last semi-legitimate stop - was the Congress Hotel. Most tours probably would’ve concentrated on the beautiful, ornate Tiffany glass mosaics covering large swaths of the ceiling. Not our tour! No, we go to a wall with framed pictures of ballrooms to hear about the ghosts that stalk their dance floors. Do we go upstairs to visit the ballrooms? NO! We just look at the pictures and listen to her rambling stories. For 45 minutes. Standing. Awesome. Once again, we foolishly climb back onto the bus.

We stop at a red light and two guys on the tour hop off the bus and don’t look back. We come to envy them.

The next three stops are in front of alleys where she claims buildings used to be but clearly aren’t there anymore. She doesn’t even have pictures of this stuff, so we’re pretty sure she made it all up. We would’ve seen a fourth thing that wasn’t there anymore but our brilliant guide didn’t realize that a huge section of the city was blocked off for a festival. So while we’re driving to the next location she tells us about what we would have seen if we’d gone there. Considering that what we were supposed to visit wasn’t there anymore, she had a lot to say. Think about that for a minute.

At this point, 3 hours into the tour, we turn down yet another alley. This time one of my friends, a local, leans over and says, ‘This is a very bad part of town.”. I took a look around and realized that she was right. Even my naïve eyes could see we were driving between the buildings of a very prosperous chop shop. Erica, ever-savvy of her surroundings, begins talking loudly about how this is clearly a “very legitimate car repair business” and we notice the workers quit what they’re doing and come to the doors to watch us. Yes, that’s right – since it’s so hot the windows are open. At this point I get a text from across the bus.

Meredith: Is this tour ever going to be over?

Me: We’re going to die here. We’re never getting off this tour.

I found out later that Meredith had sent a text to her husband with the name of the tour and told him to call 911 if he didn’t hear from her in the next hour.

Erica has us all get off the bus in the scary alley to see if we “feel any paranormal activity” and to take pictures since “we might catch a shadow figure or a ghost”. All that was there to take pictures of, without considering the chop shop which we were all smart enough to try not to look at, was part of a fence and a bunch of trash including some scary looking needles. My guess is a homeless drug addict was living there. Fantastic. To the credit of the workers, they just watched us and didn’t attack. We were able to get back on the bus.

As soon as we reached a safer section of town, we asked them to pull over so we could get off the bus. Erica actually had the nerve to ask us for a tip for the driver! It’s bad enough they took $30 from each of us for this travesty of a tour, but asking for a tip seemed a bit over the top. We were happy to be alive though, so we tipped him anyway.

We assume, since we don’t have any evidence to the contrary, that the other 7 people remaining on the bus were taken somewhere and murdered so that Erica can tell stories about seeing their ghosts to her next tour. We hope their souls find peace wherever they roam now.

Which reminds me about one of the best parts of Erica’s story. Do you know of the TV show “Ghost Hunters”? She claims that they approached her to be on that show but when she read the contract one of the provisions was that she sign up for falsifying evidence and she had too much integrity for that. Seriously, that’s what she said.

Anyway, if you actually read this far, I am sorry that my first post is so bad. :-) Hopefully I’ll do better on the next one!

Why District 9 Rules! (Spoilers)

(For all of my loyal readers, this post is a cheeky response to Ben's latest post. I am so hoping to create an old-school rap-battle style battle here, wherein one person posts something and another person writes a blog post in response and everyone's creative juices get flowing.  For my younger readers, back in the day rap bands used to write songs to dis each other.  It was delightful.

EDITOR'S NOTE:  Having reread this previous paragraph, I realize now how very geeky and white I am....)

I watch District 9 like six months ago.  So, time may be kind to my review, but here is why I really dug the movie (and I did 4 star it on Netflix, so I must have really enjoyed it at the time). 

Before we get into the specifics, there are two things that everyone should know.  (And Ben is right - they aren't blatantly said in the film, but I did some digging around afterwords to figure some stuff out.)
1 - The writer/director (Neil Blomkamp) grew up in South Africa during Apartheid.  (He emigrated to Canada when he was 18.)  This movie was inspired by his childhood.
2 -  Some types of insect colonies have a "drone" type of citizen and a "queen" type of citizen.  These types of colonies are loosely what the prawns are based on.

So, with that in mind, away we go!   Here's why the movie was so awesome:

We aren't told much about the aliens and whatnot.  That's definitely by design.  If we knew too much about them, it would take away some of the mystery.  Plus, in the beginning of the movie, we are seeing things through Wilkus's eyes.  So, we're really meant to see them as more of a pain in the ass than anything else.  Definitely not supposed to be there.  We don't know why they are there and that's that.  (This is a parallel to Apartheid.   Whites didn't care why the blacks were there, they just knew that they were a pain in the ass.)

I really dig that the ship broke and we're not really given a reason why.  I work in technology and shit just stops working.  Sure, if you've got a specialist, he can start to debug it, but if all you've got are drones, then you're pretty much SOL.

And speaking of drones, it's probably worth mentioning that all of the prawns that we see are drones.  There is no ruling class or "queens" around.  The implication is that the prawns were essentially slaves (there was a shot when humans first boarded the ship to see what was there and they were all huddled together in a dark room - not exactly lush conditions).  So, to me, the implication is that there was some ruling class and that for some reason they died.  Infection?  Infighting?  Dunno and I don't really think that it matters.  The important thing is that the slaves were the only ones left and the ones who were liberated.

But Phil, wouldn't that mean that the ship would crash?  No so!  I figured that the ship was on auto pilot.   So, when everyone died, it just went to where it was supposed to go and stop.

The ship broke down since it was just hanging in the atmosphere for 20  years without any maintenance.  I think that it was lucky that the command module was the only thing to fall off.  And yeah, they may have been more fluid on the ship, but the main prawn couldn't exactly get to it (what with the main ship floating about 200 yards in the air...) without raising suspicion.  So, he needed to slowly build up enough to get himself home.

The one prawn that seemed to have a head about him seems to have bugged a bunch of people.  With some bugs, when the queen of a colony dies, someone will step up to be the leader.  (Kinda like how some reptiles have the ability to change genders when there aren't enough of one gender.)  So, I think that this one have something snap inside of him and he was developing into a "queen" class.  He probably could have organized other prawns, but again, he didn't want to raise suspicion until he was ready to make his move.  Plus, prawns were all just drones.  Unless he was able to control them, they would just fuck everything up anyways.  (The less people know a secret, the better.)

As for the prawn behaviour... you have to remember that they really were just stupid.  Unless a leader came along, they were pretty brainless.  The cat food was essentially their crack.  They didn't care about the weapons, they just wanted the food cuz it tasted good.  (Apparently, this was actually something that happened in South Africa too..)  And as for collecting the fluid?  They didn't know what it was or what it could be used for...

One point that I can't really address from Ben's post is why the main character knocked out his prawn friend.  I can't remember that happening.  But maybe it was a heat of the moment thing?  Or maybe the screen writer just needed another reel.  :-)

All in all, I really dug this movie.  One thing to note is that it was actually pretty ballsy to make the prawns look like they do.  Generally, if a director wants the audience to sympathize with an alien, the idea is to make them look really human.  (Take a look at someone who knows what they are talking about when reviewing Avatar:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJarz7BYnHA#t=6m50s )However, this movie goes the other route and it works wonderfully (at least for me...).

why district 9 sucked (spoilers)

Well i finally got around to watching District 9 (along with about 6 other movies since friday, thanks to the aforementioned-by-phil netflix/roku combination, which leaves me with a mere 240 movies in my streaming+dvd queues).

I realize i'm a contrarian (but not completely alone, i'd like to point out) in saying this, but... what the fuck?

I got the impression that the writer said "i've got sci-fi for the fan boys, and a controversial/moral/intellectual topic for the bourgeois.. i don't need to worry about having a reasonable/sensible plot!" And apparently it worked. Yeah, those who know me know that i "suck the fun out of things" by asking too many questions, and i understand that with some movies the whole purpose of the movie is to force you to think about the possibilities, come up with theories, discuss with friends, etc..... I loved donnie darko and it didn't explain shit.

but the questions in this movie were much more mundane, but so pervasive that it utterly destroyed my ability to care about the plot of the movie because i was so fixated on the fact that how the situation had come about was not being justified to me.

Questions without answers, mainly because if they were answered the whole need for the conflict wouldn't exist:

Why did the ship come to earth?

Why was the ship broken? Did it need more "fluid" or was that just the command module? If it needed more fluid, why didn't they make some on the ship (presumably way easier than spending 20 years doing it on earth!)

Why did the "command module" just "fall off"?

Why did only one alien in the entire fucking population know about this magical command module?

Why wasn't he able to organize a couple additional aliens to collect more of the special fluid, when they were turning over their weapons to the humans left and right? Didn't anyone else want to go back to the mothership?

Why did the other aliens trade giant battlesuits capable of fighting off an entire small army (particular in the hands of someone more capable than our bumbling, human protagonist) for 100 cans of cat food instead of using it to better their situation?

Who were the aliens? (prisoners? colonists? military? cruise ship passengers?)

Why was the protagonist so retarded as to knock out the one guy who knew how to get him back to the mothership and cure his condition? did he really think he'd be able to do that by himself? Oh but luckily he has a change of heart......eventually, after creating another unnecessary crisis.


If the writer couldn't be bothered to provide an actual back story to justify his setup, then i'm not willing to buy into his "brilliant" recreation of a historical human rights atrocity in an "innovative" scifi environment. Movies aren't just cute ideas, they've got to hang together if you want your audience to be able to follow you on your journey.

Netflix: Streaming by Thine Name!

I gotta say that I freaking love Netflix.  Unlimited rentals for a fixed monthly rate?  Absolutely wonderful!  (Plus, I only need to watch like two movies in a month to be equal with the amount spent for the same rentals from Blockbuster.)  And the selection!  There have only been two movies that I wanted to see that I couldn't get on DVD when I wanted to.  ("Cannibal!  The Musical!" and "Blackula", if you are wondering.)  Really the only limiting factor is that there is a 3-4 day turn around between sending back a disk and getting a new one in the mail.  And that problem has been fixed!

Last year (maybe two years ago?), Netflix started streaming movies over the internet. I didn't really dig that since I'm not a fan of watching movies in front of my computer.  I just want to watch my movies on a TV, like Edison intended.  Fast forward a few months and alternatives start to pop up to allow for watching streamed movies on your TV.  Microsoft was the first to offer something on the XBox.  Then, Roku came out with a little box that hooked up to your TV.  Finally Playstation got an app to mimic the XBox.  (Of course the Wii didn't do it right out of the gate...)

So, since the wife and I are both bit movie nerds, I picked up a Roku box for her for Christmas.  I thought "Man, this is a great gift!  I freaking *rule*."  And here, dear readers, is where my luck starts to come in to play.  Literally less than a fortnight later, Nintendo announces functionality to stream Netflix (for free).  Arg!  O well, at least we have options now.

Then, my father in law goes out and gets the craziest awesome  TV that I have ever come close to owning.  (Thanks for that, BTW - it's freaking awesome!)  Amongst the plethora of features is Netflix Streaming built in.  So, this afternoon, I  actually had 3 devices capable of streaming Netflix hooked up to one TV.  What's a guy to do?

Well, I'll tell you what I'm doing. I moved the Roku upstairs and now we have streaming to both of the TVs in the house.  And all is good again.  Especially since I have recently discovered "Arrested Development" and it's on the streaming side.  Viva la stream!

Long overdue rant part 2: The X-Files

Moving onto the 90's, my television obsession of choice was The X-Files. And I mean obsession. I had every episode on VHS (taped off the the TV as it first ran). I even collected the TV Guide adds in the beginning. I still remember that it premiered on September 10th, 1993 and that I wasn't at home at the time, but was camping with my parents and watched it both at the campground and later on the tape I had set at home.
On top of it being really good television that spoke to my sci-fi obsession without being self-parody (well, until they intentionally self-parodied, which in and of itself was hilarious) I was insanely attracted to Gillian Anderson (by 1995, what man wasn't?). It helped that this show started at a time in my life of great change (I started dating my first girlfriend that October). It also ended the spring before I ended my first engagement. So I followed it from Sophomore year of high school all the way through my first two years of working in the "real" world.
The X-Files was broken down into three types of episodes: Conspiracy arc, monster of the week, and later the "comedy" episodes (which, with the exception of the "Dreamland" two part episode were all monster of the week).
The seasons themselves, in my horribly biased opinion, can also be separated.
Season 1 was the "introduction" which basically introduced us to the main characters, gave Chris Carter time to gain some traction, and showed us the beginning of the conspiracy.
Season 2 was shifted to accommodate both the corner they wrote themselves into in season 1 (they shut down the x-files division in the season finale due to the uncertainty of season 2, at least it would have had closure) and Gillian Anderson's pregnancy. This led to the creation of the "Scully is abducted" sub-plot which really gave birth to the overall conspiracy ARC and gave the show its real direction. Keep that in mind for later.
Seasons three through five were basically the high point of the show - the conspiracy got deeper, the Darin Morgan episodes were in here, and the show gained so much popularity that Fox agreed to make a movie.
Here is where the problem starts - Chris Carter wants to turn the show into a movie franchise, but Fox isn't ready to let go of its sure-fire television success so they agree to continue the contract through season seven.
Several things happen which make me think things would be wildly different if Carter got his way:
They closed The X-Files and burned down the office in the Season Five finale.
For the first time since Season 1there was no "To Be Continued" at the end of the season finale
The movie itself, which of course I loved because it was, well, The X-Files, was a pretty good movie, felt like a movie, but there were definitely episodes that were better. If this, however, were the first movie in a SERIES OF MOVIES, I could see X-Files, Part 2 being something similar to X-Men 2 and The Dark Knight in its ability to expand on the first movie. There was even a part of the movie edited out and re-added on the video version that had The Well-Manicured Man (played by John Neville) basically explained why Mulder's sister was kidnapped and what happened to her (or her clone). Carter originally edited this out because he knew he was going back to series (the movie was filmed before the decision was made to have a season 6) and he would have and need more time to explain this.
Seasons six and seven were the "LA" years. Duchovny started getting big for his britches and decided he wanted to start dictating and be closer to his wife in LA, so he basically strong-armed getting the show moved from Vancouver for shooting to LA. The first scene of the show it was obvious they were filming somewhere else.
Don't get me wrong, there are some fantastic season six and seven episodes (two that stand out are "Monday" from season six which very subtly referenced an earlier episode without making you realize it, and the episode from season seven with the Genie).
However, the team realized they needed to do something different, so they decided to basically explain the whole conspiracy, kill it off, then change it. When they did this the first time it worked brilliantly. I even liked that they tried to turn Mulder into a "Christ-like" figure, mainly because there have always been some religious undertones in the show (personified at times by the Scully character). They also left some things up to you to decide, not clearly explaining why Mulder becomes psychic but giving you pieces to draw your own conclusion.
This led to Season seven, which was the end of the contract obligations for the bulk of the actors. This very much felt like the "last" season by the loose ends they tied up (what REALLY happened to Mulder's sister, which Carter basically said is what would be told at the end of the series) and other episodes that hinted at Mulder and Scully finally transforming their relationship beyond "partners." In fact I think the season finale of season seven would serve as one of the best series finales I have ever seen.
It left plenty of mysteries, which is GREAT for a show all about mysteries. It would also allow Carter to go back to turning this into a movie franchise.
Fox got greedy and wouldn't let it go, so we had Seasons 8 and 9. I'm very conflicted about these last two seasons. Duchovny was only in a handful of episodes, and the ones he was in were actually pretty entertaining. He left a bit of mystery as to what happened to his character.
I also really enjoyed Robert Patrick and his character. At this point it made sense to make Scully the believer, and John Doggett was a great skeptic for her. They disagreed a lot more, but he played the character solid and although most fans of the show didn't like him, I enjoyed his character.
Then mid-season they shifted. Big time. Mulder came back, dead. Then he was alive again because they figured out how to bring him back. After three months in a coffin. Ahem. They also introduced the "Super-Soldiers", aka the new new conspiracy which basically had Alien replicants infiltrating the government and the FBI. I think Duchovny was in two more episodes after they "brought him back" since they fired his character (which sucks if you think about it. You're abducted and they do horrible experiments on you. You die. You are brought back to life, just to get fired. Actually that's kind of what happened to David Duchovny's career in real life, so....
And they brought in Anabeth Gish, who I didn't mind looking at, but wasn't much of an actress or character. Suddenly it went into season nine as "X-Files: The Next Generation" with Scully being the "elder" and Doggett and Reyes being the new agents. America didn't buy it, and the show was allowed to finish out its ninth season. However this allowed the last half of season nine to be pretty enjoyable, since the show was ending we got to see some cool episodes that dove into Doggett's back story, revisited the Brady Bunch house (with David Faustino) and there was even a weird episode with Burt Reynolds and a very sad but well executed episode where Scully gives up here baby.
So then there's the series finale, which could have been one hour long had they not decide to spend the first hour explaining everything that happened up to that point. So basically Mulder is tried and convicted for killing a military officer and is sentenced to death. Of course this officer is a "super-soldier" and can't actually be killed. But he's convicted, so everyone gets together and breaks him out of jail. The show ends with Mulder and Scully on the run, but now Mulder is more spiritual because he believes that the dead are not lost to us. Or something. The ending of the episode was a nice throw-back to the pilot, but still was way too convoluted.

The part of the blog where I actually talk about what I said I was going to talk about
Sorry for the long intro, but I wanted to give everyone an idea on where I was going with The X-Files: I Want to Believe. When I first heard about the movie coming out, I was concerned. Since the series finale a lot had changed in my life and I was a different person. I also on a more practical level didn't know HOW they were going to pull it off. There were rumors that it took place during the show's timeline, which made no sense since they were visibly a lot older. Then it was confirmed that no, it takes place after.
How, I thought? I like to think I'm creative, but I couldn't creatively think of a way they would work this one out. So how did they do it?
Quick plot synopsis - an FBI agent is attacked and kidnapped during a rather ridiculously snow Virginia winter and the only lead is a psychic, who also happens to be a convicted pedophile and former priest, who says he can help the FBI. We flash to Scully, who's now a doctor in a catholic hospital. They give her a sub-plot about a boy with a terminal disease that she is trying to treat. She gets a call from Xhibit the FBI agent saying that they need Mulder back because they want to find this agent and this case is x-files like. (None of the other characters are even referenced. That would have been such an easy thing to do and would probably have gotten more fans involved, but I digress). So she goes to a house where Mulder with a beard is living and tells him the FBI wants him back for this case and will drop all his charges (didn't realize the FBI had the ability to pardon people who were tried and convicted in military court for murdering military officers, but OK I'll shut my brain off sorry). So I know they had to fix that major issue somehow, but I just wish they could have been smarter, because part of the reason The X-Files was so successful was that it WAS an intelligent show. This show hit big right at the time that darker shows with more cerebral fare were getting successful as a response to the big, dumb action shows of the 80's (see what I did there? I referenced a previous blog. I am AWESOME). So seeing this take a silly plot hole out was disappointing.
Aside from that, I was one of the few people that enjoyed it (i was also one of the few that saw it - I went to a 10pm show opening night and the theater was 3/4 empty). It would have made a really good episode of the show, and beside the pardon in the beginning was a standalone episode (aka monster of the week) versus the previous movie which was very conspiracy heavy. I know Carter still has dreams about making this back into a movie franchise, but something tells me Fox is pretty much done with this franchise.
Now let me tell you what I REALLY liked about it. First I'll get the plot out of the way. Scully keeps saying to Mulder we should just leave and retire or whatever. Mulder and Scully help the priest who is right. They don't find the FBI woman but they do find another victim. Walter Skinner pops up in super-cameo mode and helps them find Mulder just in time to save the girl and him (this was also kind of a nice reversal of the "Scully as Damsel in Distress" formula that sometimes found its way into the show). So at the very end Scully's faith is renewed, Mulder is clean shaven and I guess not wanted for murder anymore. Then the credits roll over a background of ice melting (the whole movie takes place during snow). Eventually it becomes grass, trees and then pans back and is flying over an ocean in a tropical setting, and closes in on a row boat with them in bathing suits (looks kinda CGI) then they look up at the camera and wave as it fades.
This along with what Scully says in the movie strike me. When Mulder rightfully questions "why should I go back, how do I know this isn't just a way of smoking me out" she responds "they're just happy to have you out of their hair. No one cares anymore" it dawned on me. This isn't the beginning of the movie franchise. This is the end of the franchise itself. Lets ignore one of the other writers saying "the series has 2012 being the alien invasion, and we're considering making another movie for that" and think about it. The series ended basically a mess. This movie allows a much happier ending for the title characters, who after 15 years (yikes!) of crap and heartache finally get to go and retire and be happy together. What surprises me even more is I REALLY like this ending to the franchise.
The show was a product of the 90's. It BELONGS in the 90's. The feelings and events that happened in that decade are different then those in the decade that just passed. Trying to make The X-Files 2012 is counter-productive because the times are different and it just doesn't fit. Making a big budget "X-Files! Invasion 2012!" movie would be silly because the show was never about showing outcomes like that. The only cool thing about the 2012 date is that it was considered at least half way through the show because a nameless character in an easily missed line in season 5 basically says that that is the year of colonization (told you this was an obsession). I like that the date was set before all the 2012 hype kicked into high gear. For that its creative. To bank on it now for another sequel would be exploitative at best.
So I'm sorry to see it go, to put these characters to rest, but as an adult I realize that this should happen more often. If it would be popular to end things (Lost is a GREAT example) at the right time and NOT try to spin off or remake it, we may have more original ideas in Hollywood. Life isn't a series of "reboots." Good storytelling isn't either.

The Candy Snatchers!

One of the reasons that I had for creating a blog was to document the cool shiza that I do.  One of the problems is that as a married man with a youngin, I don't really do all that much cool shiza these days that doesn't involve the youngin.  (I'm not complaining, mind you.  Just saying that while I find it *adorable* that Sam demands to "push the button" to pop the "Aunt Amy toast" from the toaster, I'm not sure that all of the readership would...)  So, this week when I went out to the movies, I hit gold.

Now, I know what you are saying.  "What's the big deal about going to movies?  I mean this summer it's especially painful, but as long as you're a little masochistic, you're good to go."  Well, dear readers, lemme tell you a little story about a grindhouse movie that I watched this week.

My good friend Bobby is pretty connected with a bunch of cool happenings in Raleigh.  He and I were chatting on Wednesday and he told me he was heading out to see a movie.  (I know!  A school night!)  I said - what movie are you watching?  He told me "The Candy Snatchers".  So, he pointed me here.  (Warning:  It's a grind house style trailer and so pretty NSFW.)  Though the movie didn't really appeal to me (they showed this just a few months ago and that's more my style), I figured, what the heck?  I hadn't seen Bobby for a few months, so this would be a good excuse.

Lemme say this...  the experience of this movie was very much unlike anything that I had done in quite some time.  First off, tickets were only $5.  For a cheap bastard like me, that was totally worth it.  Secondly, and this one is a little harder to describe, unless you were there, but the atmosphere was really appropriate.  There was this neat vibe in the air.  Remember that this movie is a 70s exploitation movie.  The theater that we were watching it was definitely of that era.  It wasn't symmetrical since there were support columns holding the ceiling up.  O, and how about shag carpeting on the walls?  Awesome! 

Another groovy thing was the people there.  It was definitely a younger leaning audience, as the only people there over thirty seemed to be me, Bobby, and the two guys running the show.  Not a bad thing, just not what I'm used to.  Plus, people there all shared a bond of love for movies.  I never get that feeling if I go down to the local Carmike.  Seems people there just wanna sit down, shut up, and enjoy AC in a dark room for 90 minutes.  Here, people really seemed to dig the culture of making films.  You've gotta appreciate that.  And lest, I forget, I met a very nice lad whose claim to fame was that he built his house based on the house from Halloween.  Think I'm kidding?  Think again.

And then we come to the movie itself.  From the trailer, it looked just like another POS movie banged out  in a week.  But it was actually surprisingly deep.  Granted, not exactly Oscar-worthy, but deeper than you would expect.  The characters actually had back stories.  Oh, and how about this?  The film was shown on the old school projectors where the reels had to manually be fed and adjusted occasionally?

I'll definitely say that this was one of the more graphic movies that I have ever seen.  (But it's a grind house movie - what do you want?)  It is only the third movie that I have ever seen with an on-screen(ish) rape scene, oddly also featured in the trailer above.  (The other two being Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave.)  However, I will say this... it wasn't concentrated on and was handled as well as that subject really can be.  It's also worth mentioning that the rest of the movie hangs together so well that it doesn't really stand out as being out of place.  I just figured that I would mention it, should you be interested in seeing it yourself.

One last part of awesomeness was that the theater showed old school movie trailers both before and after the movie.  Definitely helped to set the tone.

This probably won't be a monthly occurrence, but I did have a hell of a good time, and I wanted to share.  Thanks for the invite, Bobby!

A little bit of historical WFT-ery.

The other day I was making fun of Nic Cage, which is becoming more and more frequent as of late.  I mean, seriously?  How many ridiculous wigs can one man wear?  Lemme give you an example of how stupid his wig department has gotten:

(BTW, I can only assume that Cage has a department that works on wigs since over the years it has gotten really strange and I'm guessing that someone is trying to justify their budget year to year.)

Anyway, the topic of "National Treasure" came up since how could it not?  And so I said "You know what my favorite part of the movie was?  Let's get the treasure map... on the Declaration of Independence!"  I mean, really, who green lit both this *and* a sequel.

Then, it hit me...  Where is the Declaration of Independence stored?  National Archives in DC, right?  Well... WTF is it doing there?  I mean, we wrote the document to tell Britain to piss off, right? So, shouldn't it be like... in Britain?

I mean, it's like this.  America is like Britain's kid, right?  So, imagine this situation.  You're Britain, bopping along like nothing is wrong.  Sure, your teenager has been bitching recently, but that's what teenagers do.  They'll get over it.  Then, one day your teenager sends you a letter saying "Hey - you're a dick and I'm leaving."  If I'm Britain, I'm not exactly going to be keeping that letter in the baby book or anything.  And after we fight and I get my ass handed to me, I'm not exactly going to handing back something so valuable to them.  So, what's the deal?

Well, I went to wikipedia to figure it out.  Lemme just say that I didn't get nearly the whole story from elementary social studies.

What I thought happened was that the states got together and decided that this is how it's gonna be, banged out the Declaration of Independence, and the war was on.  (I remember the reason that John Hancock wrote his name really big was cuz if things didn't work out, he didn't want the King of England to have to put on his reading glasses to read his name.  Again, leading me to believe that the King actually had *seen* the declaration.)  Apparently, what actually happened was that the revolutionary war broke out in 1775 with state militias just deciding "Fuck it, if we see the red coats, we'll fire on them."  Throughout the year, this happened to get popular so the bureaucrats decided that they should probably actually say *why* they are fighting.  You know, so dad doesn't think that you're just being fussy.  After it was written (in 1776 - a year after hostilities broke out!), copies were circulated, but the original never left the capital.  So there you go.

BTW, here's another factoid (really?  "factoid" is in the Firefox spell check dictionary?) that I didn't pick up from history in elementary school.  So, I thought that we had won the war with a little help from France and we were all happy.  That's true to be sure, but there was so much more.

So, long story short... France started quietly funneling supplies to the Americans until the Americans won a few key victories.  Then they said "It's a party - let's start whooping on England in the open."  That also drew in Spain since they were in treaty with France at the time.  And with that, other nations essentially had to bend over backwards to prove allegiance to Britain or they would be considered hostile.  So, there was tension of a land war in Europe, as well as India and the West Indies.  Obviously, England was a bit overstressed.

Oh... and there's more on the American continent as well.  First off, there were about 15 % of colonists who were loyal to the crown.  How about the native Americans?  O they were divided, but some 13,000 of them fought with the British since they were afraid that their territories would be encroached upon, should America become independent.  (Such a silly thought!  We would never do that... o wait...)  And so, there was also a western front to the war as well.

So, all in all, it wasn't so much the Americans and French beating back the biggest military power of the time.  It was the biggest military power of the time collapsing under its own weight, being too over-extended around the world and having the rest of the world gang up on them since they were pricks. 

And so thank you Nic.  For making me look more into history.  That and being a hell of a good butt to a joke.

See here, Nintendo!

I've been a Nintendo fanboy, pretty much from the beginning.  Yes, that means that I was actively evangelizing their playing cards 80 years before I was born.  And yes, those are real cookies that I made.  See?  I even like to have my diabetes branded.  (OK, so those cookies didn't really stand for "Dual Screen", but rather "Daddy" and "Sammy", but before they were eaten, I had enough presence of mind to make a Nintendo reference out of them and I think that says something....)

In reality, my torrid love affair with Nintendo goes way back into the 80s.  My dad, being the bleeding edge technology embracer that he is (that's sarcasm, BTW - we didn't even have a VCR until I was almost out of grade school) jumped right on the Nintendo band wagon when it was first released in 1985.  That is to say that my brother and I saved up our paperboy delivery money to buy ourselves on in 1988.  (Ironically, we would later go on buy the video game "Paperboy" so that we could do the thing that we hated on Saturday mornings, but without the added benefit of exercise or being paid to do it.  On the plus side, the video game did have death chase you so there you go...)

Man, Stefan and I played the hell outta that console.  Stefan more concentrated on the Tetris and RPG side of the fence and I whooped it up on everything else.  I loved how you could get a peripheral that allowed you to play with four people at the same time.  (It was called the "Four Score".  Sadly, my young brain kept calling it the "Four Play", which my brother mercilessly made fun of me for... once he explained it.)  There were only like 5 games for 4 player mode, but I loved being able to play with a whole bunch of people in the room all hollering like mad men.  So great!  Brilliant use of technology.

(As a side note, both Stefan and I still have fully functioning 8 bit Nintendos right now.)

Then, what did Nintendo do?  They came out with a way that I could waste time in the car on a trip!  Gameboy?  Yessir, sign me up!  And what's this?  You sold another accessory that lets you connect 4 Gameboys together?  Nintendo, baby, you're reading my mind!  We'll be happy forever!!

Then, came the Super Nintendo.  And the quality kept coming.  We'd be over at Chris's place playing everything from Final Fantasy 2 (I know we played RPGs together - that's how tight we were with the Nintendo) to Bill Lambeir's Combat Basketball (BTW, horrible crappy silly game - and I wouldn't have it any other way!).  We played that system into the ground.  I think that Stefan and I may have gotten one of these, but I can't swear to it.  I seem to recall Stefan trading it for a Playstation while I was away at college.  I know, heathen!  But in Stefan's defense, he *did* need to support his Final Fantasy addiction and Nintendo's steadfast commitment to cartridges made Capcom seek greener fields.  So, it's all good.

Now, we enter the college years.  Of course, we hit Nintendo 64.  Yeah, you know how I didn't get a 4.0 GPA?  Well, that was because of the Nintendo 64 (sorry Dad!).  Well, that and me being a dumb-ass, but that's a totally different story.  :-)  Bond, Starfox 64, Mario Kart 64.  Ben and Jerry (yeah, yeah, yeah - not the ice cream guys though - fun fact the ice cream guys actually took an ice cream making class at Penn State) gladly opened their room pretty much every night after dinner so that we could yell cusses at each other until it was study time (read:  Until someone got pissed that Jerry kept whoopin us).   I can't remember playing a bad game on the 64.  And what's this?  It *came* with 4 ports for controllers?  Nintendo, you were only missing one port - the port to my heart.  Cuz, Nintendo, you complete me!

After college, we still played a bit on the 64 (can you say Conker's Bad Fur Day?  Cuz I sure can!), but we definitely weren't as hard core as we once were.  We drifted apart a little, but we still cared for each other. 

After I gave my hand to another in marriage, I still kept up my affair on the side, discretely.   Over the  years, Joy picked up a GameCube and a DS for me.  With my friends no longer living in my dorm room, down the hall, it was a bit of a pain to actually play with them, but Nintendo says "Baby, it's more fun to play with people in person anyways."  I gritted my teeth - sometimes couples fight and this was no different.  We were happy enough...

Then came the release of the Wii.  I told myself "No, I'm too old... I think that I'll sit this one out..."  Then, Kookie and Skoot got one.  And it was awesome.  So, I said "I must have one.  Our love cannot be denied!"  I know that I'm gonna take some heat from Joy for skipping out on a lot of content here, but this blog is already approaching novella size, so I'll skip a little with this:  "After a bit of research, I finally was able to find a Wii after about a month of searching."  And this is the point when things started to sour...

So, the Wii is Nintendo's next gen console, right?  I knew going in that the graphics weren't going to compete with Sony or Microsoft's, and I was OK with that.  But the overall fun factor was what I was going for and prepared for.  But now, the rifts are starting to get deeper...

(Before, I get into poo-poo'ing Nintendo too much, lemme say that I still have a hell of a time with the Wii, it's just that compared to the other platforms, it's getting left in the dust really badly....)

One of the big selling points is online play.  Sweet!  I'm onboard there!  OK, so let me explain online play.  Other consoles, you turn on your system and boom!  You're online and you can see your friends.  With the Wii, you need to swap codes with your friends.  I'm sorry - what I mean is that you need to swap 32 digit hex codes with your friends.  FOR EACH GAME THAT YOU WANT TO PLAY TOGETHER.  (I know that you need to pay a monthly service for the other systems, but come on!  Register consoles and then let the hardware worry about the games.)

Next, we were promised an immersive experience with the Wii-mote.  They said "You wanna fight with a light saber?  Well, no more pushing a button for you!  You're gonna actually be doing the moves!"  Only problem is that instead of just pushing a button, you're wiggling the controller now.  Not really moving the controller as you would a sword - just flipping it back and forth randomly.

"But look!", said Nintendo,  "We have all the same games as the other platforms!  I ask hesitantly - "Do you have Rock Band?"  "Damn right!"  OK I'm on board again.  O wait - you can't download all of the songs from the first game like you can on PS and XBox?  And online play is pretty much useless?  Ugh...  Why is that?  "Oh, well, we can't actually patch software"  WTF???

And what's this?  You sell a game that lets you work OK a little while playing video games?  OK... I'll give this to you - the Wii Fit Board is pretty awesome and a brilliant use of technology - no problems there...  And all of the simple kind of proof of concepty games (like Wii Tennis for example) are pretty bad ass.  Just ask Skoot, Marie, and Ben about our monster sessions.  And the point and shoot games (like House of the Dead Overkill) are just about as spot on as you can get.  So, OK, the Wii is pretty great...

But seriously Nintendo, you're still on thin ice here.  You're really only got one more generation of console to get things a little more in order before I officially renounce my "Nintendo fan boy" title.  I want us to be together, I really do.  But we need to kick it up a notch.  First off, a few more higher caliber games would be good.  You've got your proof of concept down pat, but start using that Wii-Mote Extender a bit more.  That's brilliant!  Why is Red Steele the only one using it now?  Secondly, get your head around online play more.  I've got buddies all around the country - it shouldn't be this hard to connect.  Next, I'm a software guy.  I know how pressed for time dev cycles are.  So, don't be afraid to patch your games.  It's OK.  It's common practice these days.

Now, I don't want to have ultimata here.  That's not what i'm trying to say.  I love you, Nintendo, but you're making it hard for me to do this.  Nobody cares about a Black Wii.  How about a game that uses both the Wii-Mote extender and the Wii Fit Board.  How cool would that be?  Just think about it.  I'm just sayin'...