Month: July 2004

“Did I say spidey? I meant stinky. ‘Nuff said.”

Yup, Lisa and I braved the crowds and went to see what so many are proclaiming to be one of the greatest movie sequels ever – Spider-Man 2. And my initial reaction – enh. Seriously, if you go through life without seeing this movie you won’t miss a single thing. It wasn’t bad, but there was nothing all that impressive about it. In other words, while it wasn’t Daredevil, it sure wasn’t anywhere near X2.

Let me start off by saying that I hate Spider-Man. No, not the movie, but the character. I think he is one of the absolute worst superheroes of all time (no, not the worst – as long as there was The Whizzer and Arms-Fall-Off Boy). He was irritating and preachy without actually being right most of the time. Peter Parker continually made his life hell for no reason other than he thought he should be living a tortured life because of his responsibilities. Spider-Man was filled with completely one-dimensional characters with an extremist view of right and wrong – as I’ve been saying, Parker wouldn’t pick up a $20 bill off the ground to feed his starving aunt because he would equate it with stealing. It was an incredibly immature comic, and I actually liked the first movie for improving a lot of these flaws (Jameson was actually a decent character, the webbing was natural as opposed to some retarded plot device, etc.) Unfortunately the sequel spends half of its time on the worst parts.

For starters, the movie was fairly boring. The pacing was horrendous with tons of painfully slow dialogues that sounded much like the beating of a dead horse. The action sequences were decent, but some of the special effects were pretty weak – the first shot of him swinging through the city looked like it was directly lifted from the game. Even with a really cool villain like Doc Ock, I just couldn’t get into it. Lisa was happy to hear that, because she was beginning to think that it was merely her age that prevented her from getting into the movie. But I assured her it has much more to do with her taste.

I started flipping through the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes and found myself agreeing with only the negative ones. All of the other reviewers are raving like this was such a masterful film, mistaking the overuse of long and pointless conversations for character development and a horribly drawn out crush for romance. I’m looking at these positive reviews and wondering if these people are just starved for a fun blockbuster that they’ll take anything, or do they all just want to be on the $400 million bandwagon? Hey, if you enjoy the film, good for you – but it just makes me question more whether it is the industry or the audience that has begun to bring down the quality of “art” these days.

About the only reason I have for ever wanting to see this movie again (aside from the obvious) would be an even better cameo by the man himself than the first one. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet – I recommend waiting for the DVD.

We had a picnic at the Boonton facility this afternoon (that would be Friday). Along with the usual assortment of grilled meats courtesy of Cesar (including what could have been the greatest chicken I’ve ever had) we also partook in some vigorous sporting activities. Well, maybe not that vigorous. There was some football throwing, badminton (wait ’til you see the pictures), a little bit of soccer, a few volleyball matches, and sadly lastly Whiffle ball.
Continue reading “And baby makes… 4!”

Last night, long before I actually left work (more on that later), Lisa called me after finding a little parakeet on the sidewalk. Obviously not one of Hoboken’s indigenous feathered friends, she quickly noted his dire predicament. A kind (though somewhat confused) old man who also bore witness to this little lost birdie suggested using her sweater to rescue the little guy. Being the sweet soul that she is, Lisa swept him up and gently carried him back to her place. Of course that left me with the task of picking up bird feed on the way home 😛 .

Well, he is adorable, and I certainly bear no ill-will for her rescue. But I do hope that the real owner will see one of the many posters she put up last night:

If you don’t know the Wikipedia* by now, you really should. It is a wonderful source of information freely provided by your fellow netizens. Nevertheless, it is not without its issues (although these are generally fixable). Today, for example, I was browsing their pages on the Presidency (now I know exactly where to go whenever I need some quick info on any of our past leaders) and decided to check out the entry on Dubya himself. It may have been has already been corrected by now, but at the time it looked like this (click for a larger image):

I’ve highlighted the relevent material, and now I will enlarge it for easy reading:

For those who can’t see the image, it reads, “He is also a member of MENSA and is widely regrded [sic] by scientists as the ‘Smartest Man Alive'”. Possibly the most humorous part would be the misspelling of “regarded” and the lack of punctuation. Way to hammer home why it’s the liberals who are known for their intellect. If you go to the history page of this entry you can see that this has gone back and forth, including my personal favorite edit: “Like his father, Bush is a liar, idiot, asshole, fraud and was educated at Phillips Academy and Yale University.”

Ah, the power of the Interweb.

* – I won’t bother going into the concept of a Wiki, but for the purposes of this post it is a site that can be edited by anyone, thus allowing for public contributions.

Of course you know I’m not really sexist, but holy crap is this incident too damn funny. Thank God they got a picture to capture the surrealness of the accident.

(Courtesy of Mindful Musings)

Designs on the White House has announced the winners for its t-shirt design contest. These are to benefit the Kerry-Edwards campaign, so I’m sure you will all approve. They’re definitely worth checking out, although I will warn you that upon seeing the typical “And all I got” t-shirt I nearly spit coffee all over my monitor. Most of you will probably find the more subtle anti-theocracy design most pleasing.

(Courtesy of Stupid Evil Bastard)

I sometimes question how well Google News (beta, of course) really keeps track of the important news stories. When one of the top links today was “When Kiera lost her breasts”, I think we may be overlooking some of the more pressing issues (such as Kerry selecting his running mate). Of course I can’t really blame them, considering that story was their headline and I’m still one of the shmucks who bypassed it to click on the Keira link on the side.

For those curious – and too lazy to read the barely 5 paragraphs themselves – the article talks about how the lovely Keira Knightley lost her breasts from all of the training she did for her part in King Arthur. Never fear all of you drooling fans of the unbelievably hot Knightley, after halting her workouts, they have returned. I think I can honestly say that the world is once again a better place 😛 .

Hmm, no post for four days (I am shamed) and the first thing I can add is another link related to drinking (that makes 3 alcohol posts in a row). Anywho, here’s another fun flash game, this one challenging you to keep the drunk upright and walking. I set my record a few days ago, so I forget what it was – something like 83.

(courtesy of eclecticism)

How to make a indieb0i

Ingredients: 5 parts competetiveness 5 parts brilliance 5 parts empathy

Method: Layer ingredientes in a shot glass. Add a little curiosity if desired!

P.S. (Could you quiz makers possibly try to not completely bastardize HTML when you generate output? Seriously, half the time it takes me longer to correct everything these damn memes screw up than just writing a real post.)