Seems like 500 Days till Summer

I have a headache. It is rather annoying.

I just finished watching (500) Days of Summer. I am a huge sucker for these types of movies. It's not really a romance movie, but it's not really a comedy either. It is definitely fun, and sad, and hopeful. Zooey Deschanel plays the perfect girl next door roll. Maybe not in the movie, but I would have died trying to get her to notice me if she was next door to me growing up. Nowadays, I would probably awkwardly smile when I would see her on the street, picking up her mail. Still, even disjointed as the movie was portrayed, it told a good story without the need of an over the top cast. I liked the little sister character of the protagonist, but she filled the typical "too smart for her own age" template.

Other than Zooey Deschanel, the movie entered my radar because the director, Marc Webb, has been tagged to possibly direct the next Spider-Man movie. I needed to see something of his work if I could make an accurate judgement as to if I feel he could do it. Granted, I am not an expert in the movie field at all. My only experience were bit parts in student films and writing scripts for classes. Still, the powers that be feel they need to relaunch Spider-Man with a fresh beginning. Apparently from what I know, Sam Raimi, the director of Spider-Man 1, 2, and 3, had a conflict with the people with the money. It could have been timing, direction of story or maybe he just couldn't find the right role for Bruce Campbell. Sony, the company that can make a Spider-Man movie, feels they want to cash in on a still acknowledgeable product.

Relaunches are weird. For the most part, they can work with comic book adaptations. Most of the time, the comic a movie is based on has been around for at least 40 years. This is different than remakes of movies, like Halloween or the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street. Too many things are being remade in my opinion. Some of them are fine (Dawn of the Dead), while others seem unnecessary (Psycho). The more annoying ones are the too soon remakes of stuff that is younger than me (I'm looking at you Karate Kid). Still, comics skirt the issue because it's just another story with those characters. There doesn't need to be a progressive story between some movies, like Hulk and Incredible Hulk. Of course, the latter was far better as a comic movie fun. It can work extremely well with a connecting story structure, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Of course with Dark Knight, I have no idea how they will top that for a sequel.

From watching (500) Days of Summer, I think Marc Webb can definitely pull of the atmosphere of Peter Parker (Spider-Man in secret identity mode). There was one sequence in Summer that I thought the main character was Peter Parker. Hell, he even looked exactly like him, sweater vest and all. My only concern is the action scenes. Doing those is a bit different than trying to make your actors come across as real people while dealing with what Love means. The depth of Spider-Man and his inner conflicts can definitely be portrayed by Webb. I just don't know if he can make the punches count.

All I know is that I will boycott a remake of Back to the Future.

With Music And Knowledge

I am starting to believe that I won't do some things in my life. One of those things is actually play World of Warcraft. To the people that know what that is, they are probably breathing a sigh of relief. There is a high addiction curve to the game. It creates a new social environment that combines all the positive and negative aspects of online anonymity. Maybe there may be more negative aspects than positive. Still, I seem to be keeping the damn thing on the periphery.

The way I have been accomplishing not having my life sucked into the internet world is through exposure to other hobbies. I have been buying and downloading a lot of music both lately and in general. As with many of my entertainment purchases, I tend to get the impulse buy out of my system when I get home from the store. I still have loads of DVDs that are still shrink wrapped, usually horror movies that are accrued near Halloween. I even have seasons... seasons of shows that I still figure I will get around to watching. All of this also goes for video games and music.

In the past week, I have loaded onto my computer well over 200 songs of various artists and genres. Granted, some of this is done for work reasons. I just like listening to background scores while working. It gives me mood that sometimes music with words just can't accomplish. Also, words are sometimes inappropriate for the family store environment of work. The problem I have whenever I get into music mode is that I get horde mentality. I want as much of it as possible. I need the variety. The problem is I never really give all the new music it's fair share. So, I have spent the last two nights reading stuff on the internet while listening to new music.

It's definitely opening up some stuff to me. While watching wrestling, I realized that the WWE apparently has the rights to use the Civil Twilight catalog. At first, the radio played song, Letters From The Sky, was used for one of the video packages back in October. I rewatched it on YouTube after it was considered well done according to one of the articles I read. I took note of the band and album and proceeded to acquire it. I gave the whole thing a listen, and noticed one of the other songs was used tonight for another video package. This time Human was used to highlight the coming match between Bret Hart and Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania.

I mentioned in the last blog post, I grabbed the new Gorillaz: Plastic Beach. At the same time I also snagged Slayer: World Painted Blood. I was so tired from work, that I fell asleep listening to Slayer. It seems almost wrong. Currently playing in my car is High on Fire: Snakes for the Divine. All of this and I still have to listen to the RZA albums I downloaded, The Servant, Dan Black, and a few other things here and there that need preview before I can turn them on in the store.

So, what comes of me listening to music is that I still need something to do with my eyes. Since I am in front of the computer most of the time while listening, I tend to just surf the web. Problem is I need direction whenever I web-surf. I can't just click aimlessly. I know plenty of people that find all sorts of crap on YouTube or whatever, but I need words. Usually, I can just run through my normal sites for comics and wrestling, but lately they have been slow news days. I have needed to fill that visual void with other stimuli. Tonight, that was how to get started in World of Warcraft. I have done more reading on this topic than I probably should have. I still haven't decided to play the game or not. I have a better idea on the terminology now though.

Who knows? Maybe all this could be considered research for a story or something.

Pens aren't chewy.

I am sitting in front of the computer trying to think of something to do. This is bad when it is 2:30 in the morning and I have work in less than 8 hours. This things happen though.

I have no real purpose to write right this moment. I have had no moment of clarity. I mainly think it is just to give me more awake-time before I drift off to dream world. Unfortunately, I know that will shortly become work prep.

I'm chewing on a Bic pen. It's almost like a nervous thing. Oral fixation except, I have never smoked. Well, I have never smoked with any regularity. I have had a cigarette or two in my tenure of life. That ended 10 years ago when a Newport caused me to vomit on my birthday. Menthol is not my friend.

I'm listening to the new Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach. So far, it has a 80s feel in my opinion. Most of the beats so far seem almost sampled from new-wave tracks. I am trying to dig out the cuss words. If it's a clean record, it can be played in my store without many problems. Of course, I'm not sure how well some of the clientele will take to songs with Mos Def, Snoop Dogg, and De La Soul. Part of me wants to see if I can pull out what will be the single. If there is a single at the moment, I'm not aware. I have a decent ear for music. I can usually tell what could be catchy enough to grab a hold of an audience. With this first listen, nothing is standing out yet.

I finally watched The Hurt Locker. I thought it was good. I like the actor in it... I forget his name. There are a lot of actor in Hollywood that I should know according to TMZ. I know I liked his work on the failed show, The Unusuals. The explosives that he has to deal with in the movie are ridiculous. It's completely realistic, mind you, the bombs are just complicated and enormous. My favorite line I can remember is, "There's enough bang in there to blow us all to Jesus. If I'm gonna die, I want to die comfortable."

Oh, I have even been carrying a note pad with me to seem all professional like. It's not working. I have it with me all the time, I just never take it out to write anything down. I would make a terrible secretary. I only have stuff written on two pages. It's mostly article ideas... I should just call them blog ideas. It's stuff to write about. I just haven't really gone to the well of it yet. I probably will soon.

Well, that's it for now. I will go and sleep... or attempt sleep. Hopefully this time I won't get woken up at 6AM to let my dog in. That wasn't fun this morning.

Sick - I am against it.

I am not feeling well. I think it is a cold or something. I love that I get colds towards the end of winter.

It started off as a sore throat and migrated throughout my body. A Sucrets and plenty of fluids subdued the pain for a bit. A couple Tylenol helped along the way as well. Now, I am just tired, achy and not looking forward to working in the morning.

I really didn't do too much this weekend. The onset of the cold started, but I still found my way to the bar Friday night. Some fun was had, and people got plenty intoxicated. I did not and just drank my beer while talking with various people. Overall, I think everyone had a decent time.

I didn't do anything on Saturday. My sister and her family came over, so I basically stayed with them. I really wasn't feeling up to heading to the bar again. I did get a couple beers though at a St. Patty's Day function over at the school near me. It was a church fundraiser, and my mom was helping with the food preparation. It wasn't too bad. The chicken was all right, the ham was standard, I liked the cabbage though. Vinegar is my friend. Even as a kid, I would drink it sometimes, which probably isn't good. What can I say, I liked the smell when I was dying eggs at Easter. In any case, only my brother-in-law and myself went to the thing. My nephew threw a tantrum, asking why he had to go. Free food and making his grandmother happy weren't good enough, so he had his video games taken away from him.

After the family left, I stayed in the rest of the night playing video games. I usually don't play that often. So, I got some matches of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 under my belt, and realized that I am average at best. It also didn't help that I looked down and realized that it was 4:30 AM at one point. I had forgotten that tit was daylight savings. Spring forward and all.

Sunday was a rather lazy day. The productive portion had me travel to the Gamestop to pick up my nephew's birthday gifts, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver. What sucked it that I preordered them there with the intent to get the little doodad that was supposed to come with the preorder. They only had one of the figurines. Apparently, they don't give a shit if you preorder. The employees just take the shit they want anyway. On the receipt and all there wasn't even a customer service number to call. I couldn't even find one on their website. This just teaches me that preordering anything is a futile task. People are assholes regardless. I even tried asking a friend who works at another Gamestop to find one, he tried 3 different stores and came up short. I don't understand how you can run out of something the day of release when you are supposed to have enough to cover the people that preordered it. So, don't preorder any games people. It isn't worth it.

The night consisted of Internet shenanigans and watching The Guild on the Xbox. This was followed by about 15 minutes of playing Explosion Man.

WOW: The things I think about

I don't know if I have really been busy. I do stuff, sure, but I spend most of my time thinking about the stuff I should do.

I have a few friends trying to convince me to play World of Warcraft, or WOW for short. Some of my time has been spent in the pursuit of more knowledge of the game. I have had lengthy discussion with both seasoned players and novice ones alike. Thankfully, they few that are encouraging me to play tend to be of the more novice sort.

So, what is WOW? Many people know what WOW is, but there may still be some that are scratching their heads. WOW is a massive multi-player online role-playing game. or MMORPG (usually it's just MMO). What this means is that people play with and against one another over the Internet. Players assume roles of different characters with different abilities and appearances and typically work together to complete some goal. In WOW there are two warring factions fighting for control. The funny thing is that there is an over-arching story for the WOW universe, but it definitely falls behind the insensate need to have the coolest stuff.

The rumor mill behind WOW is that it was originally a product for the Games Workshop line. I sell the Games Workshop models at my store under the table top miniature games Warhammer and Warhammer 40K. WOW was originally just Warcraft, and was a real-time strategy game. Basically, with an RTS, you would build units to win a certain scenario, like the land is infested with undead, wipe them out. How it is based on the GW product is a little fuzzy, but noticeable. Warhammer has race that consist of Humans, Orcs, various types of Elves, Dwarves, and goblins. WOW has all those races as well. Overall, it doesn't really matter as a comparison. I would rather have stock on WOW than Games Workshop any way. It's more guaranteed income.

You see, there are a lot of people playing WOW. The advertisements boast over 11 million subscribers. That's over 11 million people paying WOW about $15 a month. This adds up to a whole bunch. And that's the thing. With that many people, it is generally becoming part of the norm.

I originally approached WOW in the camp of fear. Among the news reports were various cases of addiction. There are stories of people losing their jobs over wanting to play the game for longer and avoiding work. Some relationships have been destroyed by it because of addiction. On the flip side, some relationships have started as well. There are also reports of people that have met through the game that wound up marring one another in real life. A friend of mine traveled to Colorado to meet a girl and brought her back here, because they met through WOW. Granted, they aren't together anymore, but the power of WOW is crazy.

Currently, I have sitting in my email account, a trial version of the game. My friend from work sent it to me, so that if I use it it would link our accounts. Basically, it's like a mentoring program. If I am in game, and so is he, he can send his character directly to me, so we can play together. Usually, to meet up with other characters, you would have to have your character travel through the game-world over possibly hundreds of miles... walking. As an added bonus, when the linked accounts are working together, there is an extra experience boost. More experience means a quicker growth towards a better character. It also helps that if I were to stick playing the game for a couple months, my friend would some special in-game stuff. It's a referral program.

As of right now, my mind isn't fully made up. I have a few other things I want to do, and fear that I may be addicted to WOW and not accomplish them. I still have a couple games I want to play and finish, then there is the whole blogging thing I keep avoiding. There is also the ultimate dream of actually writing something creatively, like an honest to goodness story. So, for now, I will keep doing research and let my friends talk my ear off about their in-game adventuring.