Too much entertainment lately

I have been on entertainment overload lately. TV & Movie entertainment, mainly. Here’s a recap of some stuff I’ve seen lately and my 2 cents on each:

First, some movies.

The Transporter:
Even thought I bought Transporter 1 and 2 a few months ago, I just got around to watching it over the weekend. I’ve been a fan of Jason Statham’s since seeing him in Snatch and then Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Then, we saw Crank recently and loved that, too. So, it wasn’t really a surprise that I liked this movie, too. What’s not to like. Lots of action, shit gets blown up, hot chick. You need to suspend reality for a while as the story line and some of the situations are a bit over the top. But, for me, that’s not really an issue. I don’t think the movie takes it self too seriously. You shouldn’t, either. (I’ll try and get around to watching The Transporter 2 this weekend)

Jackass Number Two:
I had such HUGE expectations for this movie. I can’t say I was disappointed, but at the same time, I don’t think it lived up to the hype. But, I’m wondering if that’s not a side effect of the fact that I watch all sorts of crazy shit on the Internet. Just exactly how crazy can they get and still make it in under the R rating? Hell, they even put a “CENSORED” bar across the screen when Pontius drinks horse jizz. Don’t get me wrong, if you liked Jackass 1, you’re bound to like this, too. There are plenty of great skits. Dunn freezes his nuts (a la “A Christmas Story”) to a rocking horse made out of ice. There’s a scene where Johnny, Bam and Dunn stand in front of a percussion granade (for lack of a better explanation) that shoots rubber balls at 500 ft per second. The welts they are left with are AWESOME. There are several others that are great. I can’t wait for the DVD to come out with 2-4 hours of extra footage. You know it’ll be good.

And now some TV:

Gotta start with the poker. I finished watching the final table of the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. Jaime Gold takes down 12 million and pretty much acts like an ass the entire time doing it. But, I have to hand it to the guy, he really picked his spots well when it comes to his non-stop talking… In some situations he would tell the other player that he has the nuts and they would call him only to find out that he wasn’t lying. In others, he’d tell the other player that he was bluffing and that he was caught… The other player would suspect he’s lying and fold the better hand.

So, even though he’s a bit of an ass hat, he did what nearly 9000 other players were unable to do. He took down the biggest poker tournament in history. He is having a massive amount of legal issues now and hasn’t collected any of his 12 million dollars in winnings… Now that couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

The Office (Season 2):
We have been watching season 2 on DVD over the past week and we will likely finish up tonight or tomorrow. That show just keeps getting better and better. Watching Steve Carell’s character is like watching a train wreck. You know that, no matter what situation, he’s going to do or say the exact WRONG thing. The inter-office dynamics are so great. Anybody who works in an office environment knows that everything going on in that show really happens. It hasn’t happened yet, but, I’m just waiting for Jim & Pam to hook up. Her boyfriend is such a tool. Oh, and the Dwight / Angela romance is classic. And what about Kelly kissing Dwight at the Christmas party? I can’t wait to see how that triangle works out.

Heroes:
I caught the replay of the pilot last night. Really liked this show! I’ve already set Tivo to catch them all. I was thinking about it this morning and I think what I like most about the show is that the characters that start finding out they have super powers are also “real people.” What I mean is, they have their own lives, their own struggles and it’s not like they have all been living a great life to this point. They’ve all got their own issues and, having the super power, for some of them, isn’t exactly great news. There’s a girl who has broken every bone in her body and her body recovers in a matter of seconds. But, she’s having a much bigger struggle with the fact that she’s adopted and wants to know who her real parents are. I also like the asian character who figured out he can teleport himself anywhere he wants to go. This is the one guy who is really stoked about his new found power. His scene starts with him working in the Japanese corporate world and hating it. When he discovers his power he’s talking about it with his friend who says, “Why do you want to be different?” to which  her responds, “Why do you want to be the same?” Right before the end of the show he teleports himself to New York City.

The trailer for the next episode looks like they are going to explain a lot of what is going on and how all these lives are intertwined. I can’t wait.

All of this entertainment and LOST hasn’t even started yet. I can’t freakin’ wait for that one, either.

After catching up on The Office though, I have seasons 1, 2 & 3 of Reno 911 plus seasons 1 & 2 of Nip/Tuck. Man, I got a lot of shows to catch up on… Damn it. I’ll go make some popcorn.

Seriously! How long does it take?

I decided that it’s time to order myself a new computer, give Paxton my existing computer, reformat the kids’ existing computer and set it up for Blake. So, I went online last night and ordered me up a new system from Dell. Let me first list for you all the options I have tossed in. While reading the list, try and come up with an estimate for how long it takes to build such a machine and, assuming Sept 25th was the order date, try and come up with a ship date. Don’t say it outloud, we don’t want to ruin the game for everyone…

Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6400 (2.13GHz,1066FSB) with 2MB cache
2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
No Keyboard Requested
Video ready option w/o monitor
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE
Serial ATA 2 RAID 0 With Dual 320GB Hard Drives
No Floppy Drive Requested
Microsoft Windows XP Professional,Service Pack 2, English
Dell Application Back-up CD, Factory Install
Dell Media Experience 3.1 Basic
Complimentary courses: Look for EU icon
Windows Media Player 10
Dell Direct Download
Icon Consolidation Application
Internet Search and Portal
Image Restore
Dell Support
Dell Owners Manual installed on your system,click on icon after system set-up to access
No Mouse Requested
No modem requested for Dell Dimension
Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0
48X Combo and 16X DVD+/-RW
Sonic Cineplayer
Roxio Creator Basic/MyDVD Basic
Sound Blaster Audigy MB Audio
No Speaker Requested
Norton Internet Security 2006 15 Month
NETZERO ISP
AOL for Broadband
Broadband Icon for Inspiron
Microsoft Office 2003 Basic Edition,Dimension,DHS
1 Year Limited Warranty
No Warranty, Year 2 and 3
Warranty Support,Initial Year
Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Initial Year
Type 3- Third Party At Home Service, 24×7 Technical Support, Initial Year
Serial and PS-2 PCI Adapter
Windows Vista Capable

Well, if you guessed October 24th as the ship date, give yourself a pat on the back.

Holy crap!! What on Earth could take so F’n long? Seriously, I would expect Dell to have all of these parts on-hand so it’s not like they have to order anything special. Everything I ordered was part of their online selection process. It’s not like I ordered some rare type of motherboard that is hand built by some sweatshop in Russia.

Ahh well, the wait begins. :-|

Ya need a bit of ooohhh Shock Treatment

Shock Treatment Of course you have already seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but, did you know that they made a sequal? It’s true, it’s true. It’s called Shock Treatment. And, for the first time ever, just in time for the 25th anniversary of it’s original release, it’s now available on DVD.

Like Rocky before it, Shock Treatment is a musical. The songs have great lyrics. The story is rediculous. Only Brad and Janet’s characters return (both played by different actors since there’s no way in hell Susan Sarandon or Barry Bostwick would have put their name two films by Richard O’Brian), but several of the original actors are in the sequal… they just play different parts.

This movie even cheesier than the original. But, I absolutely love this movie. This is the exact kind of movie where I’ll recommend it to people and 20 minutes in to watching it, they are removing my number from their phone books and vowing never to speak to me again.

Stop what you are doing and buy this DVD. Go on already. Go.

Cross Canadian Ragweed & YouTube

After seeing Cross Canadian Ragweed (CCR for short) at the House of Blues last month I was stoked to find out that they would be returning to Las Vegas so soon. Getting to see them play twice in a month was quite a treat. If there was a “bad” part about it it would be the fact that they were performing as part of the Double Down Throwdown which is a concert put on by the local country radio station. If you’ve never heard CCR, they are a southern rock band that doesn’t really fit in the “country” section, but seem to be labeled as country so that’s where you’ll find them in the record store. Well, the crowd was there to see a country show. We paid extra to get seats up front. We were in the 5th row. When they came on, we stood up and sang along. Nobody else in the entire “paid” floor section was standing. We sat for most of the show but stood during the final couple songs when they were playing 2 of our favorites.

They put on a great show. They sounded great and played a good selection of their songs. Though, I did lose a $5 bet when they failed to play the title track from their album Carney Man. One thing that happened during their show was pretty cool. They were just getting ready to play their final song of the night when a beer vendor walked up the aisle and was holding up a couple beers in each hand while standing right next to me. The singer noticed the guy holding up the beers and made a motion like “I’ll have one.” I pointed to the beer vendor and the singer nodded his head. I tapped the beer guy, bought a beer and went up and set the beer on the stage. The singer thanked me and continued on with the song. As soon as they were off the stage, we took off not waiting to see the remaining two acts.

Over the past several months, YouTube.com has just exploded. My introduction to it started off as per usual, somebody at the office sends me a link and says, “Hey, check out this video of some dude getting smacked in the nuts by a shovel.” Or, something equally as juvenile. I hadn’t really embraced all there is to find on YouTube until quite recently. Over the past week or two I have watched COUNTLESS videos by the Beastie Boys, Metallica, W.A.S.P., Motley Crue and, thanks to last night’s show, Cross Canadian Ragweed. The great part about it is that you can find rare recordings from shows or interviews and even a bunch of fan-based content that you’d have no way of ever seeing anywhere else. Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty of nut smacking videos to keep even the most hard-core 14 year old happy. But, for us old farts with a penchant for checking hidden classics, this place is a gold mine!

My dog doesn’t like peanut butter

Last night I went to a poker tournament at a co-worker’s house. While there, I was wearing pants that tend to ride a bit low and a t-shirt. While sitting down and leaning forward at the poker table, my shirt rode up a bit and their dog came up and licked the top-most portion of my butt crack.

I won the tournament and told the hosts that their dog had licked my butt crack and that I was going to steal their dog.

Pretty much a great evening all around.

I can’t wait until next Monday. I’m packing the back of my pants with kibble.