Inna Gadda Foodland

A Reunion Not Missed

2009-08-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

The NPSS 10 year reunion has come and gone. I wouldn't be posting this if I wasn't the least bit interested after all, these are people I spent my childhood with. I didn't attend mainly because I don't care and an even more honest answer, I'm not as proud as in my status attend an event that is basically about a report on your status. However I look at half of the people I don't even know, the other half I slightly do and wonder how they are feeling. I wonder if they are happy with their lives, if they are fullfilling their dreams or living up to a potential they've always imagined. I'm always amazed at how knowledgable people are, more than I in anything or everything and despite how much negative emotions I associate with FSJ, I have a respect for that at least. Everyone has a story to tell and perhaps that what I should be focusing on rather than the superficial nature of people's position in life.

I don't know if typing this out will work, but here it goes.

2009-02-24T20:37:00.000-08:00

Classes are killing me. Not physically but mentally. Long story short, I have one of the worst group make ups in the class and today I got to eat shit not only once but twice. Without going into specifics, things when missing, I explained it to my chef instructor, I got into shit into it, it turned out that said missing items were in possession of other teammates (or even entirely different groups) for the service. In the end I got fucked. This was compounded with having to babysit a high school student into making an item for us as well with having two idiots for teammates not communicating with me.

What's worst is that it shows my shortcomings as a cook. Relying too much on other people, relying on the rush not coming as fast as it should be but worst of all a incredible inability to lead. I work well by myself, I work well with other people who are competent, but right now I'm not working that well with two people who cannot get shit together. Then again it could be me just being an idiot, slow, inefficient. I don't want to be the person to blame other people because what will that accomplish? Where the fuck is the line of responsibility? In the end it's just school. It's just a mark. This is where I learn from my mistakes and not in the outside. Thanks guys for being fucktards.

Like Czernobog blood lingers the longest and revitalizes

2008-10-30T23:44:00.000-07:00

In light of my hours being cut and knowing full well that I shan't be called into work anytime soon, I need a change of pace. I need to go somewhere that wasn't the same skytrain route 5-7 stops at 6am or 7am in the morning, one block up or one block west and 3.5 blocks south. I need something that was not downtown. What better place to go for something different than to a place that I already know but is in amidst a change.

I went up to the Burnaby SFU campus, the first time in a year but truly the first time in 5+ years. I've shown SFU to my brother a while back, showing him the sights and the sounds of the place but hardly toured it for myself to absorb in the changes. The main thing that brought me back to this place of...failure is the new addition of a small market (or glorified convenience store) and other anemities that once was only availble in a pathetic in school corner market or shitty cafeteria food. The Cornerstone features some small cafe restaurants, small services something that have been popped right out of downtown Burnaby. Quaint but not as grossly overinflated as the downtown core. In all it's so called glory it disappoints me to no end how little we progressed in creating a true university (or in this case a univer-city) campus but more of a band-aid to the obvioud lack of non-school related activities and services available on campus. However the near downtown landscape of the new residences look great, almost make me do a double take in light of all this 70's/80's architecture of the rest of the campus.

So I walked through the hallowed halls of SFU. Looking at some new places, but mainly retracing my steps through the hallways just like it was yesterday. Some things were expanded, such as the SFU pub. Some things were lost such as the SFU arcade. A wise choice upon reflection considering how fucking much time I wasted there in a ever continuing pattern of sub-standard excuses for what they represent. The Ghandi bust was moved indoors into the library which is a shame. I thought one of the more appealing and in turn detrimental aspects of SFU campus life was the small little nooks and areas that were almost hidden away on campus. Spots of design who's purpose was to relax and provide a quite place of relfection for people from the huge hallways that cattle you from class to class. The bust of Ghandi imho was always a sort of beacon to invite you to discover a hidden area on campus, off the beaten path so to speak. Now it's in the library greeting many a student but sorely out of place amongst the collection of frame photographs of caucasian administrators that decroate the lobby wall.

I kept walking, looking for remnants of my past. Reliving the times when I was just a stupid young kid who probably shouldn't have gone here as soon as he did, scurrying in the hallways with no direction in any sense of the word. The stairs are familiar, the non-slip floor was familiar, even those wonderful blue paper recycling bins fill me with memory. Looking at the changes where the library walls are more colourful and thus less suicide thought inducing, makes me understand in the face of such a powerful architectual design that the best thing anyone can do is put lipstick on the so called pig. The cafeteria was dolled up to look less like an institution and more like a foodcourt and yet it still clashes with the population of the school. People stand out like sore thumbs amongst the warm reds, pasturized beiges and hospital greens. I can still see the bit of shadow that hangs over them that all this concrete and grey always does of SFU. The golem continues to victimize people.

My final stop of memory lane was into the area above the bus loop. The first place where I thought I could make friends the A.R.C. (Altered Reality Club aka an anime/geek club) seemed to have disappeared. Even the attempts of conversation amongst my potential countrymen ended up in failure and the A.R.C. is either located elsewhere on campus because only small hints of their existence in the bus loop still lingers. A poorly sketched out manga comic page, a small flyer. The rattiness of the bulletin board covered over with pastel paper. A student looks over at me, possibly catching her eye as I disturb her periphery vision and quietly goes back to looking at her laptop.

In light of the construction, the progress this "home" that called home, it just reminds me more of how much of a failed venture this place was to me. It was not UBC (which was my first choice but I never go in) and little remains to indicate that whatever past I had here still survived to this day. What gets me the most is that life continues on, the school stays the same and I don't and I feel a sense that I was never welcomed there. SFU makes sure that you don't feel welcome there by design and by it's very nature. More to the point perhaps SFU didn't welcome me because I didn't want it originally and we used each other to our own ends.

Progress of the campus development marches on but I see no progress here. Instead I see a continued emphasis on creating a sub-par society on the hill that is as natural as the molded hills of the park on top of the Academic Quadriangle. The efficiency of education continues as much as the potential to stunt the personal growth of the population.

This is what I missed last week.

2008-10-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

I still have my Weezer ticket on my desk not for any sentimental or mental reason. Just the reason that I'm a bit of a packrat/lazy bastard for not cleaning up as much as I should.

That is all.

I saw Fight Club on TLN the other night.

2008-10-14T22:10:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling pretty shitty the past few days. Pinched a nerve, hurt my back, slept on my neck wrong, aggravited the muscle, whatever, it all cumilated into the same thing. A reflection on myself. I remember a lecture a grade 11 teacher told me about dreams and how you have to other back up dreams to fall upon just in case your lose your shit and fuck up. I for one am just a lazy mother fucker. Hiding behind the idea of being an artist while hardly showing the ferral dedication to be one. A drunken friend pointed that out to be truthfully one night and I accepted wholly as a serious character flaw. As I sit here typing and tending to my nagging back it's at this moment that I have to reflect on what my career is supposed to be.

While I might be showing the chops to be a cook this injury just brought up ideas of whether I am cut out for this cutthroat lifestyle. I'm already too much of a fucking pussy to work fulltime and go to school fulltime only working part time. Now I hurt my back during a time where my job is short staffed and I feel like I'm going to lose my job for being completely useless in the face of being so reliable before. I like doing my job. I like pleasing people. I like to be part of the mchine that runs smoothly. And while I'm in a great position to continue working with this establishment, I don't know how I would react if I get fired. I might be imagining things, work has given no indication that they would want to let me go because of this but what if I were managing this well oiled machine? I'd have to replace the broken cog as soon as possible in a market where a lot of fucking cogs are availble.

How this relates to Fight Club is that it was one of the first films I saw in Vancouver when I first moved down here. It was the beginning of my Vancouver life and defined me as a person at school. A school degree that I never finished. Now my casual Sunday belief in karma is only reinforced by the stupidity that lead me to this situation. I could have exercised more, I could have done a lot of things to prevent me on being on the steps of being kicked out of the culinary program and from my job. It seemed coincidental that Fight Club should have shown up to foreshadow a potential second (or third?) supreme failure in my life. I had a moment where I reflected as to what the hell this career path is going to get me if anything.

The good news is that Fight Club is still as every bit enjoyable as it was back in 99. Also the worst of my culinary education would entail would be me withdrawing for the week and having to repeat it at a later period. My worries about work is still less quelled but life goes on. It's all a matter as to how I can deal with it and trust me it's all my fault. If lesser people could survive then certainly I can.

Street Fighter 4 as a sign of the times

2008-10-02T19:52:00.000-07:00

I've been out of the gaming loop as a whole for a long time. It's been years that I've owned an up to date current console since the N64 era and even then owning that system meant being stuck in a bygone era. You might as very well said, I love slim pickings. However I still have my opinion and even though I might not be in the experience, only getting what small chances I can to barely update myself on the ubermesche of gaming from time to time; the recently released Street Fighter 4 does bring up some ideas of what gaming is and where it's going.

It makes me contemplate whether the idea of a good game or even a decent game had already been established long ago when Capcom decided to backpedal one of it's flagship franchises around Street Fighter 2. For those who might not know the history of the franchise, SF1 came out, then the blockbuster of SF2. After countless sequels a prequel franchise of Street Fighter 2 came out in the form of the Alpha Series which was used to showcase the CPS-2 graphics board. The in game timeline set the Alpha series before the events of SF2.

SF3 then came out setting the in game timeline far after the events of SF2. However SF4 is set in the very aftermath of SF2. So if anyone is following it goes as such.

SF1 -> SFAlpha -> SF2 -> SF4 -> SF3

Fuck Capcom inable to count to 3, they can't even count in the proper order.

However enough of that. What's most likely just trying to relive theold days of success I still feel that SF4 has something significant to say about gaming culture. With the resurgence of remakes, uprgrades and the new market of aging gamers, a new sort of niche or gaming market is coming out. Where we laughed at the Namco or Atari collections of the silver age of gaming of Centipede, Asteroids and Pac-Man; as an aging gamer myself we are beginning to see collections of gaming childhoods being presented to us either through download services ala Virtual Console or X-Box Live Aracade, repackaging ala FF updates or just plain collections such as the SNK collections.

This idea of a retro gamer market of the 90's emerging seems lucrative not in the sense bringing back old franchises in a current gen setting such as Golden Axe: Beast Rider or Rygar...but to bring back the gaming we like in general such as Bionic Commando Rearmed. However the interesting idea behind Street Fighter 4 is that it straddles between the new and old. SF2 being the money maker it is and with the cast being literally plucked out of that franchise with nary a care in the world makes SF4 seem like another in a long line of updates than an full fledged installment to SF2. Sure there are new characters in it, but the lengths that Capcom decided to try and mesh them in with the old guard falls very short. The simple fact that they placed the in game timeline nearer to SF2 than even SF3's timeline makes for a simple statement about the gaming community: gaming was good in the 90's and while a lot of new franchises have refined the idea of game design, it goes to show that there's a recognition of the design concepts of the 90's far more than we realize in the jump between 2D gaming into the 3D world or even trying to progress the 2D world itself. With Super Mario Galaxy essentially being Super Mario Bros. 3 3-d it goes to show that perhaps being stuck in gaming nostolgia isn't necessarily a bad thing since it shapes how well we receive games today.

I can be a total prick sometimes. Really.

2008-09-07T19:27:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's because the previous block opened my eyes, the cold of the refridgerated classroom or just that hitting the 6 month mark my tolerance for my classmates shortcomings has become to falter but I'm feeling a bit more spiteful and smartassy than usual. As with all things perhaps a break is needed from either work or the class. The one week I had off at the beginning of August wasn't really considered a break since I was sick those 5 days in most horrible soul sapping weather.

To bring people up to speed, during July was my Stocks, Soups and sauces class. Fun but also the start of a bit more labourious work in the kitchen. Stock making involves more heaving lifting than a few carrots and heads of lettuce resulting in taking an entire box of frozen veal bones and smashing them onto the floor in order to break them free enough to make stock.

"Corey" elevated her status from bitch to Grade A fucking cunt in the week our group was in stocks. While the rest of the group had done all the motions required for stock making, from cutting the ingredients, draining the huge pots aka steam kettles and cleaning them. Corey just sat back and only cut ingredients. A faceoff occured on the last day with missing classmates, all of us in our group decided to tend to other stations hoping that she'd get the hint to drain one of the the last stocks we made before the break. She stood pacing around, hands behind her back for half an hour doing nothing. I broke first, knowing that if she wasn't going to drain it, no one would but luckily we were making fish stock. It only takes 45 minutes to make.

"Lex" is what you could call an alpha male in the group. Total Type A personality, he wants people to notice him, to know him and to understand through admiration of him. It helps that he ran a kitchen for a while, but when it came to him asking me to tell Corey to drain the fish stock, I declined and asked him to do it. "No you do it," he said with debating skill of an 8 year old. Feeling like Tigh from BSG taking a dirty order from Adama, I followed Corey to the dish area, asked her to wait and handed her the buckets for stock telling her "Here...these are to drain the fish stock." I never mentioned that it was for her to drain it, but to drain in general. Still she went to drain the stock and had the nerve of coming up to me afterwards, "I drained the stock Stephen and now that I can't make the ceaser salad, where is the garbage can to clean up the pot?"

I'm normally slow with reacting wittily or accurately to some insults on my character or at least some confrontations but in the rare occassion it works out for me. I just reacted saying where the items were and left her, showing no emotion on my part. Basically it came off as me not caring jack shit about her complaint or her passive agressive tone. She whipped the garbage bag angrily open in my presence and while it caught my attention on the inside, I just walked by not caring.

I'm in butchery now and I hate being pushed around. I think it stems from being a geeky like kid, hardly the leader type or part of the upper heirchy of the school ladder. It's not that I wanted to be up there, but I just wanted a bit of respect. While that seems to translate often to being an asshole to your inferiors (something which I find very difficult to do) once in a while I felt either singled out or stepped upon. I guess it's just a feeling of betrayal, you think that you have a fine relationship between people and one simple little act might miscommunicate to me that you see me nothing more than a stranger you know than a friend you cherish.

Spending 5 months with my classmates, I've gotten used to most of them. Probably pissed off quite a few with my own antics but I try to think that it's in good fun. However two days in a row I've had my space taken. I don't know why I'm so territorial sometimes, maybe because I haven't had a place of my own and therefore any space outside of the home setting I feel connected significantly to it. Maybe because it's back to the my childhood of not wanting to be pushed around. However the first day I marked my space with my hat only to have it moved over. It was more of an experient to see if Thomas would move it in order to stand by a classmate that he usually stands by. This is almost expected because he butt in line before me.

The second day sent me on a passive agressive rampage of sorts. During the demo of how to break down a lamb, Benito, a rugby player who has bagged 27 women so he says, took my spot. I asked him to him and he said I left so he's staying. Knowing from the previous day that he hated dead baby jokes, I proceeded to tell him a list of dead baby jokes just to make him uncomfortable. I went so far as to browse the internet during our break to attain more dead baby jokes. I followed him around telling them and even set up beside him to tell more jokes. He tried to retort back by replying to my jokes saying "Your mom?" and saying "How do you make a Chinamen cry? Punch him in the face." I was unphased by the semi-racist remark and threat as I continued to tell the jokes.

I explained partially why I feel this way; which is the basis of this blog post. He said he didn't care and then asking me to give it up. I said I was just making conversation and I wanted to make him as uncomfortable and annoyed as possible for the day. The next day will be fine because I would have gotten this out of my system and personally I don't usually hold a grudge for long. Only as long as to get my expected result, but I touched upon territory that he didn't want to talk about. Mainly the worst relationship that he had which he said was too personal. I found that a bit hypocritical considering how much he devulged of the sex he had with two women or swapping with a buddy (I suppose an orgy), his want to get himself tested for STDs among other things. I'd like to say that I was satisfied, but I'm not. However I've gotten to a point in life that I think I know when to stop with being a completely spiteful prick to someone.

I hate ignorance, I hate people who try to hide their faults that people recognize so clearly. It might be due to my own constant over self analyzation of my own character, but everyone should be aware of how they affect other people around themselves. I'm not talking about manners here, I'm talking about knowing what you do and say and figuring out what you should do about it but most importantly knowing that the end result of your action is what you fullly want and expected...not some stupid miscommunication.

Drunk in the middle of the afternoon

2008-06-05T16:40:00.000-07:00

The Cambie has always been a hang out of studying cooks at VCC (or so I'm lead to believe). What surprises me the most is this dive of a fucking pub can afford or have the audacity to have a website advertising mostly it's hostel services but more importantly to the budget concientious student....cheap ass beer. About $10 a pitcher of beer it's an absolute steal for a cheap drunk where at some other places could charge up to %70 for a fucking glass.

As I type this out I am properly buzzed, having done a wonderful day of class without our new block 3 hardass of an instructor directing us through and through. It's not so out of place to be drunk in the middle of the afternoon (or faded as some of my classmates would say) because with the weather being so shitshow lately, it's even darker than what it would be around 7:30pm or even 8:00pm. Even so, as I explain to my classmate, even 8:00pm would be lighter than now and with the overcast reflecting the decending sunset of a sunny day it would be a 10 minute window of such shadowy evening that could match our 2 hour long drinking birthday party.

I decided to take it upon myself to get some cake for the birthday boys, one person celebrating it today and another who had it two days ago, some tiramisu from a place right next to So.Cial at La Magasin in Gastown. I have to procure the name later, but apparently it had the most tasty tiramisu they've ever tasted with a strong hint of coffee and the liqour. I guess it was worth the money I paid for it but to see them surprised at small individual tiramisus with a lit candle upon it was worth it enough. All in all it was a good day even thoguh I will now probably sleep the rest of the evening away in my drunken stupor. Here's to Jagermeister and cheap beer for the lot of you!

The best Damn Sandwich in Vancouver...and it's alive.

2008-05-16T21:19:00.000-07:00

Upon a whim I decided to visit a place not far from my school and right in Gastown. So.Cial is a neat little place since it is the first restaurant that I have visited to have a separate lounge menu. Lounge menus are usually quick and dirty little plates that you eat with your beer or wine, generally smaller fares meant to either snack upon or share amongst friends. It also has a dining room menu and most impressively a deli/butchershop that features one of the best sandwiches that I've eaten EVER.

I truly mean that too. It shits on Subway and even with Quizno's in all it's toasted glorly, it only uses heat to mask the sub-par quality of their sandwich. As my friend Rob long ago said, a Sandwich is only good because of the bread. While the sandwich he made me wasn't exactly the most mind explodingly awesome, (sorry Rob) his advice has never been so accurate until this sandwich.

Now the filling and garnish were all top quality. However it certainly was the bread. A huge round of bread that is like foccacia however with the herbs. A crispy crust that isn't a shell or almost brown glass shield protecting the inner doughy-ness. It's part of the bread, much like how the grill marks and crust on a steak is part of the meat. The actually innards isn't doughy at all, soft to the touch but firm to stand up a healthy dose of either aioli, mustard or both on it's nearly 1" thick slices.

However as I discover something new, I also rediscover something lost. The feel of machinery and of art in my hand. I used my SLR camera for the first time in years and it will be interesting to see what develops from the roll of pictures that was last left before I locked it away in some dusty cupboard. I forget what was the first picture I took with it, however I will not forget the feeling of motors whirring and the shutter blinking. That solid click of the gears and screws dousing years old film with light. I daresay it made me feel young again, younger that I've felt in a long time and perhaps even a bit sad. I set out to use my SLR as a form of higher quality picture taking, something more genuine and tangible in nature for the wedding I attended. Mike and LeeAnn deserve that much. I might be investing into a Digital SLR in the near future, what with the entire world of photographic adventures that I can embark upon in the lower mainland. The biggest hurdle to adjust to the old SLR is to look at the digital display after taking a picture only to realize that you're staring at the back of the camera casing, with the unknown idea of whether or not the picture will turn out. It's so exciting to wait and wonder how the picture will develop and more importantly almost a grade of your skill as a photographer.

I don't exist.

2008-05-14T16:15:00.000-07:00

It's been a weird half decade for quite a long time for me. Ever since my life deviated from being an artist to being a student of commerce to being just a spoiled wanderer and now a cook, I still haven't gotten a true sense of myself. Perhaps because I've never struck out on my own (and with the prices of rental and my current situation it isn't coming nay time soon). One of my traits that I'd like to think that I can do is that I'm adaptable. I can adapt to most things that doesn't require a total personal commitment by me nor the risk of me getting hurt. However as adaptable as I am, I'm still a person who is a jack of all trades and master of none. It's always been like that, whether because of my natural lack of commitment or the fact that I get bored quickly due to being stuck in one place, I'm still very much a person insecure with his placement in any circle of friends...not being knowledgeable enough to be considered and equal but know enough information to keep any one person's interest for long enough. Basically said everyone is smarter than me in a multitude of ways.

It's interesting that my own fear of abandonment is offset by my own sub-conscious denial existence of my own needs and body. In reviewing the pictures of my best friend's wedding, I appear in only 2 of the dozens of photos I shot, which hails back to my old art school days where I took dozens of pictures at our parties and hardly any of them have me in it. In fact I think entire rolls were taken without me in it. While the idea of being an anonymous photographer is great, it makes me wonder if the lack of record of my pictures will just lead me to realize how much of a pathetic life I lead. That I'm not even good enough a person to be recorded in anyone's sort of memory even to the point where I deny my own existence.

I don't know why I have such a history kick for having to know the details of everything and everyone. I never exhibited such a pattern when I was a child and it's strange that it should manifest now. In the end I'm just feeling a bit sad when putting my own life into perspective. No man is an island to himself but I think I'm doing a pretty damn good job about it right now.

Block 2: Day 6: Now I know how my bosses feel

2008-05-12T19:44:00.000-07:00

One question that a lot of people ask cooks is "So you want to open up your own restaurant?" While someone might be a great cook it does not make them a great leader. In that respect we come to something that I personally dread: dealing with people. Not only that dealing with people in a situation that will no doubt lead to confrontation and dispute. Running a kitchen could be a real problem if the crew you're handling is just a mishmash of gears and cogs that don't fit together. You might want to try and suggest something for a vision of efficiency or change but it's up to the nature of that person to have to change. And with something as egotistical and passionate food creation is; we're bound to encounter people who have their own ideas of what is perfect.

So here I am; we are short one person in our group and we are handling our very first "to order" station. Customers come up to the station, place their order and we cook it for them. Me personally I was calm as a bomb but whether that was due to me tending just to grill and only grill is probably more the case. Everyone else was just buzzing around me in anticipation, obviously loosing their cool and the worst thing...compromising their role and position. The worst thing you could do when you're fucked in a huge backup of bills is everyone banding together in some desperate ditch effort to make one single dish in order to just "get the damn thing out" because that's when you withdraw from the big picture to focus on that one dish as your salvation ticket out of there.

So here we are, two people toasting bread and garnishing it while one person is doing fries. No one taking orders, a few bill orders up and me on grill. It wasn't the worst showing on earth, we didn't set the kitchen on fire but there were screwed up things that happened. First of all there was a switch in station which should never happen but I guess the stress of asking people what they fucking want on their sandwich was too fucking much. Secondly what happened was one of my classmates "Corey" decided to take over the bread station and hold up my other classmate P2 to just holding bread and talking to her about the order. If she made some room they could have made two sandwiches at the same time. If they thought out a bit clearly they might have actually not messed up the order of the bills and gotten their shit together. I was pretty frazzled a bit myself and I admit I could have taken up the slack a bit more as well. However when it came down to it we all failed from lack of communication.

There were sandwiches being made for the wrong plate, bills were not taken down when they should have been and ultimately we were wasting so much effort into making so little it felt like I was in a yard full of headless chickens. I told this to Corey and she talked back...big time. I expected it, not the complete earful that I got but it was so typical of her to run off gather her thoughts and return on the offensive to tell me off. The worst thing is her idea of pulling rank. One of the worst things in a kitchen is called "crossover" That is when on the production line, a cook goes behind or in front of another cook on the line in order to grab something or perform some duty. That is just inefficient and even worst dangerous because do it just at the wrong time and you could get burned, stabbed or worst. I brought this up and she talked about working in a bar where that type of stuff occurs.

I'm sure that she was probably a good bartender or her years of experience makes some sort of sense. However the problem with experience in a kitchen is that most of the time...it boils down to how the kitchen is run or feels and what the chef fucking wants. Now I don't claim that I should be the leader of this group of amateurs. But I will *not* ever pull rank on someone on my experience alone. What I only know is experience doesn't mean SHIT if it doesn't apply to the current situation and environment. Why should Corey's experience in a fucking bar even matter when my experience in a kitchen is just as equally useless? Corey we have to work here...NOW...not at whatever bar you poured drinks for. Not for the kitchen I work for. Our egos shouldn't exist because when you base your performance on that...then you only perform because of that. Not because of our kitchen.

Is Giving you wings the new Chasing the Dragon?

2008-04-16T20:49:00.000-07:00

While I am only very slightly disappointed that I have yet to meet a strung out co-worker in my short time in the industry, of which I hope to never meet or GASP...employ, I have noticed something happening in the kitchen.

No doubt about it, we are eating and living healthier than we were decades ago. Although we do have some things that problems with regards to eating such as obesity; it's not like we are eating hollandaise on steak at a time when hollandaise was used as universally on restaurant food like ketchup. The more I learn about history of food, the more I realize that while one bad thing is erased from the past...or goes out of style, another unregulated bad habit becomes in vogue. A decade ago we've never heard of trans-fats, but only within the food industry of all things. However like I said as the trends of food flash in and out like oil in the pan, the kitchen also has changed.

While herion isn't the choice of energy for the cooks that I've encountered, I've found a new thing has taken it over. Energy drinks. Not everyone drinks it but it's around the kitchen enough to stand out. There's good old Reggie with his labelled Red Bull in the salad cooler and Bee-Ret with his two cans of Blue Amp lying around the prep counter. It's amusing at most times, in fact I've partaked in some energy drink shinanegins when one was offered to me a few times; often as part of a chemical induced substitute for a pep-talk to rally the brigade before service. I remember the time when on a road trip with Rob he'd had enough energy drinks to even send a humming bird into cardiac arrest. One in particular where upon opening the tab filled the front of the vehicle with a mushroom cloud smell of chemicals that will no doubt be strained right into his brain. I'm glad that with the heat of the kitchen, the fans a running and the cologne of dozens of food smells in the air spares me of having to ever experience that smell again.

While slamming a can of a energy drink might be the new rail of cocaine it's interesting to imagine that perhaps why this cold beverage is used in lieu of a white powder. Perhaps how this generation feels younger and more youthful...even perhaps a entire generation of man-children needing to feel like a kid all the time. It might be the nature of immaturity in the kitchen in general since many were just teenagers when they started. It might even be because of the internet which is a proverbial fountain of youth due to it's ability to always find something entertaining on an innocent low brow level. Whatever it may be, it does make me wonder whether in a decade or so we'll soon learn of the outcome from the consumption of energy drinks leading to long term health problems in a time when it was as casual as hitting up some cocaine in the 70's.

Block 1: Day 10 Stocks, soups, sauces and a hard lesson

2008-04-11T21:42:00.000-07:00

Making soups and stocks was pretty easy albeit a bit touchy at times. This week it was all liquids and we made a variety of stocks and soups which no doubt will be for later consumption. It's interesting the pace that you go at with the class although at the same time I begin to feel that we might not be as efficient as we could possibly be. Using far more stock than what we produced earlier in the week, I feel a bit guilty borrowing stock already made by other classes which seems to be more thievery than learning. You never steal from anyone else's Mise-En-Place (every ingredient that you need for your dishes) and this feels like the ultimate form of it.

So we are down to 19 people now and out of all people it was one person who I didn't think would have quit...let's call her Kyle. A hardass or just extremely serious, she had 5 years in the industry before she decided to take the program. She would have been a great person to rely in the program considering her small amount of leadership skills after having the head of the department talk to us about wanting to come together as a group in order to succeed. She had an infection which made her miss 3 days of the course and therefore had to withdraw and attend at a different date. A shame but what can you do?

However drama abounds occurs when hard lessons are learned. The cooking industry is a lot about personal responsibility and a almost slave like dedication to your job where you follow every order and just do it until the end. You're at the mercy of human nature and you just have to weather it. When you'll break from the severity of the industry is up to your own character however true character isn't shown by what you do at work, but what you do outside of it.

And I truly mean outside of it. There's always an expectation to finish work at a specific time, namely within the 8 hours before you hit overtime and drive labour costs through the roof. However it isn't about the overtime. We love overtime. Even though we have a peculiar relationship where we feel guilty for taking overtime or are lightly lectured on the cons of overtime, I love it. I would never go out of my way to get it, but nothing is satisfying like getting overtime for the job that you have to do instead making up for failing to do.

The in the end you finish the job when you finish the job. The schedule is only there to show at BEST when you start and when you should finish; however that's bullshit. You're there 15 minutes early and you leave when you are done your close which is entirely determined by how busy you are and to a certain degree of preparedness in starting your close. We all love to get off at the appropriate time, but due to the OCD nature of the job we instinctualy finish cleaning everything that can be seen when.

However when that overtime hits sometimes and you know that perhaps that you are behind and wasn't responsible enough to plan ahead or just perhaps you feel that it's hour 8 going on 9...you deserve to get the fuck out as soon as possible; you feel that sort of rush of wanting to get out of work. You are in off hours and even though you are getting paid in some respect you are outside of work right now. How you act in finishing your job properly outside of the 8 hour regiment is a true test of character.

Today was a hard lesson for many and a reminder to others. The food industry is a peculiar one because really, a LOT of the industry is made up of youths. Students and high schools looking for their first job, first as a dishwasher and then slowly moving up the line. Far more easier at pub like places like Fogg and Sudds or EARLs (which I seem to find more and more is like the Juniour Hockey League of the cooking industry in the Lower Mainland) where production is done to a point that a monkey could do it. In fact they'd probably let a monkey do it if it wasn't for the absolute foodsafe nightmare that could accompany it. While I maintain that you meet the most peculiarly responsible people in the food industry, a school setting really starts to degrade that mentality. Standing around doing nothing really contributes to being pretty damn lazy, especially for the movement junkies that we become to be. 12:30pm rolled around and there were people who wanted to leave when there was still stuff to be done.

What resulted was a small lecture addressed to the class about when you are finished and it's not always at 12:30pm or the scheduled time. Often a class as a keener, someone who asks the questions that are obvious. They are useful in the sense that they might touch upon something that you didn't think of asking but in the end they are pretty annoying. I don't know it's because they don't know when to shut their mouths or if they just want to show off how eager they are to learn but sometimes the best example of character is to know when to NOT speak and just listen. Our resident keener keener jellybeaner Korey decided to bring up "contradictions" in our chef instructors patterns. "But we left the past few days without you saying anything" she pointed out. While Chef was pointing out that we leave when he officially tells us to leave, Korey was deciding that we should be able to leave on the basis of some unofficial parting of the ways in the past.

Big mistake

Aside from never arguing with the chef in charge, don't assume just because something happened in the past means that it will continue. I knew this shit was going to happen with her. These are one of these people who will hold something against another person due to the idea that what occurred in the past must mean it should occur (or be held accountable) in the future. She's one of those people who can't adapt or more importantly understand that two different concepts could exist for the same procedure. Eventually there will be harder lessons learned and more people dropping out. Let's hope it's sooner for others rather than later.

BLOCK 1: Day 4

2008-04-03T20:53:00.000-07:00

The start of my culinary schooling blog. All I learned today was a few knife skills that I already know. Mincing shallots, dicing and julienning onions, segmenting oranges and grapefruits and chopping garlic. Out of all these things, the only new things I've learned is to make for a more even julienne for onions, you separate the layers and cut them so they can lay flat. Orange segmenting which is basically cutting out oranges between each of the membranes for a more pure texture I've done before but it was nice to learn some new things in order to make it smoother.

I'm gotten more acquainted with my fellow classmates, already there are some cliques that are forming. Funnily enough (or luckily enough) when I planted onto my station for cutting, I was at the table with the most girls of the class even though they did not consist entirely of the group I usually converse with. It's hard to imagine with the stringent policy of attendance (3 missed classes = expulsion) that the entire class might make it through. I've heard from one of my co-workers that out of 20 students at the beginning of the year, 12 were left by the end of the program. Since we do have to partner up with people (with an apparent unwritten rule of no "two female" pairs) conversation with the class is good because you get to know their background. You get to know their talents, their skills but most importantly their weaknesses. I've encountered 3 people that I might have problems with (names changed to protect their identities):

AL 1: There are 3 people in our class whose first names start with "A" and "L". I basically listed them off in order of how I met them. AL 1 is pretty cool, working at a place with nigh sous-chef responsibilities. He might make a great partner except for one fucking thing. Talking at the wrong fucking time. While I do like to make conversation, I know when to stop talking and listen to instruction which is every fucking time. However it's not only that, it's more the idea that you anticipate when the instructor is going to speak. There were some times I wanted to tell him to shut up because he's saying something witty while the instructor is speaking which I imagine is partially my fault because I am such a conversational person and thus almost invites this sort of behaviour with people around me. It's this one thing that might lump me into getting into the bad side of an instructor just because my partner doesn't know when to shut his yap.

CHUCK: Chuck I have no problem with. He's a pastry chef and aside from me, was the only other person who took notes during a time when everyone else didn't bring a notebook. Work ethic great...however it only goes so far if he's asking me questions all the time. As much as the industry will no doubt lead me to a leadership position, this is something I don't want to be doing in school. I will volunteer information when asked, but it will get annoying if I have to babysit someone through something. Might be good, might be bad.

NEMO: I'm going to make it perfectly clear.

Nemo is fucked.

I hardly want anything to do with Nemo here. I look at this fucker and I can see that he doesn't have the chops to make it through. How do I know? By his example today. He did two things today that basically made me write him off unless he does something to redeem himself. We were cutting shallots. While we were picking them from the bag, he dropped one, picked it up and tossed it into the garbage. My brain nearly fucking broke.

The restaurant business is possibly the most frivolous and the most stingy fucking industry that you'd encounter. We toss out a LOT of food but at the same time we always ALWAYS look at "food cost" The constant monitoring of food that will never get served to a customer as a result of expiration, bad handling, contamination, rot, burning, overcooking, fucked up ingredients, not up to par, whatever the result. Mainly, anything that you can save to use for food is ESSENTIAL to maintaining the profits of a restaurant. Yes we get rid of a lot of food at the end of the night, but we don't want to be wasting perfectly good food either.

So there was a fucking shallot, perfectly fine still in it's skin. I ask Nemo what was he doing? He replied that it was dirty. That isn't dirty. It fell on the floor. If it was cut and chopped and then fell onto the floor...THEN it's dirty. If it was part of a dish that fell into the garbage can....THEN IT'S FUCKING DIRTY. But as it is in it's most pure and raw state with nature's own protective armour KEEPING DIRT AWAY FROM IT'S FLESH!...it's not fucking dirty. You can pick it up, rinse it off and use it, which is what I did. Shallots are expensive 5 times more than an onion.

Speaking of which, when we came to chopping onions he threw away a entire one. He said it was dirty which I did see some black under the skin for the scant second he held it above the garbage bin before letting it fall into it. I nearly fucking blew a gasket. However it really wasn't worth it. As confrontational I could be with people, especially when it comes to experience that I can rub in their fucking face, I just realize that we are all equals here. What little common sense Nemo has right now will obviously be apparent to future instructors who will either whip him into shape or send him to quit the program. I have no right to take the role of the instructor in order to teach him anything and chances are he'd probably won't listen to me. Especially considering his response to my shallot question.

So that's my 4th day of BLOCK 1. I'll explain all these later since now I have to go to sleep. I'm fucking tired and waking up a 5:45am isn't getting any easier.

And suddenly it hits you...

2008-03-29T19:46:00.000-07:00

I feel a bit sad today. A friend is moving away to Toronto to pursue a better life that she had here. Normally I would be 100% happy for anyone who was moving away from me because my life revolved around Fort St. John for quite a while (and I imagine for a few years at least will continue to do so in some shape or form). To move away was to escape or at least try to escape from the blackhole that is that town. I'm still happy for her, she is a wonderful friend even though we've only hung out 2 times ever since I moved back to Vancouver. I blame work entirely because that is the very nature of being a cook, to be working while others are playing. To be the very infrastructure of entertainment and fun while people are spending their time with us.

I've always thought of myself of being a child, both in responsibility and nature. It keeps me healthy and optimistic to a fault but is refreshing to a LOT of people who have been so cynical to reality and such. What tethers me to this is my association with FSJ so much, especially friends hailing from the town which only reminds me of my childhood and history. Even though I had made older friends who are Jeremy and Carla; it's also through an extension of another childhood friend that we know each other. Socially speaking I can act like such a child or at least feel young because of this hometown connection.

However in talking with my friend last night, we talked about how we were getting older. Perhaps a bit wiser, perhaps not but the conclusion that we are growing up was a point. I said that growing up creeps up on you, it never hits you but now I have to admit that I was wrong in that part. It does creep up on you but it hits you like sledgehammer when you realize it. I felt I grown up faster in one night than I have in the past few years. I've come to realize that I'm going to miss my friend a lot not because she is such a wonderful person, a fellow artist of which I can talk to on such a pretentious and bullshitty level of art dialogue; but because she is the first person of non FSJ-origin moving away from me.

Essentially she's a part of my history that is no where related to FSJ at all and it feels like a missed opportunity to know something or someone that isn't part of that social network in the remotest sense. Plainly speaking, it's like the first adult emotion related to expected adult time in my life. I don't have many regrets, many of them petty and only one real one that I've buried under denial and distance. However my heart doesn't hurt, but just feels heavy. Just seeing her again and talking about school, Vancouver related ideas and even art in general just brought up a surge of old memories of a confused kid in an art program; finding his way only to get further lost in the whole mess of it all. I can feel my muscles remembering walking around the SFU campus
, knowing every grey slab of concrete.

However sad I am to see her leave, the prospects sounds so exciting for her. She needs a change much like how I needed to leave FSJ. In end we'll both probably grow up far better if we get away from our origins that keep us chained in semi-permanent childhood. Here's to you Christina, you are a great friend as all my friends are and I wish you the best of all things as I do for all my friends.

March, the month that will never end.

2008-03-28T23:04:00.000-07:00

I don't know about the most of you, but in my limited experience march has been the month that has never ended. It's not the weather although to many I imagine that it could be; however the way I see March is that it's the month that is not fucking ending AT ALL. Perhaps it is because I have my first full-time job at a restaurant in the Lower Mainland. Perhaps instead of the thrill of learning something new, honing my skills and forever being in a state of rookieness being over; I currently have a almost machine like quality of going to work each day. This does make the days feel shorter by some extent but also very similar where time doesn't seem to pass...just a groundhog day for the all of us.

I don't know. Bookended for the month of March is my venture into the culinary arts. 1 year of 7am-1pm weekdays which are probably going to be the easiest classes ever since art class. I'm not nervous by any extent, but the lack of anticipation certainly makes the month of march feel longer because I am NOT counting the days to the beginning of my courses. Instead I'm feel like I'm switching one work for another.

We'll see. March 08' is officially the longest march in my recent experience. A March where it felt miserable and bloated, useless and hardly the transition into spring that we need. It's a fucking block that with every day seemed like a mere chip to sending it away from us. I can't wait for March to be over but for all I know it might be starting over again. Groundhog Month, what a way to be cursed.

The Serious Top Ten Greatest Moments in Video Game Movies

2008-01-03T13:41:00.000-08:00

After the not-so-serious list last time, might as well compile a serious list afterall. There might be some weird choices but with such a limited gene pool of crapola out there, it's not unusual that anomolies will appear.

10) Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within: Aki Ross wakes up from a dream and moves.

No this isn't the start of joke list #2. While FF:TSW was a total goose egg of which hurt Squaresoft possibly greater than any other venture in this business there was still something so awesome about seeing the first few screenshots of their project. Who can still remember the close up of Aki Ross screenshot years before the film came out? As it slowly revealed that the film was going to be less about Fantasy and more about Sci-Fi it pretty much put a few dozen nails in it's coffin. Some people might defend it to be a good film if you don't see it as a Final Fantasy film. I might be inclined to agree but it being only $9.00 NEW in my local bargain bin, it's hard to argue with logic like that.

While it still has it's place in history for probably being the biggest single video game movie flop ever I think it was still pretty amazing the way that Aki Ross moved in the film. You never seen anything in so much detail before in 3D let alone more photo realistic 3D. Even though mo-cap will most always be complete stilted shit, they did pretty well here. While everyone else had the benefit of short hair or ponytails (which probably saved a LOT of animating time) Aki was the real 3D star of the film being far more fluid and smooth than most of the other human characters. It took nearly 2 console generations to surpass the 3D detail present in FF:TSW.

It might have been a bad video game movie, but it did what no other video game movie did at the time. Make a 3D film that was more real world than any other CG movie at the time.

9) The Wizard: Super Mario Bros. 3 is introduced.

I know that The Wizard was from my joke list, but when this film was going to come out, anyone even remotely related to gaming was going apeshit over this film. This was light years before we wanted the gaming medium legitimized in the mainstream culture, the reveal of SMB 3 in a MOVIE of all damn things was like going to E3 when you were a kid. This movie wasn't for everyone, as much as Christian Slater and Fred Savage might try to bring in some sort of familiarity, it was for US the gamers. This was basically the first mega game trailer because when that game hit the screen...you pretty much lost it all.

8) Tomb Raider: The Robot Training sequence.

We want tits.

That's basically all we need. While there was a big huff over Michelle "Man Hands" Rodriguez not being cast because he breasts weren't as large as her digits; Angelina Jolie was the perfect choice for playing Lara Croft. Personally on a visual scale, I could never really draw a direct likeness with Jolie and Croft. Jolie's look is just too distinct and while Croft had similar emphasized attributes that Jolie possessed, Croft was far more convincingly represented by Mike Turner's interpretation in the comics IMHO. Likenesses aside there might have been some speculation whether Jolie could pull off the British accent or the action sequences.

The only thing that I really liked from Tomb Raider Movie was the first intro sequence. No character building, no crazy revelations, just pure action. You know that she raids tombs, but that's in the damn title. While the robot wasn't a dinosaur it certainly fought better than one. At the time it was one of the best choreographed fight scenes in a video game movie or even an action movie. It had enough physics defying movement to look like a video game on the move, but not enough to just totally cheese you out on believing it. It was cool, it was hot and all without having to specifically tit it out for us.

7) Resident Evil: The Laser Room

I'm sure that most of you remember only one thing from Resident Evil: The Movie. Alice Matrix kicking the dog in the head. While this almost set up an expectation of this bad habit to be reoccurring when you saw the trailer thankfully that was the only incident. Quite a few disappointments all around for this film. Little to no reference to actual Resident Evil content and a Licker taking the place of Tyrant for the end antagonist. Like FF:TSW RE: The Movie was a good film but for being a video game film it fell short of expectations. However the film wasn't a total abortion.

In an effort to almost force video game movies to be taken seriously they put some real gore into the film. The Laser Room was a sweet experience for any movie goer to see because it was tense, you were at the edge of your seat, it was a first taste of something actually going wrong for the protagonists in the film and resulted in some pretty fantastic deaths. Checkerboard Laser grid has hella priority over anything else. It's nice that the result of said laser room actually made it into RE4 which goes to show that perhaps it wasn't all that shitty. The only gripe was that Colin Salmon aka ONE had to sacrifice his character for a death worthy of any Predator.

6) Final Fantasy Advent Children: Cloud Vs. Sephiroth.

Like the worst kept spoiler in gaming history, Cloud vs. Sephiroth was totally expected even if it was cryptically revealed. In this thank you letter to all the FF Fans/Suckers (take your pick) we get an eye candy experience and a battle that was as cool as seeing the Omnislash the first time (once again coolness factor determined by own personal preference). While I could say what made this scene awesome, I think the more important question is #6? #6 ON A TOP TEN LIST?.

Why it's so "low" is as a movie it's a toss up into the air whether it was well done or not. After all the belts and zippers...I mean whistles; it really does boil down to a thank you letter to all the FF7 fans and then video game fans and then...well that's it. The next in line would be anime fans; in fact it'd probably appeals to more anime fans than general video game fans. However just catering to a single demographic that's even narrower than some sub-genres of film really makes this film suffer a bit. Ideally speaking, a film should be enjoyable on it's own; not because it's attached to nearly a decade of nostolgia. While some people try to bank on that feeling, I don't think it was as ever as blatent as FF:AC

The other major hurdle is against it is that as a video game movie; it doesn't represent the genre all that well. Yeah I know RPGs are hard to adapt I mean afterall it's about the storyline. However when FF:AC seems more like a typical anime than something distinctly video game, you begin to wonder if this film was already made beforehand but at the last minute decided to replace the characters with FF7 models. As if to admit to their lack of video game roots in the film; take for instance one of the few defining gameplay elements in FF7 not being present in the battle. Yuffie holding the box of materia is like a kid wondering why he couldn't bring their game console to the birthday party...because there's no place for gaming at the party when there are other things more important than it.

5) Mortal Kombat: Johnn Cage vs. Scorpian

One could argue that Mortal Kombat was the first good video game movie. When I mean good I mean not bad...as in "Doesn't like feel like you're being raped by a baseball bat covered in barb-wire." While some of the fights were pretty cool, like the Liu Kang vs. Sub-Zero fight, it still lacked a certain something. Showcases of actual special moves or power were seperate from the actual fighting. Actual fighting such as Sonya vs. Kano or Liu Kang vs. The Black Guy dies second didn't actually showcase anything video gamey. Even the Sub-Zero fight showed elements that were not originally in the game. However when it came to Johnny Cage vs. Scorpian, it was like someone actually got it.

Somehow...I don't know how they still did it, they managed to balance film elements with video game elements in this fight. The Harpoon was used in both a great way but different enough so it didn't show the one-dimensional trick pony that it really is. They had an awesome fight scene that just kicked mass amounts of ass. A fatality that could have been horribly done but didn't screw up. And best of all...even adding the right bit of video game wit with Johnny Cage's signed photo burning up at the end of the scene. As if nodding to the MK itself saying, "Yeah we know what we're doing. It's a video game film not just some film based upon a video game."

4) Street Fighter the Animated Movie: Chun-Li shower scene

Ok this was from the non-serious list as well, but hear me out. I'm sure that 99% of us have seen Chun-Li naked in one form or another. Whether through poorly drawn fanart or hentai doujins, aside from Mai and the DoA cast, she's basically the most molested video game character in hentai history. However it's always been a sort of weird fascination ever since she appeared on the scene in SF2. There's just something that attracts all the boys to her, perhaps a sub-concious similarity to princess Leia with her hairbuns. Perhaps a little of yellow fever. It might be because she has that hair done up, much like movie prudes who let down their business hair, take off their glasses and are just sex machines wanting a good bang. Perhaps it's because it's long legs or we can see her underwear if we pause just correctly during her spinning bird kick. Whatever the reason we are still attracted to her (or at least hate her for being so overrated)

The shower scene in Street Fighter the Animated Movie is monumental because it basically legitimizes her nudity. It's basically if someone acknowledged a side heavily debated topic in some franchise as canon. It's the real world equivalent of waiting for a playboy pictorial of some never-before-nude celebrity or some sort of nude sequence. What makes it even better is that is given the opinion of DOA's Igataki getting up in a huff over his "daughters" it's like Capcom not only doesn't give a shit about their creation being nude, but they fully encourage it. Go ahead, fuck my daughter, I'll even pay the bill for dinner! However many times a gamer has busted a nut over unofficial art of Chun-Li, at least this time we can do it without the guilt of going to an outside non-sanctioned source. Those are official tits people. Enjoy them while you can.

3) Doom: FPS Mode

There hasn't been many games that are so ingrained in reality with consideration for making a film out of it. There has always been a some element of fantasy that made some aspects of a film unadaptable. Whether it be the costume design of Super Mario Bros. the movie or Street Fighter; or a fantastical element such as the Shadow Boss of Double Dragon. In the end a video game film often hinges on a seemingly innocuous characteristic that is either so badly represented or so blown out of scale, that the film suffers more than it should from something so small.

Doom is sort of an odd duck. There's nothing special about the protagonist aside from being a space marine. A noble profession for the future I envision but what makes Doom great for adaptation is that it's storyline is simple. Start off with Rambo, add in a bit of Hellraiser, a dash of Event Horizon and a shit load of ammo and there...you have Doom. The fact that the only fantasy element in this series is the creatures from hell, shows that this movie could work. This movie can work. Hell has been something explored in movies for decades. This FPS adapted into a...wait.

First Person Shooter?

Ok I guess a bit too simple. I mean as much as the fantasy elements are in check therein lies the rub. How fun is it going to see a film about space marines killing the demons of hell on an abandoned space facility? Sounds like a great film. But how is anyone going to even recognize this as a video game film as opposed to say...Ghosts of Mars? Aside from the Chainsaw, the BFG and some recognizable enemies, there's hardly anything that would make this distinct from every other movie out there. HECK THEY DIDN'T EVEN MENTION HELL ONCE in the film! While we gamers want our video game movies to be able to blend into the cinema landscape; we still want our genre to be recognized. Perhaps Doom was a bit too non-special.

Until the FPS mode sequence.

Your opinion may vary but adding that basically made the film into a video game film. How it didn't suck great donkey sac was a Christmas miracle because they got it. It was like had a competent FPS pro as a consultant in production to say what worked and what didn't worked. It was possible the closest experience most of us will have to witnessing a FPS on a movie theatre sized screen.

A funny thing was that moment was a potential #2 until #3 usurped it's position.

2) Silent Hill: Pyramid Head Appears

When it comes to video game films, there's a certain pride in having some sort of big named actor or actress to join the cast. Perhaps they might be the one to make this movie awesome. Perhaps they might be the perfect looking person for the video game character to come to life. Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, The Rock, all of these people to whatever degree of Alphabetical-designated celebrity status was like a supernova of hope in the gamer's mind that perhaps THIS will be the actor who will finally bring some nobility to the fine medium of gaming. With the introduction of Uwe Boll perhaps what was more important is who was behind the lens rather than who was in front of it.

So we come to Christopher Gans.

And we come to Silent Hill. A franchise that is just ripe for the silver screen and the result? Unimaginable harmony. While we have few problems labeling genres of games, translating them into film is an entirely different experience. What is Super Mario Bros.? A Sci-Fi epic (perhaps given the setting of Galaxy)? Or a supernatural fantasy film? Even the relatively well done Mortal Kombat is hard to defined as just a "fighter" when obviously the film has so much else to present. However if you were to say horror, that's exactly what both the game and film are. It can't be any easier to show a behemoth of a demon with a metallic pyramid mask wreaking your shit. It could have been so easy to fuck up, but Christopher Gans in his vision managed not to. As if even the simplicity of genre classification was too easy a mark, he managed to truly bring a nobility of creativity and comparatively faithfulness, given the history of VG movies, to the source material to the film. Pyramid Head appearing on screen was as frightening as any other moment in horror history and once it did appear, you didn't think that he was a video game character. For this film, he was the lovechild of Jacob's Ladder and Conan.

And...the Number 1 video game movie moment is.....

1) The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters: The entire film.

For the longest time gaming has been looked down upon as a hobby of geeks, nerds, anti-social suicidal serial killers and children. While the idea of gaming culture has always been trying to find an outlet in legitimizing it's place in society as a perfectly normal facet of life, as normal as literature, movies, television or any other entertaining medium through higher production values, more realistic presentation, better dialogue, adaptation into a film or *gasp* celebrity endorsement there is seriously nothing that furthers the agenda of gamers from changing the perception of gamers than King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters.

Yes I know these guys are middle aged adults holding onto a game that should have an age range of 5-8. In some ways it feels like a step waaaaaaay the fuck back into promoting the stereotype of gamers. However if you could ignore that visual shit just look at it. Look at what these people are saying. Look at who they are. They are the fucking BLUEPRINT for gamers everywhere today. A generation ago is when gaming culture formed and basically written how gamers act. The competition, the practice, the strategies that would make gamefaqs authors shit a brick. The skill, the talent, the mindset of gamers...it's all there 25 years ago as much as it is today. The drive to see the game, play the game, break the game, the drive to see people play the game, to see people win at the damn thing and strategize. To find the complexity in simplicity and enjoy the game for more than it represents. These aren't bad things because you have to see past the negatives and come out looking at what is accomplished here. They show that even gamers have normals well balanced lives outside of gaming.

How many times have you heard a gamer say "I played games all my life and look how I turned out." Pretty common eh? Pretty much the gut reaction to most negative comments about gamers that seem to pop up and discredit us as lawabiding citizens and not some videogame equivalent to the pedophiles in To Catch a Predator. However when have you ever explained yourself? When have you actually talked to someone to explain gaming to them and made them understand? It's hard enough to explain fucking instructions to anyone who's eager to find out how work their computer software but to have them sit still and absorb the idea and culture of gaming? Good fucking luck with that.

Well that is what KoK is. It is the explanation that all of us are trying to tell people but never quite gotten the right opportunity to do so. Where we can't keep someone to sit down with us for an hour and a half to explain gaming culture to them and why we like it; that commitment of that $10 ticket and that $8 in overpriced concession snacks basically affords to lay it out on people and lay it on thick. This isn't some lecture that they are forced against their will to listen, they WANT to listen to this. For better or for worse, they'll laugh, they'll cry, they'll cheer and above all else they will see gamers, the most hardcore of gamers exhibit the human qualities that they seem to fail to recognize in real life.

In the end King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarter is the best video game moment and best video game movie because it does what no other video game movie has ever done...put a human face on gaming. It gives a story that will engage the audience on such an emotional level, they finally have a protagonist they can relate to. In the end it shows that perhaps they shouldn't judge the game for it's place in society but the gamer instead.

What we do in life, echoes in eternity. Except for your bank account...

2006-08-22T23:44:00.000-07:00

...that has a finite existence. I had a small discussion with my mother a day or two ago talking about the management of our bank accounts for the business. It has been 8 months since my dad passed away and as we near closer and closer to actually closing the store, we have to settle down and close our bank accounts for our various services. Once again I am somewhat reminded of my mortality or even the mortality of all of those around me as we discussed closing the bank accounts. One that we will decide to totally empty would be easy as my mom said because it is an account that is only in my father's name.

And thus another small piece of existence of my dad is about to be erased. It's just business afterall, no need to keep a bank account open if I'm not going to pay attention to it at all. But I did start to reflect on what I have done so far, how I would be remembered or would the only trace of my existence and worth to anyone would only be that of a bank account that has been left open due to my potential family forgetting or postponing closing out the account? Would the only existence of my name in the public domain be a name on a bank card that is now useless?

Bah it won't happen, and even though I might have one night of unrestful sleep that has me contemplating this EMO bullshit, I'm right as rain the next day. I've only had these restless nights probably only once or twice a year anyways.

This just in: Dumbledore officially dead

2006-08-03T23:17:00.000-07:00

I don't make it very clear but on the Chamber of Secrets Forums there had been high speculation as to the mortality of Dumbledore. Chamber of Secrets is basically the forum for Harry Potter discussion and fandom. Now granted they are basically PHDs in Potter-ology they aren't the fucking brightest bunch in the group. In fact I daresay that most of them, 98% are fucking morons who are the epitome of nerds and can only focus on only aspects of Harry Potter and theories with little social skills in anything else.

There are only a few people who are actually smart and fewer still who can post on subjects other than HP, which greatly saddens me because I'm imagining these are the people who love Harry Potter, people whom JKR was so fucking praised for turning on an entire youth generation to reading. And yet most of these people are about as smart as a dog who just learned how to play dead. Give them Harry Potter and sure they're experts, but try to call them out on their blatent stupidity on some aspects of even that and they just fucking crumble.

But why post this entry at all? Well to feast your eyes on this: Is Dumbledore Dead or Alive? v.10 . 10 versions of this shit. 10 versions of fan logic and stupidity that just boggles the mind and just general tradtional wriiting guidelines. Me I haven't even read one, but you have to fucking imagine, each version of the thread is about 1000-1500 posts.

Well it only took 13,000 posts, but we finally know the truth.

Scott Pilgrim Vol 3. and the Infinite Sadness

2006-08-02T15:45:00.000-07:00

I've heard of Scott Pilgrim before I read it even though it was on a small level. The first exposure I had was with the preview in Wizard posting some pages from Vol. 3 of Mr. Pilgrim's adventures. At first I thought the series was about real life people trapped in a MMORPG and somehow they have to navigate through it, hence the save point.

I'd say this vol has some good and some bad points about it all. Bad points that seem to be more apparent than the previous versions. There was something increidibly depressing or malicous about this particular volume. Scott barely beaten his last opponent, which was attributed to trickery no less. This time the ex-boyfriend of Ramona's is even more powerful. DBZ powerful actually. Todd Ingram's hair actually stands up in typical Saiyan style when he powers up his telekinetic powers (how they are powered, I won't spoil the surprise,). That in itself paints a desperate picture. But what is the worst part is how miserable most people are in the volume. Scott's ex-girlfriend, Envy, terrorizes not only his current girlfriend, but you see the really apparent devastation of Scott's relationship with her in flashbacks. Even Knives feels the potential wrath from one of Envy's entourage, thus making a quite interesting and conflicted character become depressed and mopey as much of the visible cast.

The other bad thing that sort of off-sets the flow is the total lack of transition into some flashback sequences. However these are minor setbacks. The book is just too great for its weaknesses to overshadow it. The angst is more, the reality and unreality more, awesome video game references up the ying yay and what's best about it all is that it's always fresh and never repeatitive.

4.9/5.0 stars.

Princes of Malibu my new Reality TV Fix

2006-07-30T00:50:00.000-07:00

For me, most of reality TV doesn't interest me. There are a few reasons why I don't like much reality TV.

The premise doesn't appeal to me. Most of them pretty much suck to me. I'm sure that to many people, the relationships, alliances and deviancy of the contestants is the primary appeal. The cast dynamic is what is great, but the producers can't wholly create entertaining conflict without it going out of reality TV and being staged-reality. Although I imagine a lot of RTV series are like that anyway. However if the premise doesn't fly, I'm not hitching a ride.
The general pace of the soap operatic shinnanegans doesn't appeal to me. The problem with that is it's pretty much like a soap opera winding out. If point #1 doesn't annoy me to change the channel first, then the 2nd one would be the second attempt to kill any interest left. It really just seems so slow to boil over, nothing of which would make you go what the fuck?
It isn't smart. I know...that's pretty much an oxymoron. But I value cleverness over anything else when it comes to reality TV. There is your basic level of cleverness which is basically backstabbing, but it can come in many different formats. From insults, to techniques, to how someone acts. Basically said the cleverness of the show should be first and foremost all the time, not in a generic way, but in a way that just breaks fucking boundries all the time.

I love Hell's Kitchen because it is the anti-thesis of the 3 reasons I outlined above. The contestants being humiliated and destroyed is at a fucking constant, there is nothing letting up. This really might have something to do with Ramsay...actually being there most of the time. The premise of cooking is great since I love it. And the cleverness of it all, well it just goes to show how clever they will get to really fuck over the contestants and even moreso to make them feel like absolute shit. This isn't torture by the contestants own stupidity, there's someone there to call them out on said stupidity and it's great.

But what about Princes of Malibu? Now I'm not really for family-invade-my-home-reality-tv series. The music business seems to go hand in hang with that for some bizarrly strange reason. But lo and behold we come to David Foster and his step sons who are college drop outs and basically freeloading off his hit record producing empire that is basically a fucking entire slope of a hill. I didn't think much of it, it was somewhat like Growing Up Gotti, but with an incredibly more slacker fare (if that were ever possible). But it really...REALLY fit into criteria #3. This show was clever. It wasn't clever as to how they insulted each other...no that was left to either Simon or else Chef Ramsay. It was clever in the way that if you had two sides trying to one-up each other with pranks, clever ploys and trickery but had unlimited access to funds.

That's how clever it is.

This is a show that is just a vengence addict's fantasy. The incredible lengths that these people will go to fuck each other over is so humourous and amazing, it makes Survivor look like a grade 3 playground with clique alliances. And this is all that happens, intentionally, unintentionally, pranks and stupidity is pulled that just amounts to war.

Wikipedia Article of the Day: Beast Wars

2006-07-28T00:36:00.000-07:00

In order to upgrade on my geek knowledge, rekindle some past personal favorites and just learn new stuff, I decided to venture onto Wikipedia once in a while.

Beast Wars was a Transformers Cartoon created by Mainframe entertainment and was basically one of the best shows I've seen when I was growing up. Most of you Canadians might have remembered it to be under Beasties because this was during a time when Canadian censorship was in a upheaval about violence in youth targetted TV, with Power Rangers being struck from the proverbial landscape. We can't have people ever think that there were actual Beast Wars happening in our world.

It does however bring up a moment of reflection of what the voice actor for the opening sequence was thinking at the time that instead of just roaring out "Beast Wars!" for the title sequence...he also had to yell out "Beasties!" for an alternate cut. Perhaps he was thinking what a fucking stupid idiot he already sounds like for wanting to growl Beast Wars! only to be asked to gather that very same motivation and growl with a straight face Beasties! Then again they are the professionals and not me. He was probably most concerned about his paycheque for doing such embarassing and deamning work.

Opening title sequence voice acting embarassment aside it was a fairly good series with great characters that rival the G1 Transformers we've come to all know and love. What appealed to me most was that it was very much crafted like Disney's Gargoyles in which even though there were adventures that happen each episode, there is a sub-plot that strings them all together very tightly. This isn't to say that it's just like Gargoyles, I do consider Garygoles to have a bit more cohesiveness to everything discussed in previous episodes. Beast Wars just didn't seem as meticulously planned that's all. But it did have a great story with actual depth that goes beyond your simple saturday cartoon story with a message.

It was peculiar as to how I came to first see this series. The thing is, the first two episodes did not originally air back in September 1996 as many people would remember it, but the spring of 1996. I forget how I came about it, but it was during a very late morning, WPIX 11 (then channel 25 or 26 I think) was in the wee hours in the morning. Suddenly this 3D animated title sequence blasted onto the screen. I was basically stuck there for 1 hour as I saw the first two episodes of Beast Wars being broadcasted....right in the middle of the fucking night with hardly anyone to see it. I even doubt that New York kids were watching what I was watching. After the second episode finished, it had a little promo clip saying to stay tuned this fall for more Beast Wars. Stupidly enough I waited next week thinking that it might show up again, but to no avail.

It wasn't until later in the summer during a swim meet of all fucking places that I heard about Beast Wars again. Apparently two of my teammates (who were in seperate motel rooms at the time) saw it with one bringing up dicussion of it. He said "Hey I was watching this awesome cartoon about something...(inaudible)...Transformers" I instantly knew what it was, although I quite forget if I had watched it earlier the night before as well in another motel room.

Regardless it was a well crafted well produce show. I did however lose track of the actual episodes when WPIX and YTV would have different airing times for all new episodes. Eventually around late Season 2 and most of Season 3, I hardly knew what was occuring let alone how many of the characters suddenly got mutated into new forms and such. And like Gargoyles, it had a unbearable end to the series with Beast Machines...which was even worst and yet I still don't know how I managed to sit through that fucking drivel to the bitter end. Sadly even Beast Machines was still infinitely better than the Takara produced Transformers anime that followed it...which thankfully has absolutely no reference to the Beast Era of Transfomers.

Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1 and Vol. 2

2006-07-24T11:55:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty much proudly Canadian, especially when it comes to our imaginative culture. There might be a big expectation for Canada of just being nice and a lot of times, being second (re: 5th) best when compared to world rankings. I admit we do have our own problems and we are in no position to greatly boast about our geopolitical position in the world...but when it does come to something great in comedy and the arts, I'm all over that shit.

I'm proud of shows that are so great that they transcend the typical idea of what Canadian content usually is; most of which seems to consist of either Canadian docudramas or Nativeploitation films. Perhaps a result of Canadian collective guilt. So basically said, I like stuff that has a universal feeling with a slight Canadian flare. But not so Canadian you basically drown in the references. So when I read Scott Pilgrim, it pretty much plucked my patriotism string.

What is it about? It's about a guy (in Canada of all places!) who has to fight 7 evil ex boyfriends in order to solidify the relationship with his current girlfriend. Most of these fights seem to end up as typical video game warfare. Well it's basically what you'd get if you mixed the graphic novel Blankets with Penny-Arcade. It actually features a lot of aspects I like about television, movies and books. The first one being most of the characters, if not just the main one, are assholes. This isn't to say that I like characters who are completely reprehensible such as Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. But ones who have a smidgen of being humble within their character. Basically an ass who's a good loser.

Another aspect I like is how the world is created and the weirdness that appears is basically accepted. I always find that some aspects in other shows or works introduce something in a plausible way at sacrafice for pace. But being able to create a world without having the need to explain but just...show that it exists I find to be a great talent. I guess it depends on the person's ability to suspend belief or disbelief, but I consider it a product of good writing and execution if someone is able to slide in something different without the audience missing a beat as opposed to holding their hand and forcing them to understand.

With tons of video game references, relationship angst up the ying yay and enough weirdness to keep it well into comic territory, it's a great series that I suggest anyone to read, especially fans of games games and more motherfucking games.

Il Diavolo Porta Prada Review

2006-07-17T22:50:00.000-07:00

For some of the more standard girly filmfare (let's face it...there really isn't any other way to say it), I have my buddy Carla to rely on to go to such films I'm interested in. I guess in someway she's my beard to prove I'm not entirely gay, or stupid, but I guess at least I have someone to talk to about the film. It's also fun to poke fun at her husband Jeremy in telling him outrageous lies on the movie we are going to see. Take for instance Take the Lead in which I proclaimed it to be the best and newest action movie of the year featuring Vin Diesel. Bullshit! He accurately cried as my grave mistake of thinking he has not seen the trailer. Next time Jeremy, I'll get you.

However on movie night we all decided to see The Devil Wears Prada starring the ever so doe-eyed Anne Hathaway (with equally large areoles featured in Brokeback Mountain, Jeremy can attest to that, but that's another story) and the maticulous Meryl Streep.

If you ever wanted to see a film of someone, or even Meryl Streep, play a character that tears a fucking strip off anyone and everyone's ass with a voice nary going above an audible whisper; this is the film for you. Streep nails being a cold and calculating leader of industry who doesn't put up with bullshit, who does her job damn mother fucking well and who's opinion is law because it works and because she knows it.

It is your typical story of the protagonist being caught up in a lifestyle/job/world in which he/she/it loses sight of their own humble beginnings yada yada yada etc. etc. However in someways it doesn't follow the right convention because it goes to show a certain cold hearted reality of how the world works. The highly expected scene where the protagonist picks up her shoes (literally), hikes up her pants and decides she's going to show the world that she can succeed never started out in a moment of empathy from a potential mentor or parent figure. There was no sympathy, no coddling, not even an acknowledgement that they care for her. They straight up said...you aren't doing your job period. There is no one to congratulate you on what's expected what is minimum requirement.

But it doesn't really stop there, it goes so far as to make you question certain moral changes in people. Certain moments of weaknesses that make someone seem human, suddenly causes someone to re-bitchify in the next moment. How even within the world that is basically making you the person that you originally hated, allows you to still act like a good person. Not in a "[i]I'm going to prevent the corporate takeover my boss is planning for the good of the people[/i]" but loyalty above all else even for someone who treated you like utter shit.

Overall it's a good movie just to waste a night with. Jeremy thought it was good as did Carla so we all enjoyed ourselves.

3.9/5.0 stars.

Samurai Champloo

2006-07-10T16:04:00.000-07:00

It has been about a year or so that I decided to pick up where I left off with Samurai Champloo. At the time they were regularly being released in Japan, fan subbed with me downloading about the first 5-6 episodes. Cowboy Bebop with Samurai is what a lot of people expected considering it is directed by Shinichiro Watanabe. What he did by mixing sci-fi with Jazz and blues, he does with Edo Period Japan with Hip Hop. Verily a hard act to follow up coming off of Cowboy Bebop.

As you begin to watch the series the first thing that comes to mind is direct comparisons to Cowboy Bebop. How would it stack up to it? Would lightening strike twice? How do the characters here relate to the characters there? I've begin to have doubts when I saw the first six episodes. Granted the animation was great, it was somewhat funny, it seemed to show that touch of authenticity in their characters and started to really create a world in which you could believe could exist but something didn't click.

I dropped the series up until a week or so ago. There was something that didn't click. It might have been that I wanted it to be like Cowboy Bebop or something more. I suppose that in my tastes I have a bias to western settings than to eastern ones, but I suppose after that year or so I chose to put it away probably did some good. Now refreshed and actually wanting to finish what I started, I begin from where I left off.

Once again it felt the other episodes I saw didn't click. There was something missing, a sense of fun or heart. It could be because most of the sub-characters were too generic, not well too defined. Or that each situation that the characters enter seemed so commonplace. When it got to episode Ten though "Lethal Lunacy" it hit its stride. Similiarities with Cowboy Bebop did bleed through, but instead of copying it, it made it it's own. The action seemed more refined and the direction clear. Suddenly I found it's heart and it found me, it was a great series now.

So I could say that this series is an acquired taste, but it's not since you just have to wait until it gets to the good parts. You won't be disappointed when great gems appear as it begins to take itself more loosely and confidently.

Has Superman really returned?

2006-06-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

When they said that Superman was going to be filmed I was pretty speculative about it all. It wasn't because of the fact that I kept up with Superman Movie talks, the handovers, the passovers, the dozens of script rewrites and whatever God awful rumours would make any nominal geek's blood turn cold. It was because like everyone else in the world, this was Superman. This is the comic book movie project. You cannot fuck this up. I'm not implying that you can't possibly fuck this up no matter how badly you do say for instance...Doctor Who, but it's clear that it's a rule that in all your ability, you will never ever let this movie be fucked up. This isn't Daredevil, and Electra isn't even 1/16th of what Superman is in terms of stature. There is no second try. This needs to be a home-run hit, not for the hometeam, but for the game itself. If any validation of comic book movies was ever needed, it would be with Superman Returns.

As more information came out, along came the doubts, the speculation, even the backlash before the movie was even released. The costume, the actors, the ideas, the perceived possiblity that bastardization might come along. Me personally, hearing Bryan Singer was directing did not encourage my enthusiasim for the film. [i]That's[/i] how big the film is, that even a director who made possibly two of the best comic book films in film history didn't even change my mindto the possiblity that the franchise is in good hands. He was there to steer a Titanic in which I hope would not sink.

I didn't invest into it as some people might have either as a movie goer or a comic book fan. I didn't anticipate with the fury that the promotional campaign should have done, but clearly did not. If anything I was one of the most indifferent people to the film on the board without going into "I don't give a shit" territory. However I'm not entirely without emotion. There were slight information tidbits that piqued my interest. Brandon Routh most of all, the costume, the idea of Kevin Spacey and even the age difference between Luthor and Superman which should be actually quite small. The Gene Hackman take on Luthor shown in the trailer made my skin crawl and my minimal expecation for a good film almost crumbled. Even the references to Superman Returns being a sequel to Superman 2 boggled my mind.

And after watching it what could I possibly say? How about I just use the other comic book blockbuster of the summer X3 for a reference?

Great Caeser's Ghost > Oh my stars and garters

Yes...we have a homerun.

If Superman 1 and 2 was about showing Superman, his ability as a superhuman, showcasing his super powers and showing the people around him; then Superman Returns is a film where we don't just see Superman being the comic book character through action...we see him as a hero.

I had my doubts. The start of the film still didn't feel like Superman to me. It didn't even feel like a comic book movie at the time. But when the time came, when you see Lois and Supes have their first real talk it was like magic. Suddenly all the doubts, all the speculation, all the geek stupidity melted away and you saw Superman. You don't care that it's Brandon Routh who could have been mistaken for the 100 Justin Timberlake clones out there or that his hair is parted on the wrong side. The costume was right, the character was right and the hero appeared. Then you begin to realise that this is a film, this isn't an adaption. This wasn't a showcase-of-superpowers-just-to-fill-in-action-movie-quota #26, this was a film about Superman and even though it might not follow the comic 100%, sure Perry didn't feel like Perry. Jimmy was a tad more generic than the last time around. But it was a film that was adapted with the spirit of it's source material and directed with the quality of a legitimate piece of cinema.

Everything in here just shows much more style, much more substance than X3. It actually showed direction instead of the decaptiated chicken, film all you can feeling of X3. Don't believe me? When Lois was in serious danger for the second time, you actually felt that danger. Even with the knowledge that Superman will come, you are barely containing the urger to scream out, "SAVE HER SUPERMAN!" by the social graces not to disturb the person beside you. How will he come? When will he come? You even begin to question whether or not he will arrive or not.

It's that ability to illicit emotion from the audience that shows the power of the directing. When Jean basically AHVB'd Charles into next Wednesday, I didn't feel anything. In fact I was pretty much sighing as to when it will end. Even the comedy was better than most of X3 because it didn't feel like it was pandered to us, it was snuck in with grace.

It is a great film. It is a film to see, to enjoy and in the end it's a damn fine comic book movie. I wouldn't say the best, I definately wouldn't say my favorite, but I can clearly see how it can easily be a favorite of many who believe in Superman.

*****/***** stars despite some minor flaws, it deserves it after rising to the occasion so greatly.

What Square could have been...

2006-06-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

As shown at our MKZ site, The piano composer Frederic Chopin is going to star in an RPG called Trusty Bell: Chopin's Dream. This is a game that has caught my serious attention, especially in a gaming world where you could hardly go one paragraph or even through 1/8th of a gamers top games list without hitting the Final Fantasy series. Along with Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior, they basically set the idea that RPG fantasy must be medieval and even more apparent, setting the standards of how most VG cinemas must be.

Even after the technical demo of what FF7 would look on had it been done on PS3, there is still much speculation that a FF7 Remake is on the horizon, being secretly done and created. Me personally I don't have any enthusiasm to see a FF7 remake. Granted many people say that it's a game that has not aged well graphically, this leads to a problem to what can it be? To me a video game remake as always been along the lines of:

An entire revamp of the story/content much like Castlevania 4 (Super Castlevania).

The same content in the origin game but with extras i.e. FF-GBA versions, Tales of Phantasia, Resident Evil 1, etc.

To me the entire concept of a FF7 seems to be a doomed propect from the beginning. It's like trying to remake an classicly reknowned film ever where there is no reason at all to do a remake. This reminds me of an article on the now defunct Whatever-Dude website, lambasting of then power couple Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck's plans of doing a Casablanca remake with themselves playing the main characters. Refrain from laughing please. It was quite a strong rumour at the time, bordering on rumbling to be true. Had it not been for the complete meltdown of their relationship in front of every tabloid reader's and magazine program viewer's eyes, Casablanca could have easily been the spiritual sequel to Gigli.

Granted FF7 is in good hands. It's by no ways able to be totally fucked up by some hack (or hacks) like say...Electronic Arts, Midway or 3D Realms. Now I don't consider FF7 to be perfect, not as widely acceepted as the beforementioned cinematic acheivement I've referenced. It could be the fact that I ruined most of the game by already knowing the worst kept secret in video game history, that I've played through most of the game with a gamefaq in hand (all 100+ pages printed out at the time), or like most haters of F7 I just jumped the bandwagon because it is cool to hate. My apprehension for the game aside, what I do recgonize is the impact that FF7 had on the gaming industry. Most importantly that to most gamers, new gamers, first time rpg-players; to them FF7 is perfect, it is their Casablanca.

And therein lies the rub. Why would we want to have lightening strike twice? From the remake methods I've mentioned, if you try to change the story as a reimagining of the story such as method 1, you are basically tampering with a great storyline and thus piss off a lot of fans. If you take the route of method 2, then all you are really left is a neater looking FF7, with a playable FF7: Advent Children part and some slight bonuses. I suppose the most obvious one is the ability to revive Aeris, where in fact it would just go back to method 1 and piss off a lot of fans. Hardly worth spending millions of dollars for a blatent amount of fanservice, much of which is already being used towards a gaming collection called Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. IMHO, Advent Children is the FF7 remake that a lot of people were waiting for. In some form though, Square Enix has pidgeon holed themselves into a very bad situation.

If a FF7 remake were to surface, I imagine that Square Enix will have to produce the game with Advent Children quality graphics. Great. Just what we need. Another foray of hyper realism into a gaming industry. I'm not entirely against realism in gaming, but it gets to a point where when a character's belt buckle has more polygons than the previous generation's entire character model, does it matter so much when all I still see is a yellow square on someone's pants? When for all the effort put into this design actually doesn't improve on either atmosphere or animation of the character who's probably using the same animation it was 5 years ago. When you can boast about the amount of pores on a character's CG rendered face where in just gaming reality you probably will never see that detail aside from 3 scant seconds of some intro movie? Basically said, why make something real over making something fun?

I've always thought that it isn't FF7 who needs a remake, but FF6, heck FF4 - FF6 because unlike FF7, there is something that can be tampered with. This isn't because I'm some old school purist who wants a FF6 remake to be made because I love it. But because as great as those stories are, they do have the leeway to be reimagined unlike FF7's beloved storyline. Basically said there is more that can be improved upon the games other than just a graphical facelift. When Kefka killed General Leo in FF6, had it not been for the glaring red screen we would have never known that a murder took place instead of a Brokeback moment. Then again with anal ruptures, who's to say the red isn't so specific only to murder? But just imagine that Sqaure-Enix could really challenge how games look graphically. That games could even look much like Amano's artwork. Instead of hard anatomically correct polygons, we can possibly get artful even wispy looking characters and design.

However I am getting to a point here. For once I am excited about a game. Not by the fact that it looks great, but by the fact that it is different and in some ways it does push the idea of design beyond what we've seen before. Much like Mother or Xenogears (not to be confused with the Would you like some game with your movie snorefest Xenosaga) Trusty Bell is appealing to me because it looks different and even acts different from RPGs. And even though I'm not exactly a graphics whore, there is something to the attention to detail that can't help but bring it out in me:

Exquisitely detailed clothing

Interiors look better than most houses.

Scenary that doesn't make me feel like I'm cowed into having to go through.

Check out the piano detail

Literature put in its place

2006-06-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

Although I had a clear opinion on what I think about Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, I was more curious in reading his prequel book Angels and Demons. It's just as bad if not worst than The DaVinci Code. The same slow and melodramatic pacing and revelation of plot points continue constantly in this book, but there is a less of a presence of flashbacks that The Davinci Code had, which IMHO bogged it down greatly.

As if my hands realized and even recognized the proverbial crappy book that I was reading (it wasn't hard, it's probably the first paperback novel I've read that was actually taller than most standard paperbacks) they promptly lost all motor control as I hovered above a toilet. My entertainment for the stay fell right into the water with a resounding plop, splashing up onto the seat and causing me to curse it. The first thing that came to mind wasn't that if I've ruined the book, but how abosrbent the pages were, nearly doubling the weight of the book for being in the water for a scant 3 seconds. After a moment of reflection and embarassment, I realized I shouldn't be surprised that shitty books would gravitate to where it rightfully belongs.

The Top 10 Greatest Video Game Movie Moments Ever

2006-06-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

Rated from best to worst....depending on your tastes and preferences:

1. Double Dragon: Allyssa Milano's Fine Ass® shown going into a ventilation shaft: Doing the only correct thing EVER in the entirety of the film; Billy and Jimmy fight for on point position to follow the Power Corps Chief Marian into the corps' hideout of spunky fun loving children. It's like Oliver Twist meets The Little Rascals...BUT SHITTIER!

2. Mortal Kombat Annihilaiton: Lord Rayden comes out of the closet!: Surprisingly enough having a Swiss raised-turned French actor-turned Hollywood actor-playing a Scottish character-turned Chinese Lightening God did not entirely suck ass as one would think in MK1. Yet when Lambert was replaced with a even worst C-Lister in Hollywood, well people can't just wound a character beyond recovery. They have to destroy it.

When Rayden, played by James Remar, comes out of the cave, in a leather vest no less, he openly proclaims, "Hey guys...I'm human!" you wonder how could Viscant possibly lose out on a Oscar nomination for costume design on MK:A. Sadly they could have easily saved the movie, making it a gay pride staple for decades to come, had they just only provided a small musical homage to previous year's most epic "coming out" scene in cinematic history in Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy. Sadly, it only serves as a curse on the SRK community to have one of our members adopt the vest permanently.

3. Super Mario Bros: 3 Marios...1 Luigi?: Like the caramel in a Caramilk bar, the actual state that Springfield resides, and could Gill have survived a Raging Demon, it was a hardly spoken secret of what Mario's and Luigi's last names were. Sure the characters' inception was back in the day when most video game characters didn't have names...at least Real Names. Space guy, the Galaga Ship, Arthur, etc. were basically the Princes and Chers back in the day. But as Mario and Luigi survived the early days of gaming, you come to realize that before they got transported to the Mushroom Kingdom, they were actually plumbers with real lives pre-save the Princess in another castle. But as the Mario Bros. were about to be put into jail to be dino-raped we are given this scene of wit dialogue at play:

Desk Sergeant: Name.
Mario: Mario.
Desk Sergeant: Last name.
Mario: Mario.
Desk Sergeant: And you?
Luigi: Luigi.
Desk Sergeant: Luigi Luigi?
Luigi: No, Luigi Mario.
Desk Sergeant: Okay how many Marios are there between the two of you?
Luigi: Three: Mario Mario and Luigi Mario.

Well fuck me.

It did make complete sense. It was the Mario Brothers afterall. And yet in some weird twisted way like how Pizza Hut was to TMNT, Little Ceaser must've had input as to how to express Mario's name like their toga wearing mascot.

4. Double Dragon: Robert Patrick's (aka Shadow Boss) Hair: Seriously....have you seen his hair?. I mean have you really seen his hair?

5. Mortal Kombat Annihilation: How to cure toomanycharacteritus by stuffing them all into a 5 minute scene: By the time MK:A rolled out there were enough Ninjas to rival the character roster in MK1. Seeing how they can't exactly put Noob Saibot or Smoke on the film crew you have to wonder what director John R. Leonetti and writer Lawrence Kasanoff had to do in order to fullfill some geek requirement to have all availble characters appear on screen. So what better way to incorporate about 5-6 different characters into one scene than to just refer to some only by name and have others become glorfied extras?

Rain: My squads have already claimed thousands of innocent souls on Earth.
Motaro: And I will claim billions.
Sheeva: By now you'd be behind bars on display in a zoo.
Motaro: If those bars could keep me away from you, Sheeva, I would welcome them!
Shao Kahn: Silence! What is your report?
Rain: Two of earth's best warriors have already been taken. Kabal and Stryker.
Shao Kahn: Tell me, did you make them beg for the lives before you destroyed them?
Rain: But, Master, I thought if I let them live...
Shao Kahn: I have no use for excuses! Rain, this will never happen again.
Rain: It will never happen again.
Shao Kahn proceeds to bitch slap Rain across the room *past* Ermac lurking in the BG and into a pit of acid as Rain screams in pain.

Thank the Lord for multi tasking.

6. House of the Dead: Cheating at Bullet Time and forgetting consistency: It seems that Uwe Boll had a misconception about more being better. It usually is good; only if it's DONE RIGHT. Now I like the camera circling antics of bullet time as much as anyone else, but when Uwe Boll decided to use it, instead of actually using SLR cameras, he decided to have the actors stand completely still on a podium as a camera spins around them on the bottom. From what I gather Boll actually created this rig specifically for this purpose. Does it even feature the actors in a cool pose at all? No...it's them holding a gun or weapon straight out. Sure it might have twice as many bullet time shots than the Matrix, but shame on you Boll for trying to fool us.

Inconsistency reigns in the movie as we come upon the graveyard scene as our heroes plummit head first into a swarm of zombies. During the scene it seems that every person that gets killed manages to get a wonderful red screen of death tribute fading them out during their death sequence. Suddenly, just as we are getting a pattern set, we suddenly come upon our hero who can't seem to use his gun correctly.

I forget what happened, but it was a malfunction that should have easily been rectified. And so we see our pony-tailed Asian girl bite the dust, instead of a red screen of death we've come to expect, instead we see our main character grimace in pain and disappointment. Was it from not being able to save the cause of his yellow fever? Or did it dawn upon him that Uwe Boll wasn't going to make him a superstar after than midnight blowjob in the alleyway? We may never know.

7. Doom: We learn John Codenamed: Reaper's last name: Following a (or preceding I forget) an awkward moment of mistaken incest Eomer...er I mean John gets ragged upon by his sister, Samantha Grimm, upon his assigned codename.

Samantha Grimm: So, "Reaper"? As in "Grim"?
John Grimm: They're Marines, Sam, not poets.

Someone was wearing the clever pants that day.

8. The Wizard: The Line™: Who'd thought that a 90 minute commercial for Super Mario Bros. 3 would instead result in the most popular, even most famous quote in video game history for one of the most failed Nintendo peripherals ever? The only way they could possibly top the line "I love the Power Glove. It's so bad." is if they had a sequel with a Virtual Boy user saying "I love the Virtual Boy. It's so fly."

And yet who knew that somehow this single scene would permeate through video game culture so greatly that 17 years later, we end up seeing the full extent of it's effect. Researchers are still speculating but this is the most agreed upon timeline upon The Wizard Sonic Effect.

March 1989: The Wizard begins film production. Fred Savage takes a break from his coke habit to join the cast.

Early July 1989: Nintendo of America reads the script and proclaim it to be the greatest marketing tool ever. It will not only be the launch pad for Super Mario Bros. 3, but single handedly restart the failing US economy by Power Glove sales alone. Universal pictures being pressured by investors decides to never release it to Japan. Car company investors fear that if released in Japan an similiar effect might happen and revitalize Japan's economy thus increasing an already growing presence in the import car market on US soil.

Late July 1989: Nintendo of Japan reads script and influences the Japanese gov't to close borders to any import of material relating or mentioning The Wizard film. Fears of The Wizard single handedly destroying the video game market by showing a gaijin weilding the power glove with such prowress thus collapsing all of society and sending it back 700 years keeps this legislation on for a minimum of 50 years.

October 1989: Todd Holland upon learning about the the secret of the whistles in SMB3 by an insider at Nintendo of America, he requests for a reshoot of the intended ending of Jimmy Woods being transported into a Nintendo Console by mastering the might of the Power Glove, obtaining the Triforce, weilding the Ice Beam and using the magic of a 1-up mushroom thus leaving Corey with a sense of happiness that Jimmy is in a better place; instead the current ending was what was shown. The original intended ending is now locked on planet Zebes.

November 9th 1989: Berlin Wall starts being torn down. Coincidence? I think not. Those East Germaners want to fucking see The Wizard.

December 15th 1989: Millions of children get exposed to mullets and The Line™. The Video gaming world is never the same.

Early 2000: Miyamoto while smoking opium in a Hong Kong brothel for inspiration as to how to proceed with the gamecube Zelda game; stumbles outside into a bootlegger's kiosk. As the middle aged man yells at him, he appologizes profusely but tells him that his friend Navi will pay for the damages and set things right. Upon trying to reorganize all the bootleg items, he happens upon an American 80's movie. Seeing how he was contemplaing naming his GC Zelda project from two titles narrowed down from dozens: The Wind Waker or Wizard Wanker. He mistakes this bootleg film as a documentary on wizards, so he proceeds to buy it for research purposes.

The Next day: Miyamoto's brain is blown away as saw The Wizard. He then proceeds to design the Wii controller.

The rest is history: Miyamoto decides Wizard Wanker is a stupid name for a game, but strictly decides on the name the Wii.

9. Wing Commander: Bullet Time Crimes Part Deux.: In possibly the most worthless and inane use of True Bullet Time, we feast upon Matthew Lillard's Character 'Maniac' prepping for a space jump by jumping from his cafeteria chair and spilling food in the process...FROM ALL DIFFERENT ANGLES. Now granted Wing Commander is a PC game series, but I think this should at least get special mention. Sure spend God knows how much money on this Jim Carey Lite for that effect to probably only answer a busboy's question on how cool it would be to see some waiter falling down freeze mid-air.

10. The Wizard: Jimmy Finding the Secret Whistles: Possibly the worst case of video game tourney cheating ever recorded, Jimmy Woods actually finds the secret whistles in which transports him to Giant World (level 4?) and wins him the tourney. This information being so secretive I imagine only developers would know when and where to find this secret item. It's like MvC2 being released on the first day for a tourney and someone learning about AHVBx3 right off the bat or performing Sent's unfly.

11. *HOUSE OF THE DEAD BONUS ROUND: UWE BOLL DVD EXTRA: It's bad enough that for a feature, Uwe Boll decides to surprise the actresses by going into their hotel rooms and waking them up...pre-make up. Say what you will about celebs, but make up does make them look decent enough. Upon the exiting the hotel, they decide to do some...training. Lo and behold they play a HOTD arcade game for a bit. For more wonderful Bolly antics we are introduced with the acteress in semi-full Paint ball gear (just the protection) and their quest to take out some zombies.

It was nice enough to see the extras in actual zombie make-up, we are going for realism afterall. What isn't real is how the extras themselves have NO PROTECTION AT ALL, thus resulting in the actresses unleashing hell upon the zombies and zombies in return peculiary shielding their fucking faces from the impending barrage of paintballs aimed at their unprotected bodies and head.

I'm the Juggernaut Bitch Review

2006-05-27T00:16:00.000-07:00

Intsead of completely comparing X3 to the previous films, might as well compare it to other sequels similiar to it. It's by no means a Batman and Robin, but it's quite like another "X" sequel, xXx: State of the Union.

To start off; the action since this is an action oriented comic. Overall I was bored to tears. This isn't to say there weren't some great moments. I think one of the better moments was during the danger room, Colossus gave Rogue a bit of his power in order to protect her from a debris attack. Juggernaut vs. Wolvie was incredible. Wolvie vs. Morlock Guards was decent enough, but other than that every other battle seemed old hat.

The next thing that most people would want to know is, what about the mutant powers? How were they used? Were they cool as fuck? As I mentioned before, some powers were used creatively, Magneto had his moments but as the movie progressed it became clear to make Magneto the equivalent of a metal tossing catapult than being a master of magentism. The very first use of Jean's powers in the first scene was amusing enough but as the movie progressed there's so much of a Hey look at me, I'm a destructive force overload it fails to actually instill any real fear in the audience.

It's hard to say what they were trying to do with the mutant powers. I imagine they were trying to stuff in so many cameos/mutant possiblities, in such a way to distract at how bad the rest of the film is. There is a lot of "introduction of powers" scenes in the film, that were produced for the sole reason of showing off a power or ability. But it lacked the certain natural introduction of the previous two films.

An example would be Kitty in X1 being like a typical student forgetting her book and then just phasing through a closed door after her fellow classmates. Iceman in X2 creating an icewall not to seperate them from Stryker's men, but also seperating Wolverin from Stryker himself. But in X3 it almost felt like a mutant audition. Even Magneto asked one mutant: "What's your power?" as if he was prepping an amateur for some porn shoot. Basically, powers were expressed in such a way that was more like the comic than a basic action film. The imaginative use of powers descresed greatly with this film. It's one thing to see Pyro set off cars and send them into the air. It's just really boring to see it happen again, only this time with Magneto as his B-assist tossing the cars for him.

Finally, the dialogue. Guess what? My feelings of deja-vu in comparing the dialogue to Triple X wasn't all that far off. Guess who worked on the screenplay of X3? Simon Kinberg the same guy who wrote xXx: 2. I'll just leave it at that.

I'm by no means a comic book purist, in fact I wasn't really intrested in this film in the first place. It might have been AICN swaying me a bit with it's talkback and weekly rumours of the slightly change. I wouldn't go so far as to say: "This isn't X-men" because I imagine to there is enough people here and everywhere who believe it is. But it does bring up the point, do we want the films to exist and be produced so haphazardly to remind us of the comics only by reference and not by the nature of the film? Do we want these adaptions to exist even though they are more like a common movie than another genre by itself?

Post E3 thoughts....

2006-05-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Another E3 has come and gone. Geeks had flocked to the gaming saltlick of demos, trailers, and mini-films laid out by the oh so cunning hunter in suits and cosplay costumes. And yet another year I feel really disappointed.

I talked to Rob a little before E3 was about to start and said that it doesn't excite me at all. This E3 is pretty much boring and lacklustre. Rob disagreed and blamed my cynicism of me saying that every year. I don't say it because it's a 50/50 chance of me being right...but because E3 has basically been pretty boring for a great deal now. This isn't by any means an old skooler crying about the sins of graphical whoring and nostolgia, but there were really only a few games that piqued my interest and one gripping me entirely; that being Metal Gear Solid 4.

But it goes to show that games are beginning to really show lack of innovation. If I couldn't have told the difference between Metroid Prime 3 and it's predecessors, then it's concerning on how Nintendo is going forward with it's next gen gaming. Many of the games look like working model demos as opposed to finished products of a next gen calibur. The only things that stood out for me was Fire Emblem and Disaster Day, both of which could have been pre-rendered and not real time.

Sony adding a seemingly last minute POS motion detecting controller just makes me cry but not as much as the price point in which a lot of gamers are debating whether they should skip their mortgage payment or monthly rent to acquire the next level of gaming.

Microsoft, of which I am indifferent to, seems to have come out as a great console. There were a lot of games that caught my eye...even though it doesn't excite me, a lot of the more realized games seem to be on the 360. It doesn't mean that they were good games, but I recognize a potentially better line-up compared to others.

However what did impress me the most, aside from MGS4, was some of the advancements in animation. They seem far more realistic and fluid, less repetitive and with the very much puclicized and acclaimed Assassin's Creed (I wonder if people know creed is pronounced crid and in bid) even though it's premise doesn't interest, just seeing it move really does impress me a bit.

But me...I'm a seriously stoked for next year's E3. I think next year will be a great one, in fact one of the greatest ones because it'll be second gen development by then and we'll see what'll happen. It'll only go to show how much the gaming industry will be shaken up after 12 months.

I'm not good at lying.

2006-05-18T11:09:00.000-07:00

Well it's kind hard to lie sometimes. With the customers who are insistent to know what our business is doing, or why it's so empty, we decided to use the term "renovation" to describe the reason we are going low on stock. Each time I say the little white lie though, it's easier and easier to say really. I think because some customers are so nosy about it all, fibbing to them makes it much easier and less stressful to explain what the fuck is going on.

I don't see why people think the store is getting low on stock because even one time when a customer asked my mother why there isn't anything in the store anymore...she asked him what he wanted. In the end he found all that he needed so basically unless you're looking for oven cleaner or atificial rum extract...yes we are getting pretty empty. We currently made one aisle empty for the sake of efficiency, and suddenly people think we are empty. We merely utilized space a bit better.

I do hope that not many customers get our contact information for our new place or else they'd probably phone us up and ask us to reopen the store because they need us.

Results of the sugar experiement

2006-05-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

After two weeks of drastically lowering my sugar intake, there seems to be more health benefits than taste benefits from it all. It does show how much sugar I do eat given a day or a week, which is far too much. Even my mother noticed a difference in my behaviour which became less fidgity and moving around a bit too much. I had a sugar binge yesterday, more than I had about last weekend which made me tense, on edge and even my thinking was in a noticiable haze. I couldn't think straight as if something was blocking my focus and I seemed to have noticed my heartrate increased slightly. That or else I seemed more senstive on feeling my pulse buldge through my neck.

What of the purpose of my sugar drought? I ate a pizza a few days after my no sugar intake and I could taste the sweetness of the tomato sauce. I imagine being a store bought one, there is a bit of sugar in it, and I've always kinda tasted a hint of it, but this time the sweetness came through clearly on my tastebuds. A sandwich I ate the next day tasted extra tasty. I don't know if it was because my tastebuds going into sugar withdrawal, desperate enough to make any food tasty, but it's good nevertheless. I think a breakthrough is that I could eat fruit without hesitation anymore. It does show that because of my dialy intake of junk food that made fruit seem extremly bitter to me, but in cutting that out, fruit tastes just good period.

Meeshun Impossibre Tree Review

2006-05-15T19:03:00.000-07:00

Let's cut to the chase. Better than #2 but almost as good as #1.

With that said, Ethan Hunt is back doing the impossible missions to avenge the death of his protege. There really isn't much to expect from this film because if you want action that is unpretentious and just full bore on entertaining...this is it. I would have to say this is about as smart as blockbuster action you'll see without being too gracefully chereographed such as The Matrix or Equilibrium. However it's not so outrageously Brukheimerian to insult your taste in film. However saying that...did it succeed?

In someways I don't think it did. I did think it was a great movie, but it wasn't a great Mission Impossible movie. A lot of conventions of typical action films eventually seeped into the plot of the film; which even though done well enough, does leave me a little deflated in expectations. Another problem that arose is that essentially, it's become a James Bond version of Mission Impossible. What really impressed me most about Mission Impossible was the use of gadgetry and pulling off the impossible in unique ways. With James Bond, it's always felt that gadgetry was there for the pure sake of creating a unqiuly specific scene in the future. However with MI, it always seem like more, gadgetry was used to aid in a situation that required thinking to solve rather than gagetry alone. Even though this time around more focus was put upon a team dynamic, they haven't seemed to command a large enough presence to be actual characters to care for.

Another problem is that after watching 24, any form of interrogation is pretty much tame compared to anything else that happens in MI:3, aside from an excellent performance from Phillip Seymour Hoffman. One scene shows Ethan basically pretending to be as badass as Jack Bauer, but it truly falls flat. The moral conflicts are pretty much typical.

But overall a good film to check out, even though we had basically 1 year of Cruise mania grace our media, it's good enough to make you ignore that for about 2 hours.

3/5 stars.

SPOILERS Silent Hill Review SPOILERS

2006-05-09T23:33:00.000-07:00

It's quite hard to say what to make of Silent Hill. It had mixed reviews along all spectrums of movie goers. The fans, the critics, the general mass. Even it's Box office tally was very lucky to even clinch #1 for a weekend at $40 million in which a lot of people could say is a moderate but not entirly sucessful amount. I personally have been waiting to see this for quite a while and when I did I came walking away with some mixed feelings.

Basically to say, this is a film that is probably the most accurate video game movie adaption to date. The video gamer in me appreciated the sentiment to take careful detail in expressing correctly the details of the game. The visual feast that came from it all really gives you a sense of nervousness, especially when you enter the dark world of Silent Hill...filled with metal rust and blood. The story itself, I found to be a tad disappointing that instead of a cult worshipping for the birth of a demon god, they were instead a cult who was bent upon burning anything they see as blasphemous. Instead of a pagan/alternate religious demon, we get a vengeful spirit along the vein of The Ring or The Grudge. I thought the original Silent Hill demon would have produced a more engaging and more weird aspect of the movie, but instead they opted for a more simplified version.

However it does lend itself to a moral conflict on behalf of the main character Rose, of how far is she willing to go and save her daughter. Is she prepared to accept and assist what was essentially pure evil to basically fullfill a long overdue vengence ass kicking upon a lot of misguided (but clearly deluded) cultists? Was it right to assist someone basically trapped people in a hellish version of Silent Hill through a pact with a demon. Who exactly won in the end? In the moral conflict is akin to the Jennifer Lopez movie Enough who actively searches out her ex-husband to actually kill him and set him up to have him attack her in a bout of self defense. But with Silent Hill, there is some sort of empathy that arose from me when I saw so many people that deserved to be killed. It isn't so much that they are evil themselves, but because they are misguided that perhaps makes them so empathetic at the same time...also just as fucking dumb. But gore there is..there is a lot of gore and a lot of painful moments that makes it worth of a R rating.

This does bring up the more mixed reaction on video game adaptions. Basically what we as gamers want from a video game adaption. I personally think with movies such as Silent Hill and Doom, that in some respect we are stepping into the right direction for video game adapted movies. That perhaps in some way movie technology has caught up to reproduce fairly accurately what a video game should look like on the movie screen. But possibly more importantly that video games themselves has gained more respect and exposure to mainstream culture, *and* the that games themselves are becoming more like movies lends more emphasis on making an accurate movie.

This brings up the question...do we just want to see a video game in a movie format? The thing is I feel that I want more than just walking away or even expecting something from the game to occur on the big screen. That I want something more than just seeing Pyramid Head appear in Silent Hill, more than just Cloud fighting Sephiroth in Final Fantasy Advent Children or more than just seeing a FPS moment in Doom. In other words I want something more than fanservice. A long time ago when I still actually pined for many games to be made into movies or become translated into television shows, I wished to have video game movies as validation of my interest...my hobby. That to show the world or even share with the world a bit of joy that I get from playing a video game.

Nowadays after many failure after failure, what I want is a film. I want a movie that can be considered or even be mistaken for a film upon it's own while still satisfying the fanservice craving I would want. And perhaps the main problem (as with most other adaptions) is the fact that games storytelling and movie storytelling are different, much like books to movies or anything else. They are just different requiring different pacing and what not. I still consider Mortal Kombat to be a better film despite being directed by Paul Anderson because when I came out of it, I gotten more than just seeing my favorite characters be put onto the screen. I got to see something that could have been considered a film in the first place. The Fatal Fury series of anime I consider to be even better because it not only manages to satisfy the requisite appearance of characters, it does so in a way that is entertaining and makes it engaging.

So it's a good advance, however I hope that this doesn't merely produce carbon copies of video games onto movie screens for the sake fans and ignoring everyone else.

Sugar the deadly drug

2006-05-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

The past few days I decided to cut out sugar or anything sweet altogether. This isn't so much a dietary choice as it is a culinary choice. As I browse through cookbooks, I've read a while back how that our tastes are just too accustomed to sweetness nowadays. That in someways we don't even know what real natural sweetness is since white sugar itself is a very refined and very pure sweet. I wouldn't be surprised that after all the junk food and soft drinks that people consume that they absolutely hate fruit because by comparison it's bitter. No wonder our kids are fucked up.

Anyway, it's day two and I've seem to have gotten past the withdrawl for the most part. I do have certain bouts of cravings, which shows how natural reaching for something sweet and unhealthy is at times. I want to get it to a point where I could actually taste the sweetness of milk...of all things. But we'll have to see how well I'll do in the end.

What the fuck aurora cinemas?

2006-04-27T23:08:00.000-07:00

Silent Hill has been a video game movie I've been hyped to see for quite a while. Granted I've never played the series aside from the scant amount on my brother's X-Box, but like Penny Arcade said...it's over civic duty as gamers to see all and any video game movies.

To my wonderful dismay though is that our local cinema decided not to bring it the first week it was out. Ok...I forgive them. Instead they decided to bring out "The Sentinal". Ok...that's alright. I mean afterall, it does feature our great lord Bauer and I as a insignificant Bauerite should be humble that they should bring such a under the radar film to my theatre. And I admit, one can't exactly expect anything from Silent Hill. Kinda weird film, by a relatively unknown (to the general masses) director and ooooo...Sean Bean aka Boromir who's a supporting character. A guy who got axed in LOTR: FOTR and makes a slight appearance in LOTR: TTT Extended Edition. I can see how some carriers might be scared to bring this film in, aside from the impending madness it might cause for one to shit their pants.

But one week later, as I eagerly await FSJnow.com to update their movie listings, I click on April 28th's date and lo and behold...instead of Pyramid Head justice gracing my eyes with it's sallow skin...it was fucking United 93. Now usually I'm not very crass in terms of people's feelings regarding tragedies. Even I felt something when 9/11 occured. I usually don't determine's a film quality by its ticket sales. And even though it's safe to assume that these film presentation schedules at Aurora are pretty much set weeks or even months ahead of time, the enraged geek in me wonders. Why the fuck would you show a film about 9/11 which, to my knowledge, hardly affected the city of Fort St. John over a horror movie which was #1 at the box office last weekend?

And so I sit here, typing away my emo anger and having to wait another week (perhaps more) before I can partake in sweet, sweet, evil eye candy of horrors. Well here's hoping.

Shits a brick....(Wii related)

2006-04-27T22:33:00.000-07:00

As the internet is a buzz with the stir of Nintendo's apparent new name for it's revolutionary console codenamed: Revolution, one should calm the fuck down and wonder...what did we really expect from it all? How serious are we to expect a non-laughable console name to appear on a new console? The only company that seemed to have avoided incredible scrutiny is Sony, but even back in the 90's Sony Playstation sounded like ass. And the only reason it seems that Sony hasn't changed their console name is because it seems right happy at reminding people at how many generations they've dominated the gaming market.

Let's be frank. Game console names are like 3 steps below Car names and 1 step below names for FPS weapons. I think somewhere along the lines, as the video game geek matured and grew, we all come to expect some sort of lame console name that would put a typical NYC Bestseller Novel's title to shame. That or a Steven Segal film title.

I think in a way the game systems names are pretty self important and even serious in the realm of video gaming...the very same vein of seriousness that some people think that some gaming can be considered a "sport." There are no good console names, just ones that suck the least. Nintendo's console titles read off like a list of suggestions from a hillbilly who was a product of incest. Super Nintendo....Nintendo64, Virtual Boy, Gamecube. It's as if somehow Nintendo doesn't give their fanbase enough credit to discern the different powers of each system; let alone what the fuck the are buying.

I mean fuck...GAME CUBE......and it's even in a cube shape. You couldn't even get more obvious if it was translated from Japanese into "Electronic Funning Zap-u Box!" I mean what the fuck...there are only two other game consoles in the world that have their names describe their appearance...and both of them were very unintentional. That's the X-Box and the Phantom.

IMHO the new title is good enough to describe the entire direction that Nintendo is going. I mean why the fuck would anyone would want to name a console that could be confused with anything else? Revolution sounds like a distant removed cousin of Genesis. It's sure just as pretentious and considering that Nintendo is going in an entirely new direction for video games, might as well reflect that in it's name with not a typical name but a new one.

Ex Machina...

2006-04-24T23:08:00.000-07:00

As my friend Mike suggested this comic book series to me since I read Y: The Last Man and Runaways are by the same author, it took a while but I got around to reading it.

Basically said, it's a story of man who becomes the first and only superhero in the world called the Great Machine. His super power is to be able to communicate and command technology even non-digital technology like a gun. However seeing how his powers seem useless, he runs for Mayor of New York after the wake of 9/11, and officially hung up his super hero costume. As I continue to read it it still follows the same Vaughn wit and ability to write the mundane into something extraordinary.

As I finish reading through the first few story-arcs, to tell the truth much of the the comic reads like the West Wing or any other Presidental movie you've seen. You get to see behind the hard choices people have to make in positions of power and sometimes the most simple answer isn't the best one. But what I found engaging about this storyline isn't because there is a lack of superheroism...which there is a great lack of. But that it envokes an old comic idea so well, it's like a new generation of it.

If we go back a few decades or so, we can see people picking up the Spiderman comics. One of the greatest appeals of Spiderman at the time was that even though Spiderman was a great superhero, his alter ego faced the pitfalls of growing up in a teenage world, responsibilities of a teen, awkwardness with women and even trying to make ends meet with a measly paying job. The fact that the superhero was humanize in such a different way, that basically a kid was a superhero with real life problems seemed to have resonated with fans.

To tell the truth I missed the boat on that era. I still see Spiderman as a hero first really, Peter Parker second. As other teenage superheroes appeared to try and bank on the same formula, with comics such as Speedball, Darkhawk, and even the Marvel's response to the Teen Titans...The New Warriors; I didn't really bite. It seemed a bit stupid to me to have a teen fight adult villains or any villains in general while balancing homework or continuing some pathetic excuse for a soap opera amongst the team members. What was really wrong with the whole problem was that there really wasn't enough humanizing, or at least quality humanizing at all. I think the main point that people were missing was...you don't fucking need children or teens to have the human part of a superhero.

Ex Machina grasps the concept very well, so well I imagine for a smarter, more learned generation to embrace the concept like our forefathers did with Spiderman in their childhood. I find it great that in humanizing the character, they never do it in such a way where they seperate the hero from the character in the traditional sense. Usually when the hero uses his/her secret identity, they minimize the use of their superpowers. If they have to use it under their alter ego, they do it in secret.

However with Ex Machina, Vaughn has made it so the main character actually uses his superpowers on a day to day basis, but not as a superhero, not even as a mayor, but as a human being with the ability. The fact that a character could use his superpower fairly openly and most important...practically, impresses me to no end. It's not like having Cyclops toast his bread, shut off his lights, open a door, act like a stoplight all with his optic blasts. Vaughn doesn't write situations in which it says "ho ho ho...look at what I'm doing. I'm using this super power IN A CASUAL MUNDANE WAY." But instead it creates a world where you can say...yeah he would use it that way. Yeah that's what I would do have I had that power.

Another great aspect is how it shows the implications of superheroism or the collateral damage it could create. In Spiderman, instead of being blindly praised, the newspapers label him as a menace, only adding to the constant troubles and feelings of apprehension with Peter Parker. However where that was a blatent attempt to antagonize a character for something he's obviously doing right, Ex Machina results in a character that is hated or disliked by everyone for good reason; and most of it being justified. In some respect showing the aftermath or implications of superheroism reminds me greatly of an old comic series "Damage Control" which was a series that explored a company that was hired to fix up parts of New York City after super hero encounters result in major property damage.

In the end I like this series a lot. I like the fact that the superhero past and origins always come back to haunt the main character, so much so that it satisfies my superhero cravings. It's a series that I suggest to read.

The Davinci Code Book Review

2006-04-22T16:44:00.000-07:00

Seeing the paperback version of the novel appear at my store, and seeing how I had some time during my housesitting a few weekends ago, I decided to pick up this highly touted novel and see what the hub-bub was all about. I'd considered waiting for the film to come out first, but my indifference to the entire subject really didn't present me with any moral conflict.

My friend Rob had told me about the book last year and I tend to agree. The basic structure of the book is exposition, exposition, dialogue, history lesson/flashback, witty dialogue. It seems impossible for anyone to have exhibit qualities of both overusing a theasaurus and not using it enough. If I never hear the term "the sacred feminine" again it'd be still far too soon. The overall tone seems to exude a type of giddy feeling of writing, but not in a good way. In someways it seems that real, more serious and well versed Da Vinci Code novel was published somewhere and Dan Brown, after reading or even writing that one, decided to write a fanfic version of the very same book. Even if you haven't read fanfiction of any sort, you can picture the author being entirely impressed with how he's writing "edu-tainment." I can hear him as hey typed out each line, saying "Man...I am sooooooooooooo cool."

Another fairly problematic thing I found about the narrative was how it decided to unveil the mystery or even the past histories of the characters. The histories usually leads to the motivations of most of the characters, but it seems that rather than actually showing each part bit by bit, it slows it down even moreso by repeating certain past occurences to a certain point and stopping from giving away too much information. What's worst, an entire section dedicated to explaining a part of the past, which would also explain a bit of the mystery; doesn't shed any light on the subject except for giving us more background, but this time from a different angle. I think there would only be so many times we can explore the details Sophie's estrangement from her grandfather without actually saying what happened; before we realize how repeatitive it is. It's like one toe step forward, 3 steps back.

In the end it's a fairly neat plot. The ending is fairly typical and even almost expected even if it seems a bit dues ex machina. However I suppose we all need to be reminded of our childhood with this Encyclopedia Brown for Adults entry in the literary world.

ZOMG the anime gurl hotness...

2006-04-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

To tell the truth much of my anime girl infatuations are purely regulated to the fighting game world. Although less characterly developed than typical anime characters (a comment in which is an oxymoron unto itself since most anime characters are shallowly developed), they fit well into my fighting game interest. So when I hear so much stuff about anime girls this and anime girls that, I being a person with marginal anime experience, find most female anime characters to be possibly the worst kind of characters in all of creativity.

It's hard to find creativity within the anime world considering most of them rely on blatent stereotypes to make them appealing in a sort of possessive way. Even a character as well developed as Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop fame, doesn't really strike a chord of resounding sexiness that she exudes most of the time. I appreciate her as a character, but appealing she is not. To tell the truth, too many buxom ladies or school girls are in the anime scene for me to really take notice.

Alas enter Seras Victoria:

(picture blatently stolen from this personality quiz site)
She's basically a new fledging vampire in the anime/manga Hellsing. I've always wanted to see this anime since it seems to have a rich history and basically had a neat enough character design for me to take a look. Even though I'm quite the purist when it came to anime, I decided to watch the series in the english dub as opposed to the Japanese with sub-titles. It wasn't entirely bad considering it all, the writing was consistent enough with anything that Anne Rice might write...or at least some non-horrible Anne Rice fanfiction. But when Seras appeared and knowing that she'll eventually become part of the main cast, I didn't think much of it. But then when she reappeared, vampired up with red eyes and with a capacity to kick some ass...for some reason the whole idea of a female anime character being boring and unappealing changed entirly for me.
Red/Orange hair aside, you noticed that she looks very very youthful. This is pretty much seen in most anime, but certain characteristics kinda emphasize that. It does kinda concern me insofar that it makes me think I'm a total pedophile because I'm liking the fact that she looks younger than she really looks, but this is anime really....everyone looks like they are 17 but developed like they're 27. It doesn't help that she was called "kitten" for a while. At least I'm not alone in the anime world in thinking that she is sexy.

So yes...I like a character even though by all means she probably encompasses all the boring aspects of what I described of the typical anime female character. She's a weak little kitten who needs to grow up and embrace her powers a vampire blah blah blah drink blood etc. But character flaws aside, I absolutely LOVE the character design. At first glance she doesn't look all that appealing, and yet in someways she encompasses some stupidly fantastical aspects of geeks.

Of course being a main character, she has to wear garb that is entirely different from the rest of her co-patriots who are pretty much filler for the rest of the attack squad. Instead of camo green, she appears as is in police woman blue. She typically carries a weopon that is far too heavy for a normal human, so in some sense, she's an amazon. The red eyes are something new and almost give way to more emotional expressions of her face. But as my primary facination with fantasty characters seem to dictate, one would wonder why I would like a character with absence of that feature? Well in some what really appeals to me is that it's cleverly hidden. It's clear that she has big breasts, but in no way is that emphasized by cleavage or something skin tight. In fact what really appeals to me is how it's almost designed to hide the fact that she has big breasts. The front pockets almost make a patterned effect that just takes away any breast form. There is something to be appreciated that you could make a woman feminine looking without resorting to something so simple and cliche as cleavage. What's more interesting is how the gloves basically cover her hands which make her a bit more unfeminine by not having pointy delicate fingers.

In some ways she reminds me of Bjork in which I used to describe a game character that I like.

Shermie from the King of Fighters series is one of the most loved characters in the entire series. So much so that upon her return to an installment, a lot of animaiton was used for fanservice type animations. She has one of the biggest chest measurements in the series, but you could never know that considering how they cover it up in her clothing. She has a mysterious side to her but also a sort of child-like aura in how she acts, talks and even fights. And yet all those attributes combine to make her very sexy in a very a typical way. It is sort of like Bjork's music where it sounds infantile, innocent and yet it resonates with something very powerful, mature and dangerous even.

I'm not saying Seras is exactly like that, but something about her character design is very appealing from a design standpoint. Even if she sports a very unpractical anime hair cut.

Howl's Moving Castle Review

2006-03-31T15:04:00.000-08:00

When it comes to adaptions of films, I think I am incredibly biased. Had there been films that I watched the film first and then read the original source material second, I tend to think that the original work did a much better job than the film. I guess it is because I am just that easily impressionable and it just depends on which work gets to me first. In some ways that kinda makes me feel a bit of a allegiance whore, grabbing onto whoever comes first.

There have been a few times when I saw an adapted film that I dind't like. Not so much for a bastardization but because I just didn't really feel for it as a film. Inversly, I thought the third Harry Potter film was a great adapted work despite having read the book beforehand.

So here we are with Howl's Moving Castle, which in someways is almost a work that was adapted twice. It was originally based on the British Novel of the same name by Diane Wynne Jones and the film was directed by Hayao Miyazaki. In turn it was translated by Pixar for western release. The result is something incredibly fabulous.

It has been such a long time since I've seen animation that leaves me in awe. There really isn't to much I could say that wouldn't be complete fanboy drivel, but if there was a film to make you believe that there truly is another world out there, then this film is it. Just seeing something as simple as the water lapping the shoreline makes you think that you're no longer watching an animation but a camera into the world of colourful characters. The animation is so smooth at times, you wonder who in their right mind would attempt to create something so detailed.

The story itself is very atypical as with most Miyazaki films. Considering that it's an adapted work in the first place, it almost fits in so well with his previous works, you'd wonder if Miyazaki inspired Jones or vice versa. Yet again, a young heroine goes off on a journey of weirdness and learns something about herself, forever changing their perceptions. What is always interesting about his film is how he manages to make a story that's gripping, but always a twist on traditional storylines. Spirited Away featured a young girl who has to save her parents from a curse...by working in the very place that caused the curse. Typically it'd be some adventure, but something as mundane as working in a bathhouse is made fantastic by Miyazaki.

There is something more that just being a simple cartoon or even a simple animation. This is a film that filmmakers, should take note of. There are so many things that no only apply to animation, but just filmmaking in general and people should take notice. They should learn from the pacing, the composition of a shot from everythign in this film to show how great something can really be.

There really isn't much to say other than it's one of the most perfect films I've seen in a long time. Every character is great, the landscapes are so beautiful you'd wish they were real and the familiarity of a European inspired setting really helps as well to accomodate the West's subtle apprehension towards Eastern settings and myths. The music, although slightly repetitive is gradiose and is constantly making the rounds on my music players.
*****/***** stars, a perfect film.

Rediscovering culture and sense of self....

2006-03-30T10:02:00.000-08:00

My brother and I are pretty different people when it comes to certain subjects as I imagine with most siblings. One of it is concerning concerning Chinese culture, and more specifically interaction with other Chinese people. Generally speaking even being a related to a friend of a friend you get treated as if you were family. I usually accomodate going out with my grandma with her friends and relatives trying to get to know them even if a bit. My brother on the other hand has a more pratical approach. It's not to say that that he is without manners, but he's not for one for wasting his time or effort into something he doesn't really believe in. In this case forging a relationship with someone he would otherwise ignore had it not been for my grandma introducing him to them.

It's not to say that he rejects Chinese culture, but he has a more of a realistic stance on how he wants to live. Chinese culture itself isn't a part of his life and I don't think at any time he would want to integrate it into his life either. I suppose one could say he doesn't want to superficially keep up appearances anymore than he has to. Me on the other hand, I feel there's a sense of duty to at least know a bit about my ethnic background. Feeling the same sense of superficiality my brother does, that usually prevents me from diving into books, articles and history about Chinese culture or even trying to learn about it.

I never really feel bad for wanting to know more about Chinese culture and not having the motivation to do so. But in recent years while my life kinda settled down in a boring repetitive fashion, one option proposed by my mother was to go to Hong Kong and try out to be an Chinese Soap Opera actor. What appealed to me wasn't the fact that I'd be on TV if I could potentialy be; but the fact that I'd be living in Hong Kong and become immersed into the culture I've been talking about. There's something very intriguing about this propostion.

I don't know why I feel that I have the need to rediscover my culture whereas my brother seems to want to seperate himself from it. What's more interesting is how split we are in a single generation. Usually there is a sort of trying to reclaim of one's culture in the second or third generation. We'll have to see though.

Ugliness hits FSJ in new ways.

2006-03-29T22:58:00.000-08:00

My hometown of Fort St. John isn't a great place of architecture. It's an oil town through and through and with the mass produced housing that is spattered around the city, you'd be hard pressed to find any buildings that inspire pride in your city. I mean we have a fucking oil derrick near our central park as a pseudo monument to the Energetic City.

To basically say, the architecture in the city ranges from dilapidated to plain. Nothing stands out entirely and if there is anything noteworthy, it's because it's more akin to the norm of the big city than that of something truly exciting. One of the landmarks is the Co-Op supermarket, that's been around since I've been born and was one of those staples in the city that really makes feel like a small town. It's almost like a close-knit store I don't know why. It never really differed itself from any other supermarket other than being a co-op, and yet there is something wholesome and less cold comparing it to the Overwaitea or the Safeway. It had closed down a few weeks ago and apparently pre-empting it's closure for a while, the management of the actual mall decided it'll be a great idea to slap in a Caberet in the building.

I'm not against the caberet. The building itself is supposed to go through an entire overhaul on the outside. But before anything was even started on the building itself, they decided to put up the monstroncities below.

Postively lovely aren't they? It's like someone shot and skinned a log cabin and put it's carcass on disply for everyone to see. It's bad enough that it's wood against concrete, but it doesn't even line up with top part wiht the roof. I swore that when I saw it in it's completeled state as of now...I thought they were still under construction. Apparently panes of glass are to go into the triangular parts. That sounds completely terrible.

From another angle it still looks terrible. I do have some feelings of vertigo when looking at them from close up really. Like I'm about to fall off the top of it. There's something unnerving about the openness of the structure, but I guess it works. They will eventually add some stuff on the outside of the building to make it match the....whatever the fuck they are. However if this is a glimpse of what is to come, it makes me worry about how shitty it'll look like.

V for Vendetta Review

2006-03-26T07:44:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting story behind my journey to see V for Vendetta really. And in a fashion somewhat like V's and Evey's own personal awakening, I've come to realize something significant. It all started with my friends, or one in particular. We saw Ultraviolet together and I daresay I felt Ultravioleted for watching it. Staying away from the theatres with nothing to attract me, he decided to go see The Hill Have Eyes remake with another friend. He reported...no warned me not to go see it since he felt it was complete and utter crap.

But then V for Vendetta came into the horizon. The geek event of the year was nearing theatres and at the time I didn't have any real interest. But my friend Chris once again showed enthusiasm for the film. Much like how he saw enthusiasm to see Ultraviolet. Being how I am, I began to share his enthusiasm imagining seeing it with a friend. Seeing a great film. When the mantinee Tuesday came along, Chris got word from a mutual friend that the film was terrible. Even he given it a 1/10. To tell the truth some part of me knew this was pretty much true but the inner geek basically raged against such an interpretation. Ignoring the travesties of The League of Extraordinary Men or Daredevil, I envisioned that even the most basic of adaptions of the material would result in a decent movie considering how well done V for Vendetta was originally.

Terrible film. I'm by no means a purist, if they make a good film I'm all for it. But a good adaption it is not. It doesn't seem to really resonate the feel for the books, the spirit of the book. In the book you feel a sense of choking of their civil liberties, that there *needs* to be change. The sense of oblivion that the Chancellor seemed to want never ever came into my mind. The only thing choking about it all was when his face was on the screen and I was wondering if he was about to jump out of the screen and seize my nachos because the cheese is bad for me.

On the whole a great shallow adaption as someone mentioned earlier, but it seems everyone; director included, were working on cruise control. Natalie Portman seems to think her brit accent is good enough to warrent no emotion at all. Everyone else seems to be paid to recite the script as opposed to act like a character. Hugo Weaving was probably the best in the film, but sadly not even his acting could save this sinking ship.

Basically it wasn't compelling. At all. There was never a sense of any sort of emotion other than University Protest Marches to get some pussy sentiment. I feel that in the end, there wasn't change, but merely another light show for people to see. How wonderful they seemed to liked it all because it might be because of the company I keep, but surely people praising it to be a great film only show how culturally and tastefully bankrupt they are.

Invincible...

2006-03-13T23:49:00.000-08:00

Continuing a blaze through comicdom, I started to read a comic that caught my attention a while ago. Invincible seemed an interesting concept enough, a teenaged boy is starting to get his superpowers inherited by his father Omni-Man. Seeing how he has this power, he decides to take up the family business and fight crime.

When I first heard about this comic, I thought it was a pretty lame concept. I think most of it had to do with the costume design, Omni-Man looked like my old elementary principal in spandex and Invincible looked completely different from his father which sort of set off the whole son and father relationship in my mind.

But a year or so later when I saw Wizard list it as one of the trades to pick up, well it kinda put in a marker in my mind to pick it up. Since I had so little access to comics before, Wizard was one of the major connections to the comics. I'm quite capable of being swayed from this magazine.

But now that I read it, to me it's one of the most perfect superhero books ever. There is something refreshing to see a new superhero rise and grow into his moniker, instead of reading the same old stuff from staples. How many times can we see Batman as the paranoid control freak until it becomes boring? How many times do we have to hear about Spiderman moan about being a superhero only to rise above the occasion and kick some serious ass? And yet it's because of those superhero conventions/cliches that makes Invincible so great.

It has a great wit about poking fun at the entire concept of superheroing. Kirkman treads a fine line between parody and a completly serious tone in which in one way it sounds funny, but in another way it sounds dead serious. Usually when a comedy/parody of a hero recalling a certain exploit of danger, it comes off as cheesy and yet in Invincible, there is something especially real and funny about the situation. Once again it brings to humanize the superhero culture, in which I seem to be finding a lot of comic series that does that.

Best of all, it has an incredible plot. Not that it's so full blownly stupid, but it's very subtle. Changing in leaders for the superhero team Guardians of the Globe, even a few panels indicates or hints at the formation of another sub-plot. What interests me the most is how it really draws me into wondering what will happen next, as opposed to thinking....oh, so something is going to happen but I don't really care.

Ever wanted to hear a Engrish Rock Opera?

2006-03-11T16:06:00.000-08:00

The Japanese have been known to put in a dash of english into their songs possibly for the same reasons that North Americans use Ciao or Japanese quotes as some sort of inside cool joke of nerdishness. Even the Beserk Intro song is pretty decipherable. I have "engrish deciphering ears" so it is easier for me at least. This is due to my experience with the chinese language and some of the mangling of the english language attempts of my family.

However I present to you one of the most engrished songs I've ever heard: Slingshot. It's so terribly mangled, that even I have a hard time to decipher it let alone understanding the general theme of song. It's take from the Japanese soundtrack of Sega's Daytona USA 2. It doesn't help that it's sung at a fast rock opera tempo. I guess in the end, we all are looking for a chicken frog of our own to call.

Marvel's Runaways

2006-03-11T14:42:00.000-08:00

As I delve into a semi-reliable mecca of comic books, I'm currently reading a few of the more critically acclaimed series of the past few years. Runaways is another series by writer Brian Vaughn whom I gushed over the other series he penned, Y: The Last Man. It is a good diversion from the mass amount of text I read in that series.

Basic premise: Six teenage children find out that they're evil supervillains. Eventually they discover powers of their own, (many of which inherited by their parents) and they embark on an adventure to stop their parents and possibly save the world at the same time.

There's plenty of action for people who crave it as well with a witty enough dialogue that Vaughn is known for. The art is great and I always like the concept of superheroes without costumes. The only problems that I have is that the series doesn't have an ultimate goal for the Runaways. Vol 1 was to stop their parents, but for a team with so much potential, it seems a bit generic. Especially considering that the villianous parents seem like C-List villains. The ongoing Vol. 2 has small little adventures held within, but the up coming season finale is very detatched from what's really going on.

This isn't to say that it's entirely bad, but it's just not that compelling. With other writers, even if they just write a series based on small adventures, they stand better alone than Vaughn's Runaways. A lot of it seems formulaic, and in the case of Runaways, the dialogue is a bit repetitive of his style. It's almost like he wanted to do the same writing style but in a different setting. But that is a limited judgement since I have yet to read any of his other works.

But what I like the best about the series is how it humanizes superheroes, not just the main characters themselves, but even guest appearances by Captain America, Spiderman and others. It reminds me of the JLA that features the comedic likesof Guy Gardner, Flash, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle and etc.

Y: The Last Man

2006-03-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

I've been reading this comic series since it looked like a pretty funny ride. I mean the actual last man on earth lends itself to the image of a man being chased down by all sorts of sex-starved women, and the guy's sudden displeasure of getting so much readily availble sex which was probably once otherwise pre-Male wipe out. A sort of allegory of you don't want something if you could easily get it.

Well it couldn't be further from the truth.

Yorick Brown is the main character in this cruel earthly joke played upon him. A disease, magical force, Godly intervention, whatever (in the series they say it's a plague) came down and wiped half of the board clean...the male half. Every single living thing with a Y chromosome suddenly kicks the bucket and we learn one awful truth of the matter.

Women are fucking nuts.

Don't get me wrong. I'm about as PC as the other left-wing liberal in Canada. I think something would be more appropriate such as "humans are fucking nuts." I'm not saying that a lot of the things that transpire in Y: The Last Man wouldn't happen if it was X: The Last Woman. But it goes to show that there are some trying feminine issues that are addressed, male related or not. And really were you the last man on Earth, you would not want to be Yorick.

Despite the constant problems that arise involving females, most notably Amazons who are basically uber-femenists who kill, there is a lot to be said about human nature in this series. We imagine that all of us, men and women included, are rational people...that there are answers for most things in life. But when something unexplained arises and there isn't a universal or even a national guiding voice of reason to speak to our more rational sides; let alone someone to make the electricity run...well you better believe that rationality takes a holiday when survival takes precedent over watching the next episode of House...or in this more feminine situation: Desperate Housewives.

It's quite bleak in series when a lot of the scenes seems like something out of a bad Mad Max fan film. Women becoming warlords, people rationlizing why all the men died through God, through faith, through science, through Mother Earth, blaming themselves, blaming others, still blaming the men.

Yorick is far from the perfect man; in fact you come to learn that his use to mankind isn't his leadership skills for one of the fortune 500 companies, but that his mere existence alone warrants the company of secret agent 355 (pronouced three-fifty-five) as his bodyguard, and Dr. Mann as the scientist helping to figure out why the world went to hell. In fact I daresay he's probably an accurate representation of the male comic book reader. Weaker than usual, a person who has a talent that seems cool but sucks at it as well finanacially useless and a smartass to boot who doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut.

But it's that smartassery that really makes Yorick a great character. Even though the art slowly improved over time, this isn't a series that lends itself to be shown as a work of art in each panel, but as a dialogue on society and perceptions. It has wit, often expressed in pop-culture references, and a masterful grasp on the languge of swearing much like "Trailer Park Boys"

Overall it's a great series in which I recommend to everyone

JLU end.....again.

2006-03-07T17:07:00.000-08:00

So I saw the last ep and I was....disappointed. I'm not saying it wasn't a great show, but it wasn't exactly the send off I expected. Then again with most Dini series, their series finales were never really the send offs/series finales that fit the typical bill, RE: Superman and Batman Beyond. In fact if anything I guess JLU was just a big SERIES FINALE for the Diniverse period.

I'm not complaining too much, but when I saw this season, it seems like it was just coasting off a good thing. Season 4 was pretty epic considering that it had a constant ongoing storyline with nigh everything connected. And the end, well you couldn't have beaten the ending. But to tell the truth, season 5 seemed a bit tacked on; had Season 4 been for the loyal viewers and comic fans everywhere, season 5 is most likely the fanservice/extra DVD features.

I mean it was great to see Luthor become a deranged little psychopath who'd inspired the killing of half of the Secret Society courtesy of Killer Frost, but it seemed a bit too easy for Luthor to prove himself time and time again with a push of his STAPLES EASY BUTTON on his belt. What else I found very troubling is that the continuity wasn't as tight as before, at least in the sense of revisting certain aspects no matter how small. Sure we got an entire ep of GL/Hawkgirl but nothing was finalized in the end. They way they left it off, it seemed like GL was saying Look here...I'm going to fuck you sooner or later, I just don't know when. Until then, hang tight. Batman and Wonder Woman didn't get finalized. Flash was seen to have almost 3 love interests through season 5 but they didn't expand on that. Most of all, Martian Manhunter who apparently gotten a bit less monotone in his voice, but you don't really know why, or how or if this actually makes him a better or worst character and don't even show him help fight in the Darkseid last battle. In which I expected something to happen because he's the JLUer who-left-on-a-spiritual-journey and "learned some trick to defeat Darkseid"

It all seemed kinda easy to say:

Ok who haven't we've brought back for the JLU to beat up?

You mean which villain haven't we gotten from Superman's series?

Darksied, yeah.....he's been gone a while.

Yeah let's bring him back to kick some fucking ass.

What about the rest of the season?

Just toss some random shit in there.

I appreciate the extra stuff, but frankly had JLU got cut off at Season 4, I would have felt a more sense of completion, of everything coming full circle. Overshooting the mark is just as bad as not making it.

SPOILERS Comic Review: The Ultimates Vol. 2 #10 SPOILERS

2006-03-04T23:27:00.000-08:00

This isn't so much a review of the single ish as it is my thoughts on the entirety of the series. I didn't jump into the Ultimates until late last year, and I had a really great 1.5 volumes of Ultimates goodness at my dispoal to read. Alas I imagine just like everyone else who is a fan of the series I've learned of the pitfalls of The Ultimates coming out whenever the hell they want aka NOT SOON ENOUGH. But this had seriously been one of the first comic series I would wait for patiently to come out.

It's quite weird because it's not that I'm entirely speculative on what'll happen, in fact my wait for The Ultimates usually is on the back burner of my mind. For some reason I accredit this lack of anticipation for the weird quality of the work. It's a compelling read at times and yet I think because of it's basis in reality, it suddenly becomes a sort of part of everyday life. I'm not saying that there are real superheroes jumping around in costumes and saving the world, but like how media or even pop culture events unfold weeks or months at a time, we keep in touch. And somehow The Ultimates manages to be so akin to our reality in terms of content, it makes us pay more attention by not focusing it as a form of media outside of what we see everyday on the internet or on TV.

So last we left our heros, the shittiest of shit storms had hit them. The machinations they created had crippled them and basically the Anti Ultimates (Called The Liberators) formed by Non-American super powers. One thing that I love about the series is that a lot of the content is based on reactions. In fact you could say that the entire series is motivated by the reactions of it's characters. The reaction of Ant Man beating up his wife. The reaction of Captain America beating up on Ant Man for beating up his wife. The reactions of finding out that Thor is a lunatic with stolen technology. And in this case, the reaction of Ultimates dealing with an incredibly shitty situation.

What I love especially about this issue this emphasizes that there can be really *really* bad times for heroes. Not just "Oh we're captured....let's just make the best of it and muscle our way out". I mean "Oh shit, there's a really big chance that we will *never* come out the same in this battle, but I'm going to take everyone down who fucked me over." It's the capacity for improvising on the fly, on the spot and winning that appeals to me greatly. Not some elaborate plan that's already been there for a while...not some unimaginative way a super power has been used (or reused) time and time again for the same purpose of hitting lever A to release containment field B.

What really sells the fact that their improvisation worked are the people in awe of it. God in Heaven sells fear to me far better than Oh my God. The surprise in villain's stupidity in underestimating the heroes, not in a "Curse you captain planet" type way but in a "Holy shit Ripley, the ALIEN escaped from the hatch" type fear. Hawkeye is that alien, and he has the jagged toothy fangs to play the nightmare to fall upon his captors. But nothing fares better than seeing people clawing thier way back to the top.....and only half the team is assembled. This was a great issue and I will wait for the next installment of the Ultimates.

Dream Entry

2006-03-01T16:37:00.000-08:00

I generally dislike arrogant people. Not so much peple with confidence but arrogance, people who seem to have more of an ego than anything else. However I suppose all of that is relative considering I have friends who are quite....arrogant in their own way, but the fact that certain degree of arrogance appeals to me makes me ignore what is obvious to someone else.

The dream basically started in a house, or a familiar setting. It wasn't necessarily my house since some of the structure was different. The basement for one apparently was more open and larger, and it was more of a split level house in which the light came from a sliding door to the south.

Apparently someone was visiting us for his vacation and staying at our place. He was a few inches taller than me, caucasion, bald with hair on the side and a long face. I don't know who he was, but for some reason I went through a box of his things that he brought along with it. It looked like he was moving into the house. When I picked up something about twice the size of a thimble, it was a portable gaming unit. It was Nintendo, had an incredibly small screen, but being the dream world for some reason I could see fairly cleary what was on the screen.

I begin to play it when our visitor comes downstairs. I don't know why, but I try to hide the system that I took and played without permission. He didn't see me, at least I didn't think he saw me, but instantly in a snide way he accused me of touching his stuff. He was right of course, but it was in the arrogant tone that really grinded me. I probably spent the next few days trying to bear his ego and his comments. Usually when it comes to arrogant people, there are some things I'm willing to do in order to cope with them. One of them is try to be understanding and become their friend. If they are not my ally, then they are my enemy. Often this is come with little sucess, since any time I was sucessful, the said idiot mellowed out and accepted me, not vice versa.

But as the dream progressed and I felt more annoyed than relaxed I eventually woke up without any conclusion to the matter; dream-wise. But when I opened up my eyes I realized that it was my mind trying to tell me something. That my personal arrogance has gotten to out of control lately. Perhaps that's why I despise it so much because it reflects my own personality and faults. I've been taking it out on my family for the last half week, usually when this happens it lasts for a day or so, but for some reason I've been on a rampage of passive agressiveness. It does worry me a bit more than usual since this seems more serious and more drawn out.

Final Fantasy 8 is hilarious

2006-03-01T10:04:00.000-08:00

I managed to get my hands on Final Fantasy 8 and in the process of playing it. In the gaming community FF8 has been considered one of the worst series, just slightly hovering above Final Fantasy 2 and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. One of the main complaints is the lead hero being a selfish, hypocritical asshole for about 90% of the game. One could liken him to the oft depressed and confused Shinji Ikari of Evangelion fame, but in a way that kinda makes me hate myself for being hypocritical for hating Evangelion, but loving FF8. So I'll just avoid making that correlation.

Even though FF8 encompasses some of the things that I hate the most about the direction the FF series has been going: 3 party members as opposed to 4-5; lack of armour equipping; jobless character classes; in ability to equip different weapons; it still comes together in a such a way that I like it.

I'm not going to lie, I love the characters, their personalities and the storyline. Comedy in the Final Fantasies has often been quite childish. Not because it pandered to children, but the fact that we were dealing with 8-bit and 16-bit graphics, there was little ability to convey comedy without having to go to extremes. FF4 itself had its moments, but the comedy wasn't subtle and more crazily stereotypical than anything else. Even FF7 relied more on stereotypes or outlandish characters say outlandish quotes.

FF8 isn't too far a step above, Arrested Development it is not, but the fact that it does try to advance the delivery impresses me to no end. The fact that everyone is so cheeful around Squall while he himself is as sour as vinegar already makes him hilarious. I find it interesting on how much introspective thinking he has; all the while trying to keep a cool, impartial exterior. It seems to me that every character has an aloofness except Squall.

If there was really any qualm I had with the game is the dependence of the use of Guardian Forces AKA summon monsters. It seems that with every boss battle I would have to use them all the time. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I imagine the use of them would decrease your SeeD rank (a rank that determines the amount of salary you have). Although I think a lot of that stems from my lack of leveling up my characters. Which leads me to the other problem, a LOT of enemy encounters. There are quite a few which I really can't believe happens so often.

But so far it's a great game. I don't know why so many people hate it so.

The Point of Gambling: You hate to lose Part 3

2006-03-01T09:26:00.000-08:00

When last we left off I'd basically lost the money I made at poker and thensome. I left the casino dismayed and with everyone in the world who ever gambled, silently vowed to win my money back. I didn't get a chance to do it at that particular casino because I would be occupied elsewhere. Plus my ride wasn't going to the casino anytime soon.

So working with what we had, we were at West Edmonton Mall when grandma decided to partake in the slots at the casino adjoining the mall. She stayed there while I tried my luck out at roulette once again. Now from my limited experience I've come to learn a few more things regarding how you play roulette. Apparently it costs more to bet on the outside parts than it is on the numbers. This itself is quite good for me because it actually prevented me from just betting red or black. So thus I learned a bit of roulette strategy.

A lot of people think that betting on one number is the key, but as with most gambling games, you have to realize your outs, your odds and increase your chances of hitting those odds. I'm not saying there is a surefire way to win each and everytime, roulette is about as random as you can get in gambling, but betting on one number or just red and just black doesn't make much sense considering that there are many other options in which to hit your number.

Spread it around, that's basically it. Spread the chips around splitting numbers, cornering them, even pile some right on the number. That is what increases your odds of winning and better yet, keeps you in the game long enough to potentially hit the jackpot. I saw roulette players who just dished out 50 dollars in chips on one spin, only to either win big, or lose it all. But what you really need, in which the world is in short amount of, is luck.

I hit that luck a few times and the payout was pretty fabulous. I think I made back the money I lost (including poker gains), as well as gotten an additional $40 on top of that. Of course being the fool I was, I ended up gambling some away, and thus only making a profit of $80 for the entire trip. Regardless it was good, it was fun and a learning experience. And here's hoping to my poker tournie this friday.

Final Fantasy 4 Advance Review Part 2

2006-02-28T20:28:00.000-08:00

Well finally finished it and the extra 50 level dungeon aka the Lunar Ruins. It's hard to say whether my opinion of the game has changed; the problems I've mentioned before have grown on me or I should say that I've learned to ignore them. The battle themselves are quite a blast, and challenging. In fact it does bring out a certain difficulty in the game that was sorely lacking. Battles with enemies in the Lunar Ruins rival bosses in the regular game. The boss battles are quite fun actually although a lot of them are very derivative of FFX where you have to fight dark/evil versions of the summon monsters.

Usually after every few levels, you are faced with a door that leads to a particular character's "trial" in which you gain insight in some of the character's personality or thoughts in the game. It's nothing entirely earth shattering, a lot of them tend to test their capacity for their job class than their personality. But what greatly increases the enjoyment is that you have the oppurtunity to gain more powerful weapons and more funwise...evolutions of some of your skills. Kain gains a Double Jump, Rydia increases the power to her summons as well as an added bonus to one of her summons, Yang gains an attack that triples his attack power as opposed to just doubling it. Sure it's very cosmetic but a bit exciting as well.

But therein lies a bit of the downfall of the advancements. What good is to have some of these special attack advancements when you're already capped off at doing 9999 damage with a single hit? The Twins Parom and Palom gain a unity spell that deals 9999 damage together, but they could have easily do 9999 damage individually. What's more there isn't anything special added for defeating the final boss at the end of the Lunar Ruins aside from a small sense of accomplishment, most of which is quite defeated by the certain items that you gain from each trial you perform. However if you do not use the certain items, I'm sure there is a greater sense of accomplishment for beating the final boss au naturale.

But in the end the pros cancel out the cons and behold, I daresay my original rating stands, despite having new extras, they don't really go far enough to satisfy you with a tiny bit more of effort.

Wonderful Guilty Pleasures

2006-02-07T09:51:00.000-08:00

I've never really felt ashamed with my appreciation for cartoons. They're fun and I've always loved them. Even when I watch especially kiddie targetted cartoons I have no reservations even with a series as sugary sweet as Atomic Betty.

But it was recently that I've found one that does tickle my guilty bone not because it's by any means a bad animated series. The quality is good and the writing is pretty tight, but it's the premise of the show, TEENAGERS.

I usually dislike teen tv shows. The occasional movie could be done well, but I have yet to find a good one that involves actual teenagers and not 20 somethings playing 14 somethings. But on the whole teenage shows pander to a demographic that has an intelligence less than the average teenager. Instead of quality they decide to bank on novelty of the person. Of course this seems to reflect a lot in the animation world as well since a lot of shows dealing with "speicifically" teenagers. Not ghosts kids fighting ghosts or kids going around the world fighting evil terrorists, but *just* teenage life, tend to be utter shit for animation.

And yet 6teen manages to go under the radar of all these problems and come out as a half decent show. I dunno why I like it, I just do. Basic premise is 6 teens (3 guy and 3 girls for gender equivalency) work in the shopping mall and hang out with each other. The entire series takes place in the huge ass mall, which you might think would cause boredom or a tiresome setting and yet it somehow in it's simplicity it manages to keep it good. The result is less crap about home or school, and more about the mall which doesn't convulute things. But this is by no means a simple show...well it is, but it does have a slight continuation of various storylines that by no mean take up the bulk of the show.

But what really amazes me but at the same time doesn't surprise me at all seeing how it's a Canadian produced show, is the amount of non-teenage bullshit is involved in this. Even though not explored in detail like say....Degrassi, 6teen mentions syching up of periods, shows vomiting into someone's mouth during a kiss, mutiple on screen vomiting in the food court, cut off of swear words and best of all, physical comedy of PAIN pain pain. Granted not every show will have these, but it's really surprising that an animated show, let alone a Wester animated show would show such things.

GBA Final Fantasy 4 review so far

2006-01-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

Unlike many people, Final Fantasy 4 was my first Final Fantasy game. It was a game unlike any other game I've every played. I've dabbled into RPGs before, the vastly more popular Dragon Warrior. In fact Dragon Warrior is so popular in Japan that it is required by law for the game to be released on a Sunday in to prevent mass school truency by students waiting to buy the game. One of the earliest memories was a screenshot of Final Fantasy which featured a group of sprites fighting some flaming beast with a technological background. It looked interesting enough and when we bought I dabbled in it, only to forget about it.

I don't know what drew me back into the game, but it forever changed how I looked at it. I essentially played a saved game to the finish, starting with our main character Cecil heading towards Mount Ordeals in order to become a Paladin. It's quite bizarre because now, no matter how many times I play the game, I always see the beginning of the game will be at that moment, everything before that is a precursor.

So this game has a lot of memories really, fond ones. I liked the characters, they were imaginative and to tell the truth it was probably the last true old school Final Fantasy before even FF6 kinda messed it up. I do have an affinity for FF6, but FF4 was the first. Why do I say it's the last true old school one? Well aside from the theme of crystals (which FF5 also has I admit), it was also one of the Final Final Fantasies where not everyone could be a like to each other. Mainly dragoons were dragoons. Knights were knights. No magic for everyone or skillz for everyone via a equipment. Plus not to mention full equipment abilities. Not just a weapon, an accessory and a piece of armour. But most importantly was the use of the ATB (active time battle) system. I liked it because it actually made it so you had to choose what spell to cast. A higher level spell will take longer to cast than a lower level spell. Do you need the spell now or later? Would you rather have your fighter fight, or perform his more powerful attack for a sacrafice of a turn? Granted it sounds nice on paper, but pratical application usually has you casting the most powerful spells in general. But the illusion of choice is good to have.

Basically the GBA port was the original Final Fantasy 4 filled with somethings that were left out from the US version. It was an reworked and reissue in the PS1 version but I've never played it before. Somehow I find playing 8-16 bit games on the next gen systems bordering on blasphemous.

It's basically a good port aside from a few minor inconviniences. Lag of inputing commands is the most important thing which truly does piss me off. It disappoints me and sort of frightens me on how lazy the programmers were in producing this. The latter exists because I wonder how they will treat the FF5 and FF6 ports. Possibly not as well considering a lot of resources seemed to be put into porting FF3j into the DS as a 3D game.

The other minor thing which is more associated with the lag is the magic animation. It looked far smoother and more impressive on the SNES and yet the GBA seem to make it into less quality.

The good parts is that the script has been revamped. It's not Post FF6 fare, hell it's not even Ff6 quality, and yet there is a noticiable difference. Even after not playing the game for so long. If anything the improvement of the script almost shows the glaring weaknesses of some of the writing because some parts are bad.

I admit, at one point in time I was disenchanted with the game. This was before the last dungeon. I was at a piddly level 45 with my characters where realistically you needed to be at level 80 to defeat the final boss. And that alone is one of the things that really make or break an RPG, if not...seperate the RPG player from the casual games. I never really relished leveling up unless I have some goal to work to, and quite frankly just getting high enough to defeat a boss isn't one of the motivators for me. I basically half assed the game a while and then when I decided to hunker down and play the new extra feature allowed to us, I regain my spark for playing the game again.

Namely what I speak of is the extra dungeon on Mt. Ordeals in which you can get the ultimate weapons for other party members. In the original you usually end up having only 5 characters to work with. It's a typical team full of variety. But the game itself has total of 12 characters in which you can play with, 10 of which are alive and spirtually supporting you before the last dungeon. So now in the port, you are allowed to use the remaining 5 characters who are still alive at your disposal. And it's just fun in general to make a mishmash of teams. Even setting them up to get their ultimate weapons was greatly enjoyable. The bosses guarding them were extremely well done and imaginative, and above all else challenging; I loved them.

The game itself is a challenge because there is a need to level up. I didn't however considering I blazed through a lot of the parts of the game, but it's fun nevertheless to play an RPG were one battle could really do you in. But ultimately it was a game that fell flat as a port. I am disappointed because I don't want a generation of players to consider that this is the best that FF4 could offer where in reality it was much more than laggy gameplay. However in the end I thank Square for the memories of the game again. I have yet to play the 50 level dungeon that awaits so that's why my review falls a bit short, but still. I'd give it a 3.5/5.0 stars

I love Power Girl

2006-01-09T10:20:00.000-08:00

These two pictures basically explain it all (might have to cut and paste the url): Pic 1 and Pic 2.

Granted she isn't the most indepth character ever created. She's basically the "other unspoken cousin" of Superman and let's face it, it's her breasticles that we're interested in. They are so prominent and defining, the absence of them would be like...the absence of Superman's "S" or Batman's pointy ears. Power Girl could have a dozen different designs, from costume changes, to having 80's hair, a buzzcut, shoulder length to even male corporate hairstyle; her body size could change from buff, to she-hulkish, to thick and even to moderately thin, but the thing that stays the same....is her boobs. You could never really do that to any other characters period without having people screaming bloody murder. Hell you couldn't even change a hair style without people going nuts.

Now I'm not going to claim that I'm an expert on her. Hell This article is way cooler and more indepth than I could ever enter. But there is just something about how she's handled in the comic industry that appeals to me. She essentially the playboy bunny, the piece of meat of mainstream comics. Vampirella takes the "[i]piece of meat[/i]" crown, but there's something subtle almost deceiving about Power Girl, enough so that she is Comic book Authority approved piece of meat.

I mean aside from her "Magical Cleavage Window" (as it's so aptly named coined in the article) there really isn't a whole lot that raised the slut alert. Perhaps it's because she was most well known in the funnier days of the JLA where tongue in cheek comedy took precedent over extreme sexiness. But even though the truth is that I'm probably liking her more for her bosoms a plenty, there is still something semi-serious that I like about her. How she's Supes cousin and yet not in a Superman outfit like the more prominent cousin of SuperGirl. How she's very similiar to Superman and yet because of her costume you never really associate her with him. There's something very classic and simple about her costume design. It's not entirely complex but yet it's simple enough to not distract most people. It's by no means goofy, and yet somehow her wearing it doesn't exactly bring up to extremly classic costume status.

She's a great facination not only for her mammaries, but because her convuluted history basically makes her as interesting as any comib book character, if only to see how her life has been retconned to death.

The Funeral

2006-01-08T23:03:00.000-08:00

The feelings with my father's death and the events leading up to it were very confusing. At that moment we had our business up for sale which we were delivered an ultimatum to push the deal through quickly or he'll leave. Yet when it all happened, everything was put on hold. Yet a lot of things had to be done quickly. Perhaps not quickly, but it only goes to show that no matter what happens, anything that needs to be done seems all to quick when you were mourning.

In some ways that week between his death and the funeral was possibly the longest week I've ever had. Not so much all the stuff that had to happen, but the yearning for some sort of finality, some closure to the entire ordeal and that was the funeral. It wasn't because I wanted my father gone, buried (or in this case cremated). It wasn't because I wanted to see people to come to the funeral and bear some of the grief. I just wanted the whole thing to be over because it was a cloud over my head and a weight in my heart. It's like life couldn't continue until after the funeral.

There isn't much to say about the funeral. It was a nice service. When we actually walked it, I felt alone with my family. Despite having people there, I didn't have much heart to look at anyone to see who came. The first and only person I saw was Mike and even though it wasn't hard to look at him, something drew my head down. I couldn't look at him. I really couldn't look at anyone.

The Pastor's talk was great. It was a speech that could have lifted up your spirits if only to make you feel only slightly less sad. It wasn't by no means the best thing since we are not a Church attending family, the message cannot be specifically applied to my dad, but it was certainly something worthwhile to hear.

My cousin did the euology well enough. I imagine it was hard enough for him to do it on such short notice. I said some part words in which I nearly lost my composure at the end, blurting out the last word. I don't really know what caused me to feel so nervous, I was never good at speaking in front of an audience or doing presentations, but I suppose the words I had to say didn't sound as eloquent as it did in my head. Perhaps I have to take a toastmasters course. But it wasn't hard as so much a thing to do, that I felt I had to do to tell somebody, anybody about my dad and what he meant to us.

I tried to keep in mind some of the things the pastor suggested, many hint in how to talk to everyone. And yet the only thing I remembered is to look up occasionally at 3 points at the back of the Church and now have my head down all the time. I did look at someone straight in the eye but I don't even remember who it was anymore.

We walked to the legion hall. My brother congratulated me on a good job with the speech. I thought he was joking but he was not. That made me feel a lot better.

The tea/reception afterwards seemed even worst to a certain degree. You met people and thanked them, not that I mind it. But it just seemed when you first opened the door; there are so much people to see, so many people to meet and a large task ahead. I don't know what to say to some of the people I talked to. There was a feeling of wanting to just end the night right there, instead of what seemed like dragging on a part of the funeral, or just wanting to stay there.

We went home and I got out of my clothes feeling I've been wearing them for days.

The viewing...

2006-01-06T20:51:00.000-08:00

One of the most talked about things during the whole process of the funeral arrangements was having an open casket. Having never been to a funeral, very naive and fed a steady diet of television, I imagined that apart from mod hits to the face, every funeral had an open casket affair. There are many reasons in which an open casket is not welcomed. More respectfully on the earthly realm, it might upset some of the attendees of the funeral. On a more spiritual level, the church itself might have traditions against an open casket.

At the viewing a handful of people showed up. For some reason I expected more, but that was the optimist in me. I did realize that somewhere along the lines not many people would show up, not because my dad wasn't close to people, but because it was a viewing and after what I learned in that week people are uncomfortable. I did pretty well in holding my composure, it seemed a bit harder to keep it with the people who did come showing their compassion. I was actually a bit happy though, my grandma however was quite sad, sad for most of the time there. I kinda lightened up the time with my brother talking about how cheap my black shoes were. They were 20 bucks I told him. The pants I also got from Winners which was also 20 dollars. Overall I was pretty damn proud that my ensemble was under $60 which seemed to have amused my brother.

There was a point where I just felt bored. I mean there wasn't much people to talk to. It was a time of mourning and yet I felt this was a good feeling because it only prepared me for saying something about my dad the next day at the funeral. It made me feel I could keep my composure enough to get through a speech. We ended the night, leaving my dad. He looked very good, very handsome and he had a small wry smile through it all.

Body does strange things.

2005-12-23T10:59:00.000-08:00

Like I said before I had some trouble breathing from time to time. Even worst my sleeping habits are fucked up. It might be because I got Final Fantasy 4 recently, and been playing that non-stop and how shitty I'm eating, but I only stay up until I'm exhausted and then I sleep an unrestful sleep. Eating, has no taste in food anymore, it feels I'm just maintaining myself enough to exist. I need to clean up my room something harsh.

A particularly tiresome day

2005-12-20T20:09:00.000-08:00

We went to the morgue today and saw my dad before releasing him to the funeral home for the arrangements. Bizarrely enough while we drove to the hospital, Crazy Train was being played on the radio which seemed to suit the moment. I don't know how to explain going to see my dad in the morgue. To tell the truth there had been a lot of questions I've been asking myself on how to handle it.

Me personally I wasn't with my dad the moment he died, after being at the hospital for so long and seeing his health deteriorate, I just went home not because I didn't want to see him in that condition, but I was just tired. The day that followed his death, there was just something in my mind that people here might find a bit morbid.

It actually was spurred by some events that happened a few days before he went into the hospital. As I mentioned before, his feet were swollen. It's hard to describe when you make a realization it never really dawns on you suddenly, but just seeing the poor state of his feet really just showed how much in denial I was about the health of my dad. I mean it was sort of showed me how badly his health was and everything was not alright. In some way that day coupled by the fact I wasn't with my father sort of made me want to take a picture of his feet at the morgue.

I know that might sound way out of line, in fact some of you might dislike me for it and I don't blame you. I did discuss this with my family and they seemed alright with it. My mother understood, I was apprehensive in discussing it with my brother because he has a more no bullshit mind, but he didn't have any objections to my actions. There really isn't a real reason for me to take it, I guess it is someway to help me cope, I was hoping to serve as a something to show to a friend who's happily married and with a great son; to help him quit smoking, but through it all I think it was a way to help me cope. I had some difficult feelings about not being right at the hospital when my dad passed away, I considered taking a picture of his face, but he did seem so peaceful it didn't warrent it. My mother discussed how the spirity has left the body and it's just the body now, and I truly felt that.

But it was slight hard, at least something that weighed heavy on my mind, not of whether or I'll actually do it; but just preparing yourself for what comes ahead. In someways I didn't want to do it, and in someways you feel anxious, but when we drove up, waited in the lobby and went down into the morgue it felt like entering another place. I there was just something different about it all, and well I don't know how to explain it. I actually helped out bringing my dad's shelf out onto the machine which is pretty damn messed up considering the last thing you want to do is pull your dad's body out from the morgue's chambers.

My mom talked a bit to him, my brother took it well. It's good because he was out of town when all of this happened. But after the viewing we all felt better. We left and later in the day we made the funeral arrangements. I don't know if anyone else really had the same feeling I had during the funeral planning with the home, but I actually felt my chest tighten up. There was nothing on my mind, but halfway through the discussions, I found a bit of trouble breathing, as if I jogged for a good mile or so. It passed after, but I dunno if it was just stress, nerves or something was actually wrong with me.

2005-12-17T01:54:00.000-08:00

I shamelessly took this post from the board I usually post on.

Some might find it a bit humourous, a bit cruel and a bit cosmic jokish but my father just passed away about a hour and half ago. Well within the day that I was born. I suppose I should be grateful to a certain degree because now I will forever have a constant reminder of when my dad died.

I know what I'm going to say so I'm just going to say it. Me and my dad never had a nuclear family, picturesque father-son relationship. I know that in some way I'm to blame for that, as well he probably think he was to blame for it as well. In some way, I guess death has made me want to feel closer to him, and the fates granted my wish by letting him die on this day. In general we weren't close, but father-son relationships are never as cut and dry as that. Despite our lack of communication we did have a bond that only family could create, that runs deeper than just understanding the surface. He worked. He worked for his family and he did that out of unconditional love for his family. And even though that is a good reason of why we were so distant, it's something that I can understand to my very core.

What killed him? Well other than his lungs failing as well with his heart giving it his all; he died because of smoking. And yes even though it might be crass, even though it might be self serving I am going to turn this post into an anti-smoking post. Me personally I've never smoked, not because the effects of my father, but I was a good little boy and never saw the need for it. And to tell the truth, being the idiot I am I might actually take it up in the future. One day when I might just feel like it, just take it up because I've always seen it as a bit of a fashion statement, an artistic accessory to an artist, a natural must for someone who's creative. But this only goes to show how smoking has been made so natural in society that even the concept of killing yourself with smoke is justified by the idealology of free will. And to tell the truth, I probably wouldn't have the slightest bit of guilt if I lit up a ciggy.

Even if the anti-smoking ads have never "gotten" to you, or those anti smoking lectures never "sunk in", I'm going to travel that same road of futility. I am saying not to smoke ever...but in such a way where you would greatly consider quitting, moreso than ever before.

My dad had club feet due to poor circulation. His feet were permanent purple reaching all the way up to his knees because of it, and they looked like inflated balloons. His hands would puff up from medication, his heart was working at max to compensate for his lung failure and he'd blister from the slightest bump. He would urinate into a gum bucket because he couldn't make it to the bathroom at night; he would just sit and watch TV all day and nothing else, all the time while being on O2.

Who knows, perhaps at the end of all of our lives, we will encounter a similiar situation, medications, deformed body parts, weak bodies...I know it will happen to many of us. But I guess what I'm trying to get at is I wouldn't like to see any of you go through this, just because of smoking. Not even at the end of your life where you think "It's my body, going to end anyways, might as well," there are better ways to go out than that. Yes we all die, but would you prefer to have lived 5+ years in the lifestyle I described above?

The death still hasn't hit me yet. It might at the morgue, or when I see my brother tommorow. I'm not the only person who's lost a dad, but it never makes it any easier to handle. I love my dad and I love you all.

Fuck Walmart and Fuck Zellers.

2005-12-14T21:40:00.000-08:00

Without my comprehension and even my awareness, FF4 (Final Fantasy 4) was released on GBA yesterday. It was even the 14th when I realized that FF4 was released on the 13th. So during the day I had a plan to buy it.

Now really, I personally find FF6 to be the best FF in the series period. Being an old school gamer myself. However FF4 holds more personal connection with me. It was the first FF I every played, and more importantly, it carried some of the most important and excellent balances to the system that the later games seem to toss out of the window. That is of course despite the fact that the magic spell "Virus" just fucks every enemy once you learn it.

But playing this incarnation of the GBA version not only offers extras, but offers the original gameplay experience of FF4. You see the FF4 released in the US was the 'easytype' version of the game, and a lot of stuff was nerfed to make it more PG 13, hell made it even more PG. But now playing this will be like playing an entirly new game.

But alas Walmart and Zellers will have no association with it apparently by not stocking it in my town. The fuckers...the damn fucking fuckers. I'll get it though. I'll get this great game and no one will stop me.

Canadian politcs.

2005-12-14T11:46:00.000-08:00

As much as I don't really care for Canadian politics at this moment, it's been awfully interesting. Why I don't care for Canadian politics between the Tories and the Grits isn't because it's a election over the holidays, but because it seems vastly useless right now to even have an election only to have another minority gov't be put into power. Sure that might not be the case now considering that what happened in the BC Provincial election in 2000 might greatly affect the Liberals this time. Basicaly the NDP being seen as more of a solid choice between the Conservatives and Liberals, but splitting the vote to allow the Conservatives coast into a happy go lucky gov't.

But I have to say, this is one of the most interesting elections in a while. A lot of things have been brought up haven't been in the past two federal elections. Social issues seem on the down low, and money money money is the issue. I haven't seen so many money issues being tossed around this time around. And that 5% GST certainly got my attention to at least pay attention to the election.

However I'm just wondering, in a time of political turmoil of not just here but all over the world, you would wonder what exactly can we hold our elected officials accountable for? The Conservatives aren't exactly the most squeaky clean of politicians with scandal of their own. The Liberals are pratically a bucket full of mud. And the NDP, well they might be nice people, but that last back stab to bring down the Gov't with the Conservatives might not exactly place well with many voters. It might be a non-issue or some sort of "necessary evil", but sadly they do reek of flip flopping so it seems.

I just wonder if promises or habits aren't really appealing to me all that much, perhaps what would really appeal to be is just brutal honesty. Complete and utter Bullworth-esque honesty. I wonder how sucessful someone would be if they actually said what they would fuck up if they were handed the keys to office. I don't think people need a rally on what could be, but a declaration of what is obviously going to happen.

The Point of Gambling: You Hate to lose Part 2

2005-12-13T14:36:00.000-08:00

As imagined by my last post I was pretty stoked on my luck. I mean I basically doubled up on my money and was eager to go to the casino on the weekend. We went out, me a bit more confident and of course I had to wait for a table to open up. Soon enough it did, but unlike the night before, I wasn't so lucky.

I'm normally not a superstitious person, but gambling does seem to have a tendacy to bring that luck mojo belief that everyone has hidden away in the back of the mind. I tried to sit in a similar place on the table, and started out with $80. As the blinds buried me down and down, and crap hand after crap hand appeared, I was down to $30 and becoming frustrated wondering where my luck went to. I won a big hand with triple 3s I think, but then a nice thing happened to me. I basically won back my money, having about $75 total and a sudden feeling of relief washed over me.

It seems that in that feeling I learned that you shouldn't really put too much emotion into gambling or take it too seriously since it is another form of entertainment. And strangely enough I felt that way. I felt that regardless if I actually lost all that $80 right then and there, at least I had a win to have made the night worthwhile to play. But after that I think I was downgraded down to around $20 - $30. I think around that time the pit bosses split the table up and closed it down because there were too few people at the table or they wanted to start a new one so they asked for some people to "migrate" to another one...however since there were so few people who migrated they just shut down the table.

Feeling slightly down I took my meager money and went to the roulette table. Now me personally I love roulette. The main thing came from playing it online a bit, and seeing that if you bet right, you could win a lot from it. However being my first time, I actaully did the typical noob thing to just bet on black or red. I hit the right mark for about 4 time straight and lo and behold I get fucked by the time...it's 2:00am and the floor for gambling is over. The poker room stays open for 24/7, but the rest of the casino games close at 2:00am. fuck jsut when I wanted to have some fun.

I wander the casino seeing if my brother is ready to leave, but apparently he's not. Instead what I do stupidly enough is take my money, plop down another 60 in chips and play another game. I don't do so well, considering that in 3/6 games and it's later in the night I'm now playing with some more seasoned people. Moreso the problem in 3/6 limit games is that there are always people who tend to chase the river card (end card). And there's always a lot of bullsht of that.

Well I lose my money to a straight that was higher than mine. I had the ass end of the straight (the lower numbered) whereas the guy got the higher number. He congratulated me, saying good hand and good game, and I leave being a bit unhappy afterall. I guess the feeling I explained earlier doesn't last when you want to win money back.

The point of gambling? You learn you hate to lose. Part 1

2005-12-10T09:41:00.000-08:00

One of the most prevalent memories I had about gambling didn't really involve it at all. I was in Las Vegas with my uncle who was on a business trip. Grandma decided to hunker down and play some slots as most elderly people seem to do. Being the loyal grandson, I decided to sit beside her to keep an eye on her. About a minute later this semi-hag of a waitress comes up to me and asks, "Are you old enough to play?" I honestly reply no and she politely asked me to leave the area since I'm not old enough. Fair enough I walked around leaving my grandmother alone.

While in Edmonton I got my first chance to really gamble. My brother is an avid texas hold'em poker player so I was interested to play one night. We entered the casino he called the Argyle, which is just a sort of nickname because that's the name of the street it is located on.

Being my first time really gambling I was quite nervous. I signed up for a 3/6 limit table and the waiting list looked enourmous. But as luck would have it, they opened up a new table because of the line of players. So here I got my rack of $80 in chips, going into the breech. I sit two spaces to the left of the dealer, set up my chips in piles of ten and away we go.

There are only three hands of singificance to report. Two of them which will really determine the future course of my poker playing.

1. I get Ace/four (A/4). I quite forget, but the flop produced another Ace and another 4. However seeing the heavy betting, I fold my two pair I think after the turn (4th community card dealt). Eventually on the river, another ace hits. The winning hand was a guy who had 4/4. He had a fucking full house, 4 over Aces. Had I stayed in, I would have a full house, but Aces over 4....resoundingly better. Well throwing away good hands is part of the game, but it doesn't make it any easier.

2. I get a shitty hand. I think 6/2, but I play it anyways. I don't quite know if this was me taking a stand to play in general considering my pot was really getting low, almost 2/3's gone. At that time I was at pretty low spirits because lady luck was not shining on me. On the flop, two 2s hit. Now for some reason I have an action where I just widen my eyes, so I guess I learned I have a problem and should control that. Sitting pretty I just call or bet if someone checks. It seems other people think they have a better hand. Lo and behold on the river I get another 2. I have quad 2's, and the pot is pretty massive (comparatively). Possibly one of the biggest pot in the game. We show our cards and boom, my monster hand totally fucks over his. My first win and I'm giddy as hell. Being the newbie I was, I begin to stack my chips showing my novice skills, and the dealer waiting for no one just totally deals the new cards, even on my pile of unstacked chips. I basically had to fold that one.

3. A few hands down the road, a spot was left empty by a player leaving earlier. A new one enters looking particularly experienced in the poker of playing. I get Ace/4 suited, hearts. I play it regardless of what happened last time when I had this hand. The flop produces 3 heart suited cards.

Holy shit.

I had a flush, but not just any flush. A flush with the ace. I really don't people to know I have the flush so I check. People bet or raise or reraise and I follow suit. By the time betting started for the river, it was just heads up poker between me and the new poker player. She raises and I think I reraise her. She calls. By now the pile is probably just as big as the previous pot I won (comparitively mind you). She shows her hand, a flush with hearts, but I have the ace of hearts. No wonder she tried to muscle me out, she thought she had it, but so did I.

After another hand and a tip to the dealer later, I pack up and leave the table. The final take, $160 dollars. $80 dollars in winnings. I was slightly disappointed/greedy because I wanted an odd number, perhaps $163 or even $162. But money is money. Not bad for a first night out.

First Time's a Charm

2005-12-07T22:42:00.000-08:00

I had a chance about two months ago to attended one of the local strip clubs with some buddies but was tired at the time. Or chickenshit as some of my closer friends would attest, which would probably more accurate. But my friend Chris told me that within the next two weeks, I must come out with him to the titty bar with him and Jeremy. Well two months later, and after a viewing of the Dukes of Hazzard we made a night out of it.

We were getting into the Wet Spot around 11, and it was pretty much dead, with at most a dozen people there. In fact I'm sure I saw some hotel managers looking at prospective future dancers. We were at the end of one girl's dance and while we got refreshements, Chris asked if this was the last dance. The waitress, being ally of the hotel first than the patrons said, "maybe". Chris tried to validate the surity of another dancer coming on and let's just say I wasn't impressed so far, but at least I had friends to share the night with.

After Chris making fun of my not wanting to sit right up front, we did. Took about 10 minutes but a new girl came onto the stage, and Jeremy made a comment how she had legs up to her neck and could probably swallow you whole with them. So she started dancing, Chris spotted me 5 loonies for future use which I didn't know what the fuck to do with them. Being the new guy and stupid, I was almost tempted to toss the fucking dollars right onto the stage, doing my best to pelt the girl to get her attention; but I guess comedy isn't appropriate for this time.

Strangely to me, the girl was talkative. I guess there isn't much to do but talk and keep the patrons occupied when the club is so empty so she basically did a little circuit corner to corner chatting it up with the customers. I would imagine (due to my lack of knowledge of female anatomy) she was in good enough shape considering that she coud flex her pectorial muscles and cause her breasts to bounce, but once again due to my lack of knowledge I don't know how much in shape she is. Strangely enough she talked about how she's a Trekker. I asked what's the difference between her and a Trekkie which seemd to be that she's a fan of the shows, but doesn't go to conventions or cosplay.

Jeremy made a comment on whether she was a man or not in which she put her hand down her pants and said...no. I guess comedic timing is everything. One little problem in which she pointed out that some guy might have been using a camera phone to take her picture, she got back to work. As she got naked, she brought out her rolled up posters in which she could hold one poster each in the underside of her breast. And thus began the coin games. She went over to us first chatted with us in which I was learning the ropes onto how to properly toss a coin.

The first game so to speak was trying to knock one of the poster out from under her breast, which Jeremy properly failed in his attempt to show me how to do it properly. The second game, which lasted only as long as the first one (one coin toss) was to toss the coin into a funneled version of her poster....that of course was rigged as fuck considering she moved it. But finally enough of the bullshit later, we came to knocking the coin off her belly. Let's just say I was so inept in doing so, she gave me tips onto how to throw. Like a dart she said. A few attempts later, it was over.

After she entertained the other patrons, I Chris called her over for one more chance. However not to make it an entire waste, I asked her what show she liked the best. She went to go on about DS9 how it was her favorite series, in which I agreed. Of course this doesn't bode well because being the geekier of my friends, I should have the more lame vastness of Star Trek knowledge amongst them. I don't want to exactly come off as a yes-man to "assume" to know what she was talking about aka just agreeing with her just because she said.

I attempted to final attempts to knock the coin off her belly and to get a poster. Somewhere along the line she said she would give me a second chance because I look like Ensign Kim and said that her roommate had such a crush on Ensign Kim how she'd like to fuck him. However unbothered as I was, I still totally failed in knocking off that damn coin. I guess in a fit of pity, or some sort of way to get rid of the poster, she said if I could do the "Live long and prosper" symbol, I could get it. Without any complication I pull it off and boom shacka lacka, I get my poster. I then continue to chat it up and ask her what her favorite character from Star Trek is. She replied: "Well my favorite character, but I wouldn't fuck him though, is Garak." which again I had to agree because he was genuinely one of my favorite characters. Mainly because he was prentetious and a tailor. We then go on a bit on each of our favorite eps with him, she apparently liked the one where he's on a Cardassian ship and goes insane due to some chemical in the air. I particularly like the one whre Basir had to remove a device from his brain.

Chris and Jeremy asked him who'd she'd like to fuck, she said totally would be Q. Chris suggest Odo, but she said totally Q because he's omniscient, thus he could do anything. She could be the guy and he the girl and she could totally drill him. Or they could be lions and just go at it in the jungle. She also made some comment about Data potentially being like a giant vibrabtor.

As she left, Jeremy said she might sit on my lap and sign the poster. A few minutes later she did come out to sign my poster asking me who to make it out too. I emphasize that it's Stephen with a ph.

She went to to chat it up with the bartender, in which Chris told me to chat it up with her. He gives me a 20 in order to send me to get a round. I do get up to the bar, make my order and ask her if she wanted a drink. She said yes, and we both ended doing a shot of Baha something....a small pink girly drink as Chris pointed out later. Apparently when I returned to my seat she wanted mocked an attempt to grab my ass by laying her hand on her seat. I should mention that she was fucking tall...I mean 6'2" at least. But yes, I guess the best way that capped off the night as she left that she thanked me and gave me a small peck on the cheek. This made me realize what were the odds finding a stripper with knowledge about Star Trek let alone talking about it during her performance.

What the fuck am I paying for?

2005-11-25T21:26:00.000-08:00

As with most people I imagine that we don't want to be reminded of our mortality or in another subtle way, our lack of connection with youth. I've always considered myself youthful at heart, even though a lot of if is due to a certain innocence and naivity on how the world works. And yet approaching the mid-point of my 20's there are small signs that dawn upon you that you are no longer "with it" anymore.

I'm never really one to completly whore myself to trends, but when shopping at American Outbackers, I saw all these "pre-made" jeans for the selection. Pre-washed. Pre-faded. Clay tainted. I looked at them and my older jeans that look like complete shit and wonder why the hell would I want to buy jeans that I essentially am wearing right now? It didn't exactly hit me that hard that I wasn't with it anymore, especialy considering that I had more of a revelation in Winners earlier where all the Hilfiger (or was it Ck?) jeans were exactly the same sort of anorexic model jeans of wonder that I've seen in jean rack. It's pretty bizarre to me anyways. But two pairs of levis later, good old fashioned well worned red tab levis, I'm a bit happier in my status quo.

Goblet of Fire Movie review

2005-11-19T01:28:00.000-08:00

The first thing that really hits you with this film is how different it is from the previous films, even PoA. There's something very pedistrian and "natural" about Newall's cinematography. It really hits you when they approach the sunrise on the hill where the portkey is, the camera is right there walking along with them, you actually feel you're trudging along with Harry + Co. on the hill. To put it plainly, Newall has taken the cinematic feel out of Harry Potter.

This isn't necessarlily a bad thing, because it really makes for great and fabulous moments. But it also does make simple moments duller than they should be. But I love this cinematic decision because ultimately we *want* to be part of the three tasks. We don't want the grandiose wideshot that says "You're the audience...here's the film". Everything we see, even the reveals of the stadiums are done in a very real way, as if seeing through a helicopter, or just...being there. You actually feel you're in the mosh pit with the students at the yule ball. It really *really* does help out with the tense moments of the tasks in general which I'll rate:

1. The Dragons: I love dragons. They are my favorite mythical being, and easily my favorite task in the book. When I saw the commercials that involved Harry having to fly around the tower of Hogwarts, it leaved me a bit dismayed that the careful dancing protrayed in the book will made into a "replacement for Quidditch ack-shun," however the subtlties of Harry's thoughts would be hard to portray in general.

But like I said, the cinematic choice was excellent, especially the part where Harry is hanging on for dear life, and the Dragon is slowly progressing roof to roof. It really gives a sense that you're a student in a tower, just in awe at looking at the events unfold before your eyes.

2. The Lake: Swimming through the weeds were excellent, seeing the Merpeople city was amazing and subtle, much like how you enter a park. It slowly appears to you and then you begin to realize the scope of what lays before you. Surprisingly they made what could have been a really boring task into something interesting.

3. The Maze: Slightly disappointed by the absence of creatures in the maze, but it is for a good reason. They made the hedges alive instead, giving it a more sense of dread. This time however, the actors brought the dangers of the maze alive to us. In the book, I've always felt the maze was quite simple and pedestrian. There was no inherent danger compared to the other tasks. However Dumbledore had a great set-up, how people lose themselves while in the maze. Their fear, their actions, their ambition made the maze dangerous, more dangerous than it had to be...and personally it was a great set up for the graveyard scene.

But this film is far from perfect really. What really disrupted the film is the editing, the drastic cuts to another scene. It sadly reminded me of Star Wars: ROTS and how terrible it's editing was. It's really quite sad because this seems to be the first film really devoid of great transitional scenes into the next one, especially when referencing the change of seasons. Even just having the camera going from one scence to another...it's very jagged, which I suppose is the problem with the cinematography that I praised so much. Even the music doesn't flow well enough to bring the film together. If I were to say, this film was almost a bit TOO TIGHT.

Actors/Actresses Performances

Dan: Hate to say this about our main character, but he was the weakest actor of the trio. It's not to say he's bad, but he's inconsistent. Quite often he's wooden, talking his lines instead of acting them out. It's quite sad because a lot of his emotions seemed to be conveyed in stares, or at least the direction of the stare, which isn't necessarily bad, but compared to the ability of the other actors around him, he should pick up.

However his comedy is great, I'm quite surprised. The small moments with Ron is where he really shines, and he has his moments. His crying moment this time around is going to be under a lot of scrunity since a lot of people no doubt will compare it to his PoA performance...or even call it a repeat performance, but he did hit it on the head.

Rupert: Best of the trio easily. It's just not his ablility to make subtle facial gestures, but just his acting ability in general is really great. I wouldn't say pitch perfect considering that his looks is too fitting for the role they stuck him with, we'll have to see him in some other films, but he really shines in this film. Every moment he makes the best of it, and it shows. The anger at Harry was played perfectly.

Emma: Still the same from last time, very good, but it's very nice to see her have a bit more range of emotion given to her this time especially fear and distress. I really did feel sad for her after the Yule ball as Rupert was a total **** but it really shows the tension between those two.

The Twins: Love them PoA, and love them even more now. Seriously stole the SHOW. They are so in tune with their characters in the book, more than anyone really.

Dumbledore: I have to say, it's very fitting of DD to be like this for GoF, especially considering how GoF is the turning of the tide of the HP series from fun loving Nancy Drew-esque solve a mystery romp, to actual dangerous adventures. Gambon Critics/Harris supporters are going to have a field day ripping into the performance, but I think the end dialogue between Harry and DD really did make up for all the qualms about him being too "scary/mean". I didn't quite like the little homage to Harris with DD yelling out SILENCE, especially considering ATTENTION sounded better in the intro for the 3rd task.

Barty Crouch/Mad Eye Moody/et al: Mad Eye was a great glory to behold. Very good acting, top notch really. There is nothing I really can't say negatively about it. Barty Crouch was confusing because it seemed a bit bizarre on what his accent was. It never really "stayed" in one place, almost sounding French at times. What's even worst was how he kept that jittery" feeling throughout the film, where in the Tri Wizard tournament it really should have been enough to voice his nervousness of knowing who done it. Maxine and Karkaroff were throwaways really. But they were good enough. Snape was pitch perfect as in PoA.

Peter Pettigrew: In what I would label the worst of the adult acting bunch. The thing is the book portrayed him sniveling through the entire ressurection process. In the film, he's quite devoted, even fanatical about helping out his master. It's appropriate for the personality they wanted to portray, especially when he barely winces in pain while holding his hand in a bloody stump. But I would have much preferred Pettigrew to be his sniveling way, motivated by fear, as opposed to his dedicated to his master route.

Voldemort: Oh yeah...the head honcho himself. I expected him to be paler, but now that I think about it...it freaking rocks. Really, it realy humanizes Voldemort to show how much of twisted monster he had become. Not because he doesn't look at all human anymore, but because how much remenants of humanity are left that disgust you.

I have to say, whenever I read about Voldemort, I never found him to be all that scary. A bit meloramatic, but never that frightening. Even when JKR made the comment that Voldemort was a psychopath, I've never EVER really saw that attribute in him. I pitied him, I saw that he was evil, but never a psychopath.

But Fiennes did a MAGNIFICANT job of bringing the inner psychopath out from him. I'm used to the Jim Dale interpretation of Voldemort, but this one...is SO suited to what he's intended to be at least by the author. Just the way he moves, he acts...it so calculating, so spine tingly evil and graceful. It truly was his "Red Dragon" all over again. The best part of it all....him dueling with Harry. Seriously even they were at a standstill, it just goes to show the power of Voldemort, even making me forget the lameness of the Star Wars fights from Episode 3.

So how does it match up? I'd still say that PoA is better, just as a more complete film. But the acting has progressed much better in GoF. So in order of favorite to least favorite:

PoA
GoF = PS
CoS

I'd give it 4.5/5.0 stars really.

My grandma the old skool racist

2005-11-16T22:08:00.000-08:00

My grandma isn't a hateful person by nature, unless you managed to piss her off in some shape or form. However I don't really blame her for the comments she made to my brother while in Edmonton. Basically she asked him to hurry the hell up and get a girlfriend so he could marry her. And to never be like our dad where he waited until the ripe age of 40 to marry. My brother asked my grandma if she knew how old he was, and she guessed wrong. Basically he said he was old enough to make his own decision on who and when to date.

I can't quite remember how it was brought up, but either my brother or my grandmother mentioned something about dating black people. Regardless, it eventually ended up with my grandmother saying "Ching kay mo toong huq qwai paq taw" which meant "Don't every date black people". When we asked why, she said that it was "weird" how black they are. The actual phonetic spelling of the term she used was "Huq mung mung" meaning very very black.

Me and my brother smiled at this wonderfully refreshing side of grandma. I've always known about this side regarding her grandson's choices in dating women but I don't think my brother knew the depths of her convictions. We then embarked on a glorious journey of mentioning the other browns of the ethnic rainbow, getting much protest against trying to date an East Indian person who was as equally "Huq Mung Mung" in my grandmother's eyes. We asked if a half-black half-asian would suffice and for some reason she casually agreed that it acceptable as if were were negotiation terms of a contract.

Apparently the same slight racism that Michelle mentioned in Mexico regarding light skinned Mexicans compared to darker skin Mexicans are also somewhat prevalent in Asia from my understanding. At least to the degree that clear bright skin is a symbol of health and beauty in asian culture I would imagine, if not at least Chinese culture.

We ended the night with a phone call home, where my dad (who has lung problems) answered. I wanted to discuss the results of my grandmother's check-up by my mother was late coming home. At that time when I had dad on the phone, my brother told me to tell dad that he was going to marry a black girl. I laughed and hung up, when at the exact same time my grandma told me in chinese to tell dad that my brother was dating a black girl. My brother laughed at the coincidence of their thinking, and jokingly protested "No grandma, I'm afraid if I do tell him that, he'd have a breathing fit!" which would probably happen.

Food Entry # 4, 5 and 6

2005-11-16T21:56:00.000-08:00

Well really I did a poor job of keeping track these few days. Laziness and a bit of fear of the FUCKING FUCK UP I did with my template that I tried this week. I tried to add the post title and link from on of the default templates, but instead I royally fucked up, thus ending up using the gaudy piece of shit I have now. I guess it's time for a change anyways.

#4: was a pretty damn shitty day. I ate a double cheeseburger and half a quizno's regular sub. That was pretty much for the rest of the day considering how bloated I felt. The day consisted of nothing great.

#5: Was a better day. Started with oatmeal in the morning, and an apple. I did eat a subway sub, but I don't think anything to gratuitously horrible. But I ended the night with grapes and an apple pear. This is a pretty huge ass feat considering I hate fruit and yet I ate it. The grapes were more motivated in getting rid of them, I had to throw out a good hanful that were brown and mushy, but the rest were pretty good. One thing I always detested about grapes..in fact fruit in general is seeds. Grapes are more diabolical because if you gotten one where it's in between it's growth into a fully seeded grape, you eventually pop the damn things into your mouth, however end up with a bitter tasting grape.

I've actually started part excercise with some tai-chi taught by the white woman on a video tape. At the same time I listened to some music because I felt that music on the tape is a bit too mellow and irritating to really do tai chi to. Then again I think aside from lack of use of my legs for well over a month, the music I was listening to cause my stablizer muscles to basically shake like a dog out in the cold.

Surprisingly or not surprisingly I worked up quite the sweat. I ended up doing 60 crunches with little to minimal pain. That either means my abs are still in shape, or I was doing the crunches completely wrong and half assedly. I would imagine the latter to be more true.

#6: Alright really. I started out with a BT sandwich since we were sorely lacking the "L" part in the house. It was with cherry tomatoes and only 4 slives of bacon on rye bread which was nearing the end of the loaf. So it was barely half a handful to eat this almost taller than wide sandwich in my hand. The 4th piece of bacon had to perform solo away from it's sandwiched brethren. I came home for lunch to eat a fish with some siu choi and mushrooms. Really healthy. I ended the night eating some reheated lasagna I made earlier in the week, and then hot wings, and chicken enchiladas with a friend at Fogg and Suds. Wonderful diet eh? The food was alright but it was a fun night out with friends.

Edmonton, the city of fashion?

2005-11-13T13:37:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it was because of just not having a vacation for over two years, that my fashion senses were heightened. The first two days were really just perusing the U of A campus, but even the lowly students walking off to their next classes looked well put together fashion wise. I mean seriously, when I looked at them, they had clothes that fit...clothes that looked good. They looked like freaking Milan models compared to the FSJ people I usually see.

Of course it doesn't help that my microcosm of the convenience store has narrowed my fashion view to flannel, dated rock t-shirts or t-shirts in general, faded jeans, clothes that are either too tight or too loose on the teenagers and hoodies. But still, it is quite true on how behind FSJ is in terms of fashion, at least 3-5 years behind. I don't know if Edmontonians (or at least U of A students) are just more fashion concious, or if it is the big city culture that makes them dress better in general. It's funny on how natural it seems to come.

Food Jounal Entry #3

2005-11-13T13:35:00.000-08:00

A rather simple day. Breakfast sausage. A movie theatre hot dog with half a medium cup of pepsi. For some reason I had my heart race a bit, and considering my mother's condition I might have inherited it as well. Either that or I'm just out of shape. The night ended with home baked lasagna. It was pretty bad the lasagna really, a bit wet and noodly for my liking. But perhaps it will pick up later in reheating. Live and learn.

Food journal entry #2

2005-11-11T23:46:00.000-08:00

I'm not impressed by my intake for food this day all things considered how much I fucking pigged out the day before on my flight home. For reference I ate at two seperate occasions (breakfast and lunch), a slice of pizza and a hamburger (so making that 2 slices of pizza and hamburger each). The next day consisted of eating some Chinese pastries and steak with some celery.

But this day was pretty simple. Just some bread for breakfast, drank a bit o slush and ended the night with some servings of mashed potatoes and half a t-bone steak. I wasn't in a particularly steak mood considering how much meat I consumed this entire week. I had buffalo steak earlier this week in Edmonton, hence the mashed potatoes.

Excercise was non-existent due to my sleeping patterns being slightly fucked up. I wake up nigh or on 10:00am now, instead of my usual 9:00am. But at least it's a start to trying to eat healthy, or at least trying to starve myself to death.

Does altitude affect your sex drive?

2005-11-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

When I touched down in the YVR (Vancouver International Airport) I had a craving to fuck someone. I don't know why, my sex drive was high, well as high as it could possibly be. I'd fuck a hole in the wall if it wasn't for the fear of public stigma and the splinters.

I think the main reason why this might be the case is that FSJ isn't exactly the place for Canada's most beautiful crop of women. And considering that I work at the convenience store, seeing jailbait every weekday lunch hour does not exactly encourage me at all. What's worst they are poorly dress jailbait. But even hitting YVR the quality of women skyrocketed...and this is just YVR. It just goes to show how shitty FSJ is at times.

I had this feeling before, but it wasn't so much concentrated on my sex drive as it was on my enthusiasm for having fun in Vancouver with friends, drink and merriment. The feeling of having a vacation might have just made me excited in general, I mean it's been at least 2 years since I've had a real one. Pat told me that perhaps the reason why I wanted to hump everything in sight like some dog in heat, is because perhaps the altitude change from FSJ going to Vancouver just opened up more blood flow in general. Well that's a theory to entertain.

2005-10-31T13:58:00.000-08:00

Food Journal Entry #1

Well not bad considering the amount of utter shit I eat at the store. Junk food readily availble and a habit forming for small bites here and there. But I went home for the afternoon for lunch.

Breakfast

A Pecan tart
One egg, overeasy, fried in a pan
One toasted slice of whole wheat bread
One toasted slice rye bread
Cup o water

Lunch

Approx 2 servings of a stir fry which consisted of siu choy, red bell pepper, and snow crab meat. Hardly fried I imagine since it was probably more steamed/boiled with all the water content
2 strips of candy
Handful of pecans

Let's see how well we'll do in the evening...it's Halloween fools. Instant candy time.

But as for excercise I did none today. No jogging in the morning since it seemed far too cold for it. I know I'm being a bitch, but I am also on the eve of heading out to Edmonton. I guess for me the vacation has started right now. Perhaps later tonight.

2005-10-31T13:51:00.000-08:00

SRK.com secret Santa

In an effort to encourage wonderful relations at SRK.com and comradary, last year I attempted an online secret santa. The first attempt basically resulted in a 50% sucess rate and from that all it seemed a complete mess. But this year is going to be a second attempt and with more rules in place and a redoubled effort, I'm aiming for a 100% success rate.

Sadly one of the worst things that contributed to it's failure is the last minute sending out of all the presents and worst...international members spending more money on shipping than the actual present. A lot of packages got lost/rerouted in the mess, but hopefully a Mid december deadline to send out gifts will avoid the holiday shitstorm that was last year.

2005-10-30T12:15:00.000-08:00

New Years in Late October

Tis funny that I decided to do something that basically should be left until New Years, but as someone said, losing weight should start whenever but it has to be planned out. This is a hope to revitalize this blog and my body back to it's swimmer fit shape I had what seemed like ages ago. In fact four more years and we could clearly chalk it up to a decade of...dare I say it...decadence.

How is this blog going to help out? Well I'm basically going to post all of my activities and perhaps my eating habits everyday or whenever I get the chance. I say 'perhaps' in regards to the eating habits because of my metabolism I probably don't need to. The thing is metabolism of an adult isn't that of a teenager who are like locusts.

But the main thing for this blogging adventure is what good old Arnold Schwarzenegger said...if you want to motivate yourself in losing weight or changing a part of your body for the better....EXPOSE YOUR SHAME. That means show the weakest part of your body so it makes you *have* to change it. Arnold apparently had shitty legs, so he wore shorts all the time. But considering I can't exactly wear *just* a sports bra to work for weather reasons as well as heterosexual fashion reasons, what better place to expose myself than the blogging intraweb eh?

Here's my wonderful midsection in unabashed glory. As you can see, I have love handles as well developing a pear shape. I say developing because I've actually seen a pear shaped person. Man his head was small. On the right side was a vain as attempt to suck it in...as it were. It's not a terrible difference. Wait till you see the side though.

One of the things I notice is tht I have horrible posture. Well here's to hoping it works out.

Lastly here's where I have the pinch test and the poke test. I'm sure that a BF tool would be more accurate, but fat is fat and I'm not going to get too technical...at least not yet. There's pretty much a solid inch or fat between my fingers, nearly enough for a handful. I was surprised by the poke test because it's not as drastically fat as I thought it would be.

I will continue to take pictures every week, just to see if there is any development over time. In the future I'm going to have to invest into a step counter and fast since winter is quickly approaching. Moreso here's what I did today.

4 laps around the park in Matthew's park. Sure that's shit, but it was something to do. Here's hoping to future.

2005-10-21T19:38:00.000-07:00

hey parry's wife...what do you do when Parry is here?
my grandfather is
haha she cries into her pillow
made of sani air
how do you know about ghetto fresh?
lol i axed parry about what he does
he just called me
Seriously you cry into your pillow?
no
i try to get his attention like all day
and then i watch animes
OIC>
How often do you two have sex?
haha
god damnit stephanie
does he shave his testicles
desperate housewife
I must know
no he does not shave his testacles
ok

2005-10-21T19:00:00.001-07:00

You know...Narnia is shaping up to look pretty cool by now

2005-10-21T19:00:00.000-07:00

Stabby McKillyou: OC!
KarmaicPain: STABBY.
Stabby McKillyou: I need help.
KarmaicPain: Does in involve shovels?
Stabby McKillyou: Then depends on you.

The wonderful company I keep online

2005-10-21T18:59:00.000-07:00

You know...I had an idea..then I lost it. Mebbe it'll turn up later.

2005-09-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

Call it a Revolution:

Well the buzz on the intraweb is the new Revolution Controller for Nintendo. I don't know really what to say about this but it's certainly got my attention. A glorified remote it is, but one has to think about exactly how people will embrace this new technology, both on the consumer side and the developer side. If anything, this new controller will open the floodgates for quirky Japanese game developers to develop Super Bass Fishing Extreme as well with other alternative sport like games.

But as developers praise it for it's unqiue ability, I just wonder how willing they will be when it comes time to develop it. The thing is ultimately you are going to develop a game specifically for one system if you develop for the Revolution utilizing it's controller's fullest abilities. At that moment, risk has already risen because you can't exactly permeate the market as greatly as if you had the ability to port the game to the two other existing consoles.

Do companies really want to take that kind of risk? I guess we have to wait until the fans decide on that. One thing that seems to go well in their way is that now game specific periphials like Kongo Drums and Light Guns seem to be useless now when it comes to the Revolution controller since now developers could just program in the appropriate specific use.

2005-09-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

Battle Poll Update

Tis a sad week, more aggrivating than usual. Two big mistakes has caused me to lose battle polls involving Poo and Vanessa. I knew it was a long shot from the start, but I hate losing, everyone hates losing. Anyways the outcome of Poo was VS. Kirby. How a fucker like Kirby could possibly win against Poo. Especially considering the use of "logic" that appears in the early rounds of the battle poll.

Poo defeated pure evil and has access to elemental powers that can blast Kirby out of the fucking arena. His keepaway game should be good enough that he doesn't need to get within Kirby's sucking ability. For the those who don't know, Kirby can suck in enemy characters and absorb their powers.

What's even more in my favour is the fact that Poo has a mirror ability. He can temporarily take the shape of his enemy and use their powers. Considering that Kirby is basically a sentient pink cotton ball, and Poo is trained in forms of combat, a mirrored Kirby should be able to beat the original one.

However most aggrivating was that I lost by one vote. Not because it could have been tied, because it did end up being a tie. Instead it was because some guy voted for Kirby in the tie breaker. The problem? A person on the boards who actually voted for Poo didn't vote for the other matches happening during the day. Usually there are four matches that take place each weekday. If you don't vote for all the matches, your vote(s) don't count.

My other character Vanessa sadly was placed again I-no. Finally tally was 27-24 for I-No. There's nothing much to say in favour for Vanessa since it was an uphill battle, but she was a particular favorite in my team. I guess when it does come down to it, you do grow attatched to your characters. Well the mistake that happened to me is when I decided to use the assist.

The assist is basically calling in your team member (each character having a different type of assist) and causing something to happen in your favour, or even potentially against you. Poo had his mirror ability, Vanessa had her punches, and Agent 47 had his ability to snipe someone for 1 of 3 randomly determined outcomes:

Legs: no attacks against me (no votes against me count)
Head: +Two votes for me
Arms: Opponent cannot break stock.

Now stupidly of me to ask, I wanted to get the headshot, without even realizing that it will not give me the edge to win. When a character breaks stock, it basically means you get extra votes. Stupid, but hey everyone does it. If I only asked for the arms I would have taken the bloody thing. It didn't matter because seriously, the assist was random anyways.

Well Agent 47 is left. Here's hoping for good luck.

2005-09-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

As for the mentioned B-Poll, my first task is POO from Earthbound vs. Kirby. I'll add more later, but above is my avatar that I will be sporting ALL through the polls...that is until I either get eliminated or if I will be going to the finals (which I doubt), but I truly wish to survive past the first round. It's a lofty goal, but nevertheless very fullfilling at the least.

2005-08-16T22:55:00.000-07:00

The SRK.com Character Battle Poll is here!

Gamesfaqs has always been a haven for scrubs, morons and basically the idiots of the gaming community. Finding an intelligent analysis on that website is like finding peace in a warzone. However Gamefaqs is sadly also *the* place to find the answers to your journey to slay a vid game monster, or to just cheat your silly ass to an quick victory.

The problem is that despite being such a pillar to the gaming community and having a wonderful "Character Battle Poll" each and every summer since 2002; this said contest has been determined by idiots and morons that make the 51% that voted Bush back for a second term seem like completly rational folk. For the past few years complete gay has been ruining the variety that gaming has to offer with the mediocre and unoriginal. And out of the fire of stupidity, SRK.com has responded justly creating it's own character battle poll.

The rules are simple, pick 3 vid game characters to form your team. In this case, it'll be a fighting game character (originally it was only a fighting game character), then an RPG character THEN a random vid game character that is non-fighter and non-rpg. Then vote vote vote until your character beats the fuck out of the other person. There are certain tactics such as breaking miracle stock which adds to your vote count at a sacrafice of some I think. It's very involved since the organizer Kailu Lantis dedicates his time to run this shin dig for all of us at SRK.com. There are tactics, smack talking and theories that make even Batman hypothesises seem dull.

Last year I nearly won the darn thing with Terry Bogard, only to be unseated by Sagat. It was quite funny because at the time, I was entirely winning on the merit of my av making skills, even beating FAN FUCKING FAVORITE Dr. Doom. It was a great upset at the time because seriously...people wanted to see a match up between the prep-time gods of SRK.com Dr. Doom and Batman. At the same time, Batman gotten beasted by Sagat in the semi finals which I think was in due part of Bogard's defeat of Doom in the first semi final.

But this year, No Terry Bogard. I still feel a slight sting of defeat when I remember him, being so close yet not close enough. Well nevertheless I'm in this year and this is my team:

Fighter: Vanessa from KoF series (The King Of Fighters). She's red head, she's a boxer and she's just fun to play. In some ways your atypical woman or stereotypical tomboy, she just has all the qualities I like in a fighter.

RPG: Poo from Earthbound. Earthbound represent. One of the most most original RPGs to hit the gaming scene since the first RPG hit gaming consoles. He's a bad ass karater fighter with PSI powers that fights with his barefists OR a sword.

Other: Agent 47 from the Hitman series. A cold blooded killer. The problem is everyone knows about the Hitman series, but hardlly anyone has associated our Bald Assassin with his name AGENT 47. However one of the greatest things about SRK.com is it's ability for people to win shit by proxy. I'm hoping that because of Vin Disel's chance to play Agent 47 for the Hitman movie, it would mean that since SRK.com loved A Random Fact by Vin Diesel they would help Agent 47 survive past the FIRST FUCKING ROUND.

Well here's good luck to me.

2005-07-25T23:06:00.000-07:00

The Ship has sailed. And people are pissed

The following regards SPOILERS Harry Potter: The Half Blood Prince SPOILERS But rather than waste precious space (like that's ever a premium on the net), I might as well talk a little about myself.

I'm pretty damn traditional when it comes to relationships. Not in the sense it should be between a man and a woman, but on certain qualities on how they should be. I found myself when I was younger...perhaps a majority of my 2nd and 3rd grade years mentally matchmaking people together. It was a pretty darn simple process. Blonde boys with blonde girls. Brunette girls with brunette boys. Auburn haired girls with Aurburn haired boys. All in the same grade (this is pretty damn important to me) and preferably the boys a tad older than the girls.

I've always kinda thought that girls being older than boys in a romantic relationship kind of odd...kind of taboo even. It's an even stronger feeling when it was people between different grades. I never really voiced my opinons with anyone except for the occasionaly shout of "YOU LOVE SO-AND-SO", which during that time was pretty damned embarassing. Bizarrly enough, personality compatability never entered my mind once. You could have a girl being terrorized by a boy (or vice versa) and I'd still think they'd make an ultimate couple. I could actually personally know these people and still think that. But coincidentally I never really matched myself up with anyone. And I'm sure that most of you can gather why I didn't.

But nevertheless, this type of reasoning for romance continued on. Although not as strongly as in Juniour high...when people of all shapes and sizes began to emerge. And bizarre little relationships happed with fugly guys paring up with semi cute girls and vice versa, it shook the foundation of how dating and romance should be. I guess I matured a bit back then. But still, sometimes I would find myself imagining little pair ups between other people. How it would work out. Not bordering on the obsessive, but I imagined for a time when people should have at least experiemented with dating the opposite sex, upon retrospect pretty damn unhealthy.

Now the Harry Potter spoilers will begin. If you haven't already, I guess you should refrain from reading anymore lest you don't really give a shit about Harry Potter...or if you already read it.

Well I delved into the really REALLY insane world of "shipping". If you haven't heard the term, it basically is a shortened term of "relationshipper". The most prominent in the Harry Potter world is the Harry and Hermoine Shipper. Others include Harry/Draco, Harry/Ginny, Ron/Harry, and whatever wonderful pairing of insignificant character with main character.

But if you don't already know, Harry and Ginny are officially a couple. They do break up in the end for the sake of "protecting loves ones" as typical stories will dictate. I'm sure that the H/G camp are raving. Even moreso the Ron/Hermione camp celebrating an unsinkable ship with clear sailings of the makings of a happy fairy tale ending. But needless to say (but I'm going to say it anyways) Harry/Hermoine Shippers (H/Hr for short) are FUCKING PISSED.

Me personally I am a H/Hr shipper, despite the obvious signs pointing to a R/Hr ship. But if you did bother to read anything above, then you'd understand how I came to that conclusion. I could live with the current relationship of Harry/Ginny. It's too bad that when I think of Ginny, I associate her discintly with her movie version, not one of my own. Not being the exactly beauty compared to Hermione, it only increases the incompatbility of the H/G relationship because..for the lack of a better term, Ginny's not exactly beautiful. Perhaps after puberty hits her yes...but right now? Not really.

But these guys/gals are really taking it to a unprecidented DEMENTED level (funny how I say that considering the above paragraph eh). Even worst...JKR herself basically called them delusional, I guess for a lack of a better word, considering that the Mugglenet.com participants were pratically goading her in the interview of it.

But yeah I'm disappointed. But I'm sure that many of these crazy asses are going fucking insane over this bordering of wanting to rip other people's heads off which by comparison makes me a reasonable respectable person of society. But if you are brave enough to venture in complete fandimodium AND baltent obessiveness no matter how moderate laugh at some people, then go right ahead. There's enough sites for everyone. It's like watching someone's fanfic being BLOWN UP into their faces.

2005-05-13T23:57:00.000-07:00

If you've ever seen the new Hubba Bubba commercials, especially one advertising the Hubba Bubba "MAX", you have seen how homosexual the two obviously male mascots seem to be. To describe the commercial with the Hubba and Bubba (as they are named for the Purple and Pink respectively), are at the zoo passing a babboon exhibit. Bubbba get's caught by the Babboon who in turn seems to be dry humping him, while Hubba is busily making a few jokes and then chooses to save him via blowing a gum bubble.

Usually when either blows a gum bubble, it's like an ultimate attack where the result isn't death or pain, but painting/covering a colour of pink and purple ALL over their targets. After the Babboon deathly shamed about his new shade of pink for his fur, he trys to cover his ass, in turn Hubba closes out with "I guess the honeymoon is over"

Bizzarly enough it seems that in the picture above, Hubba seems MUCH too enthusiastic (even though he's not directly looking at it) at the long finger than Hubba has extended vertically.

2005-05-11T20:18:00.000-07:00

The first real avatar I made was ripped from the OldSkooled series. A wonderful sprite comic about 8-bit characters, more specifically from Nintendo 8-Bit Era characters. The first took much longer than I wanted, a way to alleviate boredom. But more so that because each frame I was making, I made in paint. In fact it took so long, I'm actually embrassed to express how long I took on it because it borders on obsessive and is even stupid to spend so much time on something so silly.

Each avatar will click to the appropriate url to the source sprite comic that inspired (AKA I ripped off). (#1-4 read from left to right, top to bottom) Nevertheless it was one the avatar series that basically brought out the....*sigh*...fame of my av making skills. I don't like to boast it because really it is a shameful thing when you take into consideration all the other things that you can be doing in the meanwhile...which in turn I am doing in other things than making avs all day.

Interestingly enough, people expected the series to continue after #2. And to tell the truth I didn't have anything planned for #3. A general idea, once again inspired by the source material but this was a total departure from the previous versions. I actually decided to add in other things that I felt were funny. Just to spare you the suspense, it didn't work out to be as funny as the previous ones.

#3 was the first time I deviated to form my own real plotline to the source material. Hell it didn't even relate or fit in the storyline in the original sprite comic, the bartender was the one who Samus and Mario was trying to visit in the hospital. But I had ideas.

One of the more obscure references was to a movie Playing God in which David Duchovny played an out of work doctor who had his licsense revoked due to a bodged surgery. What happened is that after a surgery he took a "depressant" drug. As he was cozying up with his subdued mood, he was summoned to another emergency surgery. In order to cope with his state, he took an upper drug. Not the best combination. Hence the mushroom and the magic potion.

Of course drug ideas and crazy hallucinations arose in the av. It dragged on and that what was probably the biggest problem about it all.

#4 was an idea that is totally seperate. In fact I can make a follow-up to it, despite being very well ended. I didn't like the fact that I ended with Mama-Mia, which is a bit too stereotypical for my part...but I had to do at the time. A lot of the jokes are in jokes once again regarding the fighting game work. The jokes mostly come from the SNK character Terry Bogard's "engrish" sound clips from his fighting games, Fatal Fury (AKA Garou Densetsu) and The King of the Fighters.

Among one of his more popular ones is when he yells out "Are you OK?" during his start up animation before he does his super attack; the "Buster Wolf" which he also yells out loud as "Busttaaaaaaaaa WOOOOOOOLF"!

In this case, while Terry's all stuck up in the bathroom, it's his brother Andy Bogard who asks if he is "ok". The term "Oh my Shit" is once again another engrish misrepresentation. It's based on his super called the "Angle Geyser" where in the first part of the attack he yells out "Overdrive!" the followed by "Geyser!".

2005-05-10T14:47:00.000-07:00

Last year was quite a sad year to tell the truth. Quite a few people of the fighting game community died. More wide spread was Kao Maguera, a famed fighting game FAQ writer who's detail in every aspect of FAQ writing inspired people to emulate his dedication to quality. But more closer to home...more closer to SRK.com home was a friend to everyone: Mummy-B.

He was a great poster, very smart and as with all message boards was usually the winner of the arguements he was involved in. And even in the most darkest times of his life, when he had cancer and was going through chemo to treat it he used SRK.com as a mini-blog/journal to describe how he felt and what pain he was going through. It wasn't nice as support came pouring into the thread on how he'll beat it. And he did.

That was 2.5 years ago. A year later, the cancer had returned, this time infecting his brain, his lungs and other parts of his body. After a long battle and more support that SRK.com has ever contributed Mummy-B and SRK.com lost the battle against cancer Mid Last year.

I don't have to say what most other people would say in how much this affected everyone. I personally did not interact with him greatly, but it still was a shock.

The above avatar was basiacally his tribute avatar. Commisioned by the SRKers, more specifically Ever/Pained Auron it took me a while to make considering I was still new to Photoshop but also at the time when my tagging skills were getting more recognition than they ever deserved. This of course was an aftermath of a bunch of "Get Well Soon" avatars that began popping up around the board. And lo a behold....I tried to make an avatar fitting of Mummy-B and SRK.com people thought it to be good.

We are coming up to the 1 year anniversary since his death and some people still wear it out of respect, out of nothing better to wear, out of laziness since they don't want to change it or out of wearing it because they just miss a friend.

2005-05-04T21:12:00.000-07:00

I was searching around the site meter for the sister site Moon Karma Zero, which I update more frequently than this one (obviously) but I can easily say that Moon Karma Zero has become the unofficial homepage for our favorite sexual deviant, Brian Peppers.

I find it incredibly bizarre that for one post has gathered so much attention, so much so that we are #1 on the google search result for Brian Peppers, and have been granted the ever prestigious role of being the "I'm Feeling Lucky" google site.

I knew that together we'd be famous for something...but for posting up a pic of a sexual offender, I did not know. I hope 20/20 doesn't interview him because of this.

Avatar Explanation Part 2

2005-02-20T14:05:00.000-08:00

Quite often SRK.com has a lot of relationship help threads. Threads imploring people to help them talk to this one girl, or how to approach girls, or whether or not to stay pursuing a girl. In some respect, these two avatars are the result of all the idiocy that comes with the female relationship.

These sprites have been ripped from the game Street Fighter III 3rd Strike - Fight For The Future, one of the most fluidly animated fighting games out there on the market. The animation is quite stunning on every character, however sadly the game itself met with little success compared to the early days of Street Fighter 2. One thing is that you can go through an entire set of a character and notice a lot of animation quirks that were never seen before. It's quite sad that the game moves so fast that you can't see these neat little animations.

However I didn't rip these sprites myself obviously, since they came from this website, which conviniently had the entire sprite sets of each character set up in zipped files.

The first mating ritual is basically explaining a certain phrase being tossed around the boards; >Surprise Sex, a term I don't know actually appeared in any news clippings as a defense to rape, or just something evolved out of internet lingo. Nevertheless, surprise sex is a pretty crass but funny way to show how desperate some of the people on SRK.com have to sink in order to get some.

The second method refers good old fashion Handjobs (HJ), however the sad thing being they would have to trick someone in order to get the handjob, namely placing your wang and a bannana at a convinient place. The term assist isn't thrown in there for no reason, but refers to a now popular term on the boards in regards to the assist system from MvC1 and MvC2. The system is basically assigned to a button or a combination of buttons that basically calls out an extra character on the screen causing an attack. It's funny because quite often these said attacks can really determine the difference between a solid win and a solid loss, in fact a lot of the times, these assists help in prolonging the hurt that you can put onto someone.

Now the term assist can be used interchangably as to anything that helps out a person. Much like "Emeril with ESSENCE assist" or "Conan O Brien with Triumph the Dog Assist", it can be used with anyone with anything, or even objects with anything.

As for the names of the genus....well for a vid gaming message board, SRK.com is pretty much devoid of women/girls. Conviniently stolen from the Road Runner clips. Sadly our resident freak before our very eyes, cybered with a guy posing as a girl by the name of Redqueen, only to be later revealed....to be a guy. Even more frightening is that they wonderfully decided to keep a friendly relationship, considering our resident freak...well he's our resident freak. I can count the active posting female population that I know of prolly on one hand. Of course there are plenty of horny male individuals online on the board....you just have to give them a chance. LOL

Avatar explanation Part 1.

2005-02-19T08:46:00.000-08:00

As you might have guessed, I have been making avatars for a while. It started as an out for my lack of art as well an expression of creativity on the message board I usually attend. Obviously many of these avatars have a specific sort of humour, most of the time related to the in jokes created by on the board topic....Street fighter and other Fighting games.

I decided to start out with this one because of the certain universal appeal of it regardless of not knowing who the characters are. Basically I was inpsired by the stance of this stance of Captain Commando; A character that had his own beat'em up side scrolling arcade game sometime in the 1990's developed by Capcom, and brought back as a fighting game character in Marvel VS. Capcom 1 and in it's sequel MvC2, As you can see his stance is pretty erratic almost eccentric,; I imagined that he would be like a beatnik, therefore the black colour scheme.

His admirers were characters from other fighting games, starting from the Upper right going clockwise, it is Sabretooh, Gambit, Jin Satome and Rolento. In fact all of their snap animations were ripped when they made a super move (a reall flash high damaging move).

The dialogue itself, is ripped from Captain Commando's ending where the people of planet earth ask "Who are you?", and he camly replies (in a garbled stereo voice at the time) I am......Captain Commando. I guess it was a name to be remembered if any other danger threaten's the earth. That very same line is repeated in his MvC1 ending (MvC2 has a genric one ending for ALL characters due to how large the character roster is *52*) when you defeat Onslaught who is the final boss of MvC1.; I imagined that hey....perhaps just reciting his dialogue is prententious enough.

I guess the hardest part of this avatar is how much time it took to get the palette swap done. It makes me wonder if Imagready is really at all hot, or if Paint Shop Pro's program might prove easier to switch colour schemes.

2005-02-18T23:44:00.000-08:00

Double Review, Garden State and Constantine

Garden State

I didn't find Garden State particularly enjoyable, but I didn't exactly find it a waste of time. In some ways I sort of felt the film as more of a small documentary of someone's few days of being at home with strict rules of recording everything, exciting or not. It was interesting watching the film because it sort of reflects how life is in Fort St. John, moreso the fact that it shows a bunch of people who have set up shop/life in their hometown, faced to live in it in some form or matter. Whether it be sucessful, a complete loser or a person just biding their time until they leave.

The problem with this film, (which is also refreshing) is that it's so anti climatic. There's no real jumps or bumps on this venture of this person, but a series of events which otherwise never put the characters in any real difficult situations or choices, except at the end. But the end again is one that has been played out so much, that even being different or in this case being normal has become cliche. However the emphasis is on how real the characters are, basing them on weird little antics and some real life situations.

***.5/*****

Constantine

Well the verdict is in, and I particularly enjoyed this film. I don't really know much about Hellblazer in general, other than the scant experience I had with Constantine in the Sandman tradepaperback. And I'm a sucker for the occult. But what I found interesting about the film is that it was approached more as a film, than a comic book adaption, more that anyother comic book adapted film that I have viewed. Often when comics have been adapted, there is more of an emphasis on copying/translating the art of the comic, than creating art with the camera. And I feel that Constantine has kinda balanced between making a good film and a good comic film.

What I also found interesting about the whole film is that I think it struck a really great balance between humour and more serious parts. The thing with comics is that they have this inherant comedy in all forms of their writing. Whether it be dark, sort of twisted or just cheesy, it's interesting to see this comedy because in the comic universe, they are taken deadly serious. In the film, I find it interesting that some of the more humourous moments translated into that kinda humour. Not necssarily appropriate but not especially cheesy. Much like how a hero spits out a one liner that we think is cool, yet pathetic in real life, Constantine has taken movie universe humour and applied it to this film.

Ultimately I thought it was a good film, but not so great that it deserves anymore than what I should assign it because it entertained me. I do realize that some of the dialogue is pretty horrible, that fans can be pretty much angry at the translation, and that sort of brings down the score a bit. But I can't be really that bias.

***/*****

2005-02-16T11:20:00.000-08:00

Review of Saw:

Care for a mind fuck? Well you won't really find it here. Nowadays for the average movie goer, it's pretty hard to pull the wool over someone's eyes of what's going to happen. And even if you do manage to do so, it's hard to do it in such a way where to makes the viewer feels that they could actaully get it, piece the puzzle piece by piece, instead of tossing out a twist for the sake that "omfg we know, but you don't".

The worst offender of this was Ocean's 12, which threw in a twist SO out of left field, it's like they added an addition to the movie while the viewer was watching something else.

But for Saw it wasn't as blatent but it was alright. Overall it was a good film, although far too often it relied on music video cinematography to express some of the scarier moments. Unfortunately I have seen films that have disturbed me more and just blew my mind more, which is Old Boy.

2004-10-06T13:47:00.001-07:00

Review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I'll first start off that I loved this movie a lot. I would also like to start that I wanted to cold clock the fuck out of this customer who mouthed off saying that even Cable Guy was better than this film (obviously referring to say that Cable Guy was bad enough, and This film was worst)

ESOTSM is basically a film that presents a relationship gone bad...backwards. Joel Parish is basically going about to erase any memory of his ex...Clementine. Now I can go on and on for visuals and how touching and heartwarming it is, but I won't. Because basically giving my approval, people should expect as much.

But what I would like to discuss the interesting idea of between fate and love. It's interesting that the end of the story isn't Happily ever after, but continuing a course that is needed.

What I found even more interesting was how the entire dynamic on how it makes you question whether or not there is a greater plan for everyone for their lives. It is very interesting that history repeats itself, despite the fact that we try to erase it from our memories. But is it just a back-up or reaffirmation that some meetings must occur, even if it's for the bad, in order to progress?

It does seem so, becaues even if we have bad memories, they are there for a reason. Even if after people somehow want to leave their memories behind, whether it be through denial or erasure, they still remember. Their bodies remember, their hearts remember.

It's also great that at only the beginning of the relationship that they realize...how much and how important the relationship was, and how they agree to go out together.

2004-05-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

The PSP, The Prometheus or the DS?

Headlining the E3 this year (one of the most suprising E3s, moreso amplified by the info by Rob) is the GameBoy DS: Dual Screen/Developer's System.

What is even more surprising is the announcement of Sega's hat toss into the handheld ring. It's a nasty rumour as of now, but to tell the truth, if half of it is true, this is as system that I am incredibly interested in seeing.

Apparently the new Sega handheld's dimenions will have the length of a CD case, but only half the width, nothing on the depth so far. The seemingly new part is that it's taking a cue from the Phantom Console and iPOD, downloading games over the internet. An intriguing concept, possibly even greater fact that costs of the games will greatly decrease because of the lack of actualy CD/cartridge productions and distribution and possibility of patches being updated.

Another thing to add is that it seems that there is no mandatory subscription service like the Phantom.

As for the two main contenders, the DS and PSP....the DS truly impressed me the most with the possible innovations that they have at the same time. This system is really pushing the concept on how a handheld will work, without relying on gimmicks like phones, PDAs and internet usage.

The PSP on the other hand looks damn fucking sweet, sexier than the un-sexy DS, with some games that I really would love to play, especially Darkstalkers. However becuase it's demo was especially blaise, nothing special AT ALL, and has the problem of having too many games that seemed generic than actually diverse like the DS.

Who knows. Perhaps the DS is not suppose to compete with the PSP, because Nintendo does have a GBA sucessor in the works. So comparing these two systems can be entirely un-fair since the DS is most likely a system to be working with the GC and more importantly, the next Nintendo console system (at least I hope).

It's hard to say, but the DS certainly has my vote for gaming so far...but as for the potential of fighting games on the PSP, that is making me consider getting both.

2004-05-02T13:47:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentleman....Lohan mania is officially has been approved by Usher.

2004-04-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

If you have not heard, the new Batman costume.