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Thursday, December 31, 2009

I'm writing this at the bar on my lunch hour, so I'm going to write this quickly. This is my annual list of goals for the coming year. Most are the same or similar to goals of years past. Last year was a failure in most, if not all, of the goals, but this was a unique year dominated by a new job and a second move when I hadn't recovered from the last move.

So here's the list:
1. Not let my mind keep turning constantly on subjects that negatively affects my life. Yeah, this is still a problem. My mind can't get off of thinking of certain things that are problems in my life, which makes them more of a problem than they really are.
2. Get in better shape. Another one that has been a failure this year, although during my layoff, I did exercise regularly around the apartment complex in Delaware. The problem isn't my weight, which is a problem, but it's my energy level. I need to get into better shape so I have time to get other things done. Time I currently spend sleeping/resting.
3. Go to atleast one state I've never been to before. Missed this one in 2009, although I was tempted to do a roadtrip to Michigan on Christmas weekend. The closest two states are Michigan and Kentucky. Both are states I've been to, but only to the airports, which doesn't count. This year, a friend is moving to southeast Ohio, so a side trip to Kentucky would be definitely doable.
4. Go to atleast one away game for a Pittsburgh team. Got this one last year. I've decided the spirit of this goal includes neutral site games outside of the western PA area since the object is to see one of the teams in a venue you normally wouldn't. This year, I saw the Steelers play the Cardinals in the Super Bowl in Tampa.
5. Make a trip to Vegas. FAIL. Maybe this year. Anyone interested in making the trip with me?
6. Make one trip to visit friends in Jersey. In the past, this was to go to the Jersey shore, something I never did enough of when I lived in Jersey. Now that I'm back in Pittsburgh, just getting to Jersey is enough of a goal.
7. Do three things I've never done before or go places I've never been. This does not mean ordinary things like going to a normal store that I've never been to before. In the past, Spelunking and going to the Philadelphia Museum of Art satisfied this goal. In 2009, I'd say going to the Super Bowl definitely counts. I could count sleeping on a boat, which I also did in 2009. This year, I'll be on the lookout for things to satisfy this goal.
8. Go on more dates this year than last. This should be easy cause with the layoff, the move and the new job, I did not go on a single date this year. So let's say to accomplish this goal, I need to go on three dates with at least two different girls or have a relationship of atleast two months with a single girl.
9. Get my apartment in good shape. On the plus side, moving twice as made be throw away alot of stuff. Especially stuff that accumulated with being in the Jersey apartment for over four years. However, my apartment is a mess from not being unpacked. So this goal includes unpacking and making the living be in good enough shape to have guests over.
10. Get a full time employment position. In the past this has been a wild-card goal that has changed every year. It has been to "watch 150 movies and read 5 novels" which was a fail and "fill out the 25th anniversary Hooters passport", which required taking the passport to 25 different Hooters location, which was a success. This year, I am a contractor. Instead of a fun goal here, the goal here is for me to work and have a fulltime position either at my current job or at a new company.

Those are my goals. Feel free to give suggestions or help with any of them.

Updated 9:19PM
I forgot two other goals that I had intended to include into my goals for 2010, but forgot about them. So I list them here as bonus goals. A sort of extra credit goals.
First extra credit goal: Have a date for next New Years Eve. This should need no explanation.
Second extra credit goal: Meet at least one person from my facebook or plurk friends list. I've been keeping Facebook friends mostly to people I know personally. There are currently only four Facebook friends I haven't met, but considering this year, I've met three of my friends who I previously hadn't met, meeting one of them isn't unreasonable.

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Saturday, December 26, 2009

I saw Avatar recently. I saw it on IMAX 3D, but got there late and ended up sitting in the front row. I do ot advise this. Since the glasses you have to wear do limit your range of sight to a small degree, sitting in the front row means having to move your head to see the entire action on the screen.

On to the review. This is a movie worth seeing. It is a amazing movie on a visual level. At no time did the compuer-generated world and images seem like cartoons. In fact, I kept forgetting that the blue creatures that inhabit the world were computer generated and not actors in makeup. Much has been made of the budget of this movie, but alot of it was spent creating new technology. Technology that can be used in future movies without the price tag of inventing it. Much the way technology had to be created when Star Wars was filmed, the same is true here. Even if the movie never makes a profit, it will be judged a success based also on how this technology is used in the future.

Despite this movie being known for it's visual effects, it does have a plot. James Cameron has never been one to leave out the plot in his sci-fi. In Avatar, the plot might not be completely original, but it's done well. The plot is basically the same as any politically correct movie about Europeans settling America. Think Disney's Pocahantas in space. The earthlings have big spaceships that requires an element that can be found in abundance on a planet. The planet has a race of people that are in tune with the planet and nature. Their god is a tree and they can attach them selves to horse-like animals via plugs in their long hair. The earthlings have scientists that want to be peaceful with the inhabitants of the planets, but mainly they have soldiers whose sole purpose is to fight and destroy. Leading the soldiers is a executive at the energy company who is only concerned with profits. A soldier is assigned to the scientists, gets exposed to the inhabitants' culture, falls in love with them and,.. well, if you can't figure out what happens next, then you'll probably enjoy the movie even more.

But the big thing is, there is a plot. It makes sense with relatively few holes for a movie that is two hours and forty minutes long. And for a movie that long, it doesn't seem like it is that long.

And some people might be turned off from seeing a movie where the buzz is about the budget and the visual effects, but at least it was a risk taken. It's a high budget movie that is not a sequel, a remake or an adaptation of a popular book series. I saw the trailer to the Karate Kid remake recently. Everytime a movie that takes risks fails, it makes the studios less likely to take a chance in the future and more likely to go with something like the new Karate Kid. If you haven't seen the new Karate Kid trailer, find it online and ask yourself if a lack of originality and risk taking could be the problem with movies today and not big budgets.

Ignoring that motivation to see the movie and judging just on the basis of the movie itself, I give it a rating of "Worth paying full price" with an additional rating of "worth paying extra to see it in IMAX".

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Sunday, December 20, 2009

It's a little late, but here is my weekly review of How I Met Your Mother from last week.

HIMYM was a little controversial this week. The show is told as one big story a father is telling his two kids in the future. This allows for some flexibility in the continuity of the storyline. They can do stuff like insert a bartender into scenes from a previous year by asking if he had mentioned the bartender before. They can hint at a forthcoming event by mentioning it, then have the narrator simply say that it must have happened a year later. And since it is a father talking to his kids, he often cleans up certain activities like changing "marijauna" to "sandwich". (Still, it's amazing what he does tell his kids.)

So this week it is revealed that the whole gang smoked. The father had not mentioned this before cause he didn't want his kids to know him or their aunts and uncles smoked. Now I know a couple people who didn't like this episode cause it centered around smoking and liked the characters less because they smoked. Now they are only a couple years younger than me. While we grew up in the "smoking is bad" era, we didn't grow up in the "smoking is evil and everyone who does it is also" era. Most groups of people around my age has atleast one person who either smokes or has quit smoking recently. Also, it's not like they were unapologetic smokers. They, like alot of smokers, were trying to quit and would quit for extended periods of time. Anyway, they are the same people we knew, only with an additional flaw. If your opinion of them changed from love to hate because you found out they once smoked, then that says more about you than it does them. And I really liked the last scene where they said when each quit for good and that made the rest of the episdoe worth while. Knowing that Lily and Marshall both quit for their first kid and Ted quit for his wife added an additional quality to them, especially the relationship between Ted and "the mother".

So yeah, I like the episode. It was good. I'm not sure how I feel about Robin's new love interest, but I like the idea that local anchormen and women don't wear pants behind the desk and don't care what happens cause nobody is watching. As someone who once hosted a radio show that nobody listened to, I can relate.

On BBT, you had another guest star this week. Christine Baranski returned as Leonard's mother. She annoys me more often than not, but her interacting with Penny and not just giving her opinion and blowing off anyone else's point of view as ignorance let to some funny moments. Her insistence that Howard and Rejesh are gay makes for hilarious moment. And having Penny teaching her to drink, having her want to hit on the busboy and then kissing Sheldon was genius. But lets face it. Making Sheldon uncomfortable is always good for quality laughs.

I'm judging this week on most amounts I had full loud laughs. Both were funny, but BBT gets the win and takes the lead in the season series 6-5.

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Sunday, December 13, 2009

  1. Besides watching a lot of tv shows and movies, I also subscribe to at least 10 magazines, ranging from sports, pop culture, entertainment, and hard news. They are weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly. I'm also a daily subscriber to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I subscribe to the premium pay-to-use section of the PG's website and espn.com. Yes, I am a information junkie, a pop culture junkie.

    One of the reason I subscribe to some of the monthly magazines, like GQ, is that they often are only around $12 for a year subscription. So even if I don't read every issue, a year subscription is still cheaper than four issues on the newstand.

  2. A number of magazines put out a sexiest women list. This was a good year for those. None of the usual suspects like Megan Fox and Scarlett Johansson were at the top of the list. Now I'm not saying that those girls aren't attractive. I'm just saying they're overrated. They belong on the sexiest lists, but not at or near the top. The media, both the mainstream entertainment press as well as the online bloggers, gets started on the hype on an attractive actress. The media puts out attractive pictures of the actress and the bloggers republish them over and over. The actress and/or the studios making their tv show or movie make sure there are no shortage of those pics and that they are top quality maxim-esque shots. The gossip rags help by putting them on the cover any time they can find an excuse.

    Well this year, Maxim chose Olivia Wilde, who not only has the looks to get her the title, but also isn't part of the hollywood celebrity hype machine. She's known mostly for being a supporting character on a medical drama (House) and for one season as a supporting character on a nighttime soap (The O.C.). She's in the upcoming Tron movie, so maybe she'll start getting the Megan Fox level hype. On the other hand, Esquire magazine chose Kate Beckinsale. Another excellent choice that is not only not a 20-something, but is actually older than I am. She can play the girlfriend-type (I watch Serendipity way more than is healthy because of Kate's smile) and the sexy action type (any of the Underworld movies).

    Lets hope the magazines keep choosing less obvious choices for their sexiest lists. Of course, I'm probably just saying that cause my personal list, if I had one, would differ alot from the magazine list.

  3. One of my favorite sections of any magazines is the "What I've learned" in Esquire. Basically it's a one page item containing blurbs by a celebrity or other world-mover containing advice or lessons they've learned. I find them entertaining. One issue a year, which is the one I just got in the mail, contains a whole feature containing "What I've Learned"s from various people. Definitely one of my favorite issues of any magazine each year. Check it out.

  4. And as for more serious subjects, this was my favorite article all year. It's about how the autopsy of one of my favorite athletes growing up, Mike Webster, by a guy who wasn't even a fan of football, started a series of event that led to a battle with the NFL over concussions. Both fascinating and very sad.

  5. Getting away from magazines, an actress I've always like, Zooey Deschanel, guest-starred on her sister Emily's show Bones. Bones is a show I've watched since the beginning and enjoy. I was disappointed in how Zooey's stint. If you have a star of a tv show who has a close relative who is a film actress, a guest appearance by her should have more purpose than to have the star's film actress relative make a guest appearance. Zooey's character had nothing to do with the crime plot and seemed like it was stretched and strained to advance the Bones and her father relationship plot. Let's just say, I was extremely disappointed in that episode.

  6. The new James Cameron movie is coming out soon. Seems like every magazine has an article about it and every news magazine show on tv has a segment on it. I'm actually looking forward to it. With movies like Aliens, Abyss, and the first two Terminators, I think he has earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to sci-fi movies. I even think he could pull off Aquaman. In fact, it makes me wish he would take a crack at Battlefield Earth, a sci-fi novel I read when I was young, before I knew anything about Scientology, and thus see it as just good science fiction. I think would do an amazing job on not just a movie based on the first half of the novel, the half that John Travolta help made into a complete and total clusterfuck of a movie years ago, but also the second half of the novel which would involve even more aliens and special effects.

  7. So I finally saw the series finale of the tv show Monk. Not having cable I had to watch it on hulu. The first half was put on hulu that night, but the second half was delayed a week. Being curious, I glanced at the hulu discussion board and read a couple post about Stottlemeyer being the villian. I couldn't believe it. I stopped reading the discussion board immediately. Stottlemeyer has been Monk's biggest friend and supporter. So I kept saying to myself that it's been a mistake. When I finally saw the episode, I kept expecting Stottlemeyer to be implicated. He never was. He wasn't a bad guy. I looked back at the discussion board and could not find the post I had read. It must have been removed or I simply read wrong. This was a relief. The end of the series turned out to be perfect. One idea I have for a future blog topic is rating endings of tv series based on how content I am with how the series ended. Monk high up on the list with Cheers and Buffy. (Interesting sidenote: characters on Cheers and Buffy have both made appearances on spinoffs giving updates on where the other characters were at.) Monk's ending was both comforting and realistic.

  8. On a related note, my favorite ending to a series wasn't the end of a tv series, but a book series. Stephen King ended his Dark Tower series in a way that was satisfying. An amazing feat considering he once wrote that he might never end the series and the series having such a big scope that any ending could only be disappointing.

  9. I didn't have a chance to write the last five days. So I had a lot of topics stored up which caused me to take a lot of time to write this. This blog is still a work in progress. Hopefully, I'll be able to start having the post be smaller and more often. But today, you're going to have to put up with this monster of a post.

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Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Yesterday was new episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory.

HIMYM had a funny episode about "The Window", referring to the window of time when the girl of your dreams become available. The girl has to be so special that she never stays single for long. I know more than I care to about "Windows". So this episodes hit some familiar nerves for me. Also Joanna Garcia is an actress who is perfect for Maggie, the girl next door of Ted's dream. I loved her in Reba and wanted to watch Priviledged because of her. Barney is overalls trying to pick up women and the rest of the gang trying to keep guys away from Joanna's character while Ted is teaching class was top notch, except for Robin's acting desperate for an uninterested guy to keep him away from Maggie. Whenever Robin acts desperate, I cringe. Usually the more together she is, the funnier (and hotter) she is.
On BBT, Howard's girlfriend gets interested in Leonard's work causing Howard and Penny to get jealous. Howard because he's afraid he'll lose his girl to Leonard and Penny cause she can't talk to Leonard about his work. This causes Penny to convince Sheldon to teach her about Physics. This leads to alot fo Penny/Sheldon scenes. Penny/Sheldon scenes are among the funniest scenes ever on the show and this week didn't disappoint.
Both shows had quality episodes this week. But BBT had less weakness (Howard>Robin) and more laugh-really-loud-out-loud moments. The season standing is once again tied: HIMYM:5-BBT:5.

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First of all, it took me a full second to get tired of the Tiger Woods happenings that has taken over the news. That being said, alot of what I've heard has been conjecture. People deducing what happened by taking what they know and using what an average person would do to fill in the blank. This makes for what is most likely false conclusions.
For starters, Tiger Woods is not an average person. Not only in his professional life, but in a time where most superstar athletes are often relentless self-promoters, Tiger has become one of the richest athletes while only doing as much media as is required by his golf and the companies whose products he promotes. His interviews feel heavily controlled by publicists. His commercials even more so. The only time I feel we see a glimpse of his true personality is when he hits a bad shot or gets angry with someone in the gallery on the course.
And I've heard speculation about his wife being in it for money. The few things I've heard that sounds like confirmable facts suggests otherwise. I write "sounds like" because I've only heard these in a one or two places, so they could be false, but they go with stuff I've heard for years. First her family is influential in her home country. Second, she gave up modeling on her own and became a nanny to pay her way through school. Third, she turned down Tiger asking her out for a year. So she doesn't sound like she would stay with him just for the money. If all these allegations are true, and there are so many that odds say some are and some are not, then she only stays with him out of love or for the kids. And I do believe she would go after him with a golf club, or at the very least, use a golf club to beat the crap out of his car.

And from there, I'd like to share this for those who haven't seen it. It's SNL's take on the Tiger situation. (For those who stopped watching SNL, it's not as bad as it was when you stopped watching. It's also not as good as its heyday. It has moments of humor that makes it perfect for Hulu. I recommend subscribing to SNL excerpts on hulu and pick and choose which ones to watch. My favorite is, was, and likely will always be weekend update.)


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Monday, December 07, 2009

Warning: The following contains spoilers for the tv show White Collar.

If you're reading this and haven't been following the tv show White Collar, I suggest waiting til you see all the episodes. This entry is about the twist thrown in at the end of the latest episode.

First, a brief summary of the show. It centers around Neal Caffrey, one of the world's best thieves, and Peter Burke, the FBI agent who is the only man to ever catch him. Neal escapes from jail not too long before the end of his sentence because he believes his ex-girlfriend, Kate, is in danger. But he doesn't find her. Instead he gets caught by Peter again and a deal is worked out. He can finish his now-extended sentence if he helps solves the type of crimes he's great at. When he's not with a FBI agent, he's stuck wearing a home-arrest anklet keeping him in a short radius in NYC.

Individually, each episode follows a formula that alot of shows follows. There's a crime that gets solved in a standard fashion and a step or two forward taken in the season-long mystery. Neal believes Kate is being held captive by a man who Neal only knows from a hand wearing a ring on Kate's shoulder in a ATM surveillance camera photo. Kate also left a clue behind. Each week Neal follows one clue to another clue to finally find out that the man with the ring will let Kate go if Neal gives up something he has stolen and hidden in one of his many stashes.

Now this is the part where I start discussing the twist ending. The fact that they talked about the man with the ring without giving any physical descriptions suggested that the man with the ring is someone the viewer knows. The candidates include Peter and a number of other FBI agents and Mozzie, a con artist/thief friend of Neal. Mozzie is played by Willie Garson, who is short bald and wears glasses. He often plays nerdy and/or gay characters. That originally lead me to suspect him to be the man with the ring because he's physically not what you would expect. Then Neal discovered that the man with the ring was a FBI agent, which made me suspect his actual identity. The twist at the end is that the man with the ring holding Kate until Neal gives up his stash is Peter.

This makes sense in some ways. Peter always comes off as aloof. So much so that, Neal often is wonders out "This is the guy who caught me?". It's believable that Peter is smarter and more devious than he seems. And if there's one piece that Neal has stolen that Peter particularly wants back, it's conceivable that he would go through the trouble of using Kate to get Neal to give up the goods. It also explains why, when Neal escapes and is caught again, Peter has little problem having Neal around. He can keep an eye on him.

Now here's the question. Is Peter a good guy or a bad guy? Up to that point, the show as a buddy comedy/detective series. Like 48 hrs or Lethal Weapon, it fit two guys who are operates. One is straight-laced and one sees the rules as flexible. If Peter is a good guy agent who came up with a plan for something that must be the most-prized of Neal's stolen items, then it makes sense because the chemistry between the two is still believable. This only works if Kate isn't kidnapped, but instead working with the FBI.

If Peter is a bad guy, a Keyser Soze of sorts, then it pretty much questions a lot of things seen in the show so far. And in my mind, it ruins not just the chemistry between Peter and Neal, but also Peter and his wife, who is the perfect wife. If she's with a bad guy, it totally ruins it for me. Also, if he's a bad guy, then this show ends when the mystery does, which seems to be only sustainable over one, maybe two seasons. And that would be only by making Neal run and instead of fleeing the country, working to bring Peter down. If he's good guy, he could explain and possibly patch things off with neal.

I'm still processing this whole thing. I welcome anyone's thoughts who have been following the show.

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Sunday, December 06, 2009

This television season, I've been writing on Plurk (http://www.plurk.com/PittsburghTom) giving brief reviews each week of How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory. I've then declared a weekly winner and keeping track of the standings. Last week were repeats, but I never wrote the review for the episodes the week before. Starting with this week, I'll start posting the reviews and winner here. The season series stand at a 4-4 tie.

On HIMYM, it was the thanksgiving episode, or should I say the Slapsgiving episode. It was a classic, as any of the show's "Slap bet"-related episode are. Chris Eliot was the only weakness of the episode. His style of comedy clashed with the rest of the show. But how could you not love the fact that the episode ended with a commercial for the Slap Bet game.

On BBT, the main plot centered around him being humiliated by a Kripke prank. Sheldon goes back to Texas to hide at his mom's. This means another hilarious appearance from Laurie Metcalf. It ends with Sheldon getting revenge on Kripke in a prank I would like to try.

For a second week in a row, BBT put on an episode that would win most weeks, but all HIMYM had to do was say the word SLAP then live up to the expectations. HIMYM takes the lead 5-4.

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Wednesday, December 02, 2009

I'm writing this on Tuesday night. Fate has me spending the second straight night at my parents. It means I'm 50 minutes away from my apartment and work. And it means no internet access. My parents are in seventy-something. They can't do much more than start up a laptop and play solitaire or a casino slot machine program. Internet access would only be trouble for them. I have limited internet on my phone which allows me to read my email and go on facebook, but even if I can post on my blog, I'm not typing in a full blog entry on the cellphone keyboard. So I'm typing this on Tuesday night, but it won't get posted til wednesday.

I have a few ideas for regular subjects on my rebooted blog, but I'm not ready to pull any of them out, so I'm just going to comment on a few news items.

First of all, the Tiger Wood accident. I don't care what really happened. Speculation in the news, even serious news, needs to be toned down. I've heard so much about possible infidelity on Tiger's part. Frankly, if it is true, having it broadcasted non-stop on tv and in magazine isn't going to help their marriage. And true for false, it's not the public's business. And I already wish the alleged possible mistress would go away. She comes off as a typical publicity seeking celebrity wannabee. For all I can tell, one gossip source linked her to Tiger (maybe from a tip from her) and the rest of the celebrity "journalism" industry immediately followed because they're lazy and love chasing a story that they don't really have to chase. Then the celebrity wannabee proceeded to make as much noise as she could while saying she wanted privacy, even going so far as to hire the ultimate in the "celebrity whore" class of lawyer.

And there are reasonable explanations for Tiger's actions. He was reaching for a cd or a cellphone. Or he was upset about an arguement he had with his wife, which would also explain why he was driving out so late at night. Going for a drive to cool off after an argument is not something I'm unfamiliar with. And Tiger has always been private. So cancelling an appearance, even one at his own golf tournament, would be within his character to avoid answering questions or even have pictures taken of facial injuries. And not talking to police could because he doesn't want what happened to be public. Even if the police don't make it public, there's no way a statement to the police doesn't get leaked.

And as for the party crashers at the White House party. Now I'm no fans of reality shows like the Real Housewives, but if they lied to secret service agents, they should face some sort of punishment, but nothing too major. If they didn't lie, then there should be no punishment. It might be for the best that the shortcomings of the security was made public by someone without any evil intentions (although I'm not sure wanting to be on a reality show doesn't qualify as evil.) What I find really annoying are the congressmen immediately jumping in and wanting to start immediate hearings on what happened that night. Let the secret service do their investigations first. After all, when security fails, it's one of them who has to jump in front of a bullet. Let them make the changes. If there is something that the congressman should be investigating related to this is why everyone seems to be saying the secret service is spread thin. Seems to be that if they're under-funded, that can be fixed by congress while letting the secret service fix the hole in the security exposed by the couple.



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