Monthly Archive for August, 2007

He never disappoints

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on August 29, 2007
in Music
. Comments

Lexy and I just got back from a Weird Al concert in Kansas City.  It was very fun and very awesome.  The only bad thing was that since the concert had its venue changed from a hall in Kansas to one in Missouri, we didn’t get the seats we paid for.  Our tickets were for the original venue and they were honored, but when we went to sit, it turned out that we had to pretty much fight for a seat in a “general admission” style area in the orchestra area.  Both Lexy and I were so disappointed and upset that we almost left the concert and demanded our money back.  Gladly, we stayed and the show was fantastic.  Not as good as the concert I went to in St. Louis during his Poodle Hat tour, where we sat front row center, but still a very fun experience.  They did allow photography, but sadly we forgot our camera and my phone only did so much.  None of the pictures of Al and his band turned out very good, so I won’t be adding them to my gallery.  I am kind of sad about this, but at least I have the memory of the concert and the very blurry pictures.  One thing about the concert that was so god damned awesome was during the song “The Saga Begins” he had a line of Storm Troopers line up and dance to the song.  Darth Vader and Boba Fett were also there.  Super sweet.  Super sweet.  He also, shortly, wore a t-shirt that said “Atlantic Records Sucks,” which Lexy and I found very amusing.

Great concert and Weird Al remains my favorite music artist.

WHAT THE FUCK!?!

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on August 23, 2007
in Movies
. Comments

Ok, I swear to God himself that there is someone out that listening to my ideas.  Now I am motherfucking sure of it.  Several months ago, I had the idea to do an Enter the Dragon remake.  Guess what?  THERE IS NEWS OF AN ENTER THE DRAGON REMAKE!!!!  Where did I get this info?  The Totally Rad Show.  I haven’t watched the episode yet, but in the show notes, they mention news of a remake.  I am soooo pissed.  That was MY motherfucking idea.  Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper was my idea.  Ok, that second one is a bit of a stretch because two weeks after I started drinking Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper at Steak ‘n Shake, Dr. Pepper released a canned version of the soda.  The Enter the Dragon remake idea, that one was mine.  Check with Lexy and Dawn.  I had the idea several months before news of this came out.  I’m fairly certain that I would do it right.  Hollywood won’t.  If it actually happens, I better be as blown away by whomever plays Bruce Lee as I was by Bruce Lee himself.  If you remake a Bruce Lee movie, you don’t play the character Lee, you play Bruce Lee.  There is a big difference.  Dammit.  I want my idea back.

Second day of classes and…

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on August 23, 2007
in Home and Technology
. Comments

my computer dies.  Like seriously murders itself so hard that it refuses to turn on.  I guess I’m gonna have to figure out something.  I don’t want to use Lexy’s laptop as much as I used my computer, but it’s all I have right now.  I guess I’ll try getting a new power supply and seeing if that works.  I knew I wanted a new machine, but not yet.  Damn, computer you bitch.

Shit sucks.

NO! Not the Fett-man!

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on August 22, 2007
in Funny
. Comments

Ok, this video is hilarious. Generally I don’t condone vicious revenge, but hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I wonder how he dealt with his girlfriend?

Wordpress was freaking out when I tried to post the site’s HTML code to embed the video.  Oh well.

Do you live with roommates?

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on August 21, 2007
in Home, Interesting and Money
. Comments

Do you want to determine exactly what everyone should pay? Here is a simple online app that will allow you to take care of all of that stuff. I’ve set up a group for our apartment. I figure we can try it and see how it goes. If anyone else tries it, let’s hear what you think of it.

UPDATE: After looking around the ‘net a bit more, I found BillMonk.  This one seems a bit cooler because you can include your books, movies, etc that friends borrow.  You can also keep track of who owes who when you go out and one person pays for dinner or whatnot.  Help me make a decision.  Which one should we give a trial run at our apartment?

I love pets

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on August 19, 2007
in Funny
. Comments

And this link is why:

Excerpts from a Dog’s / Cat’s Diary

Metal Gear Solid 4

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on August 17, 2007
in Video Games
. Comments

I haven’t really been a huge fan of the Metal Gear Solid games. Mostly because all that sneaking around doesn’t appeal to my game-play style. Now, with what I saw of MGS4, I’m thinking it’s a game that I will give a shot. I’ll post a video from GeeVee.com here in a second. The video is about 15 minutes long and spoken entirely in Japanese, but there are subtitles, so it’s ok. Not great, but ok. The gameplay footage, and they do claim it to be actual gameplay footage and I believe it, looks so goddamn awesome it makes me want to crap my pants. Or someone else’s pants. It makes me want to crap your pants. Ok, enough about crapping pants and all that jazz. The controls look solid and fluid, the first-person view looks like it works a lot like what an FPS should control like. I’ve run into tooooo many third-person games that when you switch to a first-person mode, it’s herky-jerky and impossible to control. The GTA games come to mind as a perfect example of what I’m talking about. This game seems like it marries beautifully the great control aspects of an FPS with the fluidity of motion and control from a third-person game. Kinda like Gears of War, except with an actual first-person view. GoW is a perfect example of a great feeling TPS (third-person shooter) while keeping the third-person feel in it. What I really liked about the MGS4 video is all the cool stuff Snake can do and damn has he gotten old as shit. The mustache is a bit too much. The reactive camo is cool, but what I really like is all the little things. The detail and thought put into how he moves and what he does when an action is performed is just phenomenal. Ok, I’m going to stop blabbering. Just watch it if you are interested and see if you agree.

On Halo 3

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on August 16, 2007
in Video Games
. Comments

I am really excited about Halo 3.  Halo was the first game that brought me into the “next generation” of gaming.  Now, I’m all up to date on newest generation of came consoles.  Halo was fantastic, I loved it.  I really enjoyed playing coop through the game.  Having two people play an FPS (First Person Shooter) at the same time is way better than just one person.  Don’t get me wrong, I like to play through the game myself, but when you have another person, you find ways to cheat and have a ton of fun.  John and I were really good at that, but alas, we will not discover any tricks and mind-blowing stunts for Halo 3.  Now, in Halo 3, they have announced that they will be having a 4 player coop.  This is done by way of system link, Xbox Live, or a combination of two-player split screen and system link or Xbox Live or any combination thereof.  I really like this.  What I REALLY like about the Halo 3 coop is that the extra players aren’t playing as other Master Chiefs, they are playing as other ancillary characters like the Arbiter and two other Covenent Elites.  However, the only other person that I know of that would want to play coop with me on XBL would be Adam and he would want to play it on Legendary.  Dave might want to play some coop, but he doesn’t strike me as a Halo fan.  Me and Legendary, we have issues.  Personally, I think Legendary is so hard that it takes away a lot of the fun of the game.  I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m not the hardcore gamer/Halo player a lot of other people are.  I enjoy an FPS that is just hard enough to be fun, but not so hard you feel like it’s work.  That is what Legendary is.  Legendary, by the way, is a difficulty level.  It’s above hard.  In fact, I would call it Hard-Enough-To-Kill-Your-Dog, but I think Legendary has more of a ring to it.  Though getting four people together for a coop game would be sweet.  Four players in two warthogs tearing up a map?  Awesome.  Or four Mongoose ATVs bowling over some baddies?  Even awesomer than awesome.  We shall see, but I’m thinking the ATV may become my favorite driving machine of the Halo series.  So far the Warthog has been my baby.  I learned how to drive the shit out of that machine, put it places no Warthog was meant to go.  Hopefully the ATV will live up to my expectations, but really no game has completely fulfilled my FPS dreams.  Call of Duty 4 may be a jump in that direction, but we’ll see how that game plays when it comes out.

As if I needed one more reason to be an Apple f@nb0y.

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on August 14, 2007
in Media and Technology
. Comments

Check out these sleek, thin beautiful-looking new all-aluminum keyboards by Apple.  I really like the look of the wireless board.  It also runs on Bluetooth, so I would imagine that the beauty could conceivably connect to a PS3.  Man, there is one thing that Apple knows and that is style.  Functionality, I don’t know as I haven’t played with these new keyboards, but dammit, just looking at one makes me drool a little bit.  I can say that playing with the few Macs that I have played with, I do like them.  I wish I had one to get more familiar with, but hey, that’s why I’m taking these college courses, right?  So they can give me a piece of paper that says, “I did good!

Personally, I wish I had a job that would allow me to test stuff like this.  I really want to start a video podcast revolving around tech, movies, video games, comic books, etc and be so successful that companies send us free stuff to play with.  Adam put it really well when I was talking to him, that’d it’d kinda be a guy’s “The View”.  However, I don’t really know anyone who would want to be the host(s) of said show.  I know my ugly mug would never be seen on that side of a camera.  Interesting shows like that are all over the place.  Take a look a Diggnation, one as an example and two as a show that’s genuinely entertaining.  Two guys with laptops sit on a couch, drink beer, and talk about the top stories from Digg.com.  See?  The show is so simplistic, it’s its own logline (yes, I know loglines are for movie scripts, but I don’t know the term for a one sentence synopsis of a serial show; also, did I use the correct apostrophe placement in those two its).  When/if Lexy and I move back to JC, I’ll talk with Adam, Steve, and some other people I know to see if they would be interested in doing such a show.  Hell, if that guy I met this last semester emails me from Florida, that may be a solid project to keep with while we are doing the film production studio thang.  I really hope that guy emails me.  Or perhaps in a semester or two, I will start one for one of the Video Production courses I’ll be taking.  We shall see.

Why did nobody tell me about this?

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on August 14, 2007
in Television
. Comments

I just watched an (presumably) early episode of “Heroes” and I am so goddammed shocked that nobody told me how awesome this show was.  I just started recording it the last two episodes, so I missed 21 episodes worth of show.  The episode I watched tonight was called “Collision” if that rings a bell with anyone.  I sat there and loved every minute of that show.  I was mostly confused, but I still loved it.  I had heard a lot of people talk about the show, but nobody told me how awesomely badass it was.  Masi Oka’s character Hiro is by far my favorite at this time.  The ability to control time and then apparently, eventually he figures out how to travel through time?  Fucking… awesome.  Hopefully I can get through the first season on HD DVD before the second season starts.