Monday, January 10, 2005

Wide world of ....aw shit I don't know
Not that much going on in my world lately, but it was nice to have a relaxing weekend with little to do. Saturday I went out and blew some money on a stack of new CD's. One thing that suprised me when I was in the CD store was a new CD by Cub Country. Their first album is excellent, and luckily bought be me because of their loose association with Jets to Brazil. Really its Jawbreaker who broke up and their singer started Jets to Brazil who put out one really excellent first album but the next two were really slow and boring. But one of the non-singer members of Jets is in Cub Country, which is a really good alt-country band. I don't really listen to alt-country stuff at all but I can vouch for Cub Country.

I also picked up Children of Bodom which is a cool Metal Band. They are one of the few who break up the heavy power chords and growling lyrics with melody. The album has a lot of what sounds like pipe organ, keyboards and such. Its good stuff if you have any love for metal. Good metal is really hard to find these days, and I have no idea where to look.

Hmm....Napolean Dynamite was very funny, it reminds me of high school in a lot of ways even though I wasn't a mega-nerd. I did ride the schoolbus longer than a lot of people but was in a suburb and nothing like the wacky rural world he was in. I'd give it a 9/10 because I was laughing most of the way through it.
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Thursday, January 6, 2005

Anime
I don't really watch that much anime anymore. I thought of it a little just because this is an anime based website, even though I don't use theOtaku very much/ever anymore. I think I came here after Planetnamek.com (DBZ website) shut down, and signed on to the message boards here.

Back to the point, I used to seek out cool anime to rent/buy but don't really do that anymore. Cartoon Network is basically my only source for anime. I still watch Gundam Seed, Inuyasha and Yu Yu Hakusho but thats where it ends. I think manga might have spoiled anime for me, because I started to read manga and comics and realized that anime based off of the manga (like Naruto for example) is always shitty if you've read any of it. It always seems too drawn out in anime. You can read a Dragonball z section out of shonen jump and it covers 3 episodes of the show. DBZ is a painful example because the battles became so long and drawn out that you could literally watch for 5 minutes and only see the characters look at each other and breathe heavy. So much for an action show.

I think the last anime I bought was Haibane Renmei, which was a cool show. It was cute and sometimes sad, and had no action whatsoever. It was like a realistic story in an unrealistic world.

Oh, well for anime I guess...I'm more into english cartoons even though there's been a lull in adult swim lately and Justice League is super-inconsistent.
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Wednesday, January 5, 2005

Ratchet and Clank
I've sidelined my second playthrough of MGS3 for Ratchet and Clank 3 lately. R&C is my favorite platformer game because it has a real flair for mindless destruction and super powerful weapons. Its actually pretty funny too which can be hard to come by in videogames. In the second game you could get the "Sheepinator" which turned bad guys into sheep and was upgradable so that they turned into exploding black sheep.

Other than that I've been watching a lot of Netflix movies, Bad Santa (not as dirty as I thought it would be) and I just got Napolean Dynamite but haven't watched it yet.

On that note did anyone see the new Blockbuster thing with no late fee's? I would think there has to be a catch involved somehow. I really hate Blockbuster because they are super monopolistic and try to drive out any competition and then jack up their prices when the other stores go under. That and they have special deals with distributors to get movies for a tiny fraction of what indie stores have to pay. i was hoping that Netflix was biting them in the ass and it looks like they are trying to respond to the internet rental phenom. Man I hate Blockbuster!


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Tuesday, January 4, 2005

++++
Rachaels parents are pretty cool people, they live surrounded by farms in rural NY. They basically flew us out there, and fed us and planned most of the reception all on their own dollar. That was really cool, but they also gave us wedding and christmas presents...can't beat that.

2/3 of her family came to the reception, but none of my aunts or uncles showed (bastards!). My dad came from Omaha with his wife Sara, and my mom came with my grandmother. By brother came, and some college buddies and one friend from high school whom I haven't seen in like 5 years. He drove all the way from New Hampshire so he's pretty hardcore. I feel very grateful to have friends that will go out of their way to come visit me once in a while. The two families segregated out within the house but not too badly. Parents met each other and such. Apparently my Dad is upset with my brother even though neither me nor him have any real idea why. It was a good time.

We had a day to chill after the reception, but our flight back was 6am on wednesday. We actually got to the airport before anything was even open. We eventually made our way to our departure gate, and an hour or so later they tell us that they can't get the door to the plane open. I thought it was utterly ridiculous, but wasn't too worried because we had a long layover in Chi-town. It took them like 2 hours to get it going, and when I was just about to board the plane I look over to the side where the maintenence people must have been working. What did I see there you ask? Well it was a wire coat-hanger that was untwisted and bent up. Great!, the geniuses at American Airlines need coat hangers to open their airplane doors. I'm just glad that the door didn't fly open when we took off. The landing in Chicago was really bad too, they pretty much slammed the breaks instead of slowing down gradually like usual.

So yeah I'm back up to date with things and happily in my home base. Sunday I went to see the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson Movie) and it was really cool. I don't want to give much away about it but it follows a Jaques Cousteau type character (Bill Murray) going on his last adventure. Its strange and subtle, not the funniest move ever but remarkable. The in movie soundtrack also happens to be all David Bowie songs in Portugese which is cool. It has my highest reccommendations so go see it.
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Friday, December 31, 2004

Vacation or not?
Flying is really shitty, not because its scary, but because it is really cramped and really really boring. I picked up Metroid Zero Mission to pass the time and that helped a lot, along with some trashy magazines and my MP3 player.

I've never once been to O'Hare airport without suffering some sort of delay, and the way there was no exception. It wasn't too bad though because we got in to Buffalo at about 7pm EST anyway. Got to my mom's house, stopped at Tops to get some vegetarian grub and chilled, went to bed. Thats where all hell broke loose. Rachael became violently ill and threw up about seven times during the night. It was horrible to say the least. I took her to her parents house the next day so she could (in her own words) hug the toilet without being embarrassed. She had only met my mom a few times before. It sucked, but I drove there and back (2hrs each way) pretty resonably after getting little sleep. I ended up hanging out with my brother and his girlfriend in Buffalo for most of the night. We went to this cool modern restaurant then back to his apt. and chatted while his cats molested me. I hadn't actually seen him in like 3 years and had never met his GF of 2.5 years so it was good to catch up. I gave him a copy of Say Anything I picked up at the local record store for Christmas and just yesterday got an email saying he loved it.

The next day was X-mas eve and it kinda sucked because I got snowed in. I managed to get to a used CD store and bough a Foo Fighters CD and a Dropkick Murphy's CD to listen to in the rental car. Other than that I watched football and played FF: Tactics on my PSone. I was supposed to go visit my grandma that day but ended up waiting til christmas morning and clear roads. I spent some time with her and we went through my photo albums from the wedding and Japan, and she gave me a picture from my parents wedding. Its pretty cool and my pop looks just like I do when he was getting married in the 70's. (My parents are divorced)

So after that I headed on down to the Alexanders (Rachaela parents) for Christmas dinner and to await the reception on the 27th. I think I'll finish the second half later because otherwise it'll be just too damn long. Lots of more interesting stuff happened because all my friends and relatives came, some people I hadn't ever met and some I hadn't seen in like 5 years.
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Thursday, December 30, 2004

Back
Well I'm back from NY and have some mad stories to tell, not all of which involving the crappiness of Chicago airport and their inability to land planes.

I'll update tonight or tomorrow in the afternoon when I get better situated.

In the meantime please list your best X-maS presents that you got this year.

1. iRiver H320
2. crazy beard shaver
3. Nirvana new boxed set
4. G1 transformers Ironhide
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Tuesday, December 21, 2004

All hail consumerism
Well tonight I'm going to Portland to spend the night so that next morning I can fly out to NY. I'll be gone for a week and come back on the 29th. It should be interesting to stay with my wife in my old room in my parents house. I'm not sure that sex is going to be on the menu with that scene. Its also going to be damn cold compared to what I've been getting used to these last 3 years in Oregon.

Well, this is my 24th Christmas and I still have fun getting and receiving presents, though mostly between me and Rachael. We've already exchanged presents because of the trip and I got an iRiver iH320 MP3 player (20G Hard drive) and its amazingly fun to have. I've put about 40 of my most recently favorite albums on it and still have 16Gigs left. It works as an external hard drive too so I can put my files for school on it and pictures or anything. I don't think that the new version that I have looks as cool as the older iH120, but the new one has a color screen and I guess look doesn't really matter much.

That being said christmas can be really annoying. I specifically avoided major stores and malls this year, but still have to go out to those places occasionally and just hate the frantic feeling. Every year the news tells us how the stores are hoping for super high sales, and how their christmas deals are making things somehow cheaper, even though I don't buy into it. Things go on sale all the time, if anything stuff is usually more expensive around the holidays. They try to get your ass in the stores at like 6am by having sales from 6-11 or some crazy shit like that.

Its funny because I'm 99% non-religious but even I am starting to get annoyed with how christmas has turned into a hallmark holiday. You buy tons of stuff for little kids, decorate your house, cook a big dinner and what does that have to do with the birth of Jesus? Half the christmas carols are secular. We are about one big evil santa robot away from X-mas as seen in futurama. I don't even want to think about how much plastic gets thrown away after christmas from packaging.

Anyway, have fun this holiday season and think about Jesus at least once for me. Even if you don't believe he was the son of God then at least feel bad that we murdered him.
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Monday, December 20, 2004

Last Best album of the year
Well There really is just one more really standout album that I wanted to mention, but I've already said pretty much all I need to about them, especially if you have been a wrappedinplastic visitor. Say Anything pretty much came out of nowhere and put out a really great album. I know they are on an emo label, but really they are a straight up rock band with good fun lyrics. I think that they stand out because the lyrics for the most part tell a story rather than just a bunch of obscure poetic and depressing ramblings. It sort of harks back to the old metal days when iron maiden would sing about old Roman warriors and weird shit like that.

My favorite song is alive with the glory of love, which is a bit of a falling in love with Anne frank love song. Its hard for me to not listen to it on repeat, but I don't want to wear out the tune.

Other albums of note include really good non-2004 albums and averagely good albums.

Rilo Kiley; execution of all things....the new album lost some of the emotion for this band. So I listen to the first two more often

Death from above 1979

Radiohead; Hail to the theif

Final fantasy X soudtrack (4-disc monster from Japan)

Hyde; 666 (Japanese singer from L~arc en ciel solo album which is partly in english and very good)

Franz Ferdinand

Minibosses live from the middle east

Macho Man Randy Savage (Rap album calling out the Hulkster)
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Friday, December 17, 2004

MGS3
I finished Metal Gear 3 a few days ago and wow. Bar none this is the best game on PS2 so far. I am a big fan of the series in general and still think that this game is better than MGS 1 and 2 by far. The story is very epic, and doesn't suffer with much of the confusing and long long long cut scenes where you forget the controller is in your hand. There are some long ones, but they flow a lot better and you don't get tired of them. There are some big suprises in the game, but it also ties together the series very well and by the end of it you have a pretty good idea what it going on in this game as well as some much needed background on the "Patriots".

Some of my favorite parts (w/o giving anything away) are Snake's interactions with the young Ocelot, and the Boss fights with the Cobras. It is all very well done. The normal sneaking parts can be done in a pretty big variety of ways, so there are many paths you can take whether you want to use the tranq gun or snag enemies from behind an dispatch them. You get a lot of guns, and its not unrealistic totry to plow through some sections as well with guns blazing. Especially near the end where sneaking through unseen is very difficult.

If you have a PS2 then you really need to buy this game. It has left me not touching GTA: san andreas until I get a chance to play through a secong time at MGS3. I even changed my format a bit, though I wish there was a camo background.
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Thursday, December 16, 2004

Best of 2004 continued.
Well I have a few more left, I have to get back on track with this.

Pete Yorn: Day I Forgot

Pete Yorn is definitely one of my favorite artists and his 2004 album surpasses his first CD (music for the morning after). The first album was good, but it sort of trailed off into slower songs for the back half of the album and puts you to sleep a little. Pete Yorn is one of theose semi-prettyboy great songwriters who mixes a lot of acoustic guitar with electric and has a little bit of a Bob Dylan quality to him.

You can go to peteyorn.com and hear some audio samples from the latest album (there is a little bar at the bottom to push play on). Its similar to amazon's clips but should give some feel fro what he sounds like. I actually got to see him live when he opened for the Foo Fighters, but the sound was bad and I couldn't hear the guitar. Sucks, because he's really quite good.

***edit:
Really, I love this guy...I really like the first album but the second was just a big leap forward since its all very good, where the first album had too many slow songs. He really is a bit of a man-slut though.
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