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.

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.

Visitors, Beatles & Pools

As the summer months quickly approach, it’s time to start getting ready for onslaught of visitors we will undoubtedly have. If you don’t live in Vegas, you wouldn’t understand. I know we didn’t fully grasp the concept until we lived here for a while. But Damn, when you live here, there are always visitors during the summer.

This past weekend was the start for us. My buddy Dan was in from So. Cal. He had come in to meet up with his mom who lives in Arizona. The came out to take in a couple of shows and basically just hang out. They had tickets for the new Cirque Du Soleil show going on at the Mirage. It’s called Love and it’s set to the music of the Beatles. The show isn’t officially “open” yet. They are still doing their preview performances. But, a quick check of the website and I found that there were still some really good tickets to be had. As luck would have it, we ended up sitting 4 rows directly in front of Dan and his folks. The music was great, the stage is awesome and the show overall was really enjoyable. My one complaint with the Cirque shows as of late has been the fact that there are fewer acrobatics than that of the show “O” and Mystere. They put more emphasis on the dancing & music. I’m not complaining, really, but I’d come out of the show saying that I absolutely loved the show if there was more acrobatics. As it was, I enjoyed the show, but, it’s no match for “O” or Mystere in my book.

Earlier in the day on Saturday, we went to a home show over at Cashmen Center. We are interested in installing a pool in the backyard and wanted to go check out some of the builders. I’m really glad we did. We got brochures from several vendors and one of them really took his time with us letting us know all that they offered plus a list of things we would want/need to know before moving forward. I couldn’t have been happier with his service, help and information. I hope it works out that we can use his company when it comes time to get the ball rolling.

While we were at the show we picked up a Little Giant ladder. You’ve probably seen their infomercial. It is one awesome ladder. As a home owner, I think buying one of these suckers is just about mandatory. We did have a bit of an adventure getting it home. We bought one of the demo models from the show and saved a little extra cash over the regular show discount. We went back to pick it up in the SSR on Sunday afternoon and found that it was about 4 inches too long to fit in the back of my truck. I ended up borrowing some bungie cords from the ladder salesman and driving home with the back gate down. We made it home safely and didn’t lose anything out the back so that was cool.

On Sunday, at the recommendation of Myya, we hit up the Sunset Station Brunch buffet at The Feast. It was an absolute hit! Since they have redone the buffet over there, it is all-around better than it was before. They had a great selection and I think I sampled just about everything they had to offer. The carved roast was my least favorite part and it was the part I was expecting to like the best… Ahh well, just about everything else there made up for it.

The DVD player in our living room died a week or two back. I’ve been wanting to pick up a new one but just haven’t really had the time. Sunday afternoon after dropping Dan off at the airport, Chris, Blake and I set off to pick up a new DVD player and some dinner. First stop, Best Buy (of course). I found exactly what I was looking for. 5 DVD changer + HD upsampling all for about $135. I’ll take it! Nope. They were out of stock. So, we hop back in the car and head over to Target. They were out of the same model but I found something comparable… they were out of those, too. By this time we are getting quite hungry. However, I plead for a quick trip to Circuit City. Pay dirt! We found the same player we had found over at Best Buy for the same price and they had some in stock. After a quick trip to Chipotle for some dinner, we headed home. I quickly downed my dinner and set out to install the new DVD player… One minor issue… it’s too deep to fit in our entertainment system. Ugg. We had recently purchased a stand that was to be used for keeping the video games in a semi-orderly fashion. I hadn’t put it together yet, but this seemed like a perfect opportunity. I slapped it together and the DVD player fit perfectly on the bottom shelf. A quick test to make sure everything was working smoothly. Then, instead of actually watching a movie, I went to the garage and installed my new Sirius Satellite radio receiver in the SSR. My old one bit the dust a few weeks back and it’s been killing me not being able to listen to Howard Stern on the way to and from work. By the time I was done with that install & activation, I was too tired to sit through any sort of movie. Ahh well, there’s always tomorrow night… nope, that’s poker night. I guess I’ll shoot for Wednesday. crap.

An evening with the Beastie Boys

Last night we got to check out a Big Screen Concert of the new Beastie Boys concert movie called, “Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That“. If you aren’t familiar with Big Sceen Concerts, basically they shoot a live concert and then show it in movie theaters around the country. I have wanted to go check one out in the past but it hasn’t worked out. But, when it was the Beastie Boys, I bought tickets early. (Turns out that wasn’t needed since there were like 40-50 people in the entire theater…) The only difference from this and a normal BigScreenConcert is that the movie is actually coming out in theaters nationwide on March 31st.

The movie is from a Beastie Boys concert shot at Madison Square Gardens back in 2004. It was shot by 50 fans holding Hi-8 video cameras (plus some pro footage thrown in from time to time). If you get motion sickness, this movie is NOT for you! My wife had to leave the theater after about 20 minutes. It’s quite bouncy and by the end I was starting to feel a little woozy myself. But, the concert itself is damn good. At one point they bring out Doug E Fresh and he does beat box for one of the songs. Man that guy is good! The way he performs is quite impressive!

At the show they played all sorts of old school tunes like Brass Monkey, Time to Get Ill, Hello Brooklyn & Paul Revere. The crowd does most of the singing on Paul Revere.
It’s definitely worth seeing, but I don’t think I’d be able to watch it too many times. The camera work just makes it a bit too difficult to fully enjoy.

I’m a DVD Junky!

If I’m at the store and see a DVD of a movie I even remotely want to see, it’s all I can do to stop myself from buying it… In the past week or so I’ve purchased the following:

The Aristocrats (no, NOT the Disney movie)
Saw II
Final Destination
Final Destination 2
My Blue Heaven/Man With 2 Brains (both on one DVD. Score!)

I’ll be following that up with buying Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Walk The Line.

Over the weekend I watched Final Destination (which I had never seen before) and really enjoyed it. It’s a silly basis for a movie, but, I enjoyed the inventive ways that the people got killed off. Tonight, I watched Final Destination 2. Even more inventive ways to kill off the cast.

There’s a silly story about trying to buy the Final Destination movies… I was at Best Buy and couldn’t find either movie in the Horror section. So, finally I asked an employee. They looked them up on the computer and said they were both listed as Sci-Fi. These movies have next to no business being in Sci-Fi. Any movie that kills off 75% or more of the main cast has got to be listed as a horror movie. I’m sure that’s a law somewhere…

Mystery Men. Absolute classic!

Mystery MenI have no idea why, but the first time we saw Mystery Men, we thought it was OK. Well, it was on sale the other day at Target so we went ahead and picked it up. We hadn’t seen it since it first came out 5 or 6 years ago. When we watched it the other night we laughed throughout the entire movie. We drew comparison to the movie Galaxy Quest which, when we saw it the first time, we thought it was just OK, but it is now one of our favorite movies. There are so many one-liners & tounge-in-cheek references it kept us laughing the entire time.

If you aren’t familiar with the premise of the movie, they are a group of wanna-be superheros who have to come to the aide of Captain Amazing (played by Greg Kinear) when he gets taken hostage by the bad guy. They have no real super powers but all have some quirky talent that they use to help save the day.
Paul Ruebens (AKA Pee Wee Herman) as The Spleen is F’n hilarious. The way he talks is a riot. Hank Azaria who does half the voices on The Simpsons also has a pretty amusing accent as well. Ben Stiller.. well, add “Mr. Furious” to the list of great characters he’s played.

If you haven’t seen it, check it out. You may need to watch it 2 or 3 times to get the full enjoyment out of it, but it’ll be worth it.

Movies on the PSP

Watching movies on the PSP is pretty darn cool. Throw on a pair of headphones, pop in a flick and you have your own portable movie theater. My problem is, I’m already such a DVD junkie, getting hooked on buying movies for the PSP could be a baaaaaaad thing. What I need to do is make sure I buy DVDs that I may want to watch on the big screen. But, if it’s something that I’m certain the wife will never want to see, buying it for the PSP might not be a bad idea…

I’m just looking for the prices to start falling on the movies so I can pick them up for about $10 each. At $20, I really have to think about it… I did find this site that you can sign up and download movies for the PSP. I haven’t tried it yet, but, it looks pretty cool. I may have to give this a shot.

What makes a movie good?

Last night I could NOT sleep. I went to bed at 11:00PM, then turned on the TV after not being able to fall asleep. Flipping channels I ran in to a movie on TNT that I absolutely love. Remember the Titans. It combines a lot of things I enjoy in a movie all rolled in to one. I like movies about groups of people coming together and overcoming their differences in the quest for a common goal. I also like team sports movies. And, if the movie is based on actual events, that is a big plus for me as well. This movie has all 3.

OK, now the admission portion of the blog… No matter how many times I see this movie, it always makes me cry at the exact same spot. The captain of the football team, Gary, gets in a bad accident and is paralyzed. When they show the hospital scene where his friend Julius comes in and tells Gary’s mother that he’s sorry and then goes in and visits with Gary… Man, it kills me EVERY time… Not “blubbering on the floor in the fetal position”, but I do shed a tear or two.

So, to my monsterous readerbase I ask this question; Are there movies that, no matter how many times you see them, they still make you cry?

And for any of you tough guys who say you don’t cry in movies; screw you.

Flights, Parties, Tequila and Poker

Friday night our company had it’s “Holiday Gala.” For the first time that I can remember, I wore a tie to an event other than a wedding or funeral. Since I had ZERO plans to drive home after an event where I knew there was going to be some heavy drinking, we rented a room at Green Valley Ranch Casino where the party was being thrown. Turned out to be a great move. Though, we paid $129 to rent a room that I was awake in for less than 90 minutes. I had checked in after work, drove home and got ready for the party. Between that time and the start of the party, we took our kids to the airport and put them on a plane. It was their first time they were flying alone. Any amount of nervousness that I had was completely overshadowed by my wife. She was a bit of a mess. We left the airport and went directly to the party. About an hour in to the party we received the call from the kids that they landed safely and my mom was there to pick them up. It was then and only then that my wife was able to relax and start enjoying the party.

To help the party along, I had bought 2 bottles of Chinaco Tequila. If you have never had this tequila, stop what you are doing and go buy some. It is the best tequila I’ve ever had (and I’ve had a few). We always buy the “blanco”, but, for Christmas, a buddy gave us a bottle of “Anejo.” So, for the party, I brought the Anejo and one of the blanco. We cracked the Anejo first. Holy crap, that was some smooth F’n tequila. With a group of us all sharing, it didn’t take too long for that bottle to hit the dust. Then, about an hour later, during dinner, one of the staff from the hotel informed me that bringing liquer in to the party was against Nevada law. Before he was able to swipe the 1/2 bottle we had left, I hid it under my chair. To cover our bases, we went ahead and polished off that bottle a few minutes later. I think I finished up with 7 shots.

At the start of the party, with our first drinks, the wife and I took Chasers. These are supposed to help you avoid a hangover. For me, they worked like a charm. After the part ended at 11:00 PM, we played poker until 3:00 AM. We went to the room and were asleep by 3:30 AM. Woke up at about 10:00 AM and I had no hangover symptoms at all. I got called a few names when I told that to a few people who probably had less to drink than I did but woke up feeling pretty wrecked. :P

Saturday was a pretty lazy day. We pretty much laid around all day. Did a little shopping (very little) and then watched The 40 Year Old Virgin. We had started it pretty late so it was hard to keep awake through it. It’s a funny movie but we both hate the ending. When they break in to song it just completely loses it for us. When they broke in to song in the middle of Anchorman, it was funny and short enough that it was able to remain funny. But, in Virgin, it’s a 5 minute interlude which breaks right in to the credits. After sitting through that, it’s a real bummer that they didn’t put an extra scene at the end of the credits. Even if it was just the foreign employee jumping on screen to yell, “Go fuck a goat.” That would have been funny. (I could totally write for Hollywood.)

On Sunday, with no kids to look after, I was able to sneak out and play in 2 poker tournaments. Both at the Sahara casino. In the first tournament, I did really well in the first hour. So well that I didn’t even bother buying the optional add-on. In the second hour, I chose a bad spot to try to bluff a guy off a hand after I missed my draw. Actually, I almost got him to lay down his hand. He took a full 2 minutes before calling. So, I didn’t feel too bad about my play. I hung on and doubled up a few times and had a decent chip stack before putting in too large a raise with K/Q of spades in early position. When a player in late position re-raised, I had put too much money in to the pot to fold. I had to call off the rest of my chips. I was happy to find that he had 10/10. This put me basically in a coin flip situation. It was much better than if he had A/Q or A/K. Then I would have been in real bad shape. But, the board bricked for me so I was done. Then, in the evening tournament, I didn’t have quite the same ride, but the result was the same. I got knocked out about 2 1/2 hours in to the tourney. At the end I lost 4 good sized hands when going in with the best hand. The final 2 hands for me went like this:

Hand 1
A/Q (me) Vs K/9. K on the turn and I’m dead. This isn’t a horrible beat, I know. But, with the amount of chips I have at this point, it hurts not to win with the better starting hand.

Hand 2
A/Q (me) Vs K/Q. On this hand, I’ve got the guy basically dead to one of the 3 remaining Ks. Of course the K showed up on the turn again. This knocks me out of the tourney.

Both hands were against the same guy.

I had a blast this weekend. My company put on one hell of a party that included a VERY funny video production that had shots of our CEO and COO talking about what it is our company does. The cut back and forth to movie clips and clips from TV shows like the Three Stooges. They poked fun at all facets of the company and I don’t think anybody was spared. Also, we had a toy drive for Safe Nest. A great many of our employees brought an unwrapped gift to donate to a great cause. I’m not positive who’s idea it was to set up the toy drive but I aplaud you, whoever you are. What a great way to provide some cheer to some people who could really use it.

Enough rambling for me. I gotta get some sleep!

the weekend… good and not so good

Well, the weekend started off pretty good. Saturday we went and saw Harry Potter with a group of folks from the office. We bought our tickets a few days early and I instintively bought 4 tickets for me, the wife and 2 kids… That night, I find out that my son doesn’t want to go to the movie. What the hell is up with that?? The next day at work I tell Rob not to buy a ticket, I have an extra. Later than night I find out my Daughter doesn’t want to go, either. Who are these kids??? The following day I get Matt “606″ to take the other ticket. So at least they didn’t end up costing me extra and/or going to waste… The movie, if you haven’t seen it yet, is pretty darn good. It’s about 2.5 hours long. It hits the ground running and doesn’t stop! If you’ve read the book, you already know this thing was a monster sized book. Sooooo much happens in it. Just fitting in most of the story was a big effort. Some things did suffer because of it. There are very few classroom scenes. Harry’s battles with both Snape and Draco are cut fairly short, Sirius Black is hardly in it and there isn’t nearly as much interaction between Harry, Ron and Hermione. These are not complaints exactly. Just more matter of fact. The movie has some great visuals. It’s DEFINITELY darker than any of the previous movies. They, once again, picked some great actors to fill in some important roles. Cho, Cedric and Krum all come across exactly as I’d had them pictured after reading the book. Very well done. If you are a HP fan, you’re going to enjoy this movie without a doubt.

OK, now to the not so cool part(s)…

1. There is a problem with purchasing tickets for a concert 6 months in advance. Where the hell do you keep the tickets so you can find them 6 months later? I’m not exactly the most organized guy in the world, so this is a bit of a challenge for me. Ya see, about 6 months ago, I bought 3 tickets to see Henry Rollins’ spoken word tour at House of Blues. The show is this coming Saturday. At the moment, the tickets are MIA. So, Mike & Todd, if you read this… have no fear. I’ll turn the house upside down between now and then.

2. My hosting service has sucked ass this weekend. MySQL had to be restarted 5 times. If that wasn’t lame enough, each time it happend and I reported it, they’d simply restart MySQL. They wouldn’t (as far as I can tell) dig any further to figure out what the actual problem was. Now, if I only hosted this site and other such gems, I wouldn’t really care. I know you’d be heart broken not to be able to get your fix of geeeek.com, but, you’d get over it in time. The worst part is, I’ve got sites that actually generate a little income. If they are down, that income flow sorta stops. Plus, it’s not just the time you are down, but, anybody who visits during that time who may have been a potential customer, well, it’s unlikely they’ll be back… You know that saying about first impressions? Well, it goes triple when you are talking about potential customers…

On a positive note, MySQL has been alive and kicking for the past 6 hours without fail. So, perhaps the worst of it’s over. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

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