MY QUICK UPDATE (2/6/2011) OR: Are you ready for some football?! ...I'm not.

In case you are new to this blog or just don't remember what the "My Quick Update" posts are about, they are essentially a way for me to blog about things that have happened in the last week that were big enough for me to care about, but not enough for me to write a long blog post on. So, here we go:


As most of you know, today is Super Bowl Sunday. I neither care, nor wish to pretend to care, about football. What I have always found funny is that most people who watch the Super Bowl do not watch it for the football portion. Everyone knows this because if you took all of the Nielsen viewers who watch every Monday Night Football showcase, then doubled it, you would not equal one-tenth of the viewers that the Super Bowl brings in. I don't know if it is the commercials, the movie trailers that are promised to premiere, or the hope that Fergie's nipple will make an appearance, but most of America will be glued to their television sets, watching one team of pituitary cases bash into the more hated pituitary case clan. There may be even more people tuning in, waiting for the new "Glee" episode to come on!
Unfortunately, while I've been managing to avoid it post-high school, I have a friend who now throws a Super Bowl Party at his house annually. So, I will be bringing a bottle of Southern Comfort and drowning my hatred for the sport. It may just be easier to lose this friend.

Despite the Comic-Con International/TicketLeap team-up being an internet travesty to all us geeks on Saturday (2/5/2011), I managed to get my badge for the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con! It took 3+ hours of me hitting refresh on the site and ignoring the TicketLeap site saying that all of the 4-day passes were sold out [Comic-Con International's Twitter page continued insisting that there were plenty of passes left] but I did finally get them around 3:06pm EST (tickets went on sale at noon).
Comic-Con International has been trying to get its proverbial shit together since the site first crashed a few months ago in November 2010. They tried again a couple weeks later, the site crashed. They did a test where they only sold 1,000 passes in January (using a new system), and the tickets all sold within 60 seconds. With all of this happening, they should have prepared to have many extra servers on deck just to handle all of the traffic that they had to know would be coming to TicketLeap's site. It genuinely is not difficult to prepare your hosting service for the flood of internet-enabled geeks, clicking furiously, credit card in hand. Granted, the site would probably still crash a number of times, but it would not take one person 186 minutes just to purchase one 4-day pass.
Next year, Comic-Con should drop TicketLeap for dropping the ball on such an important task. While I do not wish for them to start using a service like TicketMaster (who would charge an extra $15 to your passes as a service charge), they need to find a company who is willing to go the extra 7 miles to guarantee satisfaction on the one day that probably brings them more than 10% of their annual revenue. And I feel that that is a generously low number. After all, has anyone ever purchased tickets to an event using TicketLeap?

I started re-watching "Battlestar Galactica" with my father, who has never seen the show. So far, obviously, he is enjoying the frak out of it! He used to watch the original series, but never liked it, citing that it was trying too hard to be Star Wars. When watching a few early season one episodes last night, my father mentioned how much he liked Billy, President Roslin's aide. I didn't have the heart to tell him not to get too attached.

My friend, Danny, posted this New Yorker profile on Guillermo del Toro on Twitter. It is a long, but great read. I always thought the man to be brilliant and this is a great insight into the mind of one of cinema's wildest imaginations. Give it a good read.

On Monday, January 24th, for the Xbox 360 Kinect, I bought Your Shape Fitness Evolved. One thing that I enjoyed about it was that it really did work! However, the one and only thing that I did not enjoy about it was that it really did work. I was sore for days! I used it for three days straight and could barely walk. Then when I had to crouch down, I had to hold onto things to balance and ease myself down. And getting up from said crouch was no picnic either. I decided to stop using it until my muscled relaxed again. After about five days, they were relaxed, but I was afraid to start using it again. What I will probably do from now on is use it every other day.
When I was beta testing the Kinect for Microsoft a few months before it came out, My one big complaint was that it had no software support behind it. That is still my big complaint with the device now. I have met with a Microsoft representative at work and he tells me that in the coming months, there will be more games coming out for it. But, in a country full of obese children who grow up to be obese adults, the Kinect is a good device to fight that. I quite enjoy both Kinect Adventures and Kinect Sports, and Dance Central may be a game that I won't play if anyone else is in the room, but I will still play it. And while I don't like my video game console tricking me into exercising, it may very well be the only form of exercise that I will actively take part in. After all, I started playing video games as a way of avoiding exercise as a child. That young lad is now 22 and his metabolism is now realizing that a bad diet should cause some form of bad features. Plus, since I was diagnosed as a Type-1 diabetic at 17, every doctor told me that I should exercise. It's been five years, maybe I should give them a listen...

MY AFTER-HOLIDAY QUICK UPDATE (1/5/09)

Happy (belated) Festivus, Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year to you all!

Back in Gainesville after spending the last 2 weeks back home in Miami. Did not get to see any new movies to cross off my pending 2008 list while I was there.

Did not receive anything from my family for Christmas. I did, however, get my father the special edition set of one of his favorite films, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and bought my sister two t-shirts that she loved from Threadless. The word from both of them: "I will get you a gift later." I'll believe it when I see it.
Luckily, I did receive $250 cash from 4 of my various aunts and uncles.

The day after Christmas, I decided that I would buy myself a brand new cellular phone to replace the now archaic one that I had had for over 2 ½ years, the Sony Ericsson W600. So, I went to Wal-Mart, which had the best prices for upgrades. For me, the choice was between the Samsung Blackjack II, which was FREE, and the LG Vu, for $48.88. When I had gone the week earlier, the Blackjack II was $18.88. So, when I went to Wal-Mart to buy the LG Vu, the decision became harder on whether or not I should get it.
But, it won. The new cell is the LG Vu (CU920). I LOVE this phone! Full HTML browser, 3G-enabled, one of the first phones to support AT&T TV and CV video-play, TOUCHSCREEN! Since I can afford neither the iPhone nor the plan that I would have to get along with it, this phone is a welcome substitute to it. My only complaints are its battery life - but I knew about that going in - and that, unlike the Sony Ericsson Walkman phone that I previously had, I cannot set an mp3 as my ringtone. Hopefully, there is a hack for the latter.
But it is very sexy...
Another fine Wal-Mart tale occured last Thursday night:
I read a tweet from @todd1985 (the internet's Todd Jurgess) telling of the Martin Scorsese Collection DVD set being $13 at Wal-Mart. At first, I did not believe him. After all, this set is usually $50+ at most retail stores. I had gone to Best Buy a couple days earlier and it was there for $57.99! But, I was sitting at home all day watching the SciFi Channel marathon of "The Twilight Zone" with no breaks. So, I set out to Wal-Mart to call his bluff. And, low and behold, there it was: the last Martin Scorsese Collection box set for $13! I grabbed it, sent a tweet to @todd1985 thanking him for this glorious bit of information, and continued to walk about the Electronics section of my local Wal-Mart.
So, I walk over to the $5 DVD bin to see if anything was in there that I wanted. And there was! In there lay the Zodiac 2-Disc Director's Cut DVD. I picked it up and laughed. There was only one in there. It must have been a mistake. After all, the single-disc version of Zodiac was in the $7.50 rack. I figured that someone must have picked it up from the regular DVD rack and, when they realized that they didn't want it anymore, dropped it in the $5 bin. But, I take it over to the price scanner to see how much Wal-Mart was charging fr it. Everywhere else, the DVD is $25. But, Wal-Mart usually is the first place to lower DVD prices. I was hoping it was around the $13-range as well. But the reading on the scanner displays, "DVD $5.00". I immediately ran to the cash register in the Electronics section and paid for both the Martin Scorsese Collection and the Zodiac 2-Disc Director's Cut, before Wal-Mart realized that they were grossly undercharging me.


The last bit of news is that my father got a call from the mechanic that has my car saying that even if we did get the money to pay for the replacement transmission, the car was also discovered to have a damaged frame. The $1100 that we were going to give to get the car fixed would have been more than what the car was worth. To fix the frame damage would have more than doubled that price. So, I am, for the first time ever, without a vehicle. This week, I will be taking out all of the things in my car before they deliver it to a junkyard.
2008 sucked, but 2009 ain't looking too pretty so far either...

MY [Late] QUICK UPDATE (12/16/08)

These posts are supposed to be written on Saturday. The last one I wrote was on a Sunday and last Saturday, I was out the entire day and forgot to write one up. Hopefully, I'll get back to doing this thing right.

Got to see Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York on Friday! Probably may be my #1 film of the year. At least out of the films I've seen thus far. As much as I love seeing his scripts through the eyes of other visual directors, Charlie Kaufman should continue to direct his own scripts.

Been working on a list of my Top 10 Films of 2008 lately. What I found interesting is that the list of movies that I need to see is almost as long as the list of movies I have seen that I feel might belong on my Top 10. This is going to be much harder than I thought.



On Saturday, I had a cookout with a few friends over at a friend's apartment complex. It was an event I had come up with and planned for the film club that I am in, FUF, and it was a blast. I called it the "FUF End-of-the-Year Potluck/Cookout".
At first, it took us about 45 minutes to actually get the charcoal on the grill to stay lit. But, in that time, we had quite a few very large fires. I find that nothing impresses men more than more fire. THe more fire, the more we grunt, drink beer, scratch ourselves, and abuse women make sexual jokes at the expense of women.
I made a rockin' potato salad - inless all my friends were lying to me to protect my feelings - and made a few hot dog rollups. If you are unaware of the hot dog rollup, click the link. It will change your life forever, but not necessarily in a good way. There were pictures taken of me making the hot dog rollup, but I am not in possession of these photographs. Hopefully, I will get them later and post them as an update to the post.
My friend, Adam "A-Train" Isaacs, made some surf-n-turf (shrimps and steak) that were unbelievably amazing. And Todd Jurgess' wife, Stephanie, made some great cheese dip that we were all devouering throughout the night.
Great night!

Trying to trooper through Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. I've gotten through the first two episodes, of four. The second episode made up for the first one quite a bit. The first episode mainly dealt with all of the adults in the story rather than the child characters whom the film is named after, Fanny and Alexander. I believe each of them had around 5 words each throughout the 90 minute first episode. But, the second episode really developed Alexander's character a lot. This episode was still mainly about the adults, but how their situations were seen throughout the children's eyes.
So far, it is growing into something great. I cannot wait to finish it!

MY QUICK UPDATE (12/07/08)

Haven't written a post in a while. Mainly, because I've been 75% complete with the latter half of my "90210" review for 3 months and have yet to finish it. But, I feel the need to keep this damn thing up-to-date and the best way to do that is to continue the weekly "MY QUICK UPDATE" posts. Hopefully, this will spark me to finish that damned review (which would be good because I said I would not continue the series until I finished said review). I'll try and cover these last 3 months very succinctly.
So, here goes...

HOLIDAYS:
Halloween - Watched some horror movies with friends. No parties this year. Kind of regret that.
Thanksgiving - Went to Miami for the break. Spent the better part of the holiday hanging out at my friends' Starbucks drinking free drinks and receiving a large amount of free food that my family ate. On the way back to Gainesville, I got in a bit of a car accident ruining my transmission which now needs to be replaced.

Have not had a car for a week and have been forced to take the bus wherever I need to go. Luckily, I have some friends that are willing to give me rides to certain destinations.

I saw Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon at a free screening playing on campus. It was genuinely a good film. With some of Howard's latest, I was a gladly surprised.

I also got a chance to see David Fincher's newest film, based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, at a free advanced unadvertised screening put on by Paramount Pictures and FilmMetro. A GREAT film! Review to come (?).

Went to the of Montreal concert last Friday (12/5) with a friend. One of the best concerts I've been to! I've always heard of Montreal concerts to be very theatrical and they definitely lived up to the hype. I would recommend that, if you have the chance, you should go see one of their concerts. You wouldn't regret it.

Currently trying to convince my father to get me this car. Isn't taking too much convincing because, like me, my dad loves sports cars. He just wishes to see and test drive the car before buying. Now, if the seller would just e-mail me back...

MY QUICK UPDATE (8/30/08)

The point of the "MY QUICK UPDATE" posts were to be a weekly Page 2 for the blog. The Page 1 stories being the long posts that have their own titles and the Page 2 posts being random things throughout the week that I want to write a quick blurb about, but not a full post.
Also, they're supposed to make me write at least ONE post per week. The point is to have a couple posts in between, but I now realize the last post I wrote was last Saturday's "MY QUICK UPDATE". Hopefully, next week will be different.

Went to see Tarsem's The Fall earlier today at the Hippodrome. Had to see it alone since everyone that I knew that would want to see it had seen it already.

Re-watched Michael Haneke's 2007 remake of Funny Games. I think I liked it more this time around. Which is odd, because I really liked it a lot when I first saw it.

Bought "Tiny Toon Adventures", season 1, volume 1, at Best Buy ealier this week since they're having a 25% off TV DVDs sale. After I finish watching it, I plan to write a post on the cartoon revolution of the 1990s vs the cartoons of today.

Started a post on one of my favorite underrated films, Galaxy Quest, but still need to finish it.

I realize that I talk more about writing posts than actually writing posts for this blog.

Barack Obama's DNC acceptance speech was phenomenal! The first Democrat I've seen that actually responds to the Republican smear campaign rather than play ostrich to it.

Re-reading "Watchmen" while reading "DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore". I feel an Alan Moore discussion coming on.

Is it odd that I was excited to see Shannen Doherty on the cover of my "Entertainment Weekly" this week? I realize that this season, the new "90210" series may become my new primetime guilty pleasure, i.e. "The OC" in 2004 and "Gossip Girl" last season.

Fishnet stockings! Man, I love Shannen Doherty...

MY QUICK UPDATE (8/23/08)

Party went well on Wednesday night...to an extent.

Been playing "Galaga Legions" on Xbox Live Arcade (Possible review coming soon?).

Savannah College of Art and Design still refuses to put up the schedule for the 2008 Savannah Film Festival and that makes it a harder event to plan early.

Can't stop watching Eddie Murphy Raw. Apparently, I'm 13 again.

Watched Steven Shainberg's Secretary and loved it.

Bought "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" on iTunes, put it on my iPod, and cannot stop listening to it and singing along in my car. There's just something about that Neil Patrick Harris that makes me want to sing. So now, I'll end up buying it twice when it comes out on DVD. Worth it.

I should find a good therapist.

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Listening to: Madvillain - Accordion
via FoxyTunes