News & Updates in May 2003
- Saturday, May 31, 2003
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Added the anime profiles of Reign the Conqueror and Eden's Boy. Added the character profiles of Serenity Wheeler (from Yu-Gi-Oh), Sumire Kanzaki and Maria Tachibana (from Sakura Wars), and Bear and Mimiru (from .hack//sign). Added an additional discription to the character profiles Kurama and Shuichi (it's the same description, because they're basically the same character). I also got the photos from my trip to LA for E3, 2003 online.
Last Saturday evening Treeses and I went to a wedding reception for the son of one of the guys she works with. It was in a huge hall at the fairgrounds, and it was completely full. There were lots of long tables which took up most of the room, and there a little dance floor section at the end. On the tables there were many little bowls of Asian food just scattered around. My favorites were the beef jerky like things and the sticky rice. I've never picked up rice and eaten it like I eat burgers, so that was really cool.
Treeses had two of her bottom back teeth pulled recently. The first one she had done Thursday of last week, and the second one she had done was yesterday. Both of them were cracked, and she had been in a lot of pain. Of course, she's still in pain now they've been pulled, but at least that pain will be going away. And until then, she has drugs to make her happy. What sucks is that she had root canals done on both of those teeth, which is painful, expensive, and didn't do a damn thing to help.
We had a visit from Clark Pest Control this week. We used Clark for over a year but canceled because they could never get the ants to stop, but the dude mentioned that they had some new chemicals now that are very effective. So I set up an appointment for them to come by the next morning and explain all about it. I was still sleeping when they came, but Treeses was up, so he explained it to her, and it sounded good so she let him go spray. It seems this new spray they have is supposed to work great for killing ants at areas that have concrete foundations, which is what we have. The next morning, there wasn't a single ant in the sink, and there hasn't been one since. I did find a trail elsewhere in the kitchen today, but he said it would take some time for it to kill all the ants.
We really didn't do anything for Memorial Day. I had no idea Monday was even a holiday, and I was all set to go to work. My lovely wife had to inform me that I had the day off. Oh yeah, and The Amazing Race started this week! Finally, and just in time too, because 24 just ended. Oh yeah, and the just restarted Yu Yu Hakusho from the beginning again, which sucks because they didn't even finish the dark tournament.
As for movies we saw recently, there was Star Trek: Nemesis (sucked), Equilibrium (cool), Adaptation (okay), Serving Sara (alright), X-Men (still good), Darkness Falls (good), The Hot Chick (funny), Jackass: The Movie (funny), and Antibody (sucked).
Oh, and I've been listening to "Weird Al" Yankovic's new album a bit this week. I can now understand why Eminem denied him permission for a video... because the parody isn't very good at all.
- Sunday, May 25, 2003
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Added the character profiles of Rin Kobayashi (from Please Save My Earth) and Li Showron (from Card Captors).
- Friday, May 23, 2003
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Added the anime profiles of Ai Yori Aoshi and Ceres, Celestial Legend. Added the character profiles of Son Goku (from Gensomade Saiyuki), Subaru (from .hack//sign), Izzy Izumi (from Digimon), and Mutsumi Otohime (from Love Hina). Added additional descriptions to the character profiles of Genkai (from Yu Yu Hakusho), and Tyson, Kai, Max, and Ray (from Beyblade).
- Tuesday, May 20, 2003
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Hey, no updates right now. I just recently got back from my trip to E3 and thought I'd tell a bit about it. Oh yeah, and "Weird Al"'s new album Poodle Hat was released today, so make sure you go pick that up. Unfortunately there's no music video to go with it. Thanks a lot Eminem... and I used to think you were cool.
It was Thursday morning and time to set out for this year's E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo). Victor swung by and picked me up, and then we drove on down to the Sacramento airport. I hadn't flown since the September 11 attack, so this would be my first introduction to the new airport security measures. Overall, it went pretty smoothly, but they did have to use the hand wand because I forgot to take off my belt. Once we landed in Burbank, we got a rental car and headed off to Knott's Berry Farm.
We got into the park at around 5:15 in the afternoon, so we had about 45 minutes before it was going to close. Luckily, there wasn't very many people there so we rarely had to wait in line for the rides. First we went on Supreme Scream, which I did not care for very much at all. Next came the Xcelerator, which was awesome. Then we trekked on over to Ghostrider, which was all the way on the other side of the park. This was also a great ride. There was actually a short line for this one, so by the time we got on, there wasn't any time to ride the rapids like we planned.
After leaving Knott's Berry Farm, we checked out the Disney shopping center. One of the stores we came across was a really cool Lego store which had life-size versions of R2-D2, Boba Fett, and Darth Vader all made out of Legos. They was also a bunch of neat Lego sets, like one they had was a giant Star Destroyer. I was thinking about getting it for Treeses, but decided against it. There was no price on it, but I'm sure it cost two to three times as much as it should, and also the thing was completely gray. I know Star Destroyers are grey, but all grey is just so plain looking.
The next day was the start of E3, 2003, but Victor had no meetings that day so we took off to Magic Mountain instead. Again, there were few people and virtually no lines. We went on Déjà Vu, The Riddler's Revenge, Scream!, Gold Rusher, and Log Jammer. Unfortunately, the X coaster was closed. After going on all those rides, neither of us felt like going on any more, so we scoped out the gift shops, picked up souvenirs, and then took off.
Later that evening we decided to see Bend It Like Beckham while we were waiting for the 10:50 preview showing of The Matrix: Reloaded. I didn't know quite what to expect from Bend It Like Beckham, but it turned out to be quite good. We were planning to leave the movie early to get in line for The Matrix, but when the time came neither of us wanted to leave without seeing what happened. And after seeing The Matrix, I wish we would have stuck around for the outtakes.
The Matrix: Reloaded was extremely disappointing. I didn't expect it to be better than the first, but I at least thought it would be good. Unfortunately, it wasn't. If this movie had been made first, there wouldn't have been any sequels. It had some really cool effects, but that's the only thing this movie had going for it. First off, the musical score was awful. Not once did I feel any kind of emotion at all (well, except for boredom). No amazement, no excitement, no sadness, no satisfaction, no nothing.
The next problem I had was with the extremely long and occasionally pointless fight scenes. Especially Neo's fight against the gang of agent Smith's. That scene went on forever, and halfway though it the characters were switched from live-action to computer graphic characters. When the fight was just about over, they cut to a close up of Neo's face, which was shocking because I actually forgot that I was watching a live-action movie. And then what's Neo do to finish this extremely long fight in which it was obvious within the first couple minutes that no one could win? He flies away! Yep, just flies away! Why the hell didn't he just do that in the first place!
And then there are the characters, of which we were given absolutely no reason to care about any of them, good or bad. Everything that was done in the first movie that made you feel for the characters was completely missing from this movie. They introduced this one French dude who is supposedly a bad guy or something... but he really didn't seem very evil to me. When they introduced him, he was just sitting there blabbing away about something that made little sense and had nothing to do with the story. Seriously! I mean, oh no, he gave a piece of cake to a woman and it made her have an orgasm, ooohhh, what an evil man, I'm really scared of this mastermind now.
I could go on, but it's just pissing me off again so I'm gonna stop. Let's just hope they delay the third movie more than a few months so that they can go back and make it better than this piece of crap. So the next day we went to E3. Victor had a meeting or two, so I walked around and scoped out the booths. There wasn't a whole lot of exiting, original games this year. There were a ton of sequels though. Most looked pretty good, but they're really nothing new. The first day I basically just looked around. I didn't really play anything until the second day of the show.
I did play the new Castlevania for PS2, which was great (it felt like a Castlevania crossed with Devil May Cry). Also, there was the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for like every system. This looked great, but one major problem I had while playing was that your turtle would move forward every time you attacked. This was very annoying, and I asked one of the dudes working the booth if they were going to change this or at least add an option to turn it off. He gave some lame excuse about doing that so they could do combinations or something. Whatever dude. The character shouldn't move forward unless I move him forward, okay? So just fix it.
We left the show early in the afternoon on the second day, headed over to the airport to check our bags, then went out to do a little more shopping before returning to the airport to head home.
- Saturday, May 10, 2003
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Added the anime profile of Beyblade. I still have a bunch more profiles to do, though.
I know that it's been a little while since the last update, but recently I've been having to deal with my PacesetterSucks.com. It seems that Pacesetter Corp. doesn't really like what some customers and former employees are saying about them, so they're trying to silence them by threatening us with a long and costly legal battle. I agreed to not display most of the stories for about a month so that my host can investigate Pacesetter's claims. I added a new section to PacesetterSucks.com called Latest News which talks about the situation in a bit more detail.
In other news, we got to see the first, midnight showing of X2: X-Men United when it came out. Victor found out about it a few hours ahead of time, so Treeses and I went with him to see it. I was really excited about this movie, as it looked like it was going to be way better than the first. Boy, was I ever disappointed... as was Victor. It did have some cool action scenes, good acting, and characters that really felt like they were the X-Men, but the story was awful, there were many, long sections where nothing interesting was happening, and there were some really poor special effects. The opening scene with Nightcrawler was great, but it was followed by a very long period of nothing interesting.
Then the action finally picked up again with the assault on the school. This was kind of cool, but also kind of lame. They have all these SWAT commando like guys dressed all in black with guns assaulting this school filled with really cool mutants who could kick their collective asses, yet all the mutants really do is run away. You get to see them using their powers here and there, but it's always just to help them escape. Wolverine was the only real saving grace here. He went on a rampage, using those claws of his to slice and dice every baddie he came in contact with.
Then once again we're thrust into boredom. Jean Grey and Storm get Nightcrawler, but that's not very interesting. Iceman, Pyro, Wolverine, and Rouge all end up at Iceman's house, and there's a little scuffle with the cops, but that's not all that interesting either. Then there's a little excitement when everyone's in the jet and it's about to crash. That wasn't too bad. And there's not much of anything after that until we get toward the end, and even the ending battles aren't that exciting. It did set up a good plot for a third movie, though. Hopefully it will be made better than this one.
So today is my birthday, and I'm now 28 years old. Treeses came home from lunch and had me open my presents. She got two DVD sets. One was Family Guy, which contains the first two seasons, and the other was the first season of Highlander: The Series. Ah, she knows me so well. I love Family Guy, as that show is just hilarious. I was shocked when I heard that they weren't going to be making anymore. And although in general I'm not a big fan of Highlander: The Series, I did really enjoy the first season. It just seemed to go downhill after that, though, and finally came crashing down in the fourth Highlander movie and that stupid Highlander: The Raven spinoff series.
Christy is still living with us. She dyed her hair blonde recently, and also bought a $3,000 vacuum cleaner/air purifier. Don't ask me if the two are related. Last night she went to see Identity and really enjoyed it. There's nothing really out that I want to see, at least not until The Matrix Reloaded is released. Oh yeah, we bought thirteen bags of plain Hershey bars at Target yesterday, as each bag was only $0.58 cents (normally $2.39). It was an amazing deal, and it wasn't even marked! You had to use one of those price-check scanners to find out.
Okay, and now for the DVDs that we've watched recently. There was Wild Cardz (sucked), The People vs. Larry Flynt (good), Legend of Crystania: The Motion Picture (alright), Sasquatch (sucked), Crocodile 2: Death Swamp (sucked), The Transporter (way cool), Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (way bad), Empire (nothing special), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (alright), Blood Work (pretty boring), Abandon (sucked), and Friday After Next (dumb). Wild Cardz was so dumb that I couldn't even finish watching it. It was really annoying and confusing. The Transporter, on the other hand, was a really good action flick with good acting and a decent plot. It also contains a lot of cool stunts in the fight scenes similar to the type Jackie Chan is famous for.