Happy T-Day

Time for some food punishing of epic proportions! I barely ate anything last night and then I slept through most of the day. It's about 1:00 now and dinner at my aunt's house is around 3:00. So I'm going to pretty much just relax until then.

Normally Thanksgiving is my entire family on my mom's side (and a rather large family at that) but this year most relatives are doing other things. So my cousin got in touch with me to let me know there would be a few of them going to my aunts house this year. So at least it's something! Since my aunt and I couldn't figure out what I could make to bring to dinner, since I can't cook, I have been entrusted to bring chips. And maybe some store bought rolls! Dunno, that might be a bit much for me to handle.

Anyway, hope everyone has a great holiday!

Boondock Saints 2 Review

....

HA! I tricked you. There is no review. Because I didn't get to see it!

My friends and I were obsessed with the original Boondock Saints, and for good reason. It was violent, funny, and the main characters were fucking Irish brothers. You can't go wrong with the Irish! Every guy wanted to be like the MacManus Brothers. Have a fuggin awesome accent and kill people that did wrong. That's right. If you haven't seen the movie the "Saints" decided they would go around and kill everyone who they felt did wrong in the world. Like murders, pedophiles, and pimps. It's like a superhero without morals.

Now I would take the more Spider-Man route if I could and just bust criminals and leave them dangling from a web for the cops to find and arrest. I could never really kill a person, but the Boondock Saints did and it was edgy as fuck. Which made it such an interesting movie. But I'm getting off topic. It took a decade for the sequel to come out. Most of us gave up hope on the whole thing, but now here it is, in limited theater release. Sadly only a few of my close friends were able to go see it so we set off to one of the few theaters playing it.


So my friends and I were running a bit late. The movie started at 7:50 and we got there right around 8. We figured we had just missed the previews so we weren't too upset. But once we entered the lobby of the theater it was mass hysteria!! The lobby was a complete mess! I had originally thought we were going to the Indie Theater down the street for Boondock, but apparently I was wrong and we were in the GINORMOUS GENERAL PUBLIC THEATER! This theater as so huge that while I was looking for a much needed restroom I had to take the stairs that were about as long as a DC Metro escalator...

But anyway, the line to get tickets was ridiculous. One of my friends and I were drunk and so we were confused, but our buddy who drove us was sober enough to point out the fact "It's opening night for New Moon"
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New Moon???

New Moon????

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


Yes sadly, it was true. It was the opening night of New Moon. We were surrounded by Tweens and Middle Aged Women unsatisfied by their marriages. It was a sight to behold! But the worst part was that even though we were late to our movie, we had to sit in the same line as the Twilight people! That's right, it was all one big line to the ticket booth.

I call bullshit!! I am a geek boy. We all know this. So whenever there is a big geek movie (Star Wars, Spider-Man, X-Men etc) there is always a separate line for them because the movie is so huge! Well apparently it wasn't the case for this theater. If you wanted to see the limited release for Boondock Saints 2 then you would have had to arrive at the theater early on like the rest of the New Moon crowd. Not only that, there were like 15 other movies out in that theater that night and if you were a poor soul not seeing New Moon, good luck catching your flick!


I'm sure it was just this theater that was being retarded, but I mean, come on. Put the mass public in a separate line (like I'm used to being in for my geek movies) so the kids can go see Planet 51 or The Christmas Carol!


So annoying...

Star Wars in Concert

So last night was the big night. As I stated in my last post there are very few things in this world that I love more than Star Wars and so a month ago when my uncle called and asked if I wanted to see Star Wars in Concert I didn't even give him a chance to finish his sentence. I didn't even know what the hell it was! I hear Star Wars and I'm there. So it was me, my uncle, and my two younger cousins. The older of the two is obsessed with Star Wars so we have a lot in common. While I do have a great deal of knowledge of the prequels I haven't seen them nearly as many times as he has. And although I feel like less of a man when someone younger than me knows more about Star Wars than I do, I just have to remind myself that the prequels are what he was raised on so he saw them the most.

The car ride there was pretty funny because my uncle and I kept singing Bill Murray's lounge song version of Star Wars. My cousins we're not as amused as we were. For those unfamiliar, here's the video.

We were told that there was going to also be an exhibit of Star Wars costumes, weapons, and the like before the show. I was kind of expecting a big room with everything on display but unfortunately they were all in glass cases in the very cramped hallways. *le sigh* Another dumb move was that they put Darth Vader and Chewbacca on display right before the entrance. So there is a mass of people blocking the area you need to give you tickets. And once you were in, you couldn't go back out until the end of the show. Hella lame! Once we were on the other side of the gate you could immediately see the other displays. First were Kit Fisto and Plo Koon from the prequels. It was hilarious seeing my cousin get all excited to see the characters. It was exactly like when I was a kid and saw the Star Wars exhibit at the Smithsonian in DC. Pointing out every character you see in complete awe. "OH!! There's Vader!" and "Ohh ohh!! It's Chewey!" At once point my uncle actually turned to my cousin and said "Dylan! Stop being a geek!" Fatherly love.

As we moved on they had C-3PO, Han Solo in carbonite (or as one dumbass said "You wanna see Han Solo in his ice cube?"), Imperial Guard, Naboo Pilot, Emperor Palpatine's robe, Amidala's get up and her hand maiden's, some blasters, and a few helmets (Scout Trooper, Death Star Gunner, and A-Wing pilot). They also had HDTV screens everywhere playing different "making of" documentary stuff. All in all, pretty rad.

As for the show itself? Fucking amazing. They had this orchestra on stage with a gigantic move screen behind them. The lights go out. It's completely dark except for dozens of mini lightsabers keychains (from the gift shop) twirling around. Of course "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" pops on the screen and then BAM! Logo hits the screen and the orchestra is a blazing. When the yellow Star Wars logo appeared they used yellow lights and swept them across the audience which looked amazing. As they are doing the main theme so they are showing clips from all the movies and cutting to shots of the band playing. I was in complete awe. It was so fucking beautiful. The very last clip they showed as the song was ending was of Darth Vader. They quickly zoom into his face and then the song ends and everything goes black for a couple seconds. Then there is some quick strobe lights and jets of steam shoot out of the stage floor and it goes dark again. Then you just hear Vader breathing. Such a great effect. As the lights come up we hear fucking James Earl Jones voice! He's introducing our host for the evening. None other than Anthony Daniels! C-3PO himself!

So now I have seen both R2-D2 and Threepio live in person. I can die happy.

The second song they played was Duel of the Fates which is one of the best things to come out of the prequels. I LOVE that song. The song first starts with a choir chanting. As soon as I heard the chanting I was looking to see where the choir was. Then I saw them slowly being revealed behind the orchestra. They had been raised out of nowhere on a moving platform. Brilliant!

During the whole show they did some real nifty shit with the lights too. While showing clips of the Carbon Freezing Chamber the spotlights would all turn red giving it this awesome feeling like you were there. Same with Tatooine. Lots of yellow and orange lighting. One of my favorite parts is when they would show the Death Stars blowing up. As we have seen, when a Death Star explodes a giant shock wave is produced. They made the lights shoot out and sweep over the audience. Give that lighting dude a medal. Seriously.

When they played The Imperial March for the second time (once before and once after intermission) they had these amazing lasers. They would flicker back and forth a set of about 7 lasers back and forth to the beat sometimes. Kind of gave the illusion of lightsabers crossing. It was a thing of beauty.

After the show they ended up going an encore of both the opening title and Imperial March. Thank god. I forgot to mention that the first time they played Imperial March they used these two really bright spot lights on either side of the stage. One was shining directly in my eyes! So badly that my eyes were watering. I turned to look at my Uncle and he looked like he was being blinded. So sadly, my favorite song was ruined for me the first time around. Luckily, they came back after intermission and did a dark version with the lasers I mentioned earlier. Thank god.

My only complaint was that even though I loved seeing the clips from the movies, it would have been nice to see more close ups on screen of the orchestra playing. To actually see HOW the music is played. They were so damn good that as you were watching the movie clips you would often forget the orchestra was there because it sounded absolutely perfect. I think the most interesting song to see them play on screen would have been the Cantina song. They went all out with that one but only showed a few clips from the movies and then some pretty interesting "concept art". What really got me was as soon as they showed Ponda on screen a good portion of the audience had a good laugh. I can only assume they were thinking the same thing that I was. The Robot Chicken Sketch.

So I guess to sum it all up, it rocked so hard and if you are a Star Wars fan you should probably get your ass there when it comes to your town. I mean come on, Anthony Daniels is the host!

Later!

Back home

Well I am back from the Burgh, sadly. Wish I could have stayed a few more days but unfortunately one needs to work in order to make money.

After work today I decided to do a bit of shopping. I needed to get an electric razor to trim the ol Van Dyke I be sporting (not a goatee!) and a copy of Catcher in the Rye. So I swung by Target this evening since my brother had picked up a pretty good razor there for pretty cheap. After searching the small electronics aisle for 10 minutes it was nowhere to be found. So I walked around the store looking for it. Now my Target is 2 floors so after searching the downstairs I made my way upstairs. Nowhere to be found. WTF? Where the hell would it be? During my search I passed many Target employee's and the majority asked them if I needed any help to which I replied "No, I'm alright"

Why didn't I ask? Because apparently that's what guys do. You always see it on TV and in the movies. Guys don't like asking for directions or whatever. I never really thought about it but I guess it's true. Maybe not so much with directions while driving, but when it comes to finding something, leave me be. For whatever reason I would rather wander around aimlessly then ask anybody for help. And that's exactly what happened tonight. I was in Target for 30 minutes and it was eventually in the last place I could have checked. Over in the corner that I thought was mainly just girly crap there were a few aisles for bathroom necessities. Well duh!! I should have guessed. To be fair I wasn't wearing my glasses. Had I had them I would have been able to actually read the signs from far away.

Why do we do it? Had I just asked somebody I could have been in and out of Target right quick! Hell, the damn thing was on the first floor several aisles away from the registers. So why did I meander around like a damn fool for so long? I have no idea. It's not like I was trying to impress anyone. There's was no one with me! I had no point to prove, no nothing. If you think I'm going somewhere with this then you would be wrong because I have no idea. Apparently I just like to inconvenience myself and waste my own damn time.

In other news I have a big day tomorrow! After work I'm driving up to my uncle's place and he's taking me and my cousin to go see Star Wars in Concert!! *Epic drool*

Not quite what I'm seeing, but how fucking rad would THIS be?!

There are very few things in this world that I love more than Star Wars. Very few things. So when my uncle called me a month ago asking if I wanted to go I agreed before he could even finish his sentence. What's also sweet is that there is going to be an exhibit there before the concert with a bunch of costumes and props from the movies. It says you can bring your camera and take pictures of the exhibit, but not into the show. So where the fuck do I put my camera for the show? I tried calling and asking but they only gave me a recording. Hella lame.

I shall make a post about it sometime in the future, hopefully with pictures to go along with it.

Later nerf herders...

"My trip to da Burgh" or "Sean, Sebulba, and Optimus Prime"

So I arrived in Pittsburgh tonight around 11:00 tonight and I had quite the journey.

I would have normally left right after work at 3:00 but it was raining hardcore and the highway was already a disaster. I decided to wait it out and hope that the rain would die down in a few hours. Sadly, it didn't. I called my buddy and asked how the weather was in Pitt. Clear skies! Which is odd for Pittsburgh. So I set off around 7 in the pouring rain. If there is one thing I hate more than driving long distances at night, it's doing it in the rain. Luckily for me I was only in the rain for about an hour or so. Basically once I hit PA it was gone (which is the exact opposite of every trip I take).

Since my bladder is pathetic I already had to go to the bathroom after an hour. Luckily I knew there was a rest stop coming up. WRONG! It was closed. So now I'm freaking out because I know the next rest stop has been under construction the past 2 years. And it was my favorite stop because it had Sabarro Pizza, Quiznos, and more! So I'm freaking out thinking that the next time I'm going to be able to go to the bathroom is in 70 miles. But guess what? It was finally open!! Thank the lords! And it was all nice an fancy too. I really dug the remodeling. Just wish it didn't take so long.

It should also be noted that before this happened I met my first "friend" of my trip. There are certain vehicles on my car rides I dub friends and enemies. Right before I got on the PA Turnpike I passed a massive truck. Since I had my window down (to enjoy the nice frosty PA air) when I passed the truck it was so loud it sounded like Sebulba's Podracer from Phantom Menace. So I dubbed him Sebulba, obviously. After leaving him in my dust, I eventually reached the rest stop that was finally open again. I went inside, did my thing, and as I was about to get back into my car I hear down the road the *chug chug chug* of Sebulba's podracer. I got in my car thinking "Oh no you don't fucker". As I drove down the road I passed that sucker again. Sadly, for Sebulba, this happened again at my last rest stop later in the trip. The poor fool. Getting to Pod Race with him was one of the highlights of my trip as it was pretty fucking wizard. But while this was going on I was also dealing with my main nemesis.

Optimus Prime.

I had a truck tailgating the shit out of me for a long time. It's absolutely horrifying having a vehicle that big with it's enormous headlights in your rear view mirror right on your ass. The PA Turnpike for the most part is only 2 lanes and since I couldn't change lanes due to the cars ahead of me and to the side of me, I had no choice for many miles but to deal with this huge ass truck on my ass. I dubbed him Optimus Prime because Michal Bay is a jerk off and so was this truck. He must have been late for his delivery or something because he was out for blood on the road. I felt like I was in the movie Duel for awhile. Once he passed me he ended up doing a good 95/100 mph down the road. The speed limit is 75 most of the time just so you know. At this point I was missing my playful back and forth with Sebulba.

I had been making amazing time by the way. But once I got off the Turnpike and was in the home stretch (right before the Squirrel Hill Tunnel for the people who are familiar with the area), I get stopped dead in traffic at 11 at night! On the other side of the road I am sitting right next to a police car. One of 5 to be exact. Obviously there had been some sort of an accident on the other side of the median. So why was my side stopped? Were people gawking at the accident? That's what I thought at first. Once I was able to move forward a bit I saw that on the other side of the road there was a PT Cruiser smashed and upside down!! How the hell could that happen? Now I understood why my side was gawking so much, it was quite a sight to see. But apparently thats not why my side had not been moving. It was because there was another car, not only on my side of the median, but so far of to the right it went off the street, went up a hill, and was pretty much crushed to half it's size against a tree. I don't know if there were other cars involved that had already been moved because if it was just these 2 it doesn't add up. They were way to far apart and on opposite sides of the median. Craziness...

Then I went to Wendy's drive through and specifically asked for plain Jr Bacon Cheeseburgers and they gave me ones covered in tomato and mayo.

I was very mad...

Vacation!

...sort of.

I've been working my ass off for awhiles now. It's been really hard to take some time off of work to get out of town. Well my boss went out of town last weekend. We made an agreement that he could take however many days off and I would work my butt off covering the shifts while in return he would do the same for me. Well after an excruciating week at work it's now my turn! Vacation time! And I will be spending it in the always lovely Pittsburgh!

The exact opposite of how I will be spending my "vacation"...

Going up to The Burgh to visit my college friends. That is how I like to spend my time. Chilling with friends and getting drunk as all hell. I'm leaving tomorrow night and coming back on Monday. Since my friends whose house I'm staying at will be working Thursday and Friday I get to use that time for R&R. If it's going to be anything like last time I was at Pitt it will consist of laying on the couch, not moving, while playing video games and watching movies all day. Basically, bliss. My job involves a lot of manual labor so laying around is just what I need.

Even though my buddy has a PS3 I will be bringing up my own so I can continue playing Dragon Age Origins, since my game is already saved on my hard drive. I can't tell you how much I love this game. Well i could, but it would just take a long time. I'm only about 10-12 hours into it or so with so much to look forward too. We'll see how much I can punish in the 2 days I'll be chilling on the couch.

Then the rest of the weekend will be dedicated to getting completely smashed. Huzzah!!

Well it's time for me to start winding down before bed. I have 3 episodes of Naruto Shippuuden queued and ready for some watching.

Later all!

Christmas

Wow they really just go right to it when it comes to Christmas, don't they? The DAY after Halloween the shopping center next to my house was already decorated with their Christmas decorations. Since I went to the grocery store in the morning and saw this, that means they had to have put the decorations up Halloween night. Fucking amazing...

Wish I could have a Christmas this year...

What sucks is that now that I'm surrounded by Christmas shit, I'm all bummed out. I don't really have a Christmas this year. Nor did I last year. My mom is gone and my dad moved away. It's just me and my brother now.

My parents separated when I was very young. But Christmas was the only holiday we would all share together. Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas Eve were always celebrated with my mom's side of the family and my dad never came. But Christmas day was always with both my parents. My brother and I would wake up in the morning to have all of our "Santa" gifts assembled and scattered across the living room. All of our family presents (from mom and dad) were wrapped under the tree. We weren't allowed to open those until my dad arrived.

Obviously as you get older the Christmas tradition changes. Our parents would get us each 1 or 2 expensive gifts and then a mess of small things. But it was those too big gifts that made it all worth it. I would always get tech stuff (computer related things, video camera, editing equipment) and my brother would get sports related things.

Several years ago my mom passed away 3 months before Christmas. It was an extremely hard holiday to go through but our dad really pulled through and made it great. There was no Christmas tree, no wrapping paper, no nothing. It was pretty bare bones but we had all been way too depressed to get all that stuff. Especially the tree. It sucked that we didn't get one, but my brother and I decided it wouldn't be the same to decorate it without mom. She would always take us tree shopping every year and my brother and I would always find a tree we liked (just so we could hurry the fuck up and get out of there) but mom always made us stick around for an hour trying to find "the right one". As much as it always annoyed the living hell out of me, I would do anything to get moments like that back.

Which brings us to last year. Mom is gone and my father retires, buys an RV to travel the US and leaves. This was last October. But before he goes he takes us to dinner and leaves us a bunch of DVD's and a 27 inch monitor for my computer!! I was going to bring up to him if he was going to come back for Christmas but I just assumed this was probably it right now. Sure it was a few months early and took place in a Mexican restaurant, but hey, it was something. That's why I wasn't too bummed out about Christmas last year. Technically we had gotten gifts and such, just not in the traditional sense. But that's what makes this year so much harder...

We have nothing going on this year. My brother and I aren't the kind of guys that are going to buy each other expensive gifts. While it would be a nice gesture, rent money gets in the way of us doing so. I have a shitload of relatives that I will be seeing on Christmas Eve (hopefully) but we only do a playful Yankee Swap lately. Christmas Eve with my mom's family was always celebrated at my Nana's house with all my aunts, uncles, and cousins (my mom had 7 siblings) so you were guaranteed a shitload of gifts. Now that we're older it's just evolved into a Yankee Swap. Which is fine but now that both Nana and my mom have passed, everything just seems off. I don't even think we had Christmas Eve last year because of Nana's death and we're still trying to figure out where we are having it this year.

What I am going to be doing on Christmas day? I have no idea. I remember 2 years ago my Jewish buddy was nice enough to invite me to join his family for Christmas Eve dinner and a movie! (Chinese food and Sweeney Todd).

But I am not going to get to enjoy the classic Christmas morning. It's the one time of the year where I can actually ask for something I can't afford and actually get it. Does this sound selfish? Do I only care about gifts? No, but it would be nice to at least get something. Last year I spent Christmas day playing WoW all day. I wanted to put my dad's 27 inch monitor gift to use cuz that's all I had. That was my Christmas!

Hoping Santa brings me a Time Machine this year... *fingers crossed*

Rocky!

So the other night I read a blog that really broke my heart. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love animals. The top right picture in my blog is always a picture of my dog. Kenobi is the friendliest dog ever (sometimes too much, ha) and I don't know what I would do if something bad ever happened to him.

Well the other day I was reading the blog of Michael Flux. He's is someone I consider a good blog friend. His blog always had amazing pictures of Japan that blew my mind and I was a follower of his page since the day I discovered it.

Well recently he just started sharing his blog with his girlfriend. She is a volunteer at Paws for Life Rescue and Adoption. She made a post about an awesome dog named Rocky that had been taken into Foster care. Sadly things didn't go to well for Rocky. Very depressing.

Please checkout The Flux's blog about Rocky's story! Read it here

And visit Justice for Rocky!