My Xmas Card 2007

How I spent my weekend...

And damn its been awhile since I posted. The reality is that its just been a really focked up time for me. Work has just been nonstop, and some personal things have gotten in the way to where I just don't want to do anything. Ya, thats me: Mr. Closed In.

Anyways, the past 3 weekends I have done Santa Claus at the Wallyworld here. Gotta say, I really groove on it. Its just so much fun interacting with these chillens as this larger than life mythical figure. Its amazing how much they absolutely believe in what they are seeing. Now, some kiddos love Santa from 10 feet away, but at 2 feet he's a large red monster. They'll wave and say high, but as soon as they get close they go off like a fire alarm.



Not this lil dude. He came dressed for the occasion. Everyone said that he was my Good Twin though...


This is Santa and the family. Mom is looken really good as she has lost over 90 pounds in the last year because of her Gastric Bypass surgery last year...on my birthday none the less.


Santa and my Boss. She told my mom that it really helped her with her Christmas mood as she is having a real hard time this year as her mom is very sick. Not to sound to self aggrandizing, its one of the reasons why I do is to help with my own "Bah Humbugness".


This is the daughter of my part-time help Shawn Lee, whom I named "Unicorn Baby" because in the first sonogram of her their is a clear horn on her forehead. Now, Shawn Lee deny's this, and says I was just making things up. Ya. Right. Denile, just ain't a river in Egypt. Anyways, she's a pretty baby, and didn't cry once. And now, if I ate her, I would feel a bit guilty cause her mom works for me.

Happy Holidays!!!!

Just in time for the Simpsons Movie, here is how I would look as a denizon of Springfield:





And here I am hanging with my Buds at Moes...and yes, i am the designated driver. Damn that rock!!! Why are you always beaten by Paper!!!!

The Summer of Contradiction

It was supposed to be the single greatest summer for movies ever!!! I mean, each week we were supposed to get one movie after another that just blew our socks off. Life changing, emotional, magnificent pieces of cinema that would make strong men weep, and women swoon.

Well...its been....kinda boring. Pirates was just more boring than exciting, Spider-Man 3 just was lots of sound and fury, and not much else. And lets not mention Shrek 3 ever again, K?

Fortunately, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (***) actually was very fun, with great effects, and was better than the original. And Ocean's Thirteen (***) was just 2 hours of total fun. This is the movie they should have made rather than that looooooooooongg boring thing they did for the second movie. They looked like they were having fun, and wanted us to come along for the ride.

Then came the shining stars of the summer.



Live Free or Die Hard(****) blew my friggen socks off. I have a serious man crush on Bruce Willis as it is, but this movie took that to full love. Fun, exciting, with magnificent stunt work and a story that just hooks ya from the beginning. Kevin Smith's cameo as a Jedi Hacker totally rocked. Not a dull moment in the whole darn movie. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is McClain's ass kicking daughter, and gets in some great licks. My only complaint is that the bad guy, Tom Olyphant, is just not as charismatic as Alan Rickman, but then who is?





Transformers(****)is my secret shame. When I heard they were doing a live action movie based on toys I just do not get (I mean, why the heck do alien robots from space come all this way to look like a truck?) I was beyond skeptical. Then I saw the trailer, and had that feeling in the pit of my stomach I might be eating some crow. Now that I have seen it? Nope, not some crow, a whole friggen murder of crow. This movie, from beginning to end, was spectacular. I loved the characters, the story, the effects, and that freaken awesome sound they make when they transform is now my ring tone. Shia LaBouf carries this movie, and should be given a huge round of applause. Before this he was only in some tween Disney Comedies, but here really shines. If we don't like his character, we just don't by this movie, and he not only like him, but root for him. Megan Fox, his love interest, is so hot she seems almost like she is made from CGI, but is also is a well rounded character in her own right. Now I know that the robots are all CGI, but WOW. The T-rex in Jurassic Park seems like a child's crayon drawing compared to these guys.

I know your thinking "Hey Christian, what about Ratatouille(**)? You are a Pixar freak, so you loved this, right?" Nope. This movie disappointed me more than any other movie I have seen this summer. I freely admit my huge love of all Pixar movies, and had very high hopes for this movie. All the adds, every trailer I saw made me want to not only see this movie, but want to buy it. The reality is there is just not much here. The characters never develop, and the story, what little their is of it, meanders around with no purpose. It is, however, the most beautiful animated movie I have ever seen. Beyond photo realistic, it makes me want to go to Paris, even though we hate the French and the closest we want to get is the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. And, lets be honest, the whole notion of a rat cooking just skeeves me out.

Well, we still have The Simpson's Movie

A Pirate and an Ogre

Now all 3 of the big movies for the summer have opened, and I have sat through all 8 hours of fun. You want the quick review of the other 2? Rent Shrek and See Pirates.

Thanks!!


Alright, fine. I guess I should be a tad more verbose about those flicks. So, lets start with Shrek the Third (***).

I liked the first one, and really liked the second one. But this one....well...the jokes are just a tad retread. Watching this one, you feel as if you've already seen it. By only seeing the trailers, and the endless advertisements on TV, you can pretty much see the whole movie. The theme of this one? Quick guess....some people don't fit in. That it is what is on the inside that counts. Its just so been there, done that. Part of the problem is that Prince Charming is just not what you would call a quality villain. For these kinds of movies to work, the bad guy has to be at least competent with a plan that has a chance of working. None of that here. So, rent it when it comes out.


Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (***) is the weakest of the trilogy, but still is fun, exciting, with wonderful fight scenes, magnificent sets, great characters, and scenery. The last 45 minutes alone is worth the price of admission. The magnificent battle between The Flying Dutchmen and The Black Pearl is a masterpiece of CG and is an epic battle we haven't seen since the Lord of the Rings. A magnificent battle full of sword fights, a marriage, an unexpected death, and, even more stunning, Captain Jack does the right thing.

The biggest problem is that this movie is just to darn long. They could have cut at least 45 minutes out of this movie and it would have just been fine. The biggest complaint I have read on the Internet has been that ya just can't keep up with the plot. That it just to complex. If they had trimmed 45 minutes off of it, I think that this would have been easily solved. The acting is stellar, and the effects are magnificent, but the damn thing is just to long!

So, now we have Fantastic Four 2, Live Free or Die Hard, and, what may be the best of all,



But we shall see....

Spider-Man 3 ***

When you have a movie as perfect, and as wonderful as Spider-Man 2 (****), it is next to impossible to make a movie that is just as good as it, or, the impossible, to top it. I know the makers of Spidey 3 just wanted to make a good movie and were not thinking this, but come on... That thought has to be on their mind from the first script draft, all they way up the last edit. Its like that older brother who's the star athlete, valedictorian of his high school class-your parents still love you, but always seem like they wonder why you can't be like Chet.

All I can say is that Spidey 3 is no Chet.

But, gosh darnit, it sure does try. The problem is there is just to much here. To many villains, to many twists, to much angst. The better movie would be one that had been much slimmer; one villain, one story. Instead we get 3 villains. First, Harry Osborne comes gunning for Spidey to avenge his father's death, even though everyone in the world but Harry knows that his dad killed himself trying to kill Pete. Then we see the birth of The Sandman. Gotta say, Thomas Hayden Church looks eggzacly like the Flint Marlow from the comics. And the character, when in sand form, is very visually stunning. The problem is that the whole character really is superfluous. Nothing he does advances the plot, and other than giving us a kewl fight sequence at the end with Harry teaming up with Peter, really does nothing for the movie as a whole.

The third villain, Venom, played very well by Topher Grace, seems like he's tacked on. The black suit symbiont that attaches himself to Peter and turns him not really evil, just more of an ass, is never really explained. Its just...there. We see a meteor, then it splotches around until it covers Pete up, making him a new costume. Then he splotches onto Topher, and becomes this large teethed, evil eyed thing. This is the villain that should have taken up all the time that Sandman had. Truthfully, he's on screen maybe 15 minutes total, and it would have been much more dramatic if their had been a tad more buildup.

The great part is that its still just as a beautiful movie as the first one. Its been 4 years since we first beheld the wonder that is Spidey swinging from rooftop to rooftop, and it still kicks as much ass as it did then. As a matter of fact, in this movie, he does moves in the air that just defy logic. One sequence has him jumping from one piece of falling rubble to another trying to swing down and catch a falling Gwen Stacy. Totally wow.

Overall, we have a very enjoyable movie that is visually exciting, with characters we love to see. Great fight scenes, frenetic action, and best of all...Bruce Campbell once again almost steals the whole movie.

Spider-Man 3 gets *** out of 5.

THE GREATEST TRAILER OF ALL TIME

HAPPY ST. PADDY'S DAY!!

 

Myspace Graphics

Happy St. Pats Day!!! May the Road always rise to meet you, and may ya be in Heaven 2 days before the Devil knows your dead!!

This is a great big DUH

How evil are you?
Like I needed the internet to tell me this.

Off to take over France...

My name in Gitmo will be Achmad UBU Jihada

Just a quick story on my way out here to Las Vegas (where, today, I doubled my money playing Roulette. But thats another story). So I arrive at the airport way in advance, cause thats how I roll. First, I hate TSA. Not the people who work for them, just the mere idea of its existence. TSA has been in existence for over 30 years, but they did not and could not stop 9/11 from happening. And now we have even more annoying crap that we have to put up with, like this ban on fluids. WTF. It would take a serious amount of any liquid to do any damage to a plane, but I can't take my lil bottle of contact solution on the plane? Sheesh. Add to that dumbasses that really don't need to be flying. On the security table as we went in were all the things they had confiscated THAT DAY. Loads of crap, including, and I kid you not, a full jar of Mayo, Peanut Butter, and Jelly. I just stood there and tried to wrap my brain around the notion that people would want to make a sammich while flying across the country. Also, who doesn't know that you can't take that stuff? Where do they live? Under their trailer?

On top of idiots who shouldn't be flying, I had failed to get my drivers license renewed. This got me flagged for extra security. Now usually I get this anyway cause I'm, well, me. But this time it was cause I'm an idiot who can't remember to get my license renewed. So after I went through the metal detectors, they patted me down, then ran the lil wand over stuff to see if I had made any bombs lately. And my terrorist laptop set off the alarm. In that moment I had visions of me in Cuba, plotting with my other brothers in Jihad to find a way to martyrdom. Then his Jihadi Ipod buddy set off the alarms, and my head was filled with me being stripped searched on the way to Gitmo. So they ran both back through the xray machine, just to make sure I hadn't hardwired the hard drive into some kind of nuke.

Now, the bomb sniffing machine was set to pick up evidence of Nitrates, the building blocks to nitroglycerin, and in ginourmous amounts, how McVeigh blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. What he used was Fertilizer, just like every farmer between Hobbs, and Lubbock, Texas does. The Saturday I drove to Lubbock the wind blew 40 mph with gusts up to 70 mph, filling the air with soil. And particles of Nitrates. So the TSA had been getting false positives all day because of the wind, including my laptop and Ipod. I was off the hook. No Gitmo for the UBUman. PHEW. I can't go to Islam Prison. I'm to Christian. In Every way.

So I finally got through security and flew to Vegas on a plane so full they were putting people in the overhead bins. They had been asking for volunteers to get off the plane,and normally I would have if A. I hadn't chose that flight to get into Vegas in time for Brunch (which was scrumptious); B. That I first had to fly to Houston, sit there for 4 hours, then fly on to Vegas. Um..no; and C. Didn't have tickets to Penn and Teller that night I would totally blow if I took that other flight. So instead I sat next to two old dudes who talked golf while I watched a movie on my Ipod.

Next...Brunch.

The View From my Hotel....

 

But. I almost got sent to Gitmo to get here. TSA sux balls.

More to come...

Its that time again...

Once again, I get to escape the lil town that is Hobbs, NM and run away to the bright lights and big city that is Las Vegas. Yup, another vacation in my favorite city. I cannot express how happy Vegas makes me. Its a place with no expectations, no worries, or any other reason to be there other than to not be who you are at home. It can be a tad overwhelming, as you want to go and do EVERYTHING. NOW. LOOOK!!THE FOUNTAINS!!! LOOOOOKKKK BUFFETS!!! LLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKKKKKKKKKKK AT THE PEOPLE!!!! LLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKKKKKKKKKKK AT THAT GIGANTIC SIGN FOR CELINE!!!!!!!! LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKKKKKKKKK THE FREAKEN EIFFAL TOWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My first solo trip thats what happened to me, and I came home exhausted. Since then I've learned to pace myself, to do a lil and to soak it all in. This time I'm going to see Penn and Teller, and the Cirque show Ka. The reason I am going to see this show is that it was featured in the first episode of CSI this season, and I was blown away. I never would have thought that I would want to see a Cirque show as I always thought they were just to Gay and French. Two things changed my mind. First was Love, the Beatles inspired Cirque I saw last time I was here. It was sooo good that I thought "Well..maybe they all don't sux...". Second was the fact that they have a stage in this show that goes VERTICAL. Then, they have a massive sword battle on it, with all the combatants hanging by wires. There's even a massive sea battle. Dude. How could I not want to see this?
Welp, I am off Sunday, and I spent extra monies to make sure I got a seat on the first flight from Lubbock to make it in time to go to brunch. Yup, you know it...Food Pics.

For all my Valentines....

Here is my heart....

just for ya'll...

There Can be Only 2....

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 2 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

My taste in music

Your Taste in Music:

Progressive Rock: Highest Influence 90's Pop: High Influence Classic Rock: High Influence Country: High Influence 80's Alternative: Medium Influence

How's Your Taste in Music?

Um...almost...I would say that Classic is much higher than Progressive Rock, but his is pretty close to true.

CHRISTMAS

Been meaning to post this since it happened, but I am what ya call, lazy.

On Christmas Eve, we got from Ol' Saint Nick not a white, snowey holiday, but instead got 30 mph winds out of the north. You got that right, Cold Artic blasts for Xmas!!! WOO!! Lucky us...

The next morning, this is what I woke to:

All my Plastic Christmas People were spread alllll over the yeard like a bad frat party. My carefully placed, arfully lit Christmas Extraveganza that is the UBU's front lawn was now the scene of a holiday scene out of a Quenten Tarentino film.

Notice the two trees...between them once stood Father Christmas. Now? See below.

The only reason the Angelo is still standing is because of the piece of PVC shoved up her boohynie. All she did in the wind was ssssssssssspppppppppppiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnn. LOL

And here is the resting place of Santa....right in the middle of the Manger. Damn drunken Elf!!!

Balthazar also survived the Horror of the Wind. Why? Not sure. Blessed by God? Dumb Luck? Or cause he's lower to the ground? All I know is that of all the wise guys, he lasted the longest. Maybe he was blessed by the Baby Jesus because of his gift of a Playstation 3.
See Frosty and mini-Frosty? They were under the other tree. Thats the neighbor's lawn, not ours. The only reason they are not all the way down in Antartica now is because they're still plugged in.











So, I left it like that. For a week. Why? Cause I found it darn funny. If I had my way, I would have put up Crime Scene tape. Now, that would be funny. Maybe next year. How was your Holidays?