Not-So Silly Weekend Video

Here is the new, full length trailer for District 9. Who wants to see it with me? The movie, not the trailer...

Girlfriend of the Week

This week's GOTW goes to Starfire, who is some alien in DC Comics. Does it really matter what her powers are or where she is from? She's hot. That's why Dick Grayson likes to bang her...plus she has some kind of power where she heats up like the sun, not bad to have around during the winter, keep those energy bills down.

Stop That or You'll Go Blind!

Not a whole lot has been happening lately, so I figured I would just point out some blogs you should be reading. These are all at the side, but maybe some of you just never bother to check them out.

The first one I need to direct you to is I know nobody asked but..., written by someone I know from my days of going to Mugshots. He is a funny guy and has an opinion on just about everything happening in the world. If you know him, you can pretty much hear him saying these things. So maybe I am biased, but you should check him out.

Next is my friend James. Many of you know him, and if you remember he was the inspiration for me to start this blog. Even though he does not post often enough, every time he does post something it is great. Imagine this blog, but written by someone with talent.

Last, but not least: Schindler's Pull List. I know what you are thinking, "I have never seen this over on the side." And you are correct, the guys at batman obviously finally changed the name of their blog.

It's funny, I do not remember how long ago it was when Jason from over there started commenting on here (I thought it was one of the multiple Jason's that comment here anyways, until I clicked on his profile). For awhile I was pretty much the only person commenting, and now look at them. Getting free comics sent to them, tons of readers, a nationally syndicated radio show (okay I made that one up, but they have a pretty sweet podcast) and now a brand new blog not affiliated with any specific character. Congratulations to Nick, Jason, and Mark for such an awesome site, and for helping me waste more time on the internet.

Also, if you go there, they kept the banner they made of my site for their friends section. Jason thought it would help bring traffic here, sadly I think most people get scared and think it must be some kind of homosexual porn site.

Joker and City of Dust

I recently read Brian Azzarello's Joker and Steve Niles' City of Dust. Both of which were awesome.

City of Dust
Remember when I said that I wanted to check out more from Radical Comics? Well I finally decided to pick up another one of their books and I cannot say enough about them as a publisher.

The story follows Phillip Khrome, a police officer in the future where stories and imagination are outlawed. He was raised by the government because at a young age he accidentally turned his father in for telling him a bedtime story.

Unfortunately, someone has created some of the beasts from our older stories (vampires, werewolves, etc...) and they are preying on people. Phillip must figure out who is doing it and then learn how to stop them.

I will try not to give anything away, and just tell you that the art and writing is fantastic. If you are a fan of future dystopian society stories, this is a good one. One of the things I like though, the book does not take us down an Orwell path, showing us how bad things are for everyone. In some ways you get to see how good things are because without stories, there is no religion, but also imagination and creativity are pretty much gone...

Joker
Many people have told me Joker is an awesome book, including my friend Travis who does not even read comics. Well those people were right, and I am a moron for not picking this up sooner.

Grant Morrison always writes a creepy, very weird Joker. Azzarello goes a different route. He captures some of that Ledger Joker, but also brings back how the Joker was a guy who also ran the criminal underground in Gotham.

He gets released from Arkham and decides to take back the streets. Unlike those old stories where he had crazy plans and silly methods, this time he skins people alive, shoots random people and just scares the living hell out of everyone.

Batman only plays a small role in the book, showing up towards the end, and he gives a great line, which I will not spoil for anyone.

Anyways, let me know what you thought of either book. And, if you are reading any of the other Radical Comics, let me know how they are.

Fall of Thanes

Fall of Thanes is the final book in Brian Ruckley's Godless World Trilogy. As I said before, the books can be very dark and bloody. This one did not disappoint. Unfortunately though, it gets kind of slow for awhile, but then when it picks back up it pretty much grabs you by the throat and forces you to keep reading. There will probably be some spoilers in here.

We find ourselves in a world that is falling apart, the villain is causing almost everyone to go mad and just kill each other. Ruckley shows how everything is falling apart and how the villain is in the center of it all. For most of second book and beginning of the third book, we get the idea that one of the more powerful races will stop him.

Then we find out that he (his name is Aeglyss by the way) might be more powerful than them. At that point there seems to be very little hope. There are two characters who seem to be immune to Aeglyss' mental decay throughout the world, Kanin and Taim, polar opposites.

Kanin seeks revenge for the death of his sister, he blames Aeglyss for her death. He is so angry that he is blinded by rage and has almost the inner power to force others to listen to him by sheer will. Taim on the other hand stays away from madness because of the intense love for his wife, and his duty to protect Orisian.

My only complaint with the book would be how they dealt with Shraeve. She starts out as this badass warrior who cannot be defeated and her mind is sharp enough to not be under Aeglyss thrall. By the end though, he has control over her and she battles with Taim to the death.

Throughout the book we hear about her quickness and the quickness of Varryn, the non-human helping Orisian, it seems they are destined to battle, but then she pretty much takes him out quickly and moves on to fight Taim.

My favorite moment was the battle between Coinach (the shieldman of Orisian's sister) and Kale (the High Thanes shieldman). Coinach is younger, but is said to be very skilled. Kale is considered one of the scarier shieldmen (you probably have to be pretty hardcore to be guarding the most important person in the land).

The fight does not last very long. Coinach defeats him with ease and then delivers a pretty funny line "I had heard he was better than that." I do not know why, but that just made me laugh when I read it.

Anyways, I highly recommend the entire series to anyone that wants to read something that is dark and full of good ole bloodshed. The characters are very likable, even after they do some not so good things. The beauty is though, Ruckley is not afraid to kill them off, which helps keep you on your toes.

Girlfriend of the Week

This weeks GOTW belongs to a girl I recently saw and wished she was not an evil robot. Well I am sure she is not an evil robot in real life, well if she is I am okay with that, because she is still hot. Anyways, the girl I am talking about is Isabel Lucas. She was in the new Transformers movie, and she was definitely hot.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I went to this movie with very low expectations. I mean, lets be real here, it's Michael Bay. I know what I am getting, right? Lots of explosions, silly plot, but pretty entertaining, like the first one. Unfortunately, this one took all the crap I hated from the first one and decided to expand from there.

I was going to rant and rave about all the things I hated, but here is a nice little site that does it for me, yay for laziness!

Aside from everything that site makes fun of, the only thing I can add is that the scenes in Egypt and Petra were cool to see since I have been to both, unfortunately they decided to throw a map away. The pyramids are nowhere near Petra (about 300 miles away I think), plus the pyramids are beyond the horizon line from a large body of water, so you could not aim a gun at Devastator like that.

I also do not remember that many chickens running around everywhere when I was at either place...




While I was inside the place where they were at Petra, I never thought to blast through the wall to see if any dead robots were in there (although, I do not remember there being some weird painting in there, but that could just be my memory).

On a side note, look at that sexy guy in the last picture. That is a guy who should be running around the desert, not Shia...

My Insane Mind

So the other day I wrote a lie nice piece of fiction about getting attacked by a bear. It reminded me of something funny I did a few years ago, The Uncle Carl story...

For those of you not familiar, back before Facebook, Twitter, and whatever else there is out there, we had AOL IM. I used to put up funny away messages, sometimes movie/music quizzes, and sometimes I would do little rants. Those rants would eventually lead me to start a livejournal page, which would then lead to me writing this page. And that is the history of my blog, yay.

Anyways, one night back in January of 2005, I was about to head over to Champs because I did not feel like playing poker at my place and that was what everyone wanted to do. This was also the period in time that I knew all the bartenders at Champs (way too many free drinks) and was trying to bang at least two of the waitresses. Anyways, before I left I wrote a little away message saying something "My Uncle Carl died, heading to Champs."

I get over there and really think nothing of it. After a few beers I receive a text message from Jason asking me if I am alright. I think he is retarded and say yes (I have completely forgotten about the away message), but then a few minutes later he shows up. He wants to know if I need to talk about my uncle. I start laughing and explain to him that I have no Uncle Carl, it was a joke. As he leaves, I tell him to not say anything to anyone while they are playing poker.

When I get home, I find out that Shellie was planning on buying me a muffin basket. I had to come clean and that caused me to write this.

Needless to say, I did it again by worrying my family. Apparently they did not read the small print in my bear post, and they were frightened for my safety. I really do not think I would get home after being attacked by a bear and sit down to write a blog post about it. Okay, yes I would...

Burn Notice Season One

I finally decided to stop being stupid and watch the first season of Burn Notice. I have never seen an episode, but many people have told me to check it out. I finished watching it last night, and I must say that I am tempted to rush to the store to buy season two.

The show is about Michael Westen, a spy who has received a burn notice, which means he has been cut off. No job, no history, no anything. He is stuck in Miami (which he explains at the beginning of each episode). To make money he takes on little odd jobs, all while working on figuring out why he was burned.

Westen is a very funny character, usually giving us little bits of information such as "when breaking into a house, it pays off to make it look like you should be there or you are confused. Grab a yogurt from the fridge, that helps." Yeah, I paraphrased, but you get the idea. Watching him create lies and backstories is always amusing. Plus we get to see actual spy stuff, which is cool since you never get to see that sort of thing in a Bond movie (unless parkour and Texas Hold 'Em are spy activities).

Also, the show has Bruce Campbell. Do I really need to say anything else? Okay, how about another picture of Gabrielle Anwar, who plays Michael's ex-girlfriend...