Wednesday, August 30, 2006

What, a Post?



Don't worry, don't get excited. The only reason I'm making this post is put up a logo for my fantasy football team. Since I'm co-owning a team (with a girl), and my old team neam refers to my facial hair, I've had to mix it up a little. So imply your favorite description for the following picture:

Friday, June 09, 2006

Hostel Review

We've upped the number of horror movies in our Netflix queue...maybe it's JC's desire to go into the biomedical area. We just received Hostel, which JC's brother dubbed "murder porn." I won't say much about the movie so as not to give too much away, but you MUST experience this movie if you need either a) a movie with some really graphic satisfying kills or b) to laugh your ass off. You'll do both. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You might even learn a little about the triumph of the human spirit over an electric drill. 5/5 stars.

Monday, May 29, 2006

tonsul's myspace page

Over the weekend, my brother and I entered the myspace revolution to promote our old band, tonsul. We posted a few songs from our catalog, and will be posting old video stills and clips for your enjoyment.

So click here to go to the myspace page (also put it in the links section to the right). If you really want to support the cause, you can go here to purchase the CD and other items.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

My Hands...

are small, I know! But they're not yours, they are my own!

Did you ever see the episode of The Mole where one of the contestants was locked in a room overnight and had to listen to Don Ho's Tiny Bubbles over and over again? I wasn't quite that tortured, but Barnes and Noble was playing Jewel's greatest hits last night.

Off to the West Coast tomorrow!

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Farewell, Oh Weekend

Yeah, Happy Mother's Day to you too!

This weekend has been awash in excitement...We saw Pinback on Friday night at Black Cat, and it was an awesome show. I first got into the band over a year ago (went through a brief obsessive period), and have heard about a million bootlegs of their shows. But man, it was another thing to see them actually perform their stuff. For those not familiar with their sound, the rhythms are primarily driven by the bass, with keyboards and guitar accompanying. Zack Smith, their bass player, is amazing and his style kind of reminds me of old Cliff Burton videos that I watched when I thought Metallica was cool...okay, so I still have Cliff 'Em All, but I don't have a VCR to watch it on (true statement)...back to Pinback. They played a long set, about 20 songs, and my appetite was satiated. I even bought a robot t-shirt.

Something always amazes me at shows these days, and on this night, the number of just absolutely plastered people blew my mind. Everyone was drunk! Apparently JC had some beer spilled on her Diet Coke shirt, and you DO NOT mess with that shirt! We did our traditional pre-encore move to the back of the room, but I think if anything, people were just more plastered back there. For some reason, it was just strange, aight?

Let's skip over Saturday, as I was either awake or asleep for the majority of the day, and not much is noteworthy beyond that.

Today, I played a lot of NCAA 2006 Baseball on XBox. It's a great game, and I've started a dynasty with my beloved Yellow Jackets. However (and there's always a however), the disk is messed up (possibly scratched, possibly manufactured by Canadians) and twice crashed my game at key junctures. So it has to go back, and hopefully Best Buy's lovely customer service staff will allow for an exchange.

This week starts a two-week stretch with lots of travel, so probably not much blogging for a while. Hopefully you find something else to do with your time, like this.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Gone Fishin' - Movie Reviews

Well, Jake Gyllenhall can never complain that this household never watches his movies. Donnie Darko is probably in our Top 5 movies (even own the DVD), and Spiderman was probably the best superhero...oh wait, that's the other guy who had intimate relations with Kirsten Dunst. Cider House Rules, great movie...nah, other guy too...Probably a little known fact - Kirsten Dunst spent some of her youth in New Jersey and attended Ranney School with a high school friend of mine.

Anyway, back to Mr. Gylllllllenhallll. Maybe by happenstance, we watched a couple of his movies this weekend.

Jarhead - Adapted from the book of the same name, Jarhead tells the story of Tony Swofford, a Marine trained to be a sniper and then shipped off for the first Iraq war. Trouble is, ain't much need for snipers when a) you got planes that can blow up everything for miles ahead of you and b) you're fighting a war with no real purpose in the first place. I did read the book before I saw the movie, and the movie gets several of the details right. However, while it's interesting to read an account of a bored Marine, I can't say that it was as interesting to watch a movie about a bored Marine. However, the parts that made me laugh in the book made me laugh in the movie, and Jamie Foxx (who seemingly comes and goes with no rhyme or reason in this movie) turns in a pretty good performance. If you want a good first Iraq war movie, see Three Kings. Overall, movie gets a 3.5/5.

Brokeback Mountain - So now if I tell the wife I'm going "fishing", she's going to think that I'm going to meet up with some guy I herded sheep with 4 years ago so we can go "catch some trout". People joke about and are turned off about the fact that this is a gay cowboy movie. Let me dispel one myth...This is a gay cowboy movie...crap. But how about this...if you're THAT turned off by the fact that two men might show affection towards each other beyond the ol' slap on the ass so commonplace in our professional sports, there's about 3 minutes total (across 3 scenes) of the movie I recommend you skip. This movie is well done and really worth watching. Heath Ledger and Mr. G have a tryst, move on with their lives, and then wrestle (sometimes literally) with the fact that two cowboys, especially one who's less intelligible than Sling Blade, probably can't live a comfortable existence. The emotion felt real, the jilted wives felt jilted, and every awkward situation was exceedingly awkward. Unlike Capote, the soft omnipresent guitar actually adds to the movie, and I think this movie does for Wyoming what the Lord of the Rings did for New Zealand. Overall, 4/5.

Happy fishing!

Friday, May 05, 2006

What Lies Beneath

Never saw this Harrison Ford movie, but I'm sure it's a real winner worth 100 minutes of my time.

In addition to watching Jarhead (review to come this weekend), I've been paying attention to my downstairs neighbor's musical selection. What else could I do...it's really freakin' loud. It's been a mix of boom-boom rap, techno, some boom-boom salsa garbage (which I really hate)...and REM. What's weird is that the rap seems to be kept the loudest, with the volume being turned down for the techno and the salsa. But man, when REM came on, he turned that stereo down so low...it's like the scene in Office Space when Michael Bolton turns down the rap. It's just not effective to say "Hey, turn down the REM"...but "turn down that crap, you m'fer" is cooler.

It seems to have stopped. For anyone who comes to my complex, this guy drives a black Infiniti G35 coupe that he always backs in to a parking space. Feel free to spit or throw any type of human waste on his car.