O Jeez, The Wreckage

I just got back from Maryville Metalfest. There were ten bands spaced out from 4pm to roughly midnight, but since I can't be out past 11, I got headed home at 10pm and missed the headliners, which is lame, but I certainly got my money's worth. Brandon, Phil, and Nathan spent the night at my house last night, and I took Nathan home at 2pm. I was watching the first "episode" of the Band of Brothers mini-series marathon on the History Channel, and now here I am, at 10:55 and it's still going on. Anyway, back to Metalfest, when Brandon and I got there, we payed our five dollar admission and got a blue star drawn on our respective right hands. We then entered the decrepit, air-conditioning-less, and crowded Alnwick Community center's gym. Looking to our right roughly fifteen yards, we have the stage, covered in speakers and various equipment. Looking to our left, we have Will, Marvin, Coty, and all the merch tables for the ten bands. So we take our seats and exchange our greetings when a man carrying a large video camera walks to our section of the bleachers. He then tells us that "they" were going to film the concert for a DVD, and he wanted to get a reaction shot from the bleachers before the show started and we'd all be busy bustin' our various moves. I say "they" because I still have no idea who organised all this. Anyway, on the count of three, we all lost our frikin' minds and yelled and screamed for this camera guy. A few minutes later the first band is set up and playing, they demand that we all come out of our seats and dance, which we do happily. They were good, awesome energy, good material, technical issues, pretty much sums up all the performances, so I'll refrain from describing the music itself in the future. So at this point, I'm not really going crazy, just kinda bobbing rather than banging my head. Got a little more rowdy for the second band, started to mosh, started to really get into the music. Them comes the third band, and a series of songs and moshes which took me off my damned feet for the rest of the night. Seriously, when they were finished with their set, I was finished period, it was about 6:30 at this point, and I was dehydrated, bruised, and sore in every possible way. So I went to the refreshment table and got a soda because they didn't have water for ssome dumb reason. Then I went outside to Will's car to get some rest away fromt he crowd in the relative calm of the parking lot. Chilled there with Higgins, Will, Marvin, and Brandon for a while, sharing battle stories and trying to get some rest for the next set. Sometime around then, Joey shows up and quickly becomes the life of the party as per usual. Will, Coty, and Marvin go off to watch the next show, and Brandon and I drive back to the highway to find a gas station where we then spend thirty minutes sitting in the ice cream section eating a candy bar and drinking a bottle of tea. We now head back to the gym for more metal and end up just chilling with Ramiz, Robby, Joey, and Coty in the parking lot (it wasn't like you couldn't hear the music out there anyway). The 4th band's set is over and Will heads back out to the parking lot for whatever reason. Sometime around here, I knocked the R off of the name plate of a Buick Roadmaster, not that I did this on purpose, but the letters now spell oadmaster, which I think is an improvement. The five of us were just sitting around, relaxing, when Joey comes out excitedly and tells us that the back half of the building is rumored to be haunted, and that we now have to go with him to check it out. Seems like other people ha heard the rumors too, as many of the windows were broken and the doors had been pryed more than once. Not only that, but on one of the doors someone had scratched DIE kill kill kill kill into the metal with a knife. Joey loves this kind of thing, and took lots of pictures, which he stopped to show to some girls from another school none of us knew who were hanging out in front of the steps to the closed part of the building. We introduced ourselves to them and were invited to join them in sitting there, which we did. After about ten minutes of sitting there with these girls, we decided we should move, so we went back around back of the building to a small playground/baseball diamond. Will, Joey, Coty, and I all stayed at the playground as the girls walked off with Marvin and Brandon. Eventually, after many profane jokes about what they were all doing back around the other side of the building, we decided to go after them. Will decided to go back to the gym, Joey broke off mid-search to go talk to another girl he knew, which left Coty and I to try and find the errant group. Coty got a phone call from his mom, and I got tired of looking from Brandon so I just called him. He, Marvin, and the girls were back at the playground, and we joined them. Joey and Will showed up eventually, and we all just started doing laps around the building talking amongst one another. As it began to get dark, we all settled back in front of the steps, and continued our conversation. At some point and for some reason, I mentioned the name Romines, at which point a group of people stopped and asked who I was talking about. After they found out I was talkign about the same Romines they knew, they asked us if we knew any bass players who were good enough to play in a band they were putting together. A few names popped into my head, none of which were really very good ideas. Two of the three people moved on soon after, but one of them decided to stay and talk with us. We found out he was a gaurd of something or other for the Defense Department, and they were putting him back through school at current so that he could resume his job because they'd upped the minimum degree you needed to do his work. We continued to chat about the government for a while, but he wasn't there for too long. However, when he and I finished our conversation I realised that most everyone had relocated a ways across the parking lot, and I walked over to tell Brandon we'd have to leave soon. He didn't feel like going home, so he got a ride from Will, and I went home by myself. Before I left, I gave the girls my cell phone number. They said we'd have to hang out again some time, and I let them know that unfortunately my phone is rarely on, but that if Will was around, then I would probably be around too. Right, so that was my day from two to ten. I'm really sore, and really tired. What can I say, it was an awesome day. I only have one real complaint. What's up with metal band names now-a-days? Is it just me or are most of the names just "Verb the Noun"(IE: Awake the Suffering, Against the Opposition, Resist the Restraint, these were all at the show today)? 

A-Thons

I recently decided that I wanted to marathon all the Modest Mouse music I've got (all of it excluding two EPs the contents of which were realeased on other albums). This was awesome, it resulted in me hearing whole new meanings to songs, and made me feel... well, worn out frankly. Please understand, their Discography is 9 hours 41 minutes and 49 seconds long. That being said, it took me 3 days of on and off listening to finish. The rules I set for myself were pretty simple (music has to be on when using the computer, if that music is from my player, it has to be MM). I took a full hour's break to watch My Morning Jacket on Austin City Limits, which was awesome.

NOW, onto future stuff. I have realised that marathoning my music is something fun that I can do to pass the time when I'm in an indecisive mood, and with that in mind, I've embarked on a Sonic Youth-A-Thon. This will take a bit longer as their music adds up to 11 hours 21 minutes and 53 seconds. So, yeah, I just felt like making a post about this project because, for me even more than most people, listening to one band's discography is really difficult.

A Big Update

Friday:

I didn't go to school. I thought I was sick, but it turns out it was just allergies. I blame all the tree-sex. Later on that afternoon, I'd say around five-ish, I went over to Brandon's to pick him up so we could go to the concert on Saturday. After Brandon and I got back to my house, he downloaded Steam onto my computer, I didn't really need or want it, but whatever. All in all it was a pretty uneventful night, we sat in my room and played Left 4 Dead and The Orange Box. I love Valve, I really do. I dislike a lot of things about Left 4 Dead, but it's still the only real decent zombie game we've ever gotten. It's good to get Team Fortress 2 back, but I now suck at it all over again.

Saturday:

Brandon and I woke up way too early (around 9a.m.), and promptly left for Habitat for Humanity without breakfast. I had my mom's debit card with me because I was supposed to withdraw 20$ from the ATM near McDonalds, but I completely forgot about it until I got to Habitat. I called when I got there because I suddenly remembered, and she was understandably worried, no big deal, really. We went up to the 2nd floor of Habitat because that's where they keep all their clothes. We looked very homosexual picking out clothes for eachother, and I think most of the other people was in the store were very uncomfortable. After Habitat we went back to my house and dropped off the debit card. From there, we went to Fotthills Mall where absolutely NOTHING was going on. Out of boredom, we decided to go to Hasting's. We walked around browsing their movies, music, anime, manga, comic books, and whatever else we could find. I bought Black Lagoon Volume 005, which I just finished reading (it was awesome). It was free comic book day, so I snagged 10 off the rack, mostly junk, but they may be interesting (haven't gotten to any of them yet). With that all done we went to Tomato Head for lunch which was great but wiped me out as far as money went. After Tomato head, we went back to my house to sit around until my mom was ready to leave for the concert. Little did we know that our friend Nicole needed help taking some videos off of her Sony Handycam due to Windows Vista troubles, so we drove over to her place and picked up the camera then back to my house to install the software on my mom's computer. It took us a while to figure everything out, it was mostly Brandon's work, but I helped (when I wasn't lounging on the couch/bed in the room). After we finished up there we drove back to Nicole's, dropped it off, and made our plans for tomorrow. After we drove back to my house, we headed down to Market Square in Knoxville for the concert. There was a guy playing a guitar on the street in front of the parking lot, he looked pretty disheveled but he was good. We walked to Tomato Head to get an early (7 p.m.) dinner, but it was too crowded. We went to some asian restaurant instead because we thought they had sushi, unfortunately that was a different asian restaurant. I ordered a baked tofu salad which sucked because it was too much tofu and not enough salad. On top of that, they used this weird wasabi dressing which was way too hot for me. On the up side, however, there was a group of people playing African tribal music which made for good entertainment. After dinner we headed over to The Bijou to see Amos lee with Mutlu (pronounced moot loo) opening. Mutlu was great he was really funny and had a song about the "sexy, naughty side of board games", most funny use of "TRIPLE WORD SCORE" ever. Amos was great and also really funny. He looked like a zombie every time he got into the music and started dancing around. His encore took about 3 songs and 20 minutes which was the second longest encore I've ever seen (Built to Spill takes top honors for one 45 minute song as an encore). As we headed back to the car after the concert, that guy in front of the parking garage was still at it playing his heart out. He'd been playing for about 4 hours straight from what I could see, so there was no way I wasn't going to give him at least a few bucks (two to be exact).

Sunday:

Today was a great day. Nicole and Brandon and I went to the mall and then Hasting's where a book of sexual positions told us what the best postion was for sex on our respective birthdays. We spent about 20 minutes in the manga section conversing about nothing, then another 20 in the anime/movies section, another 20 in music/comics/toys, and another hour or so just browsing around the store aimlessly. We took Nicole home, came back to my place and dicked around doing nothing. Then I took Brandon home. After I got back I read Black Lagoon 005 and ate dinner. I've been watching House and CSI since then. 

I could Write a lot more about Sunday, but I think this blog is long enough. Nicole is yelling at me on Skype as I type to publish this one, and I think I'll do just that. 

 

Not Sure if I'm Mad or Happy

I was going to take a nap, but then the Sci-Fi channel started playing Startrek: Enterprise ( the new one). Normally I wouldn't care as this show isn't really all that good, but this time the Intrepid crew of the Enterprise have decided to travel back in time accidentally to World War II. I can stop watching, an alien race that I don't recognize are SS officers. This is entertaining as hell. Someobody just died or passed out or something. The Captain is being bathed by some woman and I can't tell if she's supposed to be black, asian, or an alien race, but regardless she lives in France. Oh, she's black, and they're in Brooklyn? Oh, I get it, this is an alternate history, the Nazis are pwning everything. I get it now, even better. Well, I'm going to watch the rest of this now.

EDIT: massive frustration, in the last 15 minutes of that two hour special I nodded of during a commercial. This happened just in time for me to miss the conclusion, as I woke up with the bad guy screaming and (maybe) dying.

Oh me, oh my

It's hot, dammit. I'm listening to Jackson Browne's Greatest hits. Brandon is playing Gmod with David and some random other fellow. Daniel is yelling at the xbox about how someone's JDAM is messing up (his more colourful language omitted). I have nothing to do, so I thought I would update this blog with some completely unuseful information about my current situation. Brandon's Skype chat with Niccole died when we went up to Andy and Matt's house to try and ruin Andy's day. I feel like I accomplished this by stuffing both his harmonica and his back scrathcer down my pants. Keep in mind that it's sweltering out, and that I'm perspiring in unmentionable places (in other words my balls were sweaty). The picture on the front of the Yakov Smirnoff DVD Brandon bought when we went to see his comedy show is glaring at me looking every bit like a russian Al Borland. Speaking of Al Borland, Home Improvement was a fantastic show. I remember I used to laugh my ass of when Tim made those jokes about how Al was always wearing flannel, and then feeling like a dirtbag piece of shit when I found out that Al wore that flannel as a tribute to his dead father. It's a very touching story, really. I remember crying when I saw the last episode of Boy Meets World as a little kid, but I remember cryingnot only when I saw the last episode of Home Improvement, but bawling my eyes out when Jonathan Taylor Thomas left, and then even harder when he came back for Christmas. I think I'll always feel like Home Improvement and MASH had the best two sitcom endings of all time. *sigh* Good times, but anyway, what else did I want to say? Ha Ha, Brandon drank too much pineapple juice and now feels sick. That's what he gets for taking the whole damn thing. Brandon called David on Skype and now David and Daniel are bitching at eachother about who is hated more by their respective families. Brandon's room is an amalgamation of dumb shit and awesome shit. For example, there's a Pokemon: Battle Revolution poster right next to a Shaun of the Dead one, and a Pink Floyd: The Wall (movie) poster hanging above a door with a giant magnetic horseshoe hanging from the doorknob and a big pile of dirty pants at the bottom rendering it unopenable. That's okay, I suppose, there's nothing behind that door but his dad's collection of Altoids cans (don't ask me).

The Listen or Die Podcast

seems to have fallen through spectacularly due to lazy-ness on the part of it's creators (Brandon, Nathan, Andy, and Myself) and my current lack of transportation. The point of this blog isn't for me to announce the indefinite hiatus of a podcast that only had two episodes, however. Mainly I'm writing this blog to fill in whatever poor bored soul wants to read up on my daily life about what has been going on lately with me. Here it comes. Get ready. Wait for it. Wait for it. NOTHING!

That's obviously a bit of an overstatement, but it was still a pretty boring long-weekend, most likely because I'm still down in the dumps about losing my car and, subsequently, my freedom, or at least my hightened sense of it. I did manage to accomplish a few things, however, mainly I went to Nathan's 17th birthday get together (I say get together because party conjures up images of pointy hats and cake of which there were none) and managed not to hurt myself with the exception of some glass shards which got stuck in my hand after I tried and failed to reenact a bar fight by smashing a beer bottle on... something. It was fun, but unfortunately I feel like we may be reaching the last of the "get togethers" since we're all coming quickly upon the age of eightteen and we're starting to feel childish sitting in each other's basements eating too much, getting sick, and playing Halo. Anyway, as I said, it was good fun, I played pool almost constantly and went on a rant about how much I hate Irish people in an attempt to get into Jared's head which worked, a little too well. I went home the next day feeling happy and not really thinking yet that this would probably be the last of such celebrations. 

Other than that, I picked up some photos from Target, and really like quit a few of them. Others aren't so great, but eh,  I realised I would end up wasting some film when I started experimenting with different stuff. Mostly what I've been working on is shooting all the outdoor lights in my neighborhood. It might sound a little weird, but I really like the effect it gives sometimes. The problem is, these lights aren't very bright and many of the photos I need involve some mild for of breaking and entering or at the least some extremely suspicious behavior on mine and Brandon's part. So as a result many of the pictures had to be taken from a greater distance than i wanted or at a weird angle or in a hurry or something like that, and most of the ones I really had hopes for didn't turn out at all. 

I've been listening to this one album almost non-stop, and one song in particular has me pretty much in love. The band is This Mortal Coil, the album is It'll End in Tears, the song is Song to the Siren. I think the best way I've heard This Mortal Coil described is gothic dream pop, and it personifies this song specifically. I've never been a big fan of goth music, and so understand that this isn't some gushy unrequited love song, and understand that for me to be recommending gothic music to people means that I'm extremely taken with it. 

Other than that, I really haven't done much of anything, I went to Earthfare last night and got some dinner, which was good, and I ate some of said dinner for lunch today. I read some from one of the many books I need to finish at the moment, and after I finish this blog I'm gonna go read Of Mice and Men for Mrs. Wallace. Usually I would blow off a school-related book if there was another book which I liked better that I wanted to read, but OMaM is a classic, and I really like it, AND it has a deadline, so my other books are just going to have to wait for a while.

Hurm... it seems I wrote quite a bit for someone with "NOTHING!" to say.

Congrats to me

I've now officially filled my ipod (30GB) to capacity. I knew this day was fast approaching, but it feels so surreal, my ipod is more of a nostalgia generator for me sometimes than a music player. For example, I heard Modest Mouse for the first time whilst on my way to Canada for the first time, and I wore that album OUT and it'll always be in my mind. Also, I remember reading the Drizzt books by RA Salvatore while listening to Stadium Arcadium by The Red Hot Chili Peppers so that one is lodged in there pretty far. 

The albums that pushed me to the 30 GB mark?

Beck - Odelay

Rollins Band - End of Silence

Queen - like 4 greatest hits albums

Joy Division - The peel Sessions / Closer

Kings of Leon - Because of the Times

Raveonettes - Whip it on

This Mortal Coil - It'll End in Tears

Yardbirds - Greatest Hits

Short story notes/ideas

I'm making a list of random stuff I want to incorporate into the story so that I can remember it all. This is going to be a running list and suggestions to the categories are welcome. 

Names: (Note to self: Japanese names in English style)

- Quinn

- Bruce

- Mari Konno, Masami Yoshizawa, Erika Nanba, Ayako Nomoto (there's a story there)

- Ishmael

- Leviathan, Behemoth

- Gomory

- Armitage

Character traits:

- rubbing a scar when nervous

- missing limbs/appendages

- love of speed metal

- martial arts (possibly Jeet kun do)

- racial mix

- 21st century weapons

- Kafkaesque (impact before stop)

- drug overdoses

A New Post and A New Day

I've been brainstorming pretty much constantly about a new short story lately, and I still have no idea what I want to write about. Thanks to a friend of mine I now have OpenOffice so I won't have to type the whole thing on wordpad. I don't think he reads this blog, but in case he does, Andy, if the story ever gets written, it'll be because you found me some software. Alright, now on to the point. I have, like I've said, no concrete plan for this story, but I was thinking something about a town full of people in the middle of the desert who's job it is to remove obsolete satellites from orbit. I've been listening to a lot of Nick Cave and a lot of Tom Waits (I recommend them both highly), so it has to be set in the desert so I can have the whole wild west feel. I'm thinking maybe they'll be removing these satellites for one of three reasons:

1. Humans have filled the thermosphere with too much shit, which is now obsolete, but still in the way and we can't get any ships through to deeper parts of space which is severly hampering our colonization attempts

2. Humans were forced to flee Earth due to something (work in progress obviously) and eventually decided it was ok to head back. Only problem is that they need a small ship to be able to zip through the layers of debris in the thermosphere, and that the only ship capable of doing that can only hold about 10 people or so comfortably and the story takes place several generations later where the great great great grandkids of the original earth re-colonizers have carved out a life for themselves and are bringing down satellites so that the larger ships can return for all the people who were left behind out in space to come back.

3. There is a war being fought with spaceships in the lower atmosphere, and the protagonists would be tasked with removing the debris from the on-going war because the chunks of metal from the battles are raining down on the inhabitants of Earth.

I'm kinda leaning towards #3, I feel like that would give me a chance to do more action and focus on the character's work instead of their lives on Earth which are bound to be boring as sin. I'm sure I can work in some bar fights and a comic relief character so the whole thing won't have to take place in low orbit, but still I think the space battles part is the really interesting part. Another issue, I'm pretty sure this is going to be written in 1st person, if it indeed does get written at all, and saying I'm unfamiliar with 1st person writing is a rather big understatement. I don't think I've ever written anything seriously in 1st person, really, nothing. I used to always write in 3rd person limited but I have real trouble writing dialogue in that format because I don't like typing things like "(name) said" and without that it gets confusing. I know 1st person won't really do anything to relieve this, but I'm hoping to establish a very vivid personality for the main protagonist and his or her buddies so that leaving out the "(name) said" kind of stuff won't bungle it entirely. Like I've said, none of this is concrete, at this point, the story could just as easily end up being about an Ostrich who dreams of becoming a nightclub bouncer or something crazy like that.

I had a depressing day today.

You ever have those days when you can't stop thinking about suicide? Not commiting it necessarily, I'm not even entertaining that thought any more than normal so don't worry, but just people killing themselves? I have those days rather often. See it's a culmination of several things right now, so I'll start with some background. Over the last few weeks, one of my favorite albums has been The Sunset Tree by The Mountain Goats, this is a concept album about an abusive stepfather. I've also been watching sadder than normal TV and movies. Last, Script Frenzy is coming up in April and I've been interested in doing a short story for it, not for Script Frenzy itself, as it won't be a script, but just so I can get back to writing some fiction. However, the problem with this is that my writing always ends up being extraordinarily dark. I think this is because all I read as a kid were Steven King books and Edgar Allan Poe Poetry. So there I am, in my car on the way to Brandon's house, when something sad came on my ipod, not sure what exactly, but something sad. There is a tree at the crest of a hill in the middle of nowhere on the way to Brandon's and it really is one of the most awe-inspiring sights I've ever seen when the tree is coated in the tangerine glow of December dusk and the hills of the farm behind it seem to roll on forever. All of these factors combined to force me to think what it would be like to hang myself from that tree in the sunset while listening to this song so that the last thing I would see would be such a scene of serene beauty made even more divine by the knowledge that this would be the last thing I ever see. It is at this point that my rational mind kicks in and draws me back to reality to remind me that I have last second regrets more than a normal person, as far as I am aware, and that I would probably spend my last few seconds flailing indignantly in an attempt to save me from myself. One thought leads to the other and now I'm sitting in my car pulled over on the shoulder with a composition book and a pen thinking of all the famous last words I can and writing an outline of my suicide note (I realize this is creepy, but stay with me, I'm really not in any danger of actually doing any of this).About ten minutes later I look down at my notes and realise that this note turned into a damn epic and that I sound like I'm rambling. I know it's weird to read this, and normally I wouldn't type this out but hey, what are blogs for if not talking to yourself? Anyway, I continued to sit and contemplate for a while before turning my car back on and heading on my way. I had a pleasant afternoon with Brandon and Daniel and went home without another thought of death or suicide or any other macabre subject for that matter. This all changed when I saw that tree though, I spent the rest of the way home driving 80 in a 50 zone trying to outrun my piss poor mood. So I get home and take a nap, then I take a shower and now I'm just sitting here wondering half-heartedly if I'm going to have a good senior year. Wilco is playing... "soft wind and bright sky, to enjoy my suffering"... that's an awesome lyric and pretty much sums up my day. If anyone bothered to read that all, then I thank them deeply, and would like to tell them again not to worry about me.

EDIT: that song I was listening to was either Rain King, Long December, or Recovering the Satellites all by Counting Crows. This brings me to another topic, I dislike it when half the songs on a greatest hits album are all from the same album and yet they're spread across the entire album. This is the case with Counting Crows' greatest hits album Films About Ghosts. I think the majority of songs on that album are from their first album August and Everything After which says something about their quality past that point. Don't get me wrong they are still good, but just not nearly as good. 

Epic Justice, random anger, and my 10th post

Epic Justice:

I was at Hasting's today in search of Mick Foley's third autobiography (which I found) and some new manga to entertain myself with when I'm in the mood for lighter reading, and what do I see but a 1$ movie bin, I think to myself, this will be fun, if only so I can see what type of horrible low-budget horror movies they have. So I walk over, and what do my eyes behold but that glorious nugget of suck that is Tom Cruise's War of the Worlds. This is my version of justice, this is what gives me hope in people, the fact that when a horrible actor makes a horrible movie from what was originally an exquisite radio broadcast, we have the good common sense to shame the piece of filth into oblivion.

Random Anger:

Fuck the English Language. There are so many missed oppurtunities in this language. Why the fuck is the word "palindrome" not a palindrome? How fucking hard is it to make it be palilap? I know this seems like a minor issue, but I appreciate the small stuff. One of my favorite comedians ever is Mitch Hedberg, if you know his work, you know he would be pissed too. Next issue: otomatopeia. They're sound words, otomatopeias, but aren't all words sound words? if they weren't wouldn't it just be lip reading? I mean, they're like... words without meaning, but honestly, all words are sound words godammit. There are a thousand little thoughts like this out there, but these are the two I thought of by myself, as far as I know. 

10th Post:

I made it right after Kilgore, I should really update more, but most of these are pretty pointless and unread anyway, so whatever.

I love you, man and Dragonball: Evolution

I love you, man was great fun, a very funny movie. I don't have a whole lot to say about it, my favorite part of it was Thomas Lennon's cameo even if they did make it pointlessly obvious that it was going to be a huge gay joke right from his introduction. I kinda-sorta-maybe-a little bit met Thomas Lennon once, but thats a story for a later date, or never. More importantly than I Love You, Man, however, is Dragonball: Evolution, which I am now a proud owner of a poster for(I didn't get it in support of the movie, I promise). Don't let me deceive you, I HATE HATE HATE HATE this movie. It is the single most unfaithful and moronic attempt at money gauging from Dragonball fans that is possible to have been conceived. I don't like Dragonball Z, they spent 19 episodes showing the last 5 minutes of planet Namek, and it was just pointless. However, let's not bullshit, if you didn't like Dragonball Z on Toonami when you got home from elementary school, fuck you (unless you were just more into Gundam). DBZ was an about as huge a part of my childhood as toonami was itself, I almost stopped watching when Tom 1 died and I still remember the day I dropped DBZ fervently. These people are killing my childhood.I encourage anyone to watch the trailer for this tripe on youtube, I really do, if you remember DBZ from your childhood, it will make you want to vomit. 

Some of my major problems just from the trailer:

- Goku: Goku was (in the anime) a little kid whose rasion d'etre was training to kill all the bad guys for the good guys, Goku is (in the movie) a whiny little 17 year old who seems to have been almost forced into saving the world, wtf, doesn't that pretty much defeat his purpose?

- Bulma: Bulma was (in the anime) essentially what goku is in the movie, she was the spoiled teenager of rich parents and the reluctant caregiver who had no choice but to take care of hopeless little Goku, oh and also she had blue hair, Bulma (in the movie) is this John Wu-esque dual wielding pistol tough chick with black hair

- Roshi: Master Roshi was Goku's version of Mr. Miyagi, only difference was that he was a pervert, yeah, a bad one, and for some reason, he wore a turtle shell, Roshi (in the movie) looks like a 40-something in a hawaiian shirt (which DBZ Roshi had too)

- Picolo: nothing much other than that he looks all wrong in my head

- Unknown villain: WTF? were the villains in the DBZ universe not enough? did they really need another one? there are waaay better stories to be told here.

In short, DBZ: Evolution pisses me off, I can only hope that upcoming Dragonball: Kai (essentially a re-telling of DBZ w/o the filler and suck) will be good

I have nothing to say about anything right now...

... and that's just not okay, so I figured I would start typing and maybe something would come to me. I guess I can do updates on what I did for spring break to start out.

Week one:

- Saw Watchmen twice decided not to see it another like 3 times (speaking of which tales of the black freighter commercial just came on and I can't wait).

- Saw Taken, Liam Neeson kicking ass left and right, France is apparently more dangerous than we knew.

- Bought Gunslinger Girl season 1 DVD, Genshiken volume 1 DVD, and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei vol. 1 manga (I know, I know, but I had nothing better to spend my Hastings gift card on)

- Hung out with Nathan, Brandon, and myself all week

- A whole lot of nothing mostly

Week two:

- Brandon was over sunday and monday since we were planning to leave for Elkmont monday morning but slept in like usual so had to leave tuesday

- We got lost on the way up

- My chair broke... twice

- Realised that even though more than half our food was canned, we had forgotten the can opener

- Had no pillow or blanket, sleeping sucked, got a grand total of 12 hours in two nights and three days

- Cold, Cold, and more Cold with a capital C

- Various cuts and bruises

- Fires that will not start no matter what you do to them

- Matt, Chris, and David drove up to meet us (I won't mention the marijuana from this point on as I feel that it doesn't matter) and hang out, apparently their definiton of that idiom differs dramtically from mine

- We drove to Gatlinburg after a few hours to get some fudge, which we ended up with two pounds of, and then went our separate ways (home)

- Got back and was invited out for Mexican food with the family, saw Mario urbena (no idea how to spell the poor guy's name so I just spelled it like it sounded) out with an anonymous girl (go get em' tiger) and Mrs. Webber from student affairs with a man who looked quite a bit like her son Tyler so I'll assume it was her husband or at least his father

- Got home and immediately went to sleep and have been asleep all day today, even when I was awake

So, that was my week, I usually want to get back to school after a long break, but not this time.

In almost completely unrelated news, The Princess Bride is on TV (*pfft* Humperdink). I've seen it before, but I seem to like it more every time I see it. Someone needs to show this movie to all the emos that flock around Tim Burton, I think they would enjoy it and maybe stop loving Burton so damn much. So you know, there are a few things I have an irrational hate for, I'm going to list them for posterity: 

- Tim Burton

- Neil Patrick Harris

- Musicals (a few exclusions)

- People who hate things in a certain category (examples are like: I hate metal, I hate rap, I hate anime, I hate video games) and, unlike the others, I feel that this one is not irrational

I watched Zero Punctuation earlier, and I he said that he refused to use the word "blog" because it "sounds like something that lives at the bottom of a lake and communicates in farts" and while I'm not going to stop saying it, I feel like that hilarious thought needs to be repeated. 

A commercial for Hulu.com just came on featuring Seth McFarlane... who the fuck are these people and why do they have enough money to have streaming episodes of these shows?! I've used Hulu before, and was indifferent to it, but crispy crackers they're getting prestigious.

Let's see... what else is in the news...

nah, I'm just kidding, I won't start my awful standup act here.

I guess that's it then, I'm proud of myself for keeping the anime references to a minimum because thats usually what my mind drifts to when I have nothing else to talk about.

Well, I'm finally back after forgetting my password. See, my usual password is *******, but this site requires an 8 character password, and I couldn't for the life of me think what I might have put. Don't worry though, as Opera is now remembering all my information for me (isn't technology grand?). So, because I know you're waiting with bated breath to hear what I have to say after my short absence, I won't make you wate any longer.

First and foremost, is another anime review. I'm just going to go ahead and say that I rarely finish things that are bad, so most of these reviews, if not all of them, will be favorable at least but more likely closer to gushing. That being said, if you aren't an anime fan (why the fuck not (just kidding (no I'm not))) then you can probably skip this review. Regardless of this, I'm going to do the reviews because I feel like writing them. Oh, and one more thing, I've been asked to tone down the whole WALL OF TEXT thing, so I'll be attempting to condense my thoughts in the future. Okay, now, without further delay, my review of the anime Spice an Wolf:

Spice and wolf is almost at once all the things I hate, fantasy stories set in the middle ages, lessons on economics, love stories, and furries. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this anime. Essentially, the story is about a traveling merchant in a land with, as far as I know, the most convoluted monetary system ever. See, this merchant is a pretty stand up guy, and his life's goal is to be able to buy his own shop and get off the road. At least, he was until he meets a pagan wolf God who takes the form of a beautiful young girl with wolf ears and a wolf tail (thus the wolf part of the title, the spice thing is something about the travels of a person being like a seasoning spicefor their soul, but you can ignore that). So, this wolf demon, in exchange for traveling with him to her home up north and eating everything in sight is supposed to be increasing Lawrence's (thats the trader) profits. The problem is that she only does this in a few episodes, and she actually manages to wreck everything pretty bad really. However, the show is well drawn and animated, the soundtrack, despite consisting of mostly instuments ending in "ute", is quite fitting and entertaining, the drama feels, well, dramatic, and the love elements of the story between Lawrence and Horo (the wolf) are heartwarming and tend to leave you feeling happy even when things don't work out for the protagonists, so I think I can forgive some muddled story elements here and there. With a second season coming out in July of 2009, I know I'll be watching, and I would recommend anyone who is a fan of anime in any capacity watch the first episode and make their own decision from there.

Okay, next topic, imeem. Where has this wonderfull website been and why wasn't I made aware of it earlier? For anyone who doesn't know, imeem is essentially a music streaming site, and while this doesn't sound too impressive in itself, I can say that I've been sriously impressed with their selection and just the general quality of the stuff on there.

Not much of a topic was it? I honestly don't have a lot to say this time, I just wanted to show my face to let anyone who reads this (Will)know that I hadn't left the site and that they (or he) can expect many more pointless ramblings in the near future. 

A Review of the Anime School Days

I watch a lot of anime, and now that I have an outlet for reviews, I may just use it. Here's hoping this becomes a long running series. I'd also like to remind everyone that today is Shinkai day in celebration of legendary director Makoto Shinkai. If you don't know the man's work, you should.

This anime has 12 episodes of roughly 25 minutes each, and is based on a bishoujo game (bishoujo literally translates to beautiful young girl). These types of games generally focus on either the romantic or sexual side of relationships around the high school years, and may or may not be considered hentai (hentai translates as literally pervert and in the west refers to erotic comics or animation). 

*clears throat for actual review*

Be forewarned! This review may contain spoilers, but I'll try to refrain.

So, the protagonist of this story (bear in mind while watching it that protagonist does not mean the good guy, but rather the guy who the story is focused on) is Makoto Itou, a young man with a kind heart, and a very romantic view of the females he knows from what I can tell. He rides the same train on the way to school as a quiet girl, Kotonoha Katsura, who often reads. He falls in love with this girl essentially through staring at her every morning on the train ride to school, however, he is too shy to approach her and feels content to stand silently by and watch her through the camera on his cell phone. That is, of course, until Sekai Saionji takes an interest in his delimma and befriends Kotonoha by sitting with her during P.E. class in an attempt to set the two of them up. She is eventually successfull in this endeavor, and spends the next few episodes doing whatever she can to teach Makoto about how to properly deal with women. At this point in the story, I liked the show fine, but was fairly unimpressed with the direction in which it seemed to be moving. At times, for example, the fanservice, unnecessary elements of a storyline (IE odd camera angles) used to highlite girls in the show in a sexually explicit way, got completely ridiculous, and I get tired of stuff like that because I tend to watch a lot of shows about high school aged kids, and there tends to be lots of fanservice in those. However, when you realize that the story is being told through the eyes of a seventeen year old boy, it seems not at all unnecessary and even adds a touch of sincerity to the story. Not only that, but it is rare for an anime to actually emphasize sex, and by emphasize I don't mean in a wierd and fetishist way, I mean in the traditional sense that I, as a high school student, think of it as being emphasized in my everyday life which is noteworthy by itslef. Now, lets talk about symbolism, there really isn't much to be had here in the way of symbolism, its a fairly cut and dried story with few loose ends or arguable plot points which is odd for a genre that is almost defined by how subjective the ideas in the story are. This is not to say that the story isn't deep, as anyone who ever felt like they were betraying a friend or being betrayed will understand that there are a variety of very comlex emotions at play here. So, unimpressed as I was, I determined to finish the show as 12 episodes is rather short for an anime. In doing so, I committed myslef to one strange ride. The first, say, 4 episodes are romantic alright, but otherwise pretty mediocre. From there, however, episodes 5-7 quickly descend into a frankly evil mood that I simply didn't foresee. To make matters even more confusing, episode 8 is truly a funny episode with only momentary blotches of darkness where necessary to make a comment on the character growth. Episode 9, however, sees the show back to its old, evil, depressing, and infuriating (I say infuriating because the show focuses mainly on the interactions of the characters, and the characters in this show are moralless assholes to one another with startling regularity) tricks. Episodes 10-12 continued to fuel my rage towards both Makoto, and various ancillary characters, and fuel my melancholy over the general mood achieved in the latter bits of the story. Now, for anyone still reading and still interested, this show has a twist ending, I won't give it away in case anyone decides to ever watch this, but I will examine the method in which it was implemented and executed. So, first the pros of this ending: it has two parts to it, the second even more of a mind fuck than the first, even I with my warped mind didn't see the events of the second part of the twist coming, which is great, I still can't even believe what happened, and that excites me because I thought I had it well figured out. Now, the cons: I DID see the basic outline of the twist coming, the episodes leading up to the end imply and foreshadow the ending in a pretty obvious way, thats really my only complaint there, but its a big one since a show with this much WHAT THE FUCK infused into it should be able to properly deliver a twist ending.  

I'm not sure what to say about this show as a whole, so I'm going to summarize my feelings section by section in short thought blurbs. Also, please try to keep in mind that I won't be giving this show a review out of ten or on any point scale. If it sounds interesting to you, see it.

Begining: While necessary to understand later episodes, the beginning of the show is not that entertaining but not bad per se either if you like awkward romances.

Middle: Too dark for its own good at times, but overall very entertaining if you like to watch seemingly innocent characters essentially devolve into madness and do things in the name of love and general horniness for each other that they would have, at the shows beginning, considered unthinkable.

End: Poorly executed, still manages to be surprising in just how far things get carried away, perhaps a bit too dramatic to be believable for some, but not for me.

Overall: I'd recommend it for seasoned anime veterans or if nothing else people with several shows worth of experience. For a beginner though,this show is simply beyond your taste, most  likely. If I had to compare it with anything, I'd say that you should try to imagine what would happen if you took the movie Carrie and the movie Say Anything and mashed them together with a porno (Note: even though I said that this show is pretty much focused on sex, you never actually SEE anything particularly explicit).

The moral of the story: *spoilers in this section*

Don't think with your dick, you will lose your moral compass down a well and completely ruin not only your lives, but the lives of most anyone around you. Also, I think that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned works beautifully with this show given the ending. 

For those of you who know me well, you might know that I have a brother in film school. He recently had a part in a movie he and his classmates made for the 2009 Campus Film Festival. It is a far overdone film school cliche to make either an extremely gory horror movie, or a film noir. So, being the non-cliche type, my brother and his friends decided to make the opposite of those things: a musical about a man who's email inbox comes to life and sings to him. The best part? Their movie came in first place. So, without further adue, here's the movie's website:

http://www.inboxthemusical.com/ 

I have no idea why this happened

http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=40086

Yes, that is correct, do not attempt to adjust your internet. There is, in fact going to be a High School Musical manga. For those of you who don't know what a manga is, they are comics and print cartoons made in Japan and in the Japanese style. However, for all intents and purposes you can just think of them as Japanese comic books only longer and usually in black and white. My question is why. Why in the world would anyone want to make a commic book out of a musical? Isn't the entire point of a musical to make people nod their heads and tap their feet to the beat (please excuse the rhyme as it was unintentional)? I mean honestly, who goes to see a musical and thinks to themselves, gee, this is great, but I'd be enjoying it twenty times more if only it was silent and I had to read it? Really though, how did this happen? Aside from the fact that it makes no sense for this thing to be created because you can't hear the music, why would you want to make it anyway? Wasn't the movie pretty much terrible? I mean, I know it was popular here, but I genuinely thought that the Japanese had better shit to do. The anime, manga, and movies scene is really booming in Japan, so how in the world did this stupid movie gain the popularity necessary to be serialized? Don't think I'm ignorant, I know the Japanese have an obsession with overly-cheery-craziness, but this seems a little stupid even by their standards. The article says the whole first season is already done, so I guess I'm a tad late with this, but hey, if I haven't heard it, it's news to me. 

Seems Inconsistent

I demand an explanation! According to IMDB, the movie My Cousin Vinny saw an eight percent drop in popularity this week. Seems reasonable enough right? I'm sure you're asking yoursef what's so weird about that, right? Well, I'll tell you, nothing is weird about that when viewed by itself, BUT, when you go to Marisa Tomei and Joe Pesci's IMDB profiles, you may notice that this week has seen a twenty three and sixty four percent popularity increase for them respectively. I will admit that Ralph Macchio is down thirty three percent this week, and even that director Jonathan Lynn is down nine percent, but when you average those together, you get a surplus of forty five percent for poor old Cousin Vinny. So what gives guys? If I had to guess, which I do, I'd say its some sort of international conspiracy to bring down the IMDB popularity score of early 90's comedies about Italian people in order to wreck the careers of the various actors who made them for today. See, I think that the man thinks that Marisa Tomei is getting too powerful, it can't be pesci, the last thing he was in was The Good Sheperd, and that movie blew. However, with Tomei doing movies like The Wrestler, she is developing connections to the movie underground, and the government doesn't want the italian mob to be mixing interests with movie-hipsters lest they create some sort of super underground speak easy/french noir movie viewing parlour. I have no evidence for this, of course, if I did, I wouldn't be posting my idea on the internet now would I? I guess the point of this blog, is that no matter how much time you spend leapfrogging from one link to another, be it anything from IMDB to wikipedia, you will never cease to find oddities. More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that I have the ability to actually tell others about this useless discovery of mine. See, in the age of blogspot, skype, and stickam, people like me will always have an outlet for whatever stupid thing crosses the vast expanse between our ears. Does this mean we'll always have an audience? No, but if nothing else, we'll be able to ramble on to ourselves because we like to hear oursleves type.

Exposition Blog

Why did I make this blog? I don’t write very much; I procrastinate and bullshit through ninety percent of my school papers. I’m sure that most of you reading this are friends of mine, and are asking yourselves questions such as these. Well, I’ll tell you. I first came to blogspot when Will Kilgore made his blog, bowl of parrots, and when I realised that I had to make an account to follow him, my attitude was pretty much “sure, why not”. Now, I’m sitting in my room watching an absolutely lame horror movie on showtime and listening to the best band from the sixties, and I find that I have the urge to use this profile. See, one thing about me is that I like people, and I like having friends. So, when I make a profile on some website for one reason or another, I usually get an itch to customize it to attract others within a few weeks or so. This is no different, this blog has no real purpose, other than to provide a short summary of who I am and why I’m on blogspot, and to fill up space to make it look like I’m using this profile. This is not to say that I won’t use this profile in the future, but more like I have nothing to say as of right now, but can’t stand having a blank profile floating about with nothing on it. Now, some people probably want to know what my name is a reference to, since my name isn’t Rico.Well, since that’s pretty easy to explain, and because I need to take up a bit more space in this blog, I suppose I’ll answer it. Rico (リコ in kanji) is a fictional character from the anime Gunslinger Girl. She uses a Beretta SCP- 90/70 in the show, and therefore, RicoBeretta. I know it’s simple, and that’s why I picked it. On a related note, I recommend that everyone at least check out Gunslinger Girl, it’s a great show that feels a little brutal at times, but overall has a grace to that brutallity that brings the more happy elements of the story (which are few and far between) to the forefront of your mind when you watch it. So, I suppose that concludes my first blog on this site, thanks to everyone who read it, I doubt you learned much of anything, but maybe you did. Here’s to a (hopefully) beautiful future on the site.