Day 6: Favorite Adventure Movie

Well, I can't pick Raiders since that's already been spoken for, so here I present: Jaws. You want a movie of the summer? Here it is. Sure, it doesn't really become an adventure film until the second half, but it's an epic second half.
This is another one of those movies that I grew up with. I wouldn't say I grew up on it, but it was a film watched often in my family. It's constantly quoted, and when the summer comes, is constantly on. My mom and I just rode the Jaws ride at Universal, in fact.
Also the narration in this trailer is pretty cool. :-D

Day 5: Favorite Animated Movie

This was really tough. I love animated movies so much, because I feel like a kid when I watch them. When I saw I had to choose which was my favorite, I dreaded the moment. When I look at the Pixar resume, I see my favorite movie after the other. Their newest film is my favorite, so to speak. Therefore, the choice would HAVE to be Toy Story 3, right?
Well, I love Toy Story 3 SO much. It was made with my generation in mind, the kind that grew up on the series. The movie made me tear up, and I wasn't the only guy! It's a beautiful ending to the trilogy.
Yet, Up remains my favorite. I cannot pinpoint why, exactly. Maybe it's the call to adventure that I find so appealing. Adventure is out there, and we live it everyday. Just thinking about it makes me start to get teary. Goddamn it, Pixar, why must you always make me cry?! Anyway, it's gorgeous, it's funny, it's sad, and it's just all sorts of magnificent.

Day 4: Favorite Comedy

I was so torn between this and Airplane, but I eventually chose Young Frankenstein. I first watched it as a little kid, and think it's even more hilarious than when I first saw it. It's one of those comedies where no matter how many times you see it, you still laugh hysterically. If you haven't seen it, change that immediately. Drop what you're doing and go watch it. Now. I'm serious.

Day 3: Favorite Romantic Comedy

I like some romantic comedies, but I LOVE 500 Days of Summer for being a romantic comedy that is actually REAL. I don't think there's been a character I've identified with more than Tom, to the point that one particular scene near the end hit extremely, painfully close to home. It's tragic and funny, sometimes all at once. Zooey Deschanel was my dream girl, and seeing her in this added to how I see love and relationships more so than if it was some other girl.
At the beginning of the spring semester and my film class, we were asked what movie had the most influence on us. Not our favorites, but the most influential. I said this movie, for it changed the way I see love. It's not like in the movies or music, but it's real, and when you have it, you know it.

Day 2: Favorite Action Movie

I think every guy loves James Bond. Just like the Doctor, each of us has our own personal Bond. Growing up, that Bond was Pierce Brosnan, and was always my go-to mental image of what James Bond should look like: classy, black hair, and badass while still gentlemanly. So when I heard Daniel Craig would take over for him I was pretty nervous. For God's sake, he's BLONDE.
Yet all of my fears where put to rest when I saw Casino Royale. It was Bourne-like in a good way, toning down the high levels of espionage and gadgetry for grittiness and realism. This Bond was a cold-hearted killer, and was EXTREMELY badass. His character development and fallibility were also pretty sweet, making him a very worth successor to my James Bond.

Day 1: Favorite Movie Ever

I've said before how much I love Raiders of the Lost Ark. The movie is exciting, intriguing, and just very cool. My favorite movies have come and go, but Raiders is forever. If someone were to ask for the perfect movie, I'd show them Raiders of the Lost Ark.

A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES

Well, not a challenger, but a challenge! I'm going to do the 30 Day Movie Challenge, starting tomorrow! Which means that there will always be something of substance in a post. Yay!

"What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"

Chilling out with Ashley and Jessica is always so much fun. I never have as much fun as when I'm with them. We're deep, yet fun. Basically, we're amazing.

Do You Ever

Have one of those moments where you want to say something, but you just can't? It's been a really good day, and so it feels like one of those times where I just want to say things, but I can't. Not now anyway, but sometime.

Will I ever write a thoughtful post again? Jesus, I could write a whole thoughtful post on why I'm not writing thoughtful posts :-p

For Someone Who Needs It

I'm always here.

Two Years

It's been two years since we graduated. It's surreal to think about that. It feels just like yesterday that I was sitting in the bleachers watching it all occur. Then I remember going to Valhalla and having so much fun there, then finally waiting with Ashley as we watched all of our former classmates leave and never see many of them ever again. It still weirds me out to think that I'm in college, and yet here I am.
I've said it before that I can't truly say I miss Verot as much as I used to. That part of my life is over, but I do miss the people. I miss being in the theatre, hanging out in the Green Room or the wings. I miss lots of my fellow actors. I miss our old jokes (THE TIME IS NOW) and the whole environment.
I think I miss it most because it's something I could go back to. I can still do theatre, and talk or hang out with our old actors. I just don't.

*Insert Doctor Who Theme*

Had a brilliant day with Ashley watching "Doctor Who" and drinking Yoohoo. She's such a great gal and I love her so much. :-)

As these posts have been so short as of late, I think it's time for a new countdown thingy like my 25 Days. Suggestions?

Power's Out

I wanted to talk about fun things, but instead I'm stuck with the power out.

Skulking About Luzon

Skulked with Kaitlin today and had a lovely time. We banged the drums, visited Luzon, reminisced about Verot and how we're doing now, ate at Friday's and saw Maureen's mom, and babbled about how impossible it is that Jessica had never heard Simon and Garfunkel... which I'm still shocked about.

The Apathetic and the Passionate

L.A. Noire is the shit. It's classic hard boiled detective stuff, and it's brilliant. And difficult. People are hard to read.
So today was Spellamania for the class of 2011. It's always surreal going back to Verot, but this was surreal times two. It's so familiar, seeing all the little seniors so excited, and even the underclassmen so small and, in the case of the freshmen, nervous. It was also a little sad because I felt mostly ambivalent towards the whole thing. For a moment, right at the beginning, I felt that nostalgic rush. But then it was gone, and I felt like an outsider. Even with Jessica and Kaitlin there it still felt uncomfortable. As Jessica said, "it's THEIR time," which is true. Even so, the whole even didn't feel like mine anymore. In fact, the school barely felt like mine anymore. Elmeer was there and she was wonderful, the hallways in the Santini center still smelled and looked the same, but I felt divorced from the place. As much as my nostalgia goggles affect me, this is the one time I can say "THE GOGGLES! THEY DO NOTHING!"
Bishop Verot isn't mine anymore. It was for four years, but that was a chapter that I've since moved on from. I'll always cherish the memories, but outside of theatre, everything else is gone. It hurts to write that, that I've moved on without even knowing. Yet it's something I can make my peace with. It's not the destination that matters, it's the journey. I can truly say that was one of the most exhausting, satisfying, and overall wonderful journeys of my life. I'm glad that the most important people from that journey are still in my life today.

Guess Who I'm Talking To

GABY!!!!! WHOO!!!!!

Pregunta

Tell me what you think of this for my 21st: we get Nerf guns and have a Nerf gun war. Thoughts?

You Know

I'll write SOMETHING meaningful here sometime, but I just finished the Neil Gaiman episode of "Doctor Who" and my mind is still reeling over how beautiful it was. I love this show. I love it so much.

'Twas a Slow Day

But I'm okay with that. Slow days can be good days. I cleaned the house spotless, jammed to New Pornographers, and now I'm watching "Pushing Daisies" on Netflix streaming. Basically, I'm doing pretty good :-D

I Can Post Again!

Putting this in the yesterday date since this WAS supposed to be yesterday's post. Curse you Blogger! But thanks for coming back!

"The enemy's gate is down."

Today I finished reading "Ender's Game," which was given to me as a Christmas present from Maureen and Ed. I was in the middle of reading it when I was given "A Game of Thrones," which I had to finish in its mammoth entirety by last month. So, now with the time to do so, I read it. It was a really fantastic book about a child soldier in the future. It was a sci-fi book, but deconstructed the genre and what it's like being a hero. Needless to say, the ending was depressing, but I won't dare give it away here.

This was a question Ashley and I had brought up before, and I bring it up again: why do we have depressing endings so often these days? In my film class, one guy blamed Shakespeare, but it goes all the way back to the Greeks. However, nowadays most stories end sadly, or, at their happiest, bittersweet. What's wrong with having a happy ending? Why do we need depressing endings? Isn't the real world sad enough?

Anyway, here's a video of Ahnold raving. Thanks, Internet!

(What Felt Like) 127 Hours

If I could I would like to smite Jason's Deli for poisoning half of a turkey sandwich. And if it was not them, then smite the one who improperly preserved it before giving it to my mom for safe-keeping. I have the power of Thor, apparently, so I can do that sort of thing.

Yes, you have heard right. Apparently having food poisoning makes me Thor. Let me explain.

Saturday night I ate the second half of a turkey sandwich from Jason's Deli. Soon after, I started feeling nauseous. Skipping over the gross stuff, I'm spending the night in the bathroom. Going in and out of consciousness on a cold floor with a blanket that refuses to completely cover you while trying to find a comfortable spot for my stomach leads to some... weird events. I'm not sure if they're lucid dream related or from my body just saying "fuck it, let's have some delusions" but I imagined myself as the god Thor, and there were my worshipers living in the bathroom with me. They were small, so it was kind of like Gulliver's Travels, but they worshiped me as the Odinson. I would then fall asleep (maybe? There were moments of blackness or segments that I can't remember. It was a long night) and would lead them through another segment of their existence. Yes, I led them from their creation, until Ragnarok, and even a bit after then. Granted, this was a bit more like Odin, but this was also some sort of delusion, so logic doesn't exactly matter here. Besides, Odin would totally be chilling with me from time to time.

I don't want to say that I could actually see Odin (or my worshipers for that matter), but I knew they were there and what they looked like. Sort of like in a dream when you imagine someone is with you, and then you wake up but they aren't. Well, when I would wake up, for just a moment a shadow of these characters would linger and then (literally) fade away. Halfway through I finally recognized that this was a delusion and that I should stop, but then it felt like I was abandoning my people. Regardless, I did so, and yet, when I would awaken later, there I was as Thor again. I even warned my people that Ragnarok was coming, the moment that I would stop recognizing my authority. Then, in my sleep, Ragnarok came. When I awoke, no delusion. Back to sleep, awake once more, and there were two people left to worship me, two survivors of Ragnarok. Which is exactly what happens in the Norse myth.

When I slept and awoke once more, there was no more Thor hallucinations. It was on the older side of 3:30 in the morning, I was wide awake, feeling better than I had all night. I read "King Lear" thanks to my Shakespeare App (shameless plug) until 4 and then finally went back to sleep. I woke up once more at the later half of 7 am, feeling so much better than I had been. Granted, this was still worse than how my normal self feels, but at least it wasn't pure "put me out of this and kill me now" misery.

And so here I am, trying to shake off the last dregs of the food poisoning. I have to say it was a nice little vacation away from my laptop, but I'm back now. Still not in fighting shape, but a hell of a lot better than I had been.

I should add that those hallucinations would occur for maybe two minutes (in lucid dream/sickness time) before I could recognize reality, so I wasn't in a constant state of thunder-godding.

Hopefully

Tomorrow we can resume our regularly scheduled broadcast.

Still Bleh

Still feeling ill. Definitely not as bad as last night, but still pretty shitty :-(

So Not Feeling Good

Feeling ill tonight, so have some music.

The Big 100

I just saw that this is my 100th post! Wow, how crazy is that? Well, not that crazy. But still pretty cool! Here's two 100 more, then 100 after that, then 100 after that!

Just got back from seeing "Thor" and other silly things. It was a surprisingly great movie, and I really enjoyed it! It was also really nice to hang with our Verot folks again. The more we change, the more we stay the same. Things like today make me miss Verot, but then I know not everything was rosebuds back there.

Truth be told I don't know what more to talk about. I wish there were more movies about Norse mythology. Hm, that sounds good. And I guess I'll post the music to Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, since that's kind of like Norse mythology.

I Was Perfect

O "Black Swan," you have more layers than "Inception" and are just so beautiful, even in your gore. It's so deep, so tragic, so filled with meaning. The camera work is extraordinary, the acting incredible, the imagery so potent. It's avant garde without being overt. It's scary without relying on too many jump scares. It creeps up on you, disorients you, questions the reality of the situation. It, to me, was the movie of 2010.

Today ended up being much better than yesterday. Not to say that chilling and bowling with Jessica yesterday wasn't awesome, just the negativity from last night sucked. It was definitely a "me" day, which is great. I love these days.

May the Fourth Be With You

And also with you.

Today started excellent and for some reason became really unpleasant. I went bowling with Jessica, who surprised me with her FATHER. He ended up being a really nice guy, which I knew from the start would be the case. We also ate at Perkins, which was #DELICIOUS. I don't get pancakes often enough.

So I came home, took care of around the house stuff, and then took to the Twitter. Due to some things which I'm not entirely comfortable talking about on here, I became increasingly annoyed to the point that I've been put into an unpleasant mood.

I frequently tell people not to sweat the small stuff, but I wish I could take my own advice more often. That's probably one of my biggest personal flaws. I read far too deep into things, especially among people I know, which feeds into my self-confidence issues. I feel like I've improved on that as time has gone on, but it's still one of my major issues. I'm hoping that as I get older those issues will continue to fade away, but it's a big battle.

And happy Star Wars Day, everybody!

The Spiritual Successor

Today was totally the spiritual successor to Alot of Fun Tuesday with Jessica. I always have so much fun with her, despite it being plagued with vitriol, which even my mom decided to join in on. Not so sure how I feel about that besides mortification.

Anyway, much fun ensued. However, I have come to a conclusion about Jessica: she is easily confused and/or frightened by things I love. Namely my indie music and Doctor Who. Now, Doctor Who can be quite frightening at times, but it's amusing to see her be as frightened as she is when, say, the space whale spikes show up. Also, this song I have playing totally baffled her, for some reason. But it's all good. I love her in our own weird way.

Kwan's was #DELICIOUS, thankfully. Doctor Who was very entertaining, despite having watched these episodes just recently with Ashley. Of course, I was a Paranoid Parrot the entire time hoping that Jessica enjoyed them. This was followed by some video game playing, a visit by the Terminix guy in which Jessica acted like a Socially Awkward Penguin (big surprise) and some other stuff which I can't totally remember. All in all, a very good day.

Oh, and Jessica, don't forget to read Darths and Droids!

What a Day

Even though I spent most of my day lounging about, I ended up totally passed out after taking Ben to the vet. Don't worry, he had a few minor things wrong but he's now on meds to take care of them :-)

Every time I take Ben to his vet I pass by my old house. My old house has some of the best memories of my youth in there, and I really really miss it. The house I live in now has been in my family since my grandparents moved here before I was born. I've literally spent my entire life associated with this house. But my old house, which is on Burning Tree and is thus always known as the Burning Tree house, is the house which I think of as home.

We moved in when I was in the first grade. I remember it was a rainy day, we got Burger King for breakfast, and I was watching Arthur. I also remember the day we moved out: it was sunny, one of the last days of the sixth grade, and I had just my mattress and this old TV as the only things left in my room before it was all taken away. I really spent the last golden days of my youth in that house. It was small, but cozy. I have one particular moment from that house that I remember clearly. I had my Lego Magazine and was looking on the back cover to complete some contest. Inside was a set about the podrace scene from The Phantom Menace. I remember looking outside and seeing just this beautiful blue summer sky. It was brilliant and alive, and it was at that moment that I felt really young and fresh and happy.

I miss those days of innocent youth. I wish I could have them again.

Forever Alone? Me Gusta.

I LOVE being home alone. I can do what I want when I want to. Just eat dinner? Clean up later. Want to listen to music? Turn it up to 11. The fact that it comes during the summer, when I have NO responsibilities to take care of, makes it even sweeter.