Month: March 2007

Smodcast. The best podcast evar.

Entertainment, The Interweb

Ok, so anyone that knows me realizes that I’m a huge Kevin Smith fan so this may not be the biggest realization. But the “Smodcast” (Smith-Mosier Podcast) is the funniest thing I hear all week. Kevin’s a really good storyteller so that might be a reason that all the episodes so far are really funny. They just tell stories about.. well about whatever they want to really, but mostly about things that happened to them. They just have so much chemistry together, I hope everybody can get time to listen to it.

Later!
Mark

Quick Stop Entertainment

The Table goes online.

Projects, Stuff and Things

Overhead shot 1

Overhead shot 1

I hadn’t posted any pictures of the table online since we’d been building it. I’d always planned on a) finishing the table and b) making some kind of cool website for it. I did throw together a small wordpress blog and gallery for it, but that was way too much work for little reward. So I decided to throw it out on flickr. I might try and upload some of the pictures to bpong.com and other dedicated table pages tonight. I’ll have to find the right descriptions and captions for the pictures. but most likely I’ll just watch Prison Break and eat dinner.

Later!

UPDATE – www.thetable.swalrus.org

The Core: Such a guilty pleasure I should be put to death.

Entertainment, Movies

I read an article about guilty pleasures once that said we shouldn’t be ashamed to admit that we like them. We’ll I’ll admit that I like ‘Roadhouse’ and ‘Rad’ or any other 80’s movie that starts with the letter ‘R’. But this is a tough one. ‘The Core’ has a solid disaster movie beginning, things blow up, birds go crazy. I mean come on an Oscar winner lands the freaking space shuttle in the middle of downtown LA. I mean the cast of this movie is awesome, Delroy Lindo, Hillary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, that guy, that other guy. All these people have been in other, much better movies. But somehow this became the ‘Showgirls’ of disaster movies. Not that this genre has had many shining moments. I really don’t know how this movie got made, I guess Hollywood does really think we’re all idiots.

I can pretty much put up a solid defense for the first half of the movie. Standard stuff, lone scientist finds out that the world is ending, nobody believes him, incredible technology… but that’s where this movie loses it. Unlike ‘Armageddon’ which has a remarkably similar plot (really really similar). There’s just no way anybody with a functionionign brain can believe the technology in this movie. So don’t try. Just ride it out. Actually you could just stop watching the movie at about halfway and just make up your own ending and be just as happy with yourself. You’d probably come up with something as good as the real thing.

Movie Physics Reviews

Don’t you know who I think I am?

Entertainment, music

So after the last post defending my overall musical taste I’m going to write a post about the new Fallout Boy album. I like their music, what I don’t like is that douchebags sometimes also like their music. This is best illustrated by a new cingular commercial where a random frat guy at the gym is talking about how the new song, “This aint a scene, it’s an arms race” gets him pumped. Then he procedes to have a seizure or play air guitar, whichever is worse.

Their last album was pretty much the soundtrack to my Metro rides last summer. So much so that I pretty much played out all the songs and can’t stand them any more. But give them a few years and they’ll be good all over again. Just like those Black Eyed Peas songs that I ran into the ground, circa 2 years ago.

At first listen the songs were nothing special, but I just put them in with the rest anyway. I found that whenever they would come up on shuffle I really liked them. So I listened to them yesterday in order again and I decided that they are in fact good. Which is pretty much the begining of the end for them. I’ll most likely overplay them and be done with them.

So it begins sir.

Mark

I the non-musical snobberist

Entertainment, music

You know that look that some hipster kid gives you when he asks you what kind of music you like and you tell him “A little bit of everything”? Well next time punch him in the face. I honestly do like everything or at least pieces of everything. Terrence (the guy in the cube next to mine.) asked my what kind of music I listen to so I told him what’s on my playlist right now.

Here’s what’s on Poddington Jr. (my shuffle) right now.

  • Kittie
    An all-girl hardcore metal band
  • Fallout Boy
    A pop-rock band
  • Dixie Chicks
    An all-girl country group
  • Lost Prophets
    A pop-rock band, but ‘cooler’ than FOB
  • De La Soul
    A pioneering 80’s/90’s hip hop group
  • Best of Bootie 2006
    A compilation of the best Mash-ups of last year

I think this is an accurate portrait of my musical tastes. 3/6 rock, 2/3 of that pop-rock. 2/6 hip-hop or hip-hop influenced. 1/6 country, (that’s actually a little high) and 2/6 groups with girl singer.

I do like everything. So screw you with your hipster jean jacket and ironic nintendo belt buckle.

I read book.

Entertainment, Random

So the other day I was reading some posts on Boing-Boing about new/old graphic novels that are supposed to be good. I was looking to get into another one because I’ve caught up to ‘Y the last man’ and I hate to be waiting 6 months in between sets. (yes I know I could get the individual issues, but they wouldn’t look as good on my shelf.) So I went a little crazy on Amazon and ordered issue one of 3 titles. DMZ, about a second civil war in america set in present day. Fables, about famous fairy tale characters living in NYC in present day. Transmetropolitain, which I honestly forget what is about, but it looked good at the time. I’m about halfway through the Fables book, it seems to be written well. I’ll get to the others sometime.

But the book I really really like, doesn’t have pictures in it at all (shocker!). It’s ‘World War Z : An Oral History of the Zombie War’ and it is totally bas ass. It’s set 12 years after VZ (Victory over Zombies) day, this reporter is traveling around interviewing survivors, through their stories you learn how it went down.

I’ve always been a fan of Zombie movies, it’s no secret. The George A. Romero ones have always been my favorites, even the remakes. The difference in this book is the scope, this is the Gettysburg of Zombie stories. After watching the original ‘Dawn of the Dead’ I always wondered how other places around the world/country would react to the coming of the UnDead. Even though it was mostly terrible ‘Land of the Dead’ did shed light on some of those things. So far I’m only about 1/3 through the book and every chapter brings something that I’d never thought of before. For instance: How the plague was partly spread when zombies fell off boats and then eventually just walked out of the water hundreds of miles later. How ineffective conventional military strategies would be against an horde of a million zombies pouring out of New York City.

Every chapter in the book would make an awesome scene in a movie, luckily for me I also heard that they’re going to make it. I wouldn’t want to be the one deciding what parts have to get cut. But at this point with Brad Pitt in talks to star, hopefully they’ll have the budget to keep the good ones.

I read book!
Mark