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Blade: the series - cancelled

Not to overshadow the great news of Robert Downey Jr being cast in the role of Tony Stark (Iron Man) but it looks like Spike TV has decided to not pick up Blade the series for a second season. I've only watched maybe 4 episodes of the show so far, but I have all the rest of them sitting on my ipod waiting to be viewed. I know it wasn't as strong as the films, but it seemed like it might go somewhere interesting. Blade was always a cool character, maybe cooler in small doses, or as a guest star in a Spider-Man comic... but still its a shame they're ending the series before it really has a chance to find an audience. I definitely could've seen Blade the Series evolving into a slightly silly but still fun escape show, like a little bit more than Xena or Mortal Kombat: Conquest, but not quite a "serious" show. Maybe more like a Witchblade or the ill fated Birds of Prey. Anyhow, that's the news for now. The word isn't official yet, but it looks like they'll finish up the first season at least. Read all about it on Superhero Hype! Later kids.

And Iron Man is...

Robert Downey Jr.

Can I just say something at this point... Holy crap that is awesome news. Ain't it Cool News is reporting that Downey has nabbed the role in the upcoming Marvel film. They say that it will break in the trades tomorrow morning. Wow, this is great. I mean Downey really will be able to get into the soul of this exceptionally complex and dark character. I honestly couldn't be happier.

Can you imagine if this role had been given to Tom Cruise?

Good job Favs. Good job Paramount.

Favreau has confirmed it on his Official Iron Man Blog saying: "It is true. Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark. I am about as excited as I can be. I saw what he can do and he is extremely enthusiastic about playing Stark. I can say with absolute certainty that there is no better choice. The humor and emotional dimension he brings truly raises the bar on this project. Get ready."

Super cool :)

EWWWWWW....

Dustin Diamond (Samuel "Screech" Powers) is going to be a porn star...

Its called Saved by the Smell.

Read all about it HERE.

my skin is totally crawling....


UPDATE - I have NOT watched this... don't know if I can even handle it, but someone just sent this to me so here you go people. A link to footage of the tape. Let's just work under the assumption that it is totally Not Safe For Work. really it's probably not safe for anything. But here you go anyhow...

http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=1&pmmsid=1728170

climbing and tv

I'm so tired... went climbing with Tara last night again. Of course that was after going to the gym at work and running 5km. I did pretty well though. Incrementally better than my first time. I really like this Mission Cliffs gym. At the moment I'm thinking I'll go once or twice more with Tara and her climbing partner Ben, and then maybe get myself a 10 visit pass to the gym. That would probably be the best thing to do, because I feel bad using up all of Tara's guest passes. Also I think that by after going 10 times I would really know for sure if its something I'd be interested in keeping up with. It's such a fun thing to do though I imagine I will want to do it when I can. If you know anything about graded climbing, I've been obviously starting small, doing 5.5 and 5.6 level climbs. I tried one 5.7 and blasted through it no problem, but I still had pretty fresh hands at the time and powered over a bunch of it. What I'm really enjoying about the climbing though is that it requires strength, technique, and honestly a lot of thought. It's like working on a puzzle sometimes when you're at a tricky part of a wall. You have to really think how to move your body or shift you weight to reach the next hold. Its like a workout for the body, mind, and soul. I think especially as I get technically better I will enjoy it even more.

I watched ABC much touted Six Degrees premiere a day or two ago While I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, I'm still not really sold on it. It comes from JJ Abrams who obviously is a really smart cookie, having created some truly great tv over the past few years. I'm not sure I'd know how to explain it, if asked, so far its basically just a drama about people. I guess its about how everybody affects everybody else, the characters don't even know each other for the most part. Still they affect each other in interesting and unexpected ways, or presumably they will. The pilot was soft at times, and some of the specific characters stories didn't really grab me, but I guess the concept overall could be pretty good. Ultimately it will depend on all the various stories being told, and if I can get interested in the lives of the characters. So I guess I'm a bit mixed on the show at the moment. Give it another episode or two to see.

So far I don't think anything has been axed off of the fall schedule for this new season. Still a few more shows to premiere though. I'm looking forward to The Nine, 30 Rock, and Friday Night Lights. And two others very cool looking ones Traveler, and Day Break are both mid season replacement shows waiting in the wings. Here's the Metacritic listing of what shows have yet to premiere this Fall. Also check out the Fall '06 DeathWatch at Brilliant But Cancelled.

Podcasting tonight. Should be fun, if I can stay awake that long. I'm off for now. Lates.

The "podcast" debate

If you're familiar with what's been going on regarding the term "Podcast" then you should find the following MP3 file extremely interesting. I urge people to listen to it, Created by Rob from the very smart Podcast 411 it runs about 10 minutes and tries to dispel some of the hype surrounding the media attention to the issue. If you don't know it came out recently that "apparently" apple was trying to patent the word podcasting. Or so most reports claimed. Seriously that's not what happened though, and I know I can't explain it anywhere near as well as Rob does, so please just check out the MP3 file. Podcast 411 is an extremely well produced informative weekly (I think) interview podcast, and although I don't listen all the time, I pick up episodes here and there that interest me. I definitely trust what he says here. So check it out...

LISTEN AND LEARN - PODCAST 411

Thanks to Chris from the Collected Comics Library for forwarding this to me.

Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick review

I bought Evil Dead: AFOB used a few months ago and never got around to playing it. Instead I got myself all into SSX 3 again. But with some time on my hands this past week I thought I crack out Ash, and a hoard of deadites for some gory dismembering fun. Unfortunately this game falls more than a little flat. I love the Evil Dead films, but this game does not live up to the legacy. Don't get me wrong, there are moments here that are fun, but on the whole it just wasn't that great an experience.

The game is too short. With 6 levels I beat the game in 3 short sittings. The level design isn't varied enough, nor does it have the detail that would make this more visually interesting. Of the 6 levels total, 4 of them are the exact same environment only with different "skins". The character design is fairly decent, and the mechanics are surprisingly good, despite a few small camera issues. I liked the variety of weapons and their different implementations too. In fact the entire combat system was decent, not amazing, but pretty solid. My biggest gripe with the game though comes in the enemy layout (if you can call it that). See, enemies either come from one of two places, spiraling vortexes leading to some neither dimension or out of specific spots in the ground. The point is that they are only from, and only hang out, in specific areas. Also they are continually regenerating. So what this means is that you can never actually clear a level. The spaces are large, and you can make you way through vast open already finished areas only to all of a sudden be sprung upon by 10 deadites at once. While sometimes being surrounded in a crowd of zombies is great fun, it's not a fantastic experience when it's almost every encounter and you can't predict where it will come from. 3rd person action games with preset enemy positions are much more satisfying. I like the feeling of clearing a level and knowing I don't have to be worries about backtracking if I want to. This game involved much back and forth, but I just didn't feel like I was really getting anywhere. Ultimately the best strategy was to just run through the game and try to accomplish the objectives are quickly as possible lest you run out of ammo. Couple that with the patheticly bad boss battles and it leads to a somewhat unsatisfying experience.

Still, that all said, it is a good amount of fun to shred limbs off your opponents with a chainsaw. This is the middle of three Evil Dead games from THQ. I'd like to try the new one Evil Dead Regeneration to see if they managed to improve the gameplay. At least it's something to tide us fans over until Rami stops making Spider-man films and gets back to his roots. Fistful of Boomstick might be worth a rental but don't buy it. The game is too short, has too many annoying enemy situations, and if it weren't for the good license and the sometimes funny dialogue, with Bruce Campbell reprising his role, this wouldn't be worth a second glance. I'd say really only bother if you're already into this Evil Dead story. Otherwise there are much better games out there.

6/10

Freakfest x2 and more

So even with Erica out of town for the weekend I still managed to be really busy. I wish she was back but I've still got a few days to go on my own. We went out for a short while on Friday night but then decided to retire fairly early back to my place. Jan and Cecile brought over the very awesome board game Robo Rally, so we drank and played that, until I got too drunk and couldn't concentrate. Then we watched one of my all time favorite films The Last Starfighter. But that was only the start of the fun and excitement this weekend on Saturday instead of going to see the Dragon Boat Races, I decided to relax a bit and play an older game that I picked up a while ago but had never played Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick. Also I was really a bit too hung over to get out very early. I did a quick run around my neighborhood on Sat morning and it was pretty disastrous. Mind numbing video games were exactly what I needed.

Later on in the day though my friend Daniel convinced me to come out and meet him for some time at the Lovefest which was happening downtown at Civic Center. Wow, what a total freakfest. Basically its a music festival. Starts with a parade through the city. Each float has a different DJ on it. The parade ends at the civic center area outside city hall. And then its just a big dance party in the street. There were 20 different stages, a bunch of vendors, food and drinks. Daniel and I spent like 3-4 hours dancing. I'd say we definitely spent most of our time at the Energy 92.7 stage. Although I started out at a different stage that was pretty Technoy, it was easier to get into a groove with more dancy music. Especially cause its pretty weird to be in the street in the middle of the day in a crowd of people dancing. But the people were really great there. All the freaky freaks, and rave kids came out to show their support for the Lovefest. I've never seen so many furrys in one place. It was pretty fun, and even though I didn't see Oakenfold who was headlining the festival it was a very good time.

We didn't actually stay for the entire evening though, actually we went out to meet up with the rest of the gang at Film Night in the Park. This time it was up in North Beach and they were showing The Bicycle Thief, which I had never seen before. Granted we missed the first 30 minutes trying to find parking, but considering how slow the film is I think I got everything down pretty well. It was extremely depressing, but I guess I'm glad I saw it finally. I was supposed to see it at film 101 in university but I skipped out on that nights class to go to see Sloan play for like the 8th time.

On Sunday morning bright and early Daniel, Cecile and I went out to do the Race for the Cure. The timed run last run I did was for the SF Marathon 5km back at the end of July and as you can see I finished with a very respectable time of 23:50. This time though with the route almost exactly the same I managed to pull away with an even better time :) The results can be seen here, I finished 65th overall with a time of 22:25 for the 5km. Admittedly I got a bit of a better start this race than I did at the SF Marathon run, but I still ran much better overall and am really very happy with myself. I actually finished 19th for males in my age range, and that's with me being at the old end of the range. Anyhow, good times. I ended up raising a surprisingly large amount of cash with $700. It was all from family and I think it helped that I'd recently seen them all out in Nebraska.

After a shower and lunch we went out to see Jet Li's new one Fearless. Supposedly this will be his final action martial arts film. And I have to say while beautiful, with decent action, it never lived up to the likes of HERO, which is by far his best work. Fearless was a little too simple overall, and I felt like his character was a little too unlikable for a little too much of the film. There was also more than one tired cliche. A few of the fights were staged very well though, and some of the supporting character had nice three dimensional nuances. Not the highest note to go out on, but still a decent film.

As if that wasn't enough after the film my friends and I all went down to the real freakfest of all fetishdom, the Folsom Street Fair. This is one of those things that could really only happen in San Francisco. Basically just like the other street fairs Folsom plays to the local businesses, however Folsom street happens to have all of leatherworks in the city on it (or at least it seems to). The Fair has basically become one huge crazy, fetish party mostly around leather and bondage. There were a bit too many people there, like it was so many people too crowded that I was uncomfortable, and there was definitely an element of sensory overload; but as the fair thinned out and people started packing up and the crowds dwindled down I could handle it better. I saw all sort s of crazy shit. I mean really I have never ever seen so much cock in my life. for real it was crazy. naked men everywhere on the street. I really wish my friend Gillian was there cause I think she would've really enjoyed it, and been able to keep me a bit more grounded. I was a bit overwhelmed as I said. There were public spankings and floggings for charity. All sorts of whips, chains, and leather everywhere. People acting like dogs on chains, their masters towing them along. I saw a really crazy suspension that looked very intense. Saw a like a 70 year old guy chained to a fence. masks, hoods, dildos, and many, many cockrings. I even saw a guy getting a blowjob for the crowd. Basically a fun lighthearted afternoon in the city. I found some sweet new shades there, but I kind of think that this'll probably be the one and only time I got to this particular street fair. It was definitely an experience, I'm just not into the leather fetish culture that much. Oh and cock. I'm just not into cock. Nothing else really to say about that.

Sunday night I came home and chilled. It was a really busy weekend, and even today I'm just tired. I need more sleep.

I've had a complaint that the text on the blog is too small. And I'm not sure really. I mean I know its small, but if you have a good monitor I think its ok. Also I can't really judge how people see because my eyes are so bad I just figure everyone can see things easier than me. So this post obviously is in the one sized larger font. Is it better, or does it just makes the posts waaaay too long? What do you think?

Ok I'm out now. TTYL.

Interactive Text

I don't know if when I explained my whole Tov thing in this post if you actually took it seriously or not, but there really is a point to what I was saying. I've been thinking about it a bit more recently. I just KEEP running across situations over IM where misunderstanding occur because someone doesn't understand what the other person means. This kind of half way real time conversation like IM, web chats, or text messaging are really still pretty new, but I think that many people have found them to be a really good middle ground communication measure. Kelly over at the Based On Experience Podcast talked about this very issue in one of her episodes in one of their episodes a while ago. For the life of me I can't figure out which one (somewhere around ep#7 i think) but you all should be listening to them anyways, so you probably already heard it. In essence she, along with her cohost Bobby were talking about how people set up personal boundaries, and that despite or perhaps inspite of the rapid advancements in communication technology, socially its a much more complex world today. Assessing and understanding your boundaries, and then questioning them, is important. Remember how a few years ago you'd never used IM? or remember the first time you sent a text message? Internet culture is bringing people together like never before, but are we ready for it? Am I? I like these middle ground forms of communication. the stunted kind of conversation that IM provides because it is safe, I understand the rules (for the most part), and I know that I am always in control. In another five years will everyone be listing their Skype number online for true VOIP communication? maybe. For now though I know that I am not quite comfortable letting someone I've never seen, met, or communicated in any way, call me to TALK on the phone. Net-relationships are complicated enough, and I like the filtered approach. For now.

This is where something like TOV could potentially come into play. Yes I know that its kinda goofy in any kind of practical way, but as a symbol I think it has merit. Imagine along with me for a moment. What if there was some kind of standardized text animations that everyone knew and everyone could follow... imagine if the colors of words meant inflection? Why don't we have this. What I really want is Interactive Text. The color association is easy. We already associate colors with emotions. Red for love, or anger, blue is cool and relaxing, and is green which has natural qualities and depth, black is dark, important and imposing, and others like yellow, or white, or fucha can mean different things to different people. Now that wouldn't be too hard to nail down somewhat more definitively (at least for these purposes). The other key to the Interactive Text is simple animations. I'm really not sure this isn't already totally possible now, but what I see is say taking a word that you've just typed in an IM, and with the click of a button applying a specific animation to it that conveys your intended emotion. Say you want the word to really resound affirmative, why not a slow bob up and down, negative left to right. How about for confusion we could have a slight twisted tension on the edges of the font, or a text that squishes and repairs to signify playfulness or sillyness.

These concepts aren't new, in fact there are already a number of logical animations out there for specific emotions. This really hit home with me after listening to the last episode of The Gen Y Retrocast (#32) where they talked about Sesame Street. I went onto YouTube and found a bunch of old cartoons from the show. Things like this and this and this. ok, maybe those aren't the perfect examples but you'll know what I meant if you watch them. Certain animations are already in our brains, we already understand them, so why not put them to use for some added level of integrated communication.

Interactive Text is better than TOV, in fact it eliminates the need for tov which never really worked all that well to begin with. What I want is the ability to just click a word as I type and apply an emotional context, especially sarcasm. Even if I have hold down a function key, I would.

If this already exists out there please someone let me know where and how... Yes maybe in 5 years society and I will be ready to just skip this whole jilted middle ground form of communication and jump right into relationships, but for now, i think something like Interactive Text could really improve the as is experience.

Spaceballs the series

Variety reports that MGM has picked up a one hour pilot and 13 half hour episodes to a Spaceballs cartoon show. There have been reports on this in development for the past year or so, directly from the horse's mouth Mel Brooks, but you know how things work usually... Now, it looks like this is for real going to happen. The episodes are being developed with heavy involvement by Brooks, who will also reprise his role as the voice of President Skroob, and Yogurt. The show will appear on the cable network G4 in the Fall of '07.

Taking old cult movies and making cartoons of them... whatever is the world coming to.

I really can't decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I guess good. I really liked the film, even own the dvd... but a cartoon? I think I'd rather have seen a real sequel. Maybe I'm just being picky, I mean I'm sure it'll be good, assuming that is they can get Rick Moranis to do Dark Helmet again. And really they should be able to, considering he was last seen reprising his role as Bob McKenzie, I mean Rutt, in Brother Bear 2: the moose on the loose... sheesh...

300 trailer

Check out this amazing looking new trailer for the film 300...



The trailer's from iFilm (I didn't realize they offered coding for blogs :) The film is by the man behind Sin City, Frank Miller. It is also based off a comic, although this one I haven't read yet. But after seeing the trailer I think I really would like to. You can find more info on the film over at Superhero Hype! What do you guys think?


UPDATE - god damnit, i hate it when they do that. Looks like the trailer has been taken down. I guess it wasn't ready to go up officially yet. Total BS. Once it's out on internet, and the buzz that it will generate is already in motion, all taking it down does is make people like me (who might blog about it, or talk about it on my podcast) PISSED OFF. Nice job Warner Bros.

Anti-drug PSAs

Cracked.com has a list up of their picks for the top 5 most ineffective anti-drug public service announcements. All of the PSAs are available to view on YouTube, and man are they completely hilarious. Check out this one, that I totally remember seeing a number of times when I was a child. When older I would sometimes sing the song to myself as I rolled a joint. hahah...



The rest of the list can be found HERE

More Tele - vision

Oh here's something maybe more interesting to you guys, last night I was very excited to watch the premiere of Smith. And I was completely surprised to realize that in fact that Smith actually has absolutely nothing to do with the film Mr and Ms Smith. Instead its about Ray Liotta, playing a high end criminal organizing his crew to pull off tricky robberies at places like museums and art galleries. It's violent, and stylized with interesting cinematography, and unfortunately a somewhat weak script. I was really excited to see this mostly because of how cool the trailers made it look. But looks alone, do not a good show make. I won't go so far as to write the show off yet, I'll give it some leeway, especially because I think Ray Liotta is great, but I just didn't find the story very compelling and I'm not sure how much better it will get given time. So far this is the most disappointing new show of the season, but maybe that's just because I had such high hopes for it.

Having a media center PC is really great. With Erica in Tokyo for a week on work I've got a lot of time on my hands, and despite the fact that I'm not anywhere near as comfortable 'not-doing-anything-at-all' as I used to be I'm trying to enjoy some time to catch up on tv etc. Still I'd rather she was home. That said I've also been checking out a few returning tv shows that I missed last season. I bet I'm not alone in for the most part avoiding tv. Not that I don't like it, I do, but I have other things to do with my time. I suppose its arguable if they're better or worse... For now though please indulge my small TV addiction, especially while E is out of town. Once I get a feel for the new shows I'll probably stick with two or three and drop everything else. Including dropping all three of the ones I watched last night, How I Met your Mother, Two and a Half Men, and The New Adventures of Old Christine. Although they all were fine, man is it just me or are sitcoms kinda crappy?! I mean really they just aren't that good; even the good ones. I also think I'm going to drop The Simpsons, I haven't been watching it in about 5 years and after one new episode I don't see any reason to start again. I'd rather stick with the Adult Swim shows and movies on my ipod I think.

Watching:
Amazing Race, Survivor, Heroes, Jericho, Studio 60, Robot Chicken, Squidbillies, Tom Goes to the Mayor, Korgoth, Blade, SNL, South Park, Family Guy, The Office, Lost, Weeds, Psych, Eureka, Fantastic Four, ATHF, Moral Orel, Venture Bros

Maybes:
Smith, New Adventures of Old Christine (i know what i just said...), Men in Trees (prob not), My Name is Earl, Duck Dodgers

Still looking forward to:
The Nine, Six Degrees, Numb3rs (missed it b4 by l33t is gr8!!1!), Friday Night Lights, 30 Rock, Day Break, The Game, Traveler, 30 Minutes Bay Area (new local version of 60 mins), Legion of Super Heroes

I will be forced to watch:
The Bachelor, Cold Case, Law and Order: SVU, 7th Heaven (god I hope not), random awful Lifetime movies...

my Castle Rock dilema

Being the one organizing the camping trips isn't always so fun. I can deal with it. I know I can, but its still just not so fun... I'm trying to organize a trip for aproximately 9 people in October to go to Castle Rock State Park. There are complications though and I've been going kinda crazy trying to figure out what to do. Castle Rock has no reservable sites, and closes its gates at sundown, its a hike to the site, and first come first serve...etc. Usually booking the camping is aganizing enough for me, and all that involves is picking a site and entering my credit card info. Check out this confusing email I just sent to my camping friends:

-----------
Hey guys,

-you can prob skim just down to the "which option sounds best paragraph" -

little snag with camping... both of you know something of the difficulties I've been having booking this thing for October. So yesterday I booked us a night at the county park thats right beside Castle Rock for the Friday with the thought that on Saturday morning we could just go early drive the 7.2 miles to the trailhead and hike the 1 1/2 - 2 hour trail into the Castle Rock Trail Camp. As the Castle Rock park itself has no reservable sites (and only 2 full time rangers who spend their time at the pay kiosks as opposed to their office) they aren't very prompt to answer their phones, so I talked to the Big Basin parks people (as they run all the SP campgrounds 'around' Castle Rock) and from them I am reasonably confident that we will be able to get two sites on the Saturday. HOWEVER here's the dilemma, yesterday in my slow agonizing haste to try and figure this out and book something for the friday night, i accidentially booked us 2 sites at the county parks for the THURSDAY night. D'oh! Unfortunately when I tried to call them to change it to the friday, they said that santa calra county parks policy is to only allow two night bookings for the weekends. And for some rediculous reason the fees involved in a straight up cancellation are $22.

So heres the deal assuming you just skimed that long and complicated above parqagraph, do I change the booking to Friday and Saturday? That will raise the cost to $64 for the 2 sites, if we do that, do we eat it on the second night and pay a second time for camping over at Castle Rock on Saturday? or we could go and stay there both nights at Sanborn, maybe doing a day hike in Castle Rock on Saturday. The third option is for me to eat the $22 (which I'm fine to do as it was my fault) cancel the reservation and then book us one night at the closest State Park (where we CAN book a single night). The closest state park is Big Basin, and sites are available, but even the 16 miles between the parks is a big drive (i don't remember how the road is), and I kind of feel like if we go to big basin, we might as well just go to big basin cause its a pretty good place too. Then again, I'm probably making more of it than i should. Maybe we should just book a hotel...

Which option sounds best:
1 - pay for three nights camping and stay at Sanborn (Fri) and Castle Rock (Sat)
2 - pay for two nights camping and stay at Sanborn (Fri, Sat) with a day hike at Castle Rock
3 - Pay for two nights camping and stay at Big Basin (Fri) and castle Rock (Sat), Geoff eats $22 in this deal
4 - some other plan (Big Basin 2 nights, Jans on Fri, motel...)

Any thoughts?
Geoff

I hate options...

---------------

Ok, I'm sure this isn't super interesting to you all... its just frusterating to me, I'll be back later today with something better. Bye for now.

a crazy big tv roundup

I've been watching a couple of pilots lately and I thought I should tell you what i liked and didn't because really... that's what a blog is for.

So I already mentioned Survivor a few days ago, but I caught up with another fun reality shows premiere just last night: The Amazing Race. It was exciting, especially cause since the first Amazing Race I don't really think I watched the show. Last year however I was listening intently to The Big Show podcast and they did a weekly Amazing Race update, which even though I didn't actually watch it, was a highlight of their podcast for me . Not really sure why... Anyhow, Jenny and Aaron have a great show, and they basically convinced me to check out this season of Amazing Race when it started up, which it now finally has. I have to say I'm pretty impressed. It's definitely one of the better reality shows, if anything because maybe there's just a little less backstabbing and flat out lying involved. People can really compete in the amazing race and keep some dignity, they can even (as far as I know) win the game just by playing smartly. I know, I know its sounds pretty novel. I really got a bit jaded watching the end of this past season of Big Brother, and I'm worried that Survivor is poised to break my heart too. I don't really know that I enjoy conniving, and manipulating as much as I used to. The Amazing Race started strong, and the people seemed all for the most part honest and decent. They started the show with a bang and eliminated two teams right in the first episode which was exciting. They scaled the Great Wall of China which was awesome, and I overall just enjoyed the teams. So far my favorites are the father/daughter team, and the Korean brothers from the Bay area (even though they're doing badly). The teams I'm not so keen on are the couple who fight all the time and the triatheletes with the disabled girl. I was really unimpressed with her claiming to NEED a hospital to get a cab quicker. She's playing it both ways and that's not cool at all. Enough of that though there's oh so much more out there.

Because the next couple of shows I saw are really the big ones that I'm excited about. First , Heroes. Probably the single show I was most looking forward to. If you've seen that 4 minutes long preview you know how great it looks. Ordinary people all over the world start exhibiting special powers. Like with mutants in the X-Men universe they must decide how to use these powers, and the rest of the world will have to decide how to react. This is like X-Men only set in the real world. I STRONGLY encourage anyone interested in this kind of superhero deconstruction story to pick up either Rising Stars by J Michael Straczynski, or the Astro Cityboth are amazing, and readily available in trade paperbacks. That said, Heroes does have something of the unfortunate task of setting up the world before it can start to change it irrevocably. I was excited to see an opening text crawl indicating that this is only the beginning of a much larger story. And parts of this introduction we're handled very well. The cheerleader in Texas, the geeky Japanese otaku we're great, even the Radical Professor X-like Indian scientist was interesting. What I worry is that this show might end up with too much copy and not enough originality. While yes I enjoyed it, I still couldn't help as I was watching, thinking ok that guy is based on Poet (RS), that girl is like Wolverine (X-men), that guy is like Nightcrawler, etc etc... it'll take a while for the show to find its own, I and while I'm interested to see where it goes the pilot wasn't quite as great as exciting the trailer made it out to be. Still a very good time though. But why let me decide, go watch the full pilot episode online (finally properly) for free at the Yahoo! Fall TV Preview Page (you might have to click the NBC, and the Heroes links).

Man, if I keep talking like this I'm going to have one crazy long post on my hands... oh well. I also watched my second most anticipated show for the new season last night Jericho, starring the enigmatic Skeet Ulrich. Jericho ask what would the world do, specifically one small town in Kansas, do in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust? It's a pretty interesting story to tell; 'cause while I know we we're all really scared watching The Day After with Steve Guttenberg, I don't necessarily think it would be so much like that. Oh don't get me wrong, I'm sure it'd be death and destruction a plenty, but there would also be people trying, desperately trying to keep things together, and learning to rely on each other more than ever before. I enjoy these unique looks at subjects that have already been explored elsewhere. I saw an interview where the producers of Jericho said that they really wanted to show something of the good in humanity at a dangerous time. It reminds me of a really great book I read by Orson Scott Card called The Folk of the Fringe, which explores this same idea from a Mormon perspective. Not that I actually endorse Mormonism but, I highly recommend the book. The pilot episode delivered plenty of interesting character moments and really left me wanting more. It was also backed by a great soundtrack. Go check out the entire pilot for free also over at the Yahoo! Fall TV Preview Page.

This morning on the way into work I watched the premiere of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip on my iPod. And all I can say is wow. I was hoping that this would be a good show, but I was really impressed with how great the pilot was. Matthew Perry, and Bradley Whitford were great, Amanda Peet somehow managed not to completely piss me off, and I completely love both Steven Webber and (unfortunately only a guest star) Judd Hirsch. As if you didn't know Studio 60 follows the behind the scenes of a SNL style comedy show. This isn't the one with Tina Fey, that's 30 Rock. This is the more dramatic one. And I honestly have to say, the drama shone through. It was actually smart, and made me laugh which was a great way to start the day. I'm very excited to keep watching this show. Don't believe me? Missed it for yourself? Go check out the full pilot online right here, just click on the "full premiere episode online" link :)

There are two other shows I saw that I wasn't so impressed with, the first one, not quite so bad is Men in Trees. This is by the same columnist/author who brought us Sex and the City... but man, this is no where near as good as that. Anne Heche takes on the Sarah Jessica parker role, but this time its in Alaska and she has decided to restart her romantic life up in the mostly male wilds of Alaska. This is an ABC show, and that makes sense because the sappyness of it shines. This is what happens when Disney (ABC) realize how well the cut down edited reruns of Sex and the City did on TBS. But folks, this definitely is not that good. I'll give it another episode or two to make sure, and maybe it'll appeal to the romance novel crowd, but this is far to family friendly to have any real bite.

Also, and I'm going to be really quick here. I saw The Class, and it was pretty much every single bit as horrible as I imagined it would be. God! can someone please cancel this immediately and erase it from my brain. 'Cause it really stunk. If you like to be masochistic, you can watch the pilot here.

To make yourself feel better why not go watch the awesome new Adult Swim show Korgoth of Barbaria, right over on YouTube. It is seriously all kinds of awesome.

Ok, this was definitely a long enough post, I'm sure I'll catch up on some more premieres today. Definitely Smith which I'm totally stoked about too. This is just too much blogging for me right now, so I'm going to go. Probably talk with you all in an hour or so when I decide I need to write another humungous post about nothing in particular... Later.

My Buddy Bill

So my buddy Bill is going to be sending me dvds from now on. Oh sorry, perhaps you know Bill by his full name... William "Captain Kirk" Shatner! That's right friends, I have officially joined the William Shatner DVD club! Every month for the next year I will receive a shiny new dvd to my doorstep, the best in underrated or cult sci fi, fantasy, and horror films. Many of them in the "its-so-bad-its-good" category each and every title has been hand picked by Mr. Shatner to educate the lowly uncinefied masses. This is perhaps the greatest day of my life, and I owe it all to my buddy Bill...

Some examples of the kind of films I can expect in the coming weeks: The Butterfly Effect, Immortal, it2i2, Virus, and Close Your Eyes... honestly with quality like this on the line, how can I go wrong?

big budget for an indie film

I had no idea that the new WWI fighter pilot film Flyboys was actually an independently made film. That's a pretty crazy story. Produced by the inscrutible Dean Devlin (ID4, The Triangle), and a bunch of other investors including David Ellison (son of Larry) spent more than $60 million of their own money to get the film made! I mean that's some serious dedication. Apparently the studios wouldn't touch this film, as these kind of pics are notoriously hard to make and never return as big as hoped for (other than possibly for Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels). But After seeing the amazing trailer I really don't see how this film will fail to make money. I mean come on, that's just really damn cool looking. And James Franco is a fantastic actor. I mean he really really should be a humungous star. Check out this lower res version of the trailer from YouTube.


Pretty impressive in my opinion.

Paul Van Dyk

Last night friends and I went out to see the DJ Paul Van Dyk playing at 1015. It was a bit of a crazy night. Lots of alcohol, or at least enough to make me pretty wasted. But it was necessary because he didn't even start his set until midnight. Erica and I stayed until like 4 am, which was definitely late enough for me. I think he was supposed to play until 7am. Seriously though I am too old for that, and the music just wasn't quite doing it for me as much as I was hoping it would. Strange in a way, because Paul Van Dyk is pretty famous around the world, only not at all here. Or sorry, I shouldn't say that, if you've heard of him he is extremely famous, if you haven't then he is a no one. Does that make sense? I mean that he is either extremely famous, or just a nobody. There isn't any inbetween. Basically in the world of DJs its Paul Oakenfold, and Paul Van Dyk. And if you know anything about that culture you'll probably know both of them. Not to say I'm a huge super big techno dance music guy, but I do try to stay hip for the kids... Actually I really like some good trancy stuff from time to time.

That said, I was surprised that not too many people knew Van Dyk when I told them about the show. I actually wasn't even planning on going, but the call I was waiting on never came... that's another story that I'm not going to bother getting into now, and one of our friends backed out of the show so there was an extra ticket up for grabs. I had a decent time, but I think I prefer to just listen every now and again to a song here and there, this eternal flow stuff is a bit much.

One really funny, awkward and embarrassing thing happened to me last night. I was pretty wasted and I guess I was sort of nodding off at one point while standing there on the dance floor. I mean it was pretty damn late. But so I'm in this daze, half dreaming that I'm talking to Erica (i believe) and, at least this is how I'm thinking it probably happened, this couple starts pushing their way past me through the extremely crowded dance floor towards the stage. The passed in front of me, and I'm guessing were pretty close to me like right in front of my face. So as they passed by I'm like sleeping and I have no reason why I did this except that it was right in front of me but I just sort of kissed this guy's cheek. I mean I think I was jostled sort of into him, but I definitely kissed him. And then there was this sort of snap, and I all of a sudden was just standing there, with the heavy beating techno music saying to myself 'wait a second. did I just kiss this guy?! WTF?!' I sort of just stood there, and the guy is like looking at me and we have this weird moment of awkward silence just sort of like 'yeah... that was weird'. And his girlfriend is standing there looking from me to her man back and forth like' WTF just happened?!' it was pretty funny, and very embarrassing. After one of those pauses that seem like forever I just turned around without saying anything and walked away to get another drink at the bar. Very embarrassing overall...

Ok, that's all for me now, but before you go, check out this super sweet trailer for this movie A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints. I think it looks awesome, and Robert Downey is just really really great these days. Bye bye.

gooey media fun...

A few gooey bits of media goodness for you.

Check out this sweet trailer for Eragon. It's like Dragonheart all over again, only hopefully cooler. Not that I didn't really enjoy Dragonheart, but I definitely think it could've been better. Then again, at least it was better than that god awful Dungeons & Dragons film. Hopefully Jeremy Irons will finally be in a dragon movie that has so quality to it. I still have to see the sequel to D&D which I believe was direct to dvd, but I suspect it isn't really very great. Honestly I'm not sure we've ever seen a really great dragon film... except maybe Reign of Fire, which is totally a guilty pleasure of mine :)

So I watched the premiere for the new Survivor last night and I'll say I liked it for the most part. Just like I thought once it started the race thing really wasn't as big a deal, at least to the contestants. I also heard today that starting literally with the next show they will be integrating the different tribes. Which makes sense I mean 5 people per tribe is just too small. If you missed the episode don't worry, it, and actually the entire season are going to be available for free on CBS Innertube. This is a smart move on the part of CBS if you ask me. I know that I used their site a fair bit when I kept missing episodes of this past season of Big Brother. Anyhow, the show itself looks to be good.

In terms of the racial divisions I had an inkling that it would really matter most to the african american tribe. Meaning it could've made them the strongest team, or been really bad for them. In such a short time to get to know each other I think it was a problem. I think it was Sundra who said that really they're all there trying to represent. That kind of pride maybe doesn't lend itself as well to the kind of teamwork necessary for the first challenges. Sekou was definitely the right person to go last night. He was too pushy too early, and he didn't actually deliver on the fire he kept talking so big about. So as it stands now I think I'm rooting for the Asian team on the whole, definitely the most likeable group, or maybe Cody as a single player, cause he was pretty impressive climbing that palm tree for the coconuts. We'll have to see where the show goes though, it's really only just begun.

Somehow I feel like a bit of a corporate sellout for this but I've totally been reading this USA Today blog called Pop Candy a lot. I mean its really good. Not as trashy as TMZ, but still chock full of good celebrity stories, and fun media/net stuff. Frankly I'd like my blog to be as cool as that. Only I'm glad I do have a place to talk about personal thing too. Maybe I'm just jealous. Net-envy... not a good thing. bah, whatever. Forget I even mentioned this...

I mentioned this on my podcast, but the Brilliant But Cancelled website has a contest running for their DeathWatch - Fall 06 where if you place your bets on which shows will get the ax and when you can win one of 9 video ipods, drawn weekly, or the grand prize of a 37" Aquos Flatscreen HDTV. Pretty cool contest, and its fun to watch shows get cancelled... unless they're cool new sci-fi shows like Threshold, Invasion, Surface, or Nightstalker... cause those always get cancelled and it makes me sad.

Metacritic has a good listing of all the Fall shows and their start dates right here.

I'm pretty happy that Hot Buttered Pop Culture is back on the air. It's a really great fun podcast. I also want to see if they were telling the truth that they track referring sites. If you guys read this, drop me a comment :)

Oh hey! How come no one told me about this spinach thing?! That's crazy, I love spinach and I totally could've died. Damnit. Now I have to stop eating it...

ok, I'm outta here. Going to have a BBQ at my parents house tonight. Peace out.

TOV = WTF?!

So a weird sort of thing happened that I don't really know how to explain. On my latest podcast, On Hold...ep026, which I hope you're all listening to ;) Devon and I talked about this thing we've been kicking around for the past year or so. T.O.V., tone of voice. Basically we spent so much time on IM that we developed our own shorthand to an extent. One of the problems though was that we spent a lot of time insulting each other and or just joking around. Of course we never meant to really be mean or rude to each other. I mean I like Devon, and we're friends and all, but I don't feel like I'm really in a place where I can honestly call him an asshole. At least to his face... haha, ok ok just kidding. But sometimes that sort of thing just comes out in an IM, and that is usually the point where emoticons fall short. Tone of voice is totally important when talking with someone, especially if you spend a lot of time being sarcastic with each other. So the conception of tov was pretty organic. Even if it kills the punchline tov can make sure you don't accidentally insult someone for reals.

- Ex -
Devon: Seriously man, are you always this stupid or did you make a special effort today?
Geoff: jeezus murphy...
Geoff: you should sit down and give your mind a rest man.
Devon: Keep talking Geoff, someday you'll say something intelligent.
Geoff: You jackass
Geoff: ...
Geoff: TOV = sarcastic

Now I know what you're thinking. Genius. TOV is a great word that you will begin using immediately. But where will all the credit go? To Devon or I where it belongs? No. because someone decided for some reason to Cancel my submission of the acronym in question to The Urban Dictionary. And I'm really just wondering why someone would do this. If you look on my submission status page you'll see that it was "cancelled before it was reviewed by the editors".... Seriously WTF?! I just can't imagine why someone would do this. Doesn't make sense. Could it have been someone who listens to the podcast. I mean I did put that status link in the show notes. but still... why? I know it wasn't Devon. I suppose it could've been Laura who I made a little fun of with the example, but really that seems extreme even for her A.D.D. addled mind. Honestly, I just don't get it.

It's not like a huge deal or anything. Especially once I realized that UD doesn't have logins and I didn't expose my name/password or anything. And I know I could just resubmit the word, but if I offended someone with it or something I'd like to know why. Totally weird, eh?

Bad Kitty

So I was just woken up (at 5am) in a pretty unpleasant way... by being peed on by a cat.

Erica and I are staying at my parents house tonight and tomorrow looking after their very cute new kittens Loki and Freya, while they are our of town. They are just little kittens, I know, and I know that I moved their litterbox out of the kitchen cause it smelled too bad (although I literally walked them down to the new location and I know they knew where it was), also I know that its just a lot of excitement for some little kitties, and they like having the attention of me and Erica but Freya at least she's the only one I'm sure of managed to pee all over the room we were sleeping in. On our bed, on the other guest bed, on our laundry bag (which thankfully empty) and of course on us...

It's hard to be mad at them, cause they're so small and I know that they really just made a mistake, but still we're the ones who ends up at 5:30am now doing more laundry. Bad bad kitties. :(

Climbing = FUN

Man, so climbing is super fun. I can't believe I never did it before, cause I really enjoyed myself. I'm definitely planning on going again as soon as possible. Maybe next week if they'll let me :) So I went with my friend from work Tara, who is very fun and cool (and I'm not just saying that cause she reads this) and her friend and climbing partner Ben. We went to the Mission Cliffs gym in downtown SF. I won't go into super detail on the technical stuff because if you know, you know. The actual climbing was totally great though, like an intense compacted workout with each climb. I think I did pretty good too. I did 5 or 6 climbs total, maybe we went a bit slower cause it was 3 people and we all took turns but I was happy to get a break inbetween climbs. Since I run a fair bit I've got some decent leg muscles but this took a fair bit of upper body too which I wasn't totally ready for. I managed not too bad though. And did up to a 5.6 climb. which is decent I think for my first time. I also tried out bouldering which is climbing without any ropes, on a smaller wall. There are less moves to reach the top, but its really technically challenging. Anyhow, its not like I had any technique. I mostly powered my way through things, but I know there were a few instances where once I thought about things I was able to think my way through a tough spot. Honestly I didn't realize how much concentration it took to climb. Great fun really. Afterwards my arms, like my forearm muscles that control gripping were totally sore and most fine movement s with my hands were really tough, but that's pretty much gone away by this morning. I'm definitely looking forward to climbing again. Very cool...

iTunes movies

Movies! iTunes will have movies, available today through the music store! It's $12.99 for pre-order and first week of new releases, then $14.99 after that. Most titles apparently will be $9.99 though. The movies will be near dvd quality with 640x480 resolution, you will be able to record more than one movie at a time (unlike Amazon Unbox), and can watch it while you download. We'll get Dolby Surround sound on the films, and the movie store will become international in 2007. Movies to appear on the store today will include titles from Buena Vista (Disney, Pixar, Touchstone, Miramax).

Also, the box has arrived. The long rumored Apple streaming video tv box; iTV. Not coming until Q1 '07 it will have USB, ethernet, 802.11 wireless, component video, optical audio, and HDMI ports. It will work with both PCs and Macs and cost $299, and I suppose makes Apple finally a reasonable competor to Microsoft and the mediacenter pc.

check iLounge, Engadget, TUAW for more...

Amazon Unbox, Apple Showtime event

A couple quick things so far today.

my podcast On Hold... got a mentioned on one of the most famous podcasts in the world The Dawn and Drew Show. It was very exciting. For listeners, you'll know that in On Hold...ep024 we had a special guest star of Devon's roomie Laura on the show. Well ,she called into the D&D show and gave us a shout out along with her comment and they played it. Hooray for us! I don't really know if that would lead to more listeners, but hey its still cool. Obviously I don't know numbers, as that seems to be a closely guarded podcast secret, but I know that Dawn and Drew get somewhere in the range of 100 000 listeners per episode. We, don't quite get that... but maybe one day ;)

The Apple store is down right now. I'm hoping that means that after their press conference today well see some movies up for sale there.... more to come on that definitely.

This past week Amazon launched their service Amazon Unbox. I browsed through it and it seems fairly standard. They do have movies, both for rental ($3.99) or for purchase ($14.99+) but there are some really annoying restrictions on them. Seriously I mean it would probably work if you rolled out every movie for like $10. Its a friggin digital copy! I would never pay that much, especially considering I can only download it to two machines, then only to two portable devices from said machines. Yes they allow you to back it up, once. And then once it's burnt to dvd you can only play it on the same machine you downloaded it on. Basically its retarded. They did have a few tv shows on there that I hadn't seen on iTunes, notably Star Trek TOS, and Enterprise. They also had a few animes, Escaflowne, Gundam SEED, and Outlaw Star. However these anime cost a whopping $3.99 an episode! It's practically criminal. I have a feeling whatever iTunes offers it will blow Amazon out of the water.

I'm going rock climbing this evening for my very first time! Should be a barrel of monkey fun! I'm being taken by a cool new friend from work, Tara. Very exciting, I wish Erica could come but she's just too busy. Anyhow, that's all for now. Maybe I'll be back later today with Apple news. bye bye.

ps - ilounge. has good coverage of the event going on right now. So far they've announced 2nd gen ipod shuffle, 2nd gen nanos, a new 5GB ipod (60% brighter screen, games from iTunes Music Store, iTunes 7, and an updated iTunes store with more album art, some increased organization stuff, video resolution increase to (640x480), and NFL season 2006 available. I'm gonna go watch the rest now. Later.

Bloggy McBlogsalot

Am I late with the blog? ummmm... nope.

Is there supposed to be some kind of blog-ligation here? I don't think so. Actually I'm really usually way to busy to blog over the weekends. So really, I'm sorry but you'll just have to deal with it.... that incidentally, is for the one person out there clamoring for more nuggets of internet gold to fall out of my brain and onto your screen.

I don't really have too much to say now, you know... Its Monday. And while there are a bunch of small things I could say, I'll probably forget them all once I try to put it down...

Lets see, I did just sign up for The local Race for the Cure which you are all more than welcome to sponsor me in. That should be fun. Its only 5km, but I enjoy these "official" races. It's always a good adrenaline surge to run with lots of other people. Obviously it's a great cause too.

This past weekend Erica's had an old friend from Montreal in town which has been cool. Erica has extremely cool friends. Jen, that's the friend, is an animator on the tv show The Backyardigans, which I haven't actually watched but looks pretty cool. We also all went out this weekend a bunch. It seemed to be a real combination of drinking and then exercise. We went out for Friday night drinks as usual, first to Naan-n-Curry (yum!) and then to a local Irish pub, and it was all fun and games. I had a Boddington's Ale for I think the first time, and really liked it. I usually can't deal with super creamy beers cause they are so dark and heavy, but this was great. Anyhow, then we went first thing on Saturday morning for a 10km run. It's a pretty good run, that me and Olivia have been doing off and on for a few weeks now, and this time Jen decided to join us, which was great. It's nice to finally have someone who I can run with, even if I still have to hold back a bit to keep with Olivia. On Saturday night we went out to Film Night in the Park, although this time it was actually in the square, and watched Hitchcock's The Birds while drinking cheap wine. It was fun, although I don't really think The Birds is one of Hitchcock's best films. My top 3 would probably run: Strangers on a Train, then The Man Who Knew Too Much, and finally Lifeboat. On Sunday it was back to exercising when Erica, Olivia, Jen and I walked a whopping 8.26 miles (I mapquested it) from the ferry building in downtown over the Golden Gate bridge to Saulsilito. A nice walk but I was pretty tired out. Then we had a really good pot-luk over at our house and played some strange (but fun) French board game that I can't remember the name of.... So as you can see, busy weekend. Oh and I'm a bit lost as to when... maybe it was Saturday during the day, but we drove down to Mountain View and saw our friends Miriam and Florian who just had a baby girl on Tuesday. I honestly don't think I've ever even seen, and I know I've never held a baby that young before. She was only 5 days old, and extremely cute. I have to think that just being alive at that point is pretty challenging. She slept the entire time we were there. :)

I did manage to pick up a cool new dvd this weekend. Since I won the Best Form award at last weeks bowling with my work I had a $25 gift card for Target, and I picked up Fraggle Rock the complete 1st season! I haven't watched it yet but man do I love the fraggles. They we're seriously my favorite incarnation of the muppets. On the back of the box it says that Jim Henson envisioned the show as television that could bring about world peace. I think that's really sweet.

Ok, I know that I don't really have anything of interest to say today... that's why I'm not going to let myself feel obligated to blog all the time. I'll do it often enough, but I definitely couldn't handle the pressure of "having" to blog. Besides, where's the fun in that.

TTYL

K.I.T.T. and other updates

Conceptual art for the proposed Knight Rider movie...See AICN, and HERE.

This is almost definitely total bullshit. I suspect its just a cylon eye from battlestar galactica photoshopped onto the car, but its still kinda cool looking eh? I can't say I'm super excited to see the KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) or the show return in updated "tricked out" movie format. I wasn't ever a huge fan of the show. I mean I liked it ok as a kid, and it was definitely better than Airwolf... but it never held a candle to either The Dukes of Hazzard, or especially MacGyver.

But it is a fact that they really are going ahead with a KR Movie. Now don't get me wrong here, I like The Hoff a lot... and yes he is in fact set to star. Word is he asked Orlando Bloom to play his son and didn't get a very positive response. I just know that these updated movies like Dukes, Starksky & Hutch, Miami Vice, etc are really really uneven and I suspect that this one wouldn't fare to well to the updated treatment. Then again, I remember that god awful update from a few years ago called Team Knight Rider... shudder... seriously now that was a travesty.

Here's a list of shows I'd like to see updated:

• Thundercats - new tv show, and no not the Loonatics approach I read about with the rock band angle. That is just about the worst idea ever. Please stop destroying my childhood.
• G.I. Joe - live action movie. this could be great, just tone down the cartoonishness of Cobra, and have a cameo by Sgt Slaughter.
• MacGyver - movie (there already has been some rumblings on this)
• Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles - if you've seen it you know how good it was. I want a live action ongoing tv series. Space marines kick ass.
• Tripods - maybe some of you saw the old BBC series, but these books were amazing to me as a kid. Like everything that was great about Battlefield Earth without all the crap. I want a trilogy of films. It could be great. Aim them at teens too, like PG-13.
• Conan the Barbarian - I want more movies. NO Arnold.
  
• Y the Last Man - I'm thinking tv series, same scope as Jeremiah... only its a better story :)
• Fables - animated tv show. For adults. Maybe like on Showtime.
  
• Speed Racer - live action movie. make it super stylized (Ultravioletish), not a comedy but have tons of 70s throwbacks. The key is everyone plays it straight.
  

What shows or stories would you like to see given a relaunch, update, or big screen adaptation?

A little Transformers, and a lot of Nebraska...

Aaaahh!… it'’s a mystery worthy of Scooby and the gang!

Just kidding it's only me; Geoff. If you found me today through the mystery blog of the day over at A Yoga Coffee Outlook, I thank you for giving my little blog a look. If you look around you'll probably see that I'm pretty darn geeky... at least thats my impression upon first glance. But I think it might be more aptly be that I'm just geek cool. Right? hehe... yeah. Ok, so the fact that the most popular topic for my blog has been the new Transformers movie, admittedly might not be that super kewl, but hey am I blogging to make friends and influence people?! heck no! I do it for the kids... it's all for them.

Seriously though, can you really say you're not impressed with this fantastic new look at Optimus Prime? Really that's just cool. It's great the studio is on top of things. ie: as soon as the picture leaked they just said screw it and gave out high res versions officially.. Nice eh?

Prime back - Prime face

And honestly, I am very excited to see these guys hit the big screen. So what else has been going on with me lately, and/or who the heck am I? Well, I spent Labor Day in the warm embrace of America's heartland. That's right folks, Nebraska, effectively a state of grace.

I went for a family reunion. "But Geoff!" you shout, "you're from CANADA. There ain't nothin American bout you." Well that is where you'd be wrong. Both my parents are American, and I hold dual citizenship. Which is of course how I'm able to live so freely in this home of the brave. Credentials go a long way. Anywho, so I have these relatives out in Nebraska, not close relatives, but relativeses nonetheless. In fact, I'd never actually met any of these people before in my life. This was the Buel family reunion, and being a Chapman, I was thrice removed from the mix. That of course didn't stop my mother from convincing me and Erica to head out to Nebraska for the weekend to meet my second and third cousins, and I have to say that I was really glad I did. Travis is my second cousin, maybe 8 months older than me, and was from what I can tell the instrumental person in collecting all of these disparate relatives together. I was impressed that he managed to get everyone there too. Even though he said he had some troubles with the more local people, he pulled off a group of around 40 or so people. Here's a picture of Travis and me. I'll maybe try to put some of these up into a flickr group if anyone is interested.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn in downtown Lincoln which was fine overall. I'm not a super big fan of Holiday Inns, but this one was ok. For the record, my most favorite hotel ever is in fact a Holiday Inn; it's the now shut down (i believe unless this is it) Holidome in Brussels where I went when I was 8. Anywho, Lincoln is a interesting town, and when I say interesting I mean boring. It may be the state capitol, but the only thing it seemed to have going for it was the university. At around 200,000 people it is pretty much a university town. And since Nebraska has absolutely no professional sports teams, college football reigns supreme. Enter the Cornhuskers. Due to some weird fortune I was in Lincoln the day of the Cornhuskers first game of the season. An important but apparently easy game which they won no problem. Since I don't really care for football I can't tell you who it was against or anything, but I think like everyone was at the game. The waitress at restaurantnt said that on game days, it goes Omaha, Lincoln, and then the football stadium as the most populated places in Nebraska. That night Travis took me and some of my other cousins out on the town to a bar. It was pretty intensely full of football crazy kids, all decked out in red. Fun, but I wish there was something other to drink in that state than Bud Light... yuck.

Anyhow, the trip was great in the end. We went to the old family farm and had a BBQ. I was hoping for a hog roast but I guess not enough of the locals confirmed coming so it wasn't worth the hog. I saw tons of old photos of my grandma, great grandparents and even further back. The genealogy for my family is very extensively done, and we had a slew of photos and documents from literally 150 + years back. I mean I found a letter from my great great grandfather to his sister about watching Abraham Lincoln speak on his 'press tour' while campaigning for president. I've got a bunch of those scanned now, so I'll try to put those up into a flickr group too, cause those are really interesting. I also got to see a lot of my first cousins and more immediate family, some that haven't seen in upwards of 10 years. My sister and her boyfriend came down from Vancouver too which was super cool. Oh and one of my cousins had his two little girls with him, and his youngest Megan was just about the sweetest kid I've ever met. You know when you meet children that makes you immediately fall in love with them and want to have kids yourself.... that kind of kid.

Ultimately my only really bad thing I'd say about the entire trip was the food. It was soooo heavy. I mean, these people really treat potatoes and ketchup as their main vegetables. Everything was fried, or cooked with tons of oil. And it all just sort of sat there inside you. Yes it was tasty, but man it really made me wish I'd brought my running clothes.

Here are some of my choice photos from the trip. These are only the new ones not the olden day ones.. obviouslyly.

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Yeah there was some other stuff that happened too, but mostly speaking that was it. This blog post however has taken me like literally hours to complete because of all the pics, and it being so busy here today. So With that I'm going to sign off for now. Before I go though...

3 things that piss me off

• Erica lost her iPod in Nebraska
  
• The pilot to Heroes for NBC was supposed to be up on iTunes - see On Hold... for more
• Big Brother is infuriating (incl Boogie, the veto comp, Erika, CBS, girl talk, Will leaving, etc)
  

Later.

Do you know me?

So I was recently sent this from a friend and have now set up my very own Interactive Johari Window. Yea, exactly what I said... WTF!? Well check it out. The instructions are all there. Even if you don't know me in "real life" I'd like it if you'd take the time to go and submit a few choice words. Just use your imagination :)

My Johari Page

Lots more coming, including the fantastic story of how I became an official Cornhusker... and I don't mean that in any kind of gay way.

For now, lates.