I'll have a 4 Piece...

July 13th is only a month away, and I must confess I'm excited... for the movie yes, but also for the product placement. I think this could be the best movie/fast food tie in EVER. We all know how fond I am of old Colonel "Slut-Face" Sanders and his seemingly infinite combinations of KFCs & Taco Bells, A&W's, Ajib's Super Lucky Curry Shack... what have you. What better way to put more buck in your cluck than a Harry Potter tie in?

Limited Time Only! 4 Piece Order of the Phoenix For Just $6.99!

Includes 1 Leg, 1 Wing, 1 Breast, 1 Thigh (Roasted or Fried), Troll Mashed Potatoes, Pumpkin Juice and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans for dessert!

MMMMMmmmm. Delicious phoenix! Just an idea Colonel "Slut-Face"... as if you are even listening.

Please stop!

Please stop committing crimes against my friend.

I'm passing this message along for a good friend of mine. Every single day, whether you are watching the news, listening to talk radio, or reading the newspaper, you will notice that he is the victim of a new crime against him. He wanted me to post this statement for him... too the untrained ear it sounds like "eooeoooeooyyyeoeoiii oeeiii oeoiiiii ieooeoieiei." Luckily, I understand his widely misunderstood language, and am providing the translation here.

The following transcript was taken and translated on January 7th, 2007.

Leave me alone... how is it even possible that I am the victim of crimes? Hell, even Sadaam Hussein got a piece of me, and he's thousands of miles away! I've been 90 feet below the surface for the last year... and trust me it sucks! Still they find me! Leave me alone! Please, please, just leave me the fuck alone.

Sincerely,

Hugh

Pretty pictures!!! Hooray!

Since I'm graduating this May, I thought it would be nice to take some pictures of the UoI campus, for old times sake. Some of them turned out pretty well, so I thought I'd make some wallpapers (1280x960) and post them up. Enjoy!

Click the images for a full-res version

Mission Oceanpossible 11

I’ve been getting kind of excited about the new Mission Impossible coming out. It’s being helmed by J.J. Abrams, writer and director of the pilot episodes for ABC’s Lost, plus it has Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain, and if any of you all have seen Punch Drunk Love, you know he can be a kick ass bad guy. I’ll unashamedly admit that I enjoy almost every Tom Cruise movie I’ve seen. At least 75%, and that’s not too shabby.

When I was a kid I remember seeing De Palma’s first Mission Impossible (not that I yet knew who Brian De Palma was), but I liked it at the time, but remember being confused by the convoluted plot. So now that I’m infinitely more mature I figured I’d give the original MI another go.

There’s definitely some residual coolness, I really liked the opening in Prague, and the ending action piece with the train and the helicopter are still very impressive. De Palma really makes a stylish spy flick, I must say, but the plot is still a little too complex and the characters a little too simple. One thing that really stood out however was the planning sequence of the NOC list heist... remember Tom Cruise hanging by a thread in black clothes over the white floor, catching the sweat dripping off his brow with a rubber glove. Anyway, it was really reminiscent of the planning sequence of knocking over the Bellagio, the Mirage, and the MGM Grand in Ocean’s 11. The white room with the computer from MI actually reminds me a lot of the safe room in Ocean’s 11, George Clooney and Matt Damon’s outfits are even similar. In fact, even some of the lines were scarily similar. Remember Danny Ocean and Brad Pitt going over the impossible security systems? He says something like “The passwords, which we won’t have, and the retinal scans, which we can’t fake.” Tom Cruise says almost the exact same line, only some five or six years earlier. Plus, you may remember the gag of Ocean’s 11 running out of the hotel in SWAT gear, well, it’s the same in Mission Impossible, only firemen’s/firewomen’s uniforms.

Soderbergh you hack, you tasteful thief of the night. Today it was announced that Pacino is going to be in on Ocean’s 13. Now that I think about it, even the color (prominent neon blues and candle yellows) and style of Ocean’s 11 is similar to De Palma. Although, it could be argued that it purposefully references Mission Impossible in order to Scary Movie it. Well, it was Picasso that said that bad artist’s copy, great artist’s steal.

Stupid hippies.

What the hell happened? In the sixties the hippies were this generation of people wanting to escape society and exercise peace and love. They lived in hippie communes, made their own food, made their own clothes, and were more or less self sufficient man.

Today’s hippies drive Subaru’s, shop at health food stores, dress in designer hippie fashion, wear hemp necklaces, and above all, get high a lot. Oh yeah, and they dance like morons, not matter the music. They could be listening to Mozart, The Sex Pistols, Bob Marley, or Garth Brooks, to these pseudo hippies it makes no difference, they’ll dance the same.

The 10 rules of pseudo hippie dancing

01. Smoke pot, this perhaps is the most important rule

02. Put on hemp necklace or anything else you have that references marijuana, if you don’t look like a hippie, you may be ostracized by the pseudo hippie community

03. Close your eyes and pretend you’re in a forest or whatever… windy beach is fine

04. Disregard the beat of the music… actually, just disregard the music entirely

05. Take off your shoes, or wear hemp sandals

06. Bend neck back

07. Close eyes

08. Stand in front of the people who are actually paying attention to the band

09. Reach hands high in the air, or out in front of you, and move them in a swirling motion

10. Swirl your body around in a completely mindless fashion

Just in case you don’t understand how to pseudo hippie dance, click here, for a video example.

Ok… everyone got it? Now try it. C’mon, no ones looking. It’s just you, and the computer.

Now that you’ve done it, don’t you feel a little stupid? I know I sure did.

Listen up kiddies! This is what can happen when you're an alcoholist.

My roommate channels the Ghettobot 5000. I think the picture and the video more or less explain themselves, so I'm not going to go into them that much. This I will say however, sometimes all it takes is a little Jack Daniels to show the world who you really are.

Robot Video

The Three Burials of Melquaides Estrada

To be buried three times… well, we do say third times a charm. I suspect however, that three, four hundred years from now, Melquaides body may be dug up by some futuristic digging device, and unintentionally buried somewhere else, and a thousand years after that, yet again no doubt.

The idea of a place where you lay your bones to rest is really only important for those who you were close to, and who lived while you lived. To Melquaides, Tommy Lee Jones’ character is one of those people. We are reminded here, intentionally no doubt, of Sam Pekinpah and his film The Wild Bunch. Tommy Lee Jones won best actor at Cannes this year, and if you see it, you’ll understand why. His character is fairly complex, he’s caring about his friends, but when someone kills a person he loves (that being the illegal Mexican immigrant Melquaides Estrada) shit really go sideways, and Tommy Lee Jones will show us all that he’s almost as bat shit crazy as Mel Gibson… almost.

It’s a good thing films like this exist. American film seems to get lost to slews of romantic comedies, Hollywood dramas, and huge explosion action films. It’s a comforting thought that as the most conservative and macho of all American genres, and maybe even the most conservative genre of the entire language of film, the Western is perhaps the most poetic. The western is truly our contribution to film, and it’s nice when even in the year 2006 we can be reminded of its relevance. Oh yeah, and it kicks ass.

!Qué ricas son las margaritas!

You know the feeling... chips, salsa, and margaritas. Winter, spring, summer, fall, makes no difference, it’s always nice. One, you can eat for virtually free, and two, margaritas. Only problem really is that margaritas at Mexican restaurants can be a little expensive, and generally a little week. So here’s what you do. Grab an Aquafina bottle… Evian, what have you, and fill it up with some cheap tequila from home or from the liquor store, put it in your coat pocket or purse if you have one, get a pitcher of margaritas, and when the waiter/waitress isn’t looking, spice it up a bit. That’s my trick, thought I’d pass it along.

April 12th, 1912

“They called it the ship of dreams, and it was, it really was,” spattered some old hag at a rather confused looking Bill Paxton. “Uh, game-over man?” he replied.

Thank god the Titanic crashed. I’m so happy all those people died helplessly, else there never would have been a dramatic adaptation made from the events to film. No Leonardo DiCaprio screaming he’s the king of the world from the bow of a CGI ship. No nude Kate Winslet, stuck graciously into a PG-13 film for all of us pubescent boys to gawk at. Thanks for making all those people freeze to death so we could sit in a warm theater and enjoy ourselves, many of us three or one-hundred times.

Thank god those Palestinian terrorists kidnapped Israeli athletes and murdered them, and thank god that Israel created an assassination squad to find those responsible and murder them, because Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush, and Daniel Craig totally rocked in the movie version of these actual events. It was seriously awesome.

Now Oliver Stone is making a movie about 9/11, and Paul Greengrass is making a movie about the events of Flight 93. I’m so glad. In all honesty, I thought Hotel Rwanda was great, The Constant Gardner intriguing, I mean, there have been so many movies based on atrocious “actual events” that to list all of them would take me weeks.

However, the films themselves have purpose, they are intended to teach us about the past in hopes to influence our future decisions, creating awareness about the... oops I would love to finish but I have to go eat dinner and do some online shopping.

Yet another great bargain.

One friend calls me a “wheeler and dealer.” I think of myself more as an opportunity taker. I thought I’d pass along this great way to save some money. So you go to the movies, buy your ticket, adult… ok that’ll be $8, maybe more depending on where you live. Maybe you’re a student and get some sort of “discount.” Watch the flunkey that takes your ticket next time, the only thing he looks at is the title of the movie. So here’s what you do, if your in a group, have one person go up to the ticket counter and buy all the tickets, have that person buy only one adult or student ticket, and get everyone else children’s tickets, somewhere in the neigborhood of $5, not too shabby. If you’re in a group of 20 they may get suspicious, unless you’re Michael Jackson, so may want to split it up a bit in such a scenario. Then you hand your tickets to the flunkey, and he/she rips them apart, your in, and that’s the scam. Now, in the very unlikely chance that someone questions you, you just tell them you wanted all student tickets, and say they must have screwed up. They can’t prove anything, so no harm no foul.

Also, if you have some sort of moral quandary with this, think of it this way. Who’s losing money? Tom Cruise? Steven Spielberg? Who cares… they got more than they could ever need anyways.