Inception

Not much I can say about this movie other than it was amazing. I loved it. I heard a review that said it was a cross between the matrix and some other movie... and it was exactly that. Just as awesome as the first matrix movie.

Probably one of the better movies I've seen this year. I hated myself for having to leave near the end for a bathroom break. But I don't think I missed too much so that's a plus. I'd like to go see it again for sure.

definitely have to give it a 5/5. Worth every penny.

My parents came and picked me up from Zac's House and we went to the mall of america and tried to get the DBOX seats... but they were sold out... It was only later that I realized that the DBOX seats are just four or so rows in the back of the theater that have seats that move... Kinda lame... but the one person we talked to said that it was cool and worth the extra money.... the extra $8. :/

But the movie is a definite MUST SEE.

Movies and a Dog

Last week I saw "Predators" with Michael and midnight. I hadn't seen the first two in their entirety before this one so I made it a point to watch them within the days after. And as far as I can tell, this one was probably my favorite. It introduced a concept that the rest of the predator movies only toyed with, and that concept was that the predators have been doing this for a LONG LONG time.

I have seen Aliens vs Predators but not the second one. I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to the sequel, even though it's been out for quite some time now.

But as far as "Predators" goes, the reason this one was probably my favorite is because it was set on a planet/reserve where they release different species to hunt. Really pulled the whole idea of a Predator together I thought.

I'd give it a 4/5... go see it.

NEXT I went and saw Disney's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" last night with Michael and my mom at midnight. This movie was pretty good, aside from the usual disney silly stuff they throw in here and there. I actually thought it did a great job of setting itself apart from Harry Potter. This had much more to do with Merlin and the "traditional" magicians... I guess you could call that traditional... i don't know.

But anyway, it was still a good movie. I thought it would be a bit more "epic" near the ending but still good.

another 4/5... don't miss it... as long as you remember it's disney and that this movie stemmed from the Fantasia short about Mickey and the magical hat with the mops.

And Finally, the dog. Last week my friend/old roommate, Zac, called me up and asked if I could do him a solid and dogsit for them while they're in Canada. I, of course, excepted and am now keeping an eye on this hell hound.

Just kidding. This dog has been nothing but perfect ever since he got him my car. The whole ride back from 35w he was sitting/laying in my passenger seat, watching the road and catching some Z's. He's actually doing a really good job of staying put and not barking every time I leave the room.

For some reason I thought there would be more work than thi..... omg... I'm not kidding you... He just farted... Silent but deadly... WOW LOUIE... wow.

I'll be sure to keep you posted of all the crazy shenanigans I get into with this Louie this week. Will probably go over to Zac and Ashley's place tomorrow. They originally asked if I would like to stay there and watch the dog. Which I wouldn't mind doing... But there's this HUGE fuggin computer in my room that likes it when I stay here. :)

Garden

Today Gretchen and I put down newspaper with grass clippings on it in my garden... Help cut back on weeds.

Here's a few pics of how crazy my garden has grown.

Onions and Carrots look AMAZING.

Corn and tomatoes are really shooting up there.

Lettuce and cucumbers are HUGE.

As for all of the melons, they are growing but not quite as fast.

More Pictures from Canada Trip

Flowers from the Botanical Gardens in Cleveland.

Butterfly from the Botanical Garden in Cleveland.

One of the guys who will answer all of you questions at the Niagara Falls, US side. He wasn't covering his face from my camera, he was talking to gretchen's mom, and he was talking with his hands. I shot from the hip with this one... and glad I did, because it turned out pretty nice.

Picture of above the falls. People can walk up next to one of them and get all wet.

Maid of the Mist from above.

Canada and it's syrup.

The falls at night from the canada side.

Colored lights were projected on them and they kept changing.

Back From Vacation, to Take Another

So we got back from the week long Niagara falls/Canada trip just in time to leave on friday and go up to Gretchen's friend Kari's cabin. But before I speak of the weekend of the 4th, I'm going to finalize the Canada trip...

Here's a pic from Cleveland, OH. Took it as we were driving by.

We went into Canada for an awesome, but rainy, time. The only thing I didn't like about the trip is that I had to PEE SOOO BAD when we were going threw the boarder back into the U.S.

We got in line, I was driving, and I had to pee a little bit. Figured I'd be fine waiting since it didn't take THAT long to go through the boarder any of the three other times we went through. But this line was different, THIS line took what seemed like FOREVER. By the time we were half way threw I was nervous, and not because I didn't think we would get back into the country, but because I didn't want the car to be searched since they were pulling people out for searches pretty frequently. But we got up there, I bit my lip to stop moving so much, and I handed the guy our passports.

Now I don't know if you've ever been threw the canadian boarder, but they ask you a DIFFERENT series of questions every time you go through. I have no idea how they know which questions you've already been asked... BUT THEY HAVE TO KNOW! The few times we went threw the boarder before they asked things like, "Are you all family?", "What is your purpose for going into Canada?" and, "How long are you going to be in Canada?". But THIS time, he tried to throw me for a loop.... "How do you know everyone in the car?" I looked straight at him and said, "THIS", thumbed to my right, "is my girlfriend, and THESE", thumbed to the back, "are here parents."

And I thought I was done for. Fastest response he probably had all day... I mean, I REALLY had to pee. But he looked at me, then looked in the back and said, "So what do THEY think about YOU driving?" with a smile. And from then on out, everything except my bladder was completely relaxed. We continued to bullshit for a minute or two before we took off and I headed for the FIRST exit for a bathroom. Pulled it and jumped out of the car without even shutting it off or closing the door.

It was bad.

But we made it home all safe and sound and in just enough time to go see "Eclipse" and "The Last Airbender" before we went to Kari's cabin.

Sorry to jump around so much but here's a pic from Benihana just before we went to see Eclipse. The guy there was doing all new things and made it pretty original. I was thinking earlier that I was getting sick of going to Benihana but this guy changed my mind.

Anyway, Today I got back from a 4 day weekend up at Gretchen's friend Kari's grandparent's cabin. Each day started out kinda wet and mucky but ended a lot better. I think it rained almost every night that we were there, but each day we had pretty much sunny skies.

The people involved were Kari, her Boyfriend Zach, her parents, gretchen and I. We did quite a bit of water sports, skiing and wake boarding. I'm SUPER sore today from all that wake boarding. We also did a little bit of tubing, also fun.

Dinners were awesome. Games after the dinners were just as awesome. Little bit of fishing, and the fish that we did catch we fried in the neighbors turkey fryer since they were frying a while turkey and having a party. We were told that they thought everyone was going to be talking about how good the turkey was but what everyone really talked about was how good the fried fish were. They WERE amazing.

I caught 4 decent sized sunfish and Zach caught a medium/small sized Large Mouth Bass. All were delicious, expect the one that Gretchen and Kari's mom let out when they tried to look at the fish in the fish basket. THEY say that didn't lose one but I asked Zack how many Sunnies I caught and he said four or five. I said, "At LEAST four right?" He said, "OH YEAH, at least." But there were only three. tisk tisk...

The next day we tried our luck again but there was nothing to be found.

Today we went out for some fun in the sun on the lake for a few hours before it started getting cloudy. Then we packed it up and headed out.

Got home to find my garden BLOOMING!

Looks like everything is about ready to go... not really, but SOON.

The Last Airbender

I know I need to post about the rest of my trip... And I should post about the most recent Twilight movie I saw last night... but neither of those are as urgent as this.

*WARNING* This is going to be a rant about how much I didn't like this movie and for what reasons. If you have not yet seen the movie and don't want to be affected by this, please stop reading now.

That being said... WOW, this movie was a large gathering of feces. Nothing was right about it... nothing. Graphics were sub par, actor choices were impossibly wrong, the parts of the series that were held from this movie had to be a mistake... they just had to.

The effects were by ILM which were by Industrial Light and Magic which was somewhat surprising. I mean, they were passable but a definitely expected more. But I can let that slide. The actors chosen for this had to be a random drawing. No one, NOT A SINGLE PERSON, seemed like they should've been in this movie. Okay, Katara, maybe but everyone else was just plain SHIT. I really didn't think that this was going to be worse than prince of persia. But with the combination of shit actors and leaving the best parts out, it was.

If you ever watch the show, or even talk to someone, like myself, who HAS watched the show, you'll be smothered with reasons why the TV series is amazing. The way they tell the story, the hilarity of it all, the cartoon character acting, the voice talent, the creativity... ALL OF WHICH was left out of this movie. They even fucking changed the names to some extent.

Aang was pronounced like Bang. In the movie it's pronounced Ong... Like Dong.

Katar was the same. Thank gawd.

Sokka was pronounced with the "o" sounds like soccer. In the movie ti was like soak-ah.

Zuka was the same...

His uncle Iroh was like eye-row... in the movie, ear-o... and the list continues...

The movie seemed like it was one big April Fools prank. Sometimes on April Fools Day some companies will release fake movie trailers that look like they COULD be a movie but are still missing something... This movie was like that. Visually it was nice... but once people started moving around and "acting" it was like watching paint dry.

There were actually a lot of parts that they STRAIGHT UP CHANGED from the show. This made no sense to me. The object of the movie is to get other people who weren't interested in the series MORE interested in it. But I don't see how anyone who hadn't watched the whole series would have understood or even been able to follow this crap. Characters in the show were made out completely different in most of the movie. AHH it's even hard to talk about, it was so bad.

I actually saw the twilight movie last night at midnight with Gretchen, my mom, my aunts, my cousin and her friends, and that was infinitely better than this. At least it kept my attention throughout the whole thing. In the final "epic" battle of "the last airbender" I couldn't even keep my eyes open. I was drifting in and out threw the whole last battle, and it WASN'T EVEN BAD ASS!!!! The New Twilight's battle was WAY MORE BADASS... well, it was actually bad ass w/o being compared to "the last airbender"... But still.

One of the characters in Twilight actually played one of the main characters in this. The kid who played Jasper in twilight also played Sokka. In the most recent twilight, I thought he started to seem much less like a pussy and more of a badass. I ACTUALLY really enjoyed his performance in the new twilight movie. But in this... WOW... I was let down. Everything he built up with his acting in twilight was flushed down the drain with this.

OK, I think I'm done.

iPhone... And trip so far

We left on Wednesday and headed for Milwaukee. Once we got there and into our hotel we went right to Miller Stadium for the Twins/Brewers game. At the Stadium we ate at a TGI Friday's before starting the climb to the nose bleeds. The seats were on the 4th floor but still pretty awesome. We even got to see the retractable roof close because it started raining. Twins lost and a drunk Brewers fan started to mess with me since I was wearing my twins jersey. It wasn't long before a fellow Twins fan walked over and asked what the record between the Twins and Brewers was. "I think 13 and 5... So shut the fuck up" he said to the Brewers fan before he looked at me and said, "figured I'd help you out" and then walked away.... I laughed. When we left we ended up driving by the mall to see if the line for the iPhone was already started... and it was... about 10 or so in line. But that was it for day one.

Day two was designated by me as "iPhone Day." I started it out by waking up at 4:30 in the A.M. Gretchen drove me to the Mayfair mall so I could wait in line, but there was no line to be found.

I saw a few people walking into the mall door so I followed and figured they were going in to get in line. I walked in, right behind another younger guy and followed as he went into one of those small hallways where the bathrooms usually are. He then walked through some doors that weren't labeled. I saw a security guard talking to someone about the iphone release so i stood by and listened. Then when he was threw, I asked where the drinking fountains were, he said up stairs, so I asked what the quickest way to the Apple store was and he said right threw those doors. He pointed at the same doors that the guy I followed in went threw... I thought it looked like it was for employees only and just before I walked in, a woman said, "are you an employee?" To which I replied, "no". Once the security guard heard that he got excited and told me that I couldn't be in there.

As he walked me to the door he said that they broke up the line that was formed last night and told everyone that they couldn't line up until 6am. Once I made it back outside and into the parking lot I saw a group of people standing around... these were the people I was looking for. They, also, explained that they weren't supposed to line up until 6am but one guy suggested that we make a line FOR the line we couldn't start till 6.

We made the line and a security guard told us we couldn't be there so he moved the line to the front of the building... where they ORIGINALLY said we couldn't be.... So there we waited until about 6am when a couple Apple employees came out and brought us into the mall to wait in two more lines... A line for people who pre ordered the phone and a line for the regular walk ins. I was one of the only people who had a pre order when we were standing out the in parking lot and people asked me why I pre ordered it and came to the store. Well, this was why. I was second in the pre order line. It was awesome.

At 7am when they started letting people in, they walked about ten people from each line over to the store where they had black curtains up blocking the windows. Shortly after we lined up they dropped the curtains and the doors opened up all smooth and slow like. So awesome. All the Apple employees were standing in two lines clapping and holding their hands out for high fives... so I, and everyone else walked threw the line of people and at the end they told us that the people we just passed were the people who were going to get us the phones...

Some employees were walking right up to people and helping them, and some were standing around kind of looking for someone to help... I ran up to one of those people and said, "Hey, are you going to help me get an iPhone?" "Yes I am," he said... we set it up right there and BOOM... I had my new iphone.

In and out of the store in about 15 minutes after waiting in line for two hours and 45 minutes.

When I got back to the hotel we headed to chicago. Stopped at a Cracker Barrel for breakfast and then finished the trip to the hotel. We took the shuttle from there to the O'Hare airport where we took the blue line into downtown Chicago.

We walked to the Navy Pier and then Gretchen and her parents went to Millennium park while I went to visit my friend from college, Chad. I waited in a Starbucks and drew in my sketchbook until he got off work. Then we huffed it north to Chicago Ave and rode a bus to Rotofugi, Chicago's equivalent of RobotLove.

After an awesome ride with chad, talking about the new iPhones we both have we arrived at Rotofugi and bought a few pieces of urban vinyl. After that we parted ways and I met Gretchen and family back at Michigan Ave. We checked out a couple stores, hit Ghirardelli and walked back to the blue line... worst nap ever.

Today we drove to Ohio.... not much more than that... just drove. Here now, tomorrow Gretchen and I will hit Cleveland while Gary and Bonnie go to a wedding.

I threw together this iphone/ipod wallpaper if anyone is interested.

More updates to come....

OH yeah... in other news, I was in the Honorable Mention Category with my 5 second project, "Shaved Yeti". Check out the full article here HERE.