I saw Spider-Man 2 with Chuck this morning. It was fucking awesome. In brief and without really spoiling anything, I'll say that it was better than the first one, in part because Doc Ock is much cooler than Green Goblin. Great action, great special effects, great drama, great love story...5 stars. Chuck thought it was great too, but wished it had less love story, just fyi. Anyway, I can't wait to see this film again. I'll definitely catch it again in the theater.
The flood of people in my house passed by without incident. Was fun having everyone over, although I'll still be catching up on my sleep into next week.
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Now that its actually been linked all over the place including at Gizmodo, I don't feel bad linking you to the guy that built a home made flamethrower!
Link to animated gif of flamethrower in action.
Actual Something Awful thread.
Thats right, its less than two days until I can watch the Spider-Man 2 movie and play the really badass Spider-Man 2 game(sort of like Grand Theft Auto, except its Spidey).
In the interim, Joe & James will be up from ABQ tonight around midnight. They are up here to see Mum in concert tomorrow. And Tina & Jay & like 2 others will be up here at 6am tomorrow for a Skinny Puppy show tomorrow. Its going to be a crowded house.
In other news... I am now in the World of Warcraft beta test. Mmmmmm.
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Movie stuff:
Around the World in 80 Days was pretty amusing. I don't think it was quite as good as the other Jackie Chan collaborations we've been seeing in the last few years, but it had a lot of really funny moments and some fantastic cameos.
Garfield was the suck. I couldn't even finish watching it, and thats probably only the third movie I can say that about.
Dodgeball was...bad. It had a few really hilarious moments, but overall was pretty crap.
So the first private space flight took place yesterday and was successful!! You can read about it here.
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I have yet another new job title. I am now a member of the Gateway VIP Desk. Nothing has changed really, it just means that I am now "officially" in at least three different departments. :)
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I finished watching Stargate season 7 the other night after I got home from ABQ. Good stuff. I am now fully caught up and can begin watching the show as normal when the eighth season and the new spinoff show begin in July.
I just got home from Albuquerque. It was a relatively uneventful drive punctuated by an amazing lightning storm as I was coming into Denver. I also have to say that a long drive with nothing but your thoughts when your thoughts are mostly fixated on a woman that you miss is the suck.
So yeah, anyway, great weekend for the most part. The only downside was that I started feeling sick late on Saturday and it progressively got worse. When 8am rolled around and it was time to drive home so I could be back in time for work I just wasn't at all in a condition to make the drive. So although I actually felt mostly better by the time my shift should have started, I was still a 6+ hour drive away. Aw well. I think it was probably too much junk food. I always eat really badly and snack a lot when I go home. Coupled with the fact that I get to eat yummy home cooked food and lots of it when I am down there means that I probably need to lose a couple extra pounds now that I am back in Denver.
I saw the Terminal with my Mom and Joe. Pretty enjoyable movie. I also watched Gotcha! again this weekend. I love that movie. The downside is that one of the characters in the movie is supposedly "Czech" which reminded me that Maria was probably in Prague this weekend and that I haven't talked to her in like a week and a half. Argh! Miss her lots.
Played some pool and went dancing with Joe, Abbey, Crystal and Jenny while I was down there. It was a lot of fun. I haven't been dancing like that in a looooong time and I missed it. For the most part I don't have people to go dancing with here in Denver for multiple reasons.
Anyway, promised Mom I would update when I got home so she would know I got here safely....and here it is.
I saw the Chronicles of Riddick the other morning with Chris and Chuck. Neither of them were too impressed, but I actually enjoyed it a fair bit. I think I just find the character of Riddick to be very cool, and the mythology of the universe to be particularly interesting. For the record, the movie was not as good as Pitch Black, but still worth seeing.
Yesterday I watched a short animated movie called Dark Fury which is also in the Riddick universe. It was done by Peter Chung(Aeon Flux) and told the story immediately following Pitch Black to sort of set the stage for the movie. Pretty spiffy stuff, and I'm a fan of Chung's animation.
Last, but not least, I had a chance to play some more of the Chronicles of Riddick game for the Xbox(which is actually set before Pitch Black). Its soo fantastic. Definitely one of the best movie licensed games to ever come down the pike.
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This is a great week for Science and Sci-Fi nerds thanks to Paul Allen. Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame is opening up in Seattle on June 18th, this Friday. I'm not going to get into the coolness of this here, lets just say that it sounds like a kickass place to visit, and you can read a couple of articles on it:
Wired
ufocasebook
Seattle Weekly
Second, and more importantly, this coming Monday, the 21st will potentially go down in history as the day that private industry reaches the stars. ;) SpaceShipOne is scheduled to launch and will be the first commercial manned space craft! Read all about it here!
I had a really fun day on Saturday. Met Linda, Shelly, etc at six flags for my "company picnic". The food was awful, but the day at the park was quite entertaining. Much alcohol was consumed. Many rides(aka convenient excuses to be flipped upside down) were ridden.
The group of us then went and had dinner(I was absolutely starving at that point) and drinks. This was followed by a trip to another bar where some pool playing(Adam and I were kicking ass) and more general carousing took place. Way too much fun was had.
Last but not least I headed over to Sobo to meet Chris, Jen, Joe and Bob(she was in town visiting) for a bit of karaoke.
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I finished up the last of Farscape finally... stunned silence Yeah, wow, and wtf all wrapped up into one. All I can say is thank god the fan uproar is bringing it back for a 4 hour mini-series at the end of this year to tie up loose ends. This is definitely one of the best shows to ever grace a television set and I would have had to find and murder whoever was responsible if the end of season 4 had been the finale for the series. There is closure there of a sort, but...jesus.
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Mark Osborne's Academy-Award nominated Short film(1998) - More - I highly recommend spending the 4 minutes to watch this. Its great.
Tomorrow I get to come into work at 8am for some training which will last until 4pm when I start my normal shift and work until Midnight! Yes, Zombie Malek will be in full effect tomorrow. Other than that, its same ol same ol at the moment, lots of catching up on movies and things, and getting the house in order.
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If you ended up missing the Transit of Venus, lots of nice pics and movies and the like can be found here.
Two priests and a pornographer walk into a bar... hehe, read about Pete, the porno puppet.
Last but not least, maybe you'd like to read about the Christians who want to move to South Carolina in mass and withdraw from the US.
AKA - US Customs.
This is the third story I've read in as many months where our customs is acting like something out of the Russian iron curtain days. Very good to know that our tax dollars are getting wasted to imprison and discomfort foreign journalists from allied nations. Our potential future is beginning to look more and more Orwellian.
On a similar but tangential topic, in Bruce Sterling's column this month in Wired, he roasts the Bush administration for a lack of scientific respect. Lysenkoism.
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I saw the third Harry Potter film this weekend with Linda. Fun film and really entertaining. It had some flow problems for me though and I didn't end up liking it as much as I liked the second film. I think perhaps the new director is at fault. I also really wish there had been a lot more Rickman and Oldman, but oh well. =) One of the trailers before HP3 was for Spider-Man 2 which comes out in less than a month now. What a fantastic trailer! *goosebumps*
Rest of the weekend was occupied by hanging with Jason and Melissa down in Co. Springs as well as a bunch of movie watching. I will give quick brief opinions on the horde of films I watched:
Butterfly Effect - Intriguing concept that didn't always pan out. Decent.
50 First Dates - Absolutely fantastic. Very funny and cute romantic comedy.
Watership Down - Classic. Seen it before actually, but deserves mentioning.
Mean Girls - Surprisingly awesome. Didn't really expect this "teen" movie to be anywhere near this good.
13 going on 30 - Tripe! Pretty awful, one great moment involving "Thriller."
Win a date with Tad Hamilton - Also pretty bad, why did I even waste my time on these last two? I'm not sure. This one was more redeeming from the "I'm a sucker for a romantic comedy" perspective, but still don't recommend it.
Walking Tall - Eh, decent. Nowhere near as good as The Rundown though.
Ok, I don't follow politics very closely, but those of you that do probably already know that the director of the CIA resigned on Thursday. If not, you can read about it here.
I just had to relate a quick moment from the Daily Show in regards to this, because its funny as hell.
Jon Stewart -"First of all, George Tenet couldn't have been completely incompetent, he was second longest serving CIA director in history...he must have been doing something right."
Ed Helms - "Nnno. Jon, the CIA's credibility has never been lower. Crazy people no longer believe the CIA is implanting a chip in their heads to listen to their dreams. They just don't think they can pull it off. It's a sad day for America when even our paranoid schizophrenics realize they don't need to wear the aluminum foil hats anymore."
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I did in fact end up having dinner with Brian, Laura, and Sparks last night. Was cool finally meeting Sparks after all this time. And, I found out that Brian did the whole proposal thing the other day and they are getting married. Well holy shit. I'm running out of unmarried friends.
I'm mostly maintaining the new and improved sleep schedule, but its been slipping a bit. I'm trying to adjust it back on track this weekend.
Barring any calamities, going to see the new Harry Potter tonight with Linda and if my av rack finally arrives today like it should I'll probably spend all day Saturday finishing up the living room.
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Early next week astromers are going to be watching as Venus moves across the disc of the sun. Pretty rare. Last time this happened/was observable was 1882. If you want to read up about it, or view images as it happens, you can check out this website. I don't think there is anyone out there stupid enough to look directly at the sun to see this when it happens...But just in case... Don't. haha. Not viewable from this part of the US in any case.
My brother called me today speaking Japanese! Hurrah! Keep up the Japanese courses Joe! Soon we will both be speaking well enough to get by on our future Japan trip.
Not much else of interest going on at the moment. Maria sent me a heads up to let me know she is alive and well and enjoying herself in the British Isles, wheee! I may or may not get to have dinner with Brian, Laura and Sparks tomorrow. And I am most definitely going to see Harry Potter with Linda the day after.
And now for something completely different...
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Nasa says they may actually save the Hubble after all, using Robot goodness. Read about it here.
Photoshop contest revolving around twisted children's books and the like can be found here. Some of these are hilarious, I recommend you go take a look!
Curious about how people refer to "soda" in a certain part of the country? Be curious no longer.
Great Wired article about Pixar and their leave taking of Disney. Once Walt died, watching Disney films get made was like "watching master chefs cook hot dogs."
