I do not remember, but I may have posted on this topic before. But, I still just don’t get it. I’ve never watched more than one episode of any reality show, and the drivel that I have watched is terrible. What is the draw to these shows? Following a celebrity around to watch them flaunt their 100X better life in front of your face? That is fascinating to you? The second you put a camera in the room, it ceases to be reality because no longer do people really behave like the way that they normally would. And thus, if they are not behaving the way they normally are, they are acting!!! And if you just want to watch acting, why not watch good acting and good writing at that, because that reality crap has neither.
I somewhat might understand the draw for competition shows like American Idol or even The Amazing Race, which is kind of like an outdoors around the world game show (from what I’ve read about it at least as I’ve never watched it). So, I kinda get that as game shows have been part of American television almost since the beginning. But, the hell do you care to watch the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, Tori Spelling, Terrell Owens, those Real Housewives shows, or any other of that stuff? Is there someone out there who can actually explain the appeal of these shows? I watched about 10 minutes of that Terrell Owens show about a month ago as I did not have control of the remote. The whole time I’m watching it, I’m thinking, this is a piece of crap. His home is worth more money than I will ever make in a lifetime. The “writing” was awful, as they tried to dramatize any of the crap that went on in front of the camera, even though I bet all of it was staged anyway. Why? Cuz its not freaking reality, its practically scripted crap. You might as watch wrestling, as that is somewhat scripted as well, and the wrestlers just ad lib out there from an outline. I sometimes wonder if in these “reality” shows they go through a scene, the camera guy goes hold up, I didn’t get a good shot of that scene and asks them to replay that scene again, and I bet they do!
Can I ask all of you to stop watching this crap so that they can stop producing this stuff? If not, for the life of me, please explain to me why in the hell you watch this stuff.
I won 2 tickets to the Dave Matthew Band concert at the Verizon Amphitheater in Irvine last week and so went there this past Saturday. I don’t go to many concerts, this being really only my 2nd, and the first at this venue. I have heard of Dave Matthews, but don’t really know any of the songs. I am not a big music person, but I won 2 tickets so took the girlfriend on a night out.
Firstly, this was my first time at the Verizon Amphitheater, and we got the lawn tickets. That is, we got to sit anywhere we could find a seat on the grass in the back. We ended up in the very back corner, put our blanket down, and sat down the whole night. From where we sat, the performers on stage were very small, so I pretty much watched the big screen TVs most of the time. It was a beautiful night out that night, not too hot, not too cold, and perfect for an outdoors performance of any kind. We just sat on our blanket and enjoyed the performance like everyone else. For the most part, everyone on the lawn sat down and did not stand, so everyone was able to see. The venue is a pretty nice place to watch a performance. The last concert I went to was at the Forum for Coldplay. I think the acoustics at the Forum was much better, at least compared to where we were sitting, which was at least a hundred or more feet from the nearest speaker. However the outdoor setting was much more enjoyable to the cold confines of the old Lakers stadium.
Secondly, my ignorance of the Dave Matthews Band was proven after the concert ended as I had never heard of any of the songs that were performed. They were nice and fun, but I just had never heard of them. After watching the performance, will I start listening to their music more? Probably not as like I am not a huge music fan in general so I will never pay for music. So, unless they are on the radio (which I don’t listen to very often anyway, choosing sports talk if I ever do choose to do so) I probably will continue not to hear their music.
And finally, after the performance ended (following a 2 song encore from the band) it was a very long process flowing out. There is only one way in and out to the theater, so everyone had to walk it. Tons of people, narrow walkway means slow getting out. On the other side, getting out of the parking lot, while still crowded and filled with traffic, was much better than leaving the concert at Coldplay at the Forum.
Overall, fun night. I would watch Dave Matthews Band again if I won tickets or they were cheap, and I would go to the Verizon Amphitheater again if there was some type of performance that I was interested in watching.
I am going to ask a question that most people know the answer to, but they don’t act like they do. Do you know that 100% of all pictures you see in magazines of models and actresses are airbrushed? Expanding on that, do you know that every person you see on TV and in the movies has tons of make-up on, have the best lighting and camera effects which make the actors look better than they normally do? Now, don’t get me wrong. The women in these photos look amazing. I see them for myself. And I always used to think others realized the same thing. But, when you hear the comments people make everyday about how so and so doesn’t look good or how so and so is fat when they are not even close to fat, it makes you kind of wonder.
Have you ever seen some of these “hot” actresses in those pics of them without make up? Oh trust me you can see a difference and many times its safe to say if you saw those same women on the streets like that you would not look twice. Have you ever seen how people look on a soap opera vs. a prime time show? The lighting and cameras on soaps are not as good, and you can really tell the difference. And you do realize that most of the models and actresses you see on TV have had plastic surgery of some sort as well? Put that all together and you see “hot” people on TV and pictures all the time. Sorry to burst your bubble if you didn’t realize all this. Hope that you just like the fantasy that these people represent and not the reality you may perceive them to be.
The action movie written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, starring an all-star action casts…..of the 80s and 90s. Yup, pretty much every action start you have ever heard of from a couple decades ago come together in one film for what would have been every guy’s dream, back then. Now? Well, I’m sure that the names of these stars still got many people to go and watch the film. In this latest gun blazing action film, Stallone stars as the leader of a bunch of mercenaries that get hired to overthrow some corrupt government/leadership of an island nation. Lots of action, lots of guns, lots of fights, lots of explosions, about what you’d expect knowing the cast of this movie going in.
But, is it fun? After watching the movie, I did not think it was anything special. I’ve definitely seen action flicks that were better than this one. It wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t boring, but I didn’t think it was all that good either. Some of the fight scenes were fun and cool, none realistic at all, some were nothing special, and there were definitely a couple that made me go “Whoa”. But, all that really is in this movie is the action and such. Sly wrote Rocky and Rambo too, I believe. Those movies were awesome action wise, but also had a nice story, some heart. While watching those, you felt for the characters, or got behind them at least. The Expendables? Not so much really, at least not for me. The story that Mickey Rourke tells Sly which convinces him to take the job going to the island was, I guess, an attempt at some emotion and such. But, it did nothing for me.
Overall, if you just want to see fighting, guns, action scenes, and explosions, this is a movie you will probably want to check out. If you are expecting anything else from your movie besides that, then this will not be for you. Go rent this and watch it on your entertainment center because you will definitely be putting your speakers to good use with all the explosions.
I got this game, ModNation Racers, last week for a great price brand new, so was happy about it. A good reviewed game, in my price range, and one similar to Mario Kart, and I just had to lay down the money for it. And most important? The graphics in it are cute, as in Mario Kart, so it was a game the girlfriend and I could play together, which we both did over this past weekend. Can’t have it any better huh?
Anyway, the game is fun. Its kind of like a combination of Little Big Planet in that you can totally and completely customize your driver, your kart, and all race tracks, as well as the aforementioned Mario Kart, being able to use weapons and such to attack the other racers on your way to the finish line. Like Mario Kart, I am and probably never will be great at it. I know how to do things like drift, but I don’t know how to use it in a way that makes me better. I have yet to play online, and I might do it on occasion but probably not something I would do on a normal basis since I know that I’d get my butt kicked all the time. The best part about this game, I’d say, is the multi-player ability. Like I mentioned earlier, the girlfriend and I played over the weekend. You can play with up to 4 players split screen, and like Mario Kart, it’s be great. Now we have two games we can play together on PS3, this and Little Big Planet.
I also do like the fact that this game can have almost limitless replay value. There are tons and tons of tracks that others have created which you can download and race on. I already downloaded 4 of them and they are fun. I haven’t even played much of the single player career mode yet, but what I have played is pretty fun. Like the rage nowadays, there are achievements you can get on each race and throughout the game, making those who like that stuff want to get them all. There are also tons of characters and karts you can download that people have created. I saw Spider-Man, Mario, Joker, Batman, and tons more.
As for the negative? Firstly, I will say that I think that Mario Kart is a more fun and better racing game. I can’t really explain, but it just feels better and seems to be more fun. The choice of weapons, I think, are better in that game. But, this game is definitely not a bad one, and there are not many kart racing games that live up to Mario Kart so its really unfair to compare it to such a high standard. That being said, the number one, by far, biggest negative of the game is the unbelievably slow load times. It is terrible. After finishing a race, I almost always want to replay the exact same race because if you change the tracks, you have to wait probably over a minute or so to select and start the next race. I know 1 minute may not sound like a lot, but when you are playing with others and you have to wait that long after every race, especially when each race only lasts a total of a couple minutes, it gets very annoying. Other than that, its a great, fun game that is great especially at parties.
Fifty some odd hours later (not counting all the times I died either) I finally passed this PlayStation 3 game that I bought during last Thanksgiving Black Friday sale. I did not think that I had it in me to play a game for this long. But I did, and it was fun. If I play an RPG type game, it almost has to be a fantasy type game, as I played Dungeons and Dragons many years ago and enjoyed it. Dragon Age is not a D & D game, but it is definitely very close to one without actually being one. Bioware has made many D & D games on the PC, so it definitely had that feel. I tried playing Fallout a while back on my Xbox, and just could not finish it. For whatever reason, I just got bored of it, even though when I first started playing it, it was kind of cool to walk out into the world for the first time and see that it is completely empty due to a nuclear fallout. However, I guess it wore thin on me.
Dragon Age, however, was pretty engaging throughout, and when I saw little side quests, I wanted to complete them. I played a dual sword wielding elf that can expertly fire a long bow! While playing the game, I did notice that the graphics in this game are not quite as good as many other games I have played on Xbox 360 and PS3. If I do decide to get the sequel (as one has already been announced to come out) I’m sure that this will be rectified. However, the graphics were serviceable and I enjoyed going through the storyline, so it was all good. I do think though that these types of games are a bit easier to control on a PC than on a console. When I played Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 as well as NeverWinter Nights, it just felt more natural controlling things with a mouse. Maybe its just because I became used to it and have never really played or gotten used to this type of game on a console.
Oh, and one last thing. The ending of this game was pretty terrible in my opinion. When I said earlier that that graphics are average at best for the game, that drops dramatically when it comes to the ending. Why? Because there are no graphics in the ending!!! Its one set picture, and it is all text. As you read it, more text comes! What??? I played all those hours to see a text based ending? That’s so old school. In fact, that could be worse than old school. Even the 8-bit NES games had text in addition to multiple pictures at least! Oh well, it was fun getting to the ending though, and I guess that is what counts in the end. I probably will not be getting the expansions for this game as I don’t want to pay all that much for one mission. Waiting for the sequel will suffice and even if I do, probably won’t buy it until it drop below $40 as I almost never spend more than that on any game.
Another summer weekend, another movie watched. Although I did not utter that sentence for many weekends this summer, I am able to do so for this one. As you can see from the picture of the always hot Angelina Jolie, the latest and possibly last movie for this summer was Salt. I’m not sure if there is another movie I really want to see in this, what I still consider, a disappointing movie season. But, enough of that and on to Salt. Angelina Jolie plays CIA agent Evelyn Salt. While interrogating a Russian defector, she is accused of being a Russian spy, and that is where all hell breaks loose. Using her spy skills, she must instead evade the people she has always worked for. But, is she really a Russian spy? Or is something going on in the background that no one but her knows about?
The movie is definitely action packed, and somewhat reminded me of the type of action you see in the Bourne movies. As you are watching the movie, I think it tries to present itself as a is she a spy or isn’t she throughout the movie, but I didn’t think it was all that unpredictable seeing what was really going on. However, getting to that conclusion was definitely fun and worth watching. The movie is not very long, but didn’t feel short either. Its not the kind of movie like Inception where you are thinking throughout the movie, what is really happening, or thinking after the movie, what just happened. It is just good, clean, pure action packed fun. That and you get to stare at Angelina Jolie for 90 or so minutes. What more could you ask for??? Not a great movie by any means, but definitely one of the better ones, IMO, of this summer season. Go watch if you are looking for a movie to watch, or wait for it to come out on cable. Probably be fun either way.
This past weekend I went to the annual Comic Con in San Diego. I’ve been going for years and years and this year was no different. Its become a tradition now. Go down to Comic Con, walk around and attend panels, take pictures, then eat dinner with 2 of my cousins. Yup, only two. I think I’ve gone something like 4 of the last 5 years, with the one year I missed falling on my sister’s wedding. Before that time, I had not gone in years, maybe like 10 years before that or so. And, like every year I mention this, it seems to get more crowded every year that I go. Its actually so huge now that I believe some of the articles that I’ve read about the convention being too mainstream now.
When I first when to this many, many years ago, it really was for the geeks. It was primarily about the comics, sci fi, fantasy, etc. Now? Its funny cuz when you read about the Comic Con now, you see articles on how Angelina Jolie is going to go, or how this or that movie studio is going to have all of their cast there, and this and that. I don’t want to say that Hollywood ruined the convention like some have said since I still have fun there, but like all this in this country, corporations only care about money and that what they have turned this convention into, a marketing extravaganza. For them, its not about the fun, the gathering of people with similar tastes and interests. For them, its all about trying to promote their movie, tv show, game, etc and to try to earn more money. They don’t care about the fun, just about the money.
What else did I notice? I don’t know if it was just me, but it seems like less and less people are dressing up. I don’t mean to say that no one dresses up anymore. No, you still see lots of people dressed up in costumes. However, to me, it seems like most of the people who are dressed up are now the people who are paid to dress up, and no longer really the fans getting all geeked up. Is it because less geeks now attend the show and more mainstream people do, as the studios want? But, like I said, that’s just what it seemed like to me. I could be wrong, and maybe I just wasn’t as observant as years past. But, I was never hard core geek, so the move towards mainstream doesn’t bother me all that much because I swing slightly that way myself watching all the movies and TV shows that I do.
Anyway, bottomline is that yes I still had fun and I still plan on going. I will probably give up on going to panels though as they are not worth waiting for in my opinion. I did see 2 panels for Fringe and V, but did not have to wait long for them because they were back to back in the same room so once I got into one, I got into both. However, my friends went to see Chuck and they went super early in the morning and still did not get that great a seat. The walking around and just looking at stuff is still fun and that’s what I did most of the time. This was also the girlfriend’s first time there and she had fun as well, though she was of the opinion that it was too mainstream and not enough comic book as the name implies it should be. But, most important, she said she had fun!
So apparently this guy is all the rage right now on the internet. I don’t watch TV in the summer, so not sure if he has had commercials on TV or not. I didn’t even click on any of the ads he had on the internet. However, before the movie Inception started, it showed a commercial with him, and I thought it was kind of funny. It got my dad to laugh too. But, I just read an article today that said despite the wild popularity, sales are down. LOL. I’ve never used Old Spice deodorant before. When I was young and just started using deodorant, I went to the store and took a whiff of pretty much every one that was out there in the store (hehe, yup true story), and there was no Old Spice brand that I liked at all. And have never used it since then.
But that is another story. What I really wanted to discuss was commercials, ads and marketing in general. Obviously I am in the minority, but commercials just do not work on me. I am not the kind of person who sees an ad and then think, dang, I gotta buy that. In fact, I hate commercials and they have quite the opposite effect on me. If I see stuff that annoy me, it’ll just make me not want to buy the product. I block all ads while I surf the internet, such that whenever I do see some type of banner ad when surfing on a public computer, I’m like WTF is that? I use a DVR now and always skip commercials, and even before DVR’s, I used to time record the shows I watched on a VCR and then fast forward the commercials. Sorry, but its a waste of my time to watch 20 minutes of commercials for every hour show I watch. I won’t do it, and I’m not going to do it if I don’t have to.
The only advertisements that work on me? They are the coupons/sales that I am specifically looking for. If I know I want to buy say a hard drive, I will look through maybe the Sunday ads. Or I will look at different websites for the cheapest price. Or I will go to slickdeals or something each day until I see an ad for a hard drive. But, in almost all cases, an ad only works for me when I already want that product, and it almost never works on me to buy something I wasn’t already going to buy. There are obviously a couple exceptions to this, like if a new restaurant opens up where I live and I see a flyer and I will try it out. Or I see a coupon to a restaurant that I frequent often or will do so again. I’ll always try out new foods. Video games? I usually have in the back of my mind certain games that I would buy if the price were right, so if I happen to see a sale for that game at my price, then sure. Or I see coupons for things I regularly buy, like maybe toilet paper or the aforementioned deodorant, etc.
Marketing is a funny thing. We seem to have taken in this country the strategy of just bombarding people with every imaginable item and ad out there, hoping that at least a few people buy. The ultimate example of this is spam. You people out there do realize that the reason that people still send out spam is because there are a couple of you out there who actually click the links to those ads and actually buy the product right? I always found it funny that this is the marketing approach so many companies take because its hard for me to imagine commercials getting people to buy stuff since they don’t really work all that much on me. Targeted ads seems like the best way to go, but in mediums such as TV, the best you can do is show commercials during certain programs you know your audience watches. Maybe that’s why Google is so popular, as its much easier to show an ad when you know what the user is searching for. I’d hate to be in marketing because it seems so hit or miss to me. There are so many commercials out there where I thought that’s lame, and it did well. What works for one company often does not work for another. What works one year for a company doesn’t work the following year for that same company. It just seems so hard to predict.
Anyway, getting back to the Old Spice Guy. It kind of sucks I guess for Old Spice that sales have not increased, I guess. Though I will say it might be too soon to tell as the commercials are relatively new. But, if things do not pick up, it would appear there would be only one winner to that campaign, the Old Spice Guy himself Isaiah Mustafa.
I know that I kind of predicted this at the beginning of the summer, but the number of movies I have seen this summer is still so surprisingly low to me. I don’t know for how many straight years, but I always watch pretty much at least one movie a week during the summer. This year? I saw Inception a couple days ago. But, I think I only saw like 2 or 3, before that, with the last being A-Team I believe. I really want to blame things like me having to spend all my time after work and on the weekends fixing things up at the new home, but its not just that. You know my theory about not having enough time is a load of crap. No one has no time.
So, definitely not that I don’t have time, but the quality of the movies does not convince me to shift priorities from home repair to movie going. To be blunt, the movies suck this summer. I haven’t read a summer movie article in a while, but the last time I checked, we were down YOY in revenue, and when I read that I was like duh! Now, that being said, I wanted to watch Inception from the very beginning and was not disappointed. And I also want to watch Salt cuz Angelina Jolie is awesome. If I can pry myself away from the home, then maybe even catch Toy Story 3. But, we will just have to wait and see about that. I think the last Harry Potter comes out this fall. (at least part 1 of it. Can I just rant really quickly on how the studios are milking that and the last Twilight for all it is worth? A two part ending for both movie franchises??? Yeah, I’m sure its because the books are just too big and they had to be “true” to the book. Right. Back in the day, they called it screenwriting and they usually have no problem fitting it in one movie….if that’s what they really wanted to do!). Hopefully next summer the quality of the movies will be much better. And hopefully by then I will have more time. If I still am having to do major stuff to my home by next summer, I will be pretty sad.
On a final note, I might have to add that perhaps I am getting older now and my taste in movies has changed. Maybe I’m more of a plot driven movie guy now? Could that really be the case? I did think that Transformers 2 was one of the worst movies ever made. It was just terrible. But it made so much money so am I just one of those old people complaining about plot less movies nowadays? I think next summer will give me a better indication of that. I want to say no though because I still love watching action movies. So, instead of blaming my changing tastes, I’m going to be blaming the movie studios for putting out crap this summer.
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