May 2008 Archives

Thursday night, we made the trek out to see the latest Indiana Jones movie. Opting against the midnight movie on Wednesday because of the movies' length -- at 2+ hours we'd have been home at 3 am -- we went instead for the 6:15 PM show on Thursday. This avoided the mad rush of the evening shows, or so we thought.

In all actuality, it avoided people in general. There were less than 20 people in our theater, and five of them were in our group. For Indiana Jones! I can only assume that the evening shows were busier, because if the 6:15 show is a reliable barometer on the Omaha area's interest...yeesh.

As I wrote earlier, I loved the movie. But clearly I was in the minority in our group.

Jack Bauhaus thought it was cheesy, and singled out the scene where Mutt swings through the jungle like Tarzan as the scene that put things over the top.

Dick Herculanum was lukewarm about the movie, giving it the faintest of praises by saying it was "better than Transformers".

Brother of Dick Herculanum disagreed, saying that he actually liked Transformers more because at least it was entertaining. "If I'd come to this movie at midnight, I'd have been really pissed because I could have been asleep. Since I came at 6, at least I can go home and be pissed about it while I play Xbox."

Nicole, too, was dismayed. "At least now we know how Han Solo wound up with the rebellion. Indiana Jones got sucked up into a flying saucer with aliens and because of the nature of space he never aged."

Like I say, I'm in the minority apparently, but that's alright. You bet.

Sometimes I think people just want to be miserable, and want to be disappointed. They want things to be terrible, because that way they can complain. Specifically, I'm talking about movies, and more specifically, I'm talking about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Its a pulp action movie, and anyone who expected more than that was at the wrong flick. For that matter, anyone who expected more than that from the other three Indiana Jones movies was at the wrong movie. Some will say that it wasn't as good as "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and you know what? Yeah, it wasn't.

But isn't that a little like saying Led Zeppelin IV isn't as good as Led Zeppelin II? Being not as good as pretty much the greatest movie ever is not something to be ashamed of, just like being not as good as pretty much the greatest album ever is not. Both are great, but one just isn't as good as another.

I wasn't exactly sure what had just happened, so I continued driving. At the next corner, I turned around, and by the time I got back to the intersection where Dick had jumped out, he had already convinced not only Continental but also his wife to jump in the car. Suddenly, the six bottles of PBR we had purchased to take to the party were not enough. Instead of three apiece, we'd each get one bottle, and we'd have to fight over rights to the remaining two. However in the midst of driving around looking for the address Gilby had given me, we managed to end up just a block from Continental's house. His wife got out, wished us a good time, and walked the block to their house. Meanwhile, the three of us headed out to the party.

MU: "Ultimate? Ultimate what?"

CF: "Ultimate Frisbee, silly."

MU: "Why didn't you just say that in the first place?"

CF: "Because its not called that. It's just Ultimate."

Using an adjective as a noun is dicey, particularly when describing a game. As Continental said on Sunday, people would think you were nuts if you played a game of "Awesome", but no one even thinks twice about a game named "Ultimate".

The lesson, as always, is that you shouldn't let frat boys name a game. If you do, it winds up being called "Ultimate", which is completely ridiculous. However, a corollary to this lesson is that frat boys should still invent games -- just not name them. Because Ultimate is pretty damn fun.

Who woulda thought you could get such awesome, artsy photos from a $2 photo booth? Let me rephrase that. Who woulda though you could squeeze so many people into a photo booth? Yet there we are: Jack, Dick, myself and a couple of ladies. Hilarious stuff.

At some point before our food arrived, I got up to use the facilities and when I returned, Kelly was showing photos on her camera to the dude in the booth next to us. Initially when we'd come in, I was a little worried because we were loud and obnoxious, and the proximity of the people in the next booth made me wonder if they were going to be upset. Mind you this worry was fleeting, in that it came and went in the span of about two seconds, but it was there however briefly.

To my horror...nay, to my amusement, the dude is that booth was crazy. I mean, he might honestly have been nuts. There might have been a plain white van waiting outside for him with a straight jacket and various and sundry medications. Anyway, I walked into the middle of the conversation so I'm not entirely sure what it was about, but from what I was able to deduce, they were arguing about whether the animal in the photo was a duck or something else. Random Crazy Dude thought it was a rooster or a chicken; the ladies were sure it was a duck. This is where I returned to the table, and we join the conversation in progress.

When I play a baseball or football video game, or hell, even a basketball one, I want strategy. I want real players, I want to change plays, I want bells and whistles. When you know the third-string running back on the Bengals or the left-handed one-out guy for the Rays, these things become important. When you can't name a hockey player other than Sidney Crosby, these things become somewhat less important. And by less important I mean not important at all.

No, when I play a hockey video game all I want to do is skate around, shoot the puck, and punch people in the face. Blades of Steel delivers on all three. Which is why, when I was browsing through the Virtual Console store on my Wii and discovered the addition of Blades of Steel, I spit out the portion of my Bud Light that I hadn't already swallowed. Made a heckuva mess all over my shirt, the chair and pretty much everything within a four-foot radius.

After cleaning up said mess, I paid the $5 to download the game. I knew that it stood an excellent chance of being the best $5 I've spent since the 2am Dominos Pizza in Des Moines last month. What I didn't anticipate is that it would be the best $5 I've spent since the 3am McDonalds in New York City in November.

That's the highest of high praise, when you move ahead of late night foodstuffs after a night of partying, because in terms of value, that's almost impossible to beat. Blades of Steel not only beats it, it whups its behind into the penalty box.

You bet.

Matt Univers and his wife did not attend this game.

Sunday night, the Twins jumped ahead 7-1 on the strength of three homeruns -- a two-run bomb from Adam Everett and a three-run homer from Craig Monroe in the same inning, and a later solo homer from Monroe -- and then held off a furious Boston rally, striking out their best hitter with the tying run at second base.

Matt Univers and his wife did not attend this game.

Saturday night, the Twins scored early and led 2-1 going into the 7th inning before imploding and losing 5-2. This is the game they attended.

I got an email from my mom this week, and she thought I'd be amused by a font case study. Guess what: not amused!

When I'd be out at the bars right after work on a Thursday and not make it home until 1:30 AM, without fail they would bring my garbage can back up to my garage from the street. They made sure my sprinklers ran when I was out of town. We had quite a few beers together when I'd be outside grilling out. Good people.

They sold their house in March, and the people who bought the house couldn't be more different if they were not even human. Instead of driving a Toyota as their day-to-day car, they both ride Harley's. Yes, both the gentleman and his lady. They have a ridiculous set of lawn furniture on their front porch that has blown into their yard three times in the last three weeks. On Sunday afternoons when I'm watching baseball on TV, they're watching NASCAR.

Oh, and they have this thing parked in front of the house:

Behold, the Mothers Day card to end all Mothers Day cards. Its the President in drag. Combined with an Applebee's gift card, its pretty much the best thing ever (sic).

Of course, the five things had to fall into the following categories: 3D Object, Wall hanging, Resource, Wild Card, and Inspirational Tome. I prepared epic visual aids for two of the topics, and came in empty-handed for the other three -- my plan was to improvise. How'd that work out? I've had better days, trust me.

For "Wall Hanging", I showed off a classic 1968 Vikings poster that I've seen on eBay from time to time. Part of a series of original prints that I believe was commissioned by Sports Illustrated, the posters are more art than sports poster. The Vikings one is a very distressed, acrylic-on-vinyl painting of an immense Nordic Viking warrior, with two players in front. One is of a quarterback ostensibly wearing number 11 -- the front of his jersey is obscured slightly by his non-throwing hand. Most likely, it is intended to be QB Joe Kapp, because as you'll recall, in 1968 Fran Tarkenton was playing the second of his five seasons with the New York Giants after being traded in the middle of his career. He played for Minnesota from 1961-1966 and 1972-1978. The other player is a random lineman wearing number 65; I'm not sure who this is intended to be, because the most famous Viking to wear that number was offensive lineman Gary Zimmerman, who played six seasons in Minnesota from 1986-1992 before leaving for the Broncos.

Anyway, its a sweet poster. A few days after the show aired, Dick Herculanum sent me an IM to alert me that a mint-condition version of the poster was up on eBay for just $29 -- with seven bucks shipping, it was $36. The name of their website? 36 point. It was meant to be mine. I bought it.

When they switched over to their new codebase last year, people who published to an external server via FTP were left out in the cold on most of the new features. Worse, the site became really unreliable for us FTP folks. Republishing an entire site to reflect changes to a layout template? Good luck. Especially one with 900+ posts like mine.