Deep thoughts: The Ghostbusters

I recently picked up The Real Ghostbusters off Amazon.com a few weeks ago and been trying to make a go at the first season of the seriess. The writing is surprisingly good for a 80′s children s cartoon and the plot at times can be pretty complex. The cartoon was written by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd, so for all intents and purposes, what went on in the cartoon was canon. After getting a few episodes into the series, odd ball questions started popping up in my head about the Ghostbusters. At first, I tried Googling my questions to find answers, but couldn’t find any. I trolled some Ghostbuster fan pages, but didn’t find answers to my specific questions. So I’m just going to lay out my questions and try to piece together a rationale to help me understand the Ghostbusters and how they would exist in the real world. Feel free to put in your two cents.

Thanksgiving rush

So I went back to North East Ohio for Thanksgiving. I spent about six days going around old haunts, drinking a lot of Christmas ale (per semi-drunken status updates on Facebook), and attending a high school reunion. All in all it was good fun. I ate way too much and drank more than I should (I spent one afternoon at Kraynaks hung over). I’ll get more into the meat and potatoes of my break in a bit, but what’s really on my mind is the holiday season and how I’m just not in the mood for it this year.

GAME REVIEW: Super Mario Galaxy 2

I’m sure most of you that already know of this game, played it, or are on the fence on picking it up has probably read a review or two and have a pretty good idea of what Mario’s new adventure is all about. I’ll try to skip all the basic stuff in most reviews and get right to the nuts and bolts; most importantly, will you be entertained enough to want to play through the game AND THEN pick up all the green ‘Luigi’ stars.

TORNADO!

Spring’s coming around and you know what that means?

Tornado season is coming back to town.

I love tornadoes. I love chasing them, watching them on local television, and looking at what they did after they’re gone. In high school, I had a camera that I would wrap in a grocery back (poke a hole out for the lens for waterproofing purposes) and would chase dark clouds that I thought would produce the next F5. I would get into my car and drive down country roads with my arm sticking out of the window; getting pelted by hail and high winds in the process, for the hopes of getting great video of a tornado. Sadly, I never got good footage. Instead I took some great footage of high winds, hail, lightning, and lots and lots of heavy rain.

Mind you,  the movie ‘Twister’ sucked. Let’s not even discuss that abortion of a movie.

Now, for some items of interest

Normally, I don’t like talking about myself in great depth. I find keeping my cards close to the chest to be the best policy. Sometimes though, there’s just too much items of interesting going on in or around me, I just need to vent of a little steam. I’ll try to keep this as brief as possible without getting into too many gross parts.

Decade go BOOM!

Looks like every news source is doing their “00′s in retrospect” pieces, why not do one of my own. I can rant and rant about which movies were great or what happened in the world of video games, but I think I’m going to chronicle something a little more closer to home. Namely, myself.

The decade wasn’t a complete wash (as the picture illustrates). socially, I grew up, moved out, got a job, and started the adult thing. It’s all the small shit in between that was the pain in the ass. First real relationships, make and losing friends, people you know all your life up and dying all of a sudden. Those are the things that you’ll remember, and sometime, remember when they happened.

I tend to like to bundle memories up around the date that they happened. Whether it be a year, or a summer, for just a few weeks; it really helps me preserve the memories for later on in life.

Blog has been linked!

Quick update. My blog has been lined to www.Dronespolls.com. It’s a neat site if you live in Warren, Ohio and like polls. Check it out.

I swear to god I’ll get to writing again very soon…

Where were you?

Welp, it’s 9/11. NO PUT DOWN THE PARTY FAVORS, IT’S NOT THAT KIND OF DAY! From 9/11/2001 to now, I can’t think of another day in that time frame (8 years now?) where I remember vividly where I was when I saw the Twin Towers become the world’s largest pair of smoldering cigarettes. 9/11/2001 was really one of those “Kennedy” days. Here’s my story.

I was living at a Fraternity house in Youngstown, Ohio but I was staying at my mother’s house for some reason or another (free dinner the night before?). I didn’t have class that day so I didn’t have to get up early. By the time I got up, both towers were already hit, but not down yet. My brother had a small television on in the dining room, showing the spectacle in NYC. I asked what happened and he replied with “I don’t know, something happened to some buildings”. I think I might have said something along the lines that I thought those were the same buildings that were hit up in the nineties. I think it might have been a half joke to me at the time, but I seem to remember thinking “Ohhh you terrorists, you’ll get us eventually” with faux fist shaking motion in my head.

I make some coffee, make some breakfast and continue to watch the news as the first tower came down. To me it was amazing. All that dust and dirt coming at people at 100 mph was something I wasn’t expecting. This big huge billowing cloud of dirt and dust totally engulfing a city street and everything in it was something to take pause with. This is something you see in movies, not real life.

It didn’t take long for the dust to settle and right there on tv, a scene that looked almost surreal. Everything was caked in dirt. It looked like a dirty winter time. It just looked… quiet. People that didn’t find cover were completely caked in the stuff from head to toe. They were walking around dazed looking, with really no direction for their movements. Everybody looked like they just went 10 rounds and were told to go walk it off.

Then the second tower went down. More of the same after that.

That evening I went back to the fraternity house to watch the presidential address. After that I went to go fill up the car with gas. News reports all day were mentioning a run on gas, so I thought it would be a good idea to fill up. I went to a Shell station in Howland, there was a line down the street. I remember vividly that gas rose to $1.39 that day, I was convinced that the gas station was participating in price gouging.

That was my day in a nutshell.

—

Thinking back on it now, seeing the towers go down really didn’t affect me as it did some other people. I’m not in NYC nor in DC nor in a field in PA, what’s this have to do with me? It seems too far removed for me to get any real emotional attachment to it. Whatever that was going on in NYC, it was all condensed to a news cast on a small television in my mom’s dining room. I think the first time I actually noticed anything immediate happen by direct result of the towers going down was the lack to sound coming from airplanes. NE Ohio is a pretty busy place for Airplanes. There’s a friggen Air Force base nearby, so you’re always hearing big loud planes go by. Any with Pittsburgh, Akron and Cleveland airports near by, there’s always planes overhead. None of that existed for at least 2 weeks after 9/11. It was eerie.

Everything seemed to go on hold for the next two weeks after the attacks. Nobody knew what the hell was going to happen. The president gave a so-so speech about what America needs to do and the VP just up and disappeared to an undisclosed location (which I think turned out to be the basement of the VP mansion). Nobody knew if we were going to war or who was at fault here. Right after the attacks happened, I remember the newsman naming a shortlist of a few organizations that took credit.

The Eastwood mall closed at 5:00 pm  so people could go home to their families. Most (if not all) schools closed at noon. The FAA, over live television, called for the immediate halt and landing of all commercial and non commercial airplanes flying over US soil.. If you didn’t land, you were seen as an enemy of the state and were pretty much open game to F-16s. People went outside to see if there was anything else that was going to fall from the sky. The whole country went from 0 to TOTAL WAR in a matter of hours. Everything else shut down.

Winkers

Sorry, quick post. I couldn’t pass this video up. I’m sure most of you don’t frequent the Consumerist like I do. You should, it’s an excellent site about the customer fighting back against terrible customer service/ insane retail practices. Anyway, there’s a video on their home page for a product called “Winkers”. Without getting too far into it, I’ll just let you watch the video. Enjoy!

Recession that’s not a Recession, that is a Recession, but isn’t a Recession.

O.M.G!

If there’s one article of news that isn’t getting enough press, it’s the labeling of our economic times. World wide, state leaders are announcing that they are in recession. Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, England and Japan announced that they’re lowering their GDP forecasts to get in line with their (wait for it…) “recession”. Other EU and Asian states have made similar statements earlier. This brings me to my question; with, at least, two straight quarters of contraction in our economy, why are financial leaders still hesitant to call it a recession.

I thought up of two theories. The first being that our guys at the treasury have put such a stigmata on the word “recession”, that the only course of action upon hearing the word is to poke your eyes out, pull out your hair, and go running for the hills. Look at what the news has done to the word, they can’t even speak it without throwing up the “quotations” gesture. Hell, look at the ticker on the bottom of CNN, whenever it’s used to describe our economic situation, it’s in quotations again! You also have Federal Reserve Chairman  Ben “running bull” Bernanke going above and beyond in not using the “R word”.

I’m not understanding the fear behind the word. Will volcanos come out of the ground on Wall Street and engulf half of New York City in liquid hot magma? More than likely not. Does the Federal Reserve belive that stocks might take a tumble if the US finally designates itself as “in a recession”? That might be what we need to flush out some of the stock market (a little correction). Actual realization of the economic condition we’re in is what’s in order. Right now, it just seems like economists are playing a big game of plugging the holes in the dam, and denying that there’s a problem.

My second theory is that the government, and by extension the Federal Reserve, would have less authority to divvy out large sums of money to failing banks/ mortgage institutions. Stating that we’re in a “economic crisis” or a “slowdown” is much more urgent sounding than “we’re in a recession”. Keeping the theme of “economic crisis” keeps attention away from the word “recession” and, in return, gives our government greater means to act upon it. This isn’t entirely bad though, companies go bankrupt , but little was ever done during recessions. It’s all a part of capitalism.

The problem we faced was that there were too few players in this economic mess (People responsible, not people paying for it). Mortgage companies Fannie and Freddie had some 50% of the mortgages in the US, AIG insured trillions in mortgage insurance, and countless other large scale banks all had their hands in the “housing bubble” cookie jar. You let these guys go the way of the dinosaurs, you’re going to have a MAJOR mess on your hands. Looking back, it’s grosse un-accountability and cheap profit that got world financial institutions into this mess.

So calling it a “economic crisis” can be accurate, but using that term, while ignoring “recession” is completely nonsense. Recession indicates a economic trend that can be either short or long term. Not only is it a economic condition, it’s a guide line for financial institutions to use to forecast economic futures. “Economic crisis” is more of a “this is what’s going on now” approach. It gives no guidelines for economic futures, and it’s very reactionary in nature. “Economic Crisis” implies “Oh. My. Gaaaaawwwd! A bank is in trouble. Quick! Lets throw money at it!”, using “recession” would just make companies lower their economic forecasts for a few quarters to weather the financial storm.

It is also possible to have an economic crisis with  a recession. Major institutions could fail under the weight of their own stupidity and blindness because the wind changed directions. That’s more than enough reason for our Federal Government to come in and put in safe guards to make sure our financial structure is left intact, but this “wack a mole” process of throwing money at the problem is completely idiotic! There’s absolutely no incentive for a poorly ran company to change it’s management if it knows that, no matter how much risk it puts itself in, the government will bail them out at the right moment. It’s exactly that rationale that has us $8 trillion dollar in debt(er) since October and (us) in the worst “recession” since the end of the great depression.

It’s deplorable, absolutely deplorable. 

Again, I think it’s just a fear of using the word. I could be totally wrong though, I’m no economist.

-Robert

 

UPDATE!!

I found neato cartoon that illustrates my theory.

 

For your Viewing perusal (thanks Wikipedia!):

Ben Bernake; The Federal Reserve; The federal take over of Fannie and Freddie Mac; AIG; CNN Money (count how many times you see “economic crisis” over “recession”)

So, uhhh, it’s now a recession

Mainly an update from yesterday’s post. The National Bureau of Economic Research relesed their report yesterday afternoon stating that the U.S., is in fact, in a recession. Good times eh?

Now if we can only get Bernanke, Paulson, and Bush to use the word.

For your entertainment perusal: Thanks to CNN.com & Wikipedia

Dow Plunges 680 points; National Bureau of Economic Research; Recession

Hump Day Enjoyment: Funny Words

 Happy Wednesday everybody! It’s really not the best day of the week, but take note; at 1 o-clock today, your work week is halfway through (assuming you work the normal 9 -5, Monday thru Friday routine)!! To celebrate, I thought of starting a series of comedic topics for Wednesday.

Why are some words/ phrases funnier than others?

Norm McDonald makes a living searching for words that can replace other words for comedic value. Instead of using the word “prostitute”, he opted for the word “whore” in his blockbuster flop Dirty Work (I though it was hi-larious though). There’s a scene where Norm is trying to take down a uppity car sales manager by placing dead hookers in trunks of cars he’s selling in a live commercial. Right on queue, trunks would pop open and, what do you know, “Oh my God, There’s a dead WHORE in that trunk!”… comedy gold.

Is it just how a word sounds that makes it funny? Can it be the context the word is used? Or are our minds just that far gone, that we find comedy in dark dark things because we use a word that sounds funny? We’re all probably a little bit of all three.

The tourettes Guy

It could be the vulgarity of the substituted word that give it that extra kick in the funny bone. If I was to say “Hey, your bazooka holders are showing” is a lot funnier than “your bra is showing”. The internationally renowned “Tourettes Guy” would do nothing but shout profanities at every available opportunity. Guess what… It was funny.

 I guess there’s a certain creativity to using vulgarity. Anyone can say FUCK CUNT SHIT, but it takes savvy to say “Hey baby, I want to stick my thing in your thing, and anywhere my thing with stick into!” (credit Gilbert Gottfried). If there’s anyone who made a career turnaround based off of profanity, that would be Bob Saget. His stand-up routine is nothing more than an exercise on how many swear words a man can remember.

Lets make a short list of words that we can replace other words with for comedic value. Of course, we know whore is funnier than hooker and prostitute, but lets explore further.

• Vagina –> Dick holster (or sheath if you perfer)
• Mayonaise –> Meowniss
• Mustard –> Mustrad
• Milk –> cow cum
• Egg Nog –> Elf Cum (credit to Dave Attell for that)
• Detroit –> da hood
• Daughter –> Prescious little snowflake

The list can go on and on. After a while, it just seems like it’s a re-naming game, which it probably it. It’s fun, but at the same time, you don’t want to be a douche about it, or what I would like to call, the “Dane Cook Effect”. There’s a fine line between being clever, and being an asshole.

Tonight, we dine on elf cum!

For your edutainment (hate that word) perusal: Thanks to Wikipedia

Norm McDonald; Gilbert Gottfried; swear word; Dirty Work; Bob Saget; Tourettes syndrome; Touretts guy;

-Robert

Moving ahead

Well, we have a picture, so I guess that’s something, right? This past weekend was a very productive one, I recorded drums for 5 songs, and the guys (and girl) started in on initial vocal demo work. Everything is very preliminary; we’re just trying to get a feel for what we sound like right now. I really want to hear what I sound like from the other side of the drum set, in relation to what everybody else is doing in the band. Listening to myself play with guitar and vocal cues is a time where I can sit down and be critical to how I sound in relation to what’s being played.

Am I too busy in spots? I’m sure I am.

How does this fill sound here? Do my fills sound too much the same in XYZ song? Probably, I’ll have to listen to find out.

Listening to myself is ultimately a time for me to listen to how bad I am in parts, and what I can do to fix/ re-arrange it.

On a side now, we still don’t have a name for our project yet. At first, we were sliding towards Matlock, but seriously, there’s a lot wrong with that name. It’s a little too campy, a little too old, and a little too high school-ish. Seriously, I love playing in bands, but I HATE naming them.

For your entertainment perusal: Rob and the Frogstompers; Nate Sullivan; Steveronline

Got the holidays behind me

 

 

 

So the holiday season is over and it’s back to work, geat. Besides all the problems I’ve ran into the past few months (moving, being jobless for the first time since I was sixteen, living with a significant other), everything went find the past few weeks. Actually, you can say that it, for the most part, was pretty un-eventful. I didn’t go out to visit family, the GF and I didn’t break the bank on christmas, and on NYE, I went to bed at a respectable time (2:30 am-ish).

I’ve gotten interested in a few new things over the holiday break. I’m currently reading The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I even picked up The Return of the King on DVD for my viewing enjoyment. I bought Sam and Max: Season One for the Wii, I’m currently loving the hell out of that game.

The music will start up Sunday at the same bat time, same bat channel. It’s been about two weeks since we’ve played, but it’s felt like a year. I’m hoping that we can get a few dates planned for the spring.

Oh! I almost forgot. Every year for christmas, I go out to the movie theaters to go see the worst movie playing. Over the past few years, I had to make some rule changes (As in, the worst movie in the theater was a movie I wanted to see) to keep in line of the holiday tradition.  The intended theme for this exercise is that I should go see that worst movie or be a movie that I really don’t want to see because it’s so bad. Holiday films are normally off limits (it’s a given they’re bad, so I equate it to cheating).  It’s pretty simple rules.

Every year, there’s usually about two/ three movies I can choose from. This year, wow, there was only one movie that I wanted to see (Frost Nixon), everything else looked like complete shit. I could go see Valkerie (the trailers looked terrible enough),but I was afraid that I might like it. Bedtime Stories looked like another contender, but just because it’s a childrens movie, that doesn’t neccessarly mean it’s a terrible movie. I settled for what I thought is a contender for worst movie of the year… Four Christmases.

This steaming pile of shit was the most boring 90 minutes I’ve ever spent in my life. We didn’t even finish it, my girlfriend threw up her arm and yelled “DONE!” about fifteen minutes before the end (I had to go on Wikipedia to fill out the rest of the story). We promtply went home and drank ourselves into the next morning.

Here’s a list of Bad movies I’ve seen on Christmas.

1999- Galaxy Quest

2000- Dude, where’s my Car?

2001- Shallow Hal

2002- Friday After Next

2003- Peter Pan

2004- National Treasure

2005- The Ringer

2006- Night at the Museum

2007- National Treasure 2

2008- Four Christmases

Yes, with the exception of Galaxy Quest, I despise every movie I see on Christmas day, Four Cristmases is the first I ever walked out on (hopefully that doesn’t become habit, movies are so expensive!). I took my girlfriend to see National Treasure on a date (before we were going out) to see if she was cool or not. We ended up laughing all the way through it and having a really good time making fun of the movie.

I’ve only walked out of 5 movies, I ten not to like doing that, but sometimes you just have to. I’ve walked out of Reindeer Games, Darkness Falls, Sphere, Alien Vs. Predator: Resurrection, and Four Christmases.

Baseball fever 2009

Well, not really a fever, but somewhat of an anticipation for the upcoming season. It’s going to be a different relationship this year, I’m in a new city with a different team that’s in a different league. Neither team plays each other all year (I already looked at league play week), so it’s going to be a little awkward for me. I’m an American League man, I love my American League teams. I’m going to miss not seeing the Indians this year, I’ve really come to think of that team (and by extension, the ball park), as a place to hang out during the summer. See, I used to live two blocks from Progressive field in Downtown Cleveland, Ohio. For seven bucks I could walk over to the ballpark after work, pop in a little AM transistor radio I had, and sit and relax for three to four hours. Hell, on a good day (dollar dog night), I would have dinner by gorging on hot dogs.

Now this year, I have the Washington Nationals, the fucking laughing stock of baseball. I hear they have a nice park though, and I should really take a tour, but I don’t have any emotional attachment to the team. My girlfriend won’t even let me explain that it’s ok to like 2 teams at once (She’ll always be a ‘Grady’s Lady’). My rationale is that the Indians are a AL team, the Nats are NL, they never meet, so they’ll never rival.

I’ll probably end up going to games alone.

I know all of this sounds incredibly nerdy, I believe most true sports fans are like this to a degree or two. I lived in close proximity to my favorite team, now I don’t. I live to a shit team in a different league, of course I’ll be pining for my first team. I’m just hoping the Nats will be something to root for this year.

Summer or Bust

    

 When I saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine a little over a week ago, I thought the summer movie season was starting with a major mis fire. My feelings weren’t coming from age old love for the character, or some kind of obsessive fanboy obsession, but from an outside-looking-in point of view. I know very little of the characters in the movie besides Gambit (he was in the cartoon and the Sega Genesis video game), and I didn’t even know that there was a published back story to Wolverine before the movie, so I had little to go on before walking into the theater; which I guess would be best if there’s going to be any type of non-biased review.

     Here it goes… It stinked.

     There’s really not much else to say besides it’s a stinker of a movie. Even as far as moving making goes, there’s such glaring problems with the production value of the film, that it takes you out of any kind of disbelief you were in and leaves you wanting to leave the theater early so you can beat the traffic.

       Wolverine had me think of a few traps that many film makers fall into when they know they’re making movies.

     1.) A movie lacking in plot, script, or story? Simple, take a note from the Michael Bay School of Movie Making and fill boring spots and plot holes with fire and explosions.

     2.) If your protagonist a naturally violent so-and-so? Simple, take all blood out of the movie. You can be as violent as you want as long as there’s no blood.

     3.) Glaring Plot hole keeping your writers up all night? Easy, put it in the movie anyway, The fanboys won’t notice. They’re too busy quibbling over if the casting was correct and if the director didn’t “ruin” the source material.

     4.) Script written on a napkin? Simple! Give your actors a chance to rewrite the script for you (looking squarely at you Christian Bale).

     Over all, I thought X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a plain-out, badly made movie. Every time I started being entertained, I would be jarred out violently by bad script, special effect, or movie ending plot hole. It’s like the director threw his hands up in the air duing editing and shouted “Whatever it takes to put 90 minutes together. right?”.

     Now for the comments from the people saying, “You didn’t like it because you didn’t know the source material” and “you can’t appreciate the good story over a few film flubs?”. Sorry, Wolverine, when he’s not chopping people into itty-bits, leads a very boring life. Your source material isn’t that great either. If you wanted a good movie, they should of just looped the first 20 minutes of the movie 5 times to fill the 90 minute mark.

Whatever Happened to Those Catchy Intro Songs for a Cartoon?

     

 

 Let’s take a trip down memory lane. You’re 5 or 6 years old, it’s Saturday morning, and you’re already bouncing off the walls at 6:00 am due to a sugar infused breakfast. You turn on the TV and next thing you know, your jamming out to the opening themes of Garfield and Friends, or The Snorks, or The Wuzzles, or (insert childhood show here). As soon as that first note makes it out of the TV speaker, you are glued to the set for the next 30 minutes. Hell, you can be in the other room and once you hear the first bass beats of the Duck tales theme, (even today) you’ll come racing to the television set.

Gettin a pug

Here’s a couple of pictures of the little guy in question. We don’t have a name yet for him, but I’m thinking Brock Rocketcock Thunderstrike Ulesys Merigold Bitchslapper (or BRTUMB for short).

Summer Project: They are eh-growin!

The GF (or “gf”…. I’m lazy with the consistency) and I are growing some plants. She’s mostly growing herbs, but I’m taking a shot at something you can actually pick off the vine. Right now I’m growing habareno peppers, jalapeno peppers and pumpkins (of the pie variety). I’ve never really grown anything before, so this is a pretty exciting experiment. I’m actually quiet excited that the pumpkin plant has sprouted and the pepper plants starts bulbing (or whatever you call it). The pictures attached are as of 5/22/2009. I’m going to try to take pics every day or so to show the progress. 

 

Pumpkin

 

Pumpkin from front

 

Jalapeno pepper

 

Jalapeno from front

Hot Fuck Habanero pepper

Habanero from the front

 

Let’s see how these little fuckers grow!

Terminator: Salvage the cliche

The GF has the car for the weekend, so I decided to do the smart thing and walk the 4 1/2 miles to the local theater to see Terminator: Salvation. It was a nice sunny day, so it wasn’t too much of a deal  (and I got a good sunburn on the back of my neck over the whole deal) and plus I’m sure there was some type of health factor involved that I benefited from. 

Anyway, I get to a early show (it’s cheaper) with extreme low expectations for this movie. A sequel/ semi reboot of the series didn’t sit well with me. 

Enough of the jibber jabber, here’s the review.

 

IT STINKS.

There’s a lot of problems with this movie. Terrible script, over acting, and pointless plot devices are scattered throughout this mess, but the one problem I’ve had most with this installment was the re-reinvention of the series paradoxes. John Conner gets word that Kyle Reese (Connors dad) has been abducted by the robots, and unless John saves Kyle, there won’t be a John Conner. Got that part? Well if there’s no Kyle Reese, there would be no reason for the robots to go into the past to kill John or Sarah Conner, thus never leaving robot parts behind for Cyberdyne to reverse engineer–> create Skynet –> have Judgement Day —> etc etc.

So John Conner would rather live in a shitty world than take one for the team and let Kyle Reese die. On top of that John Conner is kid of a emo prick about the whole thing; making everybody uncomfortable around him when he starts spouting off that “He is the past and the future”. OHHHHHH WEEELLLLL GOOOOD FOR YOUU!

That’s it, I can’t keep going on with this review. It was a overbudget let down.

Big changes up ahead

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to have a puppy. The GF and I are driving 3 or so hours to Somerset PA (PA’s ass pimple) to meet up with our contact (the gf’s mom) to get our puppy. If you scroll down my posts, you’ll see pictures of the little guy.

I finally got hired into to the firm I’ve been temping for since early March. My first day is Monday (6/1) and I start off with will health care and the lot. It’s a pretty exciting time to get a job when there’s so few to choose from. I’ve really needed that kind of stability in my life so I can peruse other projects (like vacations and killing bums and what not). living week to week is never any fun, so actually having a growing bank account is a pretty good feeling. Now I can finally pay off moving expenses I’ve incurred back in September.

Believe it or not, the name of this picture is "Flint"

Speaking of un-employment, I watched Michael Moore’s Roger and me last night. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a documentary about the rise and complete and total collapse of Flint Michigan (Michael Moore’s home town). Moore sees first hand what one company, that is pretty much the financial life blood of the city, can do to when they pick up roots and move to Mexico. The movie is a little rough around the edges (more than likely due to Moore’s inexperience in film making being his first time and all) but the content is solid. It’s obvious that there’s some liberties to time of events in this picture, but I don’t think Moore was going for that kind of thing. Ultimately, he got his point across of what happens to a town after the prime source of employment is gone. First thing the city did was try resorting to other industries; obviously there aren’t any, it was a car town. Next, the City tries tourism, but who the hell wants to go to Flint? Finally, President Reagan comes to town and tells some citizens flatly that they should probably move to a more prosperous part of the country if they want jobs. Crime goes up, employment goes down, and a cash register and news van get stolen.

Normally I’m not a Michael Moore fan. I found Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheight 9/11 to be lacking in substance and facts. Those two pieces really felt like Moore was trying to push his personal agenda too hard, for because of that the documentary suffered. Sicko on the other hand was awesome. I found Sicko to be a genuine social commentary that (for it being made by a big liberal loudmouth) was fairly moderate and down the middle when it came to the issues.

Long story short, go out and Netflix Roger and Me. It’s not as dated as you might think (except for the hair cuts, the fashion, and awww gaawwwd Miss America 1988 is HIDEOUS!). This flick is also VERY relevant to what’s going on in Detroit at the moment, it’s a good lesson in how we can take what happened in the past to apply in the future.

No perusal today folks, I linked everything in the blog. Thanks to Wikipedia and the nerds that keep it full of quasi factual info!

The changes; they came

Egon Spengler Poff-Leonard Phd

After about 6 months of looking and talking about it, the GF and I finally got a puppy. We drove to Somerset, PA (WOW is that town horrible) to meet up with the GF’s mom to pass the puppy along to us. The little guy cried for a little bit, but for the most part, he slept the entire 3+ hours back home. It wasn’t until Saturday night the we were let in on how annoying puppy wimpering can be. I ended up sleeping on the couch right next to the little guy to keep him quiet. The next day we took him to the pet store, where he met some other dogs, and about 2 girls that just oogled over him (note to single guys, get a puppy). Afterwards I was dropped off at band practice, then afterwards I ate a shit ton (or metric shit ton) of ham. Delicious, all American Ham… from Canada.

 

Puppy Stats

Name: Egon Spengler Poff-Leonard P.h.d.

Breed: Pug

Age: 11 weeks (born March 10, 2009)

Weight: 6 1/2 pounds as of 5/31

Egon Spengler? Well Saturday night, the GF and I were trying to figure out a name so we can start calling that (thus he can learn it) and for the pet insurance application. The GF was looking for something powerful, like Brock Sampson or Gaius (Julius Caesar), I went with the more traditional route and tried to remember more pop-culture references for the little guy. Possible names I came up with were Freddy Krueger, John Rambo and Rocky Balboa. The little guy started reacting to Egon, so that name pretty much stuck.

I also managed to take a few pictures of the plants Saturday (5/30/2009) to show how far they came since the last time I posted something. The pumpkins are coming along nicely, growing about 5-6 inches a week. The Jalapeno is starting to flower out and the habanero is much larger. I’ve bought a rosemary plant last week, but there’s really nothing interesting about the guy.

What the plants look like as of 5/30/2009

The Pumpkins

Jalapeno Peppers

Hot Fuck Habanero Peppers

Rosemary

This is getting ridiculous

Wait! There's more, oh- no there isn't

What the hell happened last week, huh? I get to work, I find out Mr. “Heeyyy OHHH” died the night before, then on Thursday, Farrah Fawcett dies. I saw that one coming, but then a few hours later when I’m home, the GF walks in from the gym and tells me that Michael Jackson just died. I told her I have a one celebrity death per day quota, so tell me tomorrow (which she did because she’s an awesome GF). THEN this morning on my commute to work, I read from the paper next to me on the train that Billy Mays is dead. I immediately threw my arms up in disgust and belted out a “OHHH, WHAT THE HELL NOW?!”. This got me thinking; there must be some kind of higher power taking the souls of these people in order to prolong their own life. Who would do such a thing? Who is living on the fringes of life, just hanging on by a teeny, tiny thread, hoping for the opportunity to come back to full health to rule the world like he once did.

Who is this creature, living this half life in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to attack and regain his influence and strength? Some say it’s the person who much not be named, but I’ll name him…

Things coming together

The band is doing great. We have shows lined up (could fill out the schedule a little more, but what can you do, eh) and practices are really really productive. Unlike other projects I’ve been with in the past, we’ve been doing a great job keeping new music in the mix for our rehearsals. I’ve been with bands where the same 6 – 7 songs we started practicing when we first formed were the same 6 – 7 songs we were practicing 4 years later. Steve and Nate have been doing a superb job keeping the rest of us engaged in new music on  a consistent basis. Sometimes I feel that I’m not contributing what I should be (The Ringo syndrome), but hopefully that will turn around when I finally get off my ass and, once and for all, learn garage band on my Mac.

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The GF and I went to Baltimore over the weekend to attend the Wedding of one of the GF’s aunts. Why didn’t anybody tell me Baltimore can be so much fun? From what I saw, it’s a very clean city (with a so-so skyline) and a really nice harbor district. The harbor district reminds me of the old flats in Cleveland before it went down hill; full of clubs and bars and nice restaurants. The only issue I had with the entire experience was how expensive parking is in Baltimore. We were at the Rusty Skupper for probably 3.5 – 4 hours and (even with a parking voucher) we owed $11. Someone told me that Baltimore’s public parking is ran by the city, what the hell!?! Does it really need to be that much?

One thing I want to check out next time I’m in Baltimore is the Urban Pirate ride. It’s a pirate ship with water cannons (sounds like fun right?). During the day, a pirate on a small motor boat tries to board the bigger pirate ship your on, so you blast him with the water cannons… yeah, I know. Well anyway, this company also has something called BYOG (Bring Your Own Grog), it’s a adult party every Friday night where you go on the pirate ship (assuming dress in pirate) and you go out into the water and basically get drunk and party with pirates. To me, that’s all American, baby Jesus shaking hands with George Washington, fun.

Visit to my old home town: Warren, Ohio

Aahh, bright sunny Warren. It pretty much looks like this all year long.

Last Tuesday, the GF sent me a text message from work asking if I wanted to go to Warren for the weekend (there was a Sunrise pizza in it for me if I came with).  The GF’s cousin recently been admitted to the local hospital to have a “baby extraction” and she wanted to go visit to see this thing (I’ll admit, my motivations were COMPLETELY food based). I eventually agreed the the idea, and on Friday after work, we made the drive from Washington DC back to Warren, Ohio.

Top five nintendo bad guys that pissed me off to no end

My formative years were the 1980′s. That was the decade where I learned my ABC’s, learned to tie my shoes, work the tv remote, figure out if I liked sports or not, etc. etc. etc. but it was also the time of my life that I got into video games. For christmas 1987, I got the Ninja Turtle Blimp and a NES. My NES came with Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, and Track and Field (came with the Power Pad). I mostly played SMB because I really didn’t understand duck hunt (I was one of those kids that would put the gun right up to the tv to shoot, thus eliminating all the challenge in the game). SMB was my first experience in pure unadulterated frustration. Don’t get me wrong, most of the game is pretty easy, but every once in a while, there’s a wrench (hammer) thrown into the works that puts the brakes on your game, leaving you’re just left there  at the paused screen, thinking to yourself “How the god damned HELL do I get past this!?”.

rants and raves about the metro

Every day, I hear someone complaining about the metro rail. On Monday it’s the news, on Tuesday it’s the GF, today, it’s some Asian woman that missed getting on the Orange line train at Dunn Loring/ Merrifield.  Why all the hate? It’s not like the metro kills 9 people due to negligence every day.

The whimsical world of the velvet painting

Velvet paintings, velvet paintings, v e l v e t paintings. What’s not to love about them? Velvet paintings are made of two of the best attributes of humanity, first of which is velvet and the other art. Who ever thought of the concept of painting on a swath of velvet was either a genius or a mad genius. Either way, velvet paintings are here to stay. As long as there are airport Marriott starving artist art shows, we’ll be surrounded by velvet paintings for eons to come.

Missing the point

I apologize up front, but I’m gonna rant.

I’m in complete media fatigue. When I dial up NPR this morning during my commute to the office, I rolled my eyes when Morning Edition started off with ”The New Conservative Congress”. This is probably the five-hundredth time since election night NPR ran this piece. I’m not bitter that conservatives won, heck, I’m a Republican and that’s just dandy. I’m tired of the media beating the shit out of a dead horse.

It kind of like when you go to a friends house in February and their Christmas tree is still up.

For some reason, I naively thought that after Tuesday night, the media would back off and I’d be able to listen to some other news besides what John Boehner had for lunch. Yes, I know he’s got a uphill battle rounding up newely elected Tea Party Canidates and yes, I know he loves golf, but why do I have to hear about it from every view point known to man. It’s tiring.