Christmas Recap...

So the weekend was good. As usual it was very busy driving from one house to another and eating a huge meal immediately upon arrival, but at least we're not going hungry. Saturday morning Jen and I went up to Nashville to pick up her brother at the airport. We were short on time, so we didn't get to make a Hooter visit. I actually drove well over the speed limit both too and from so as far as Nashville is concerned I doubt it ever knew we were there. I had to slow down on the drive back because at around 110 my wifes car threw a wheel weight and we picked up a vibration. It's a small one at 60, but from 90-120 it's more than noticeable. From Chatty to Nashville we made it in just a little less than an hour and a half. The best part is that my wifes car was still getting about 26mpg's at that speed. Nice. Her brother flew in as a suprise to her parents and since they don't believe in exchanging gifts, that was our gift to them. They were shocked and her mom cried. We made the trip back in about an hour and 45 minutes and the family visitations began. Her aunt and uncle were in town, but her aunt is insanely annoying so I didn't spend much quality time with her. Her uncle is pretty cool and he likes movies so we got along just fine. After a few hours of visitation with the in-laws we headed over to my parents house for dinner and then headed to a church service at my sisters church. If you've ever watched the Andy Griffith show, that's pretty much what my sisters church service was like. Sunday morning was a repeat. Back to my parents house for presents and breakfast, then back over to the inlaws for presents and dinner. As far as presents go we both got some pretty useful gifts. I got a set of impact tools with a compressor, and my hot wife and her parents got me a workbench with a powered backwall. Both of our grandparents gave money, so we spent it on this. When we moved in, the gas logs weren't working so we got a propane tank and propane with our Christmas money. It really does help heat the house, but it stinks of propane if they run too long. Outside of that, I got a few good movies like the Matrix Collectors edition, and the Fantastic Four. Her brother arrived safely back in Texas last night and her aunt and uncle are back home as well. Today it's back to work for a few hours then back home. I hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas!

Happy Birthday To Jefe!

Happy Birthday El Jefe! I'm about to leave work so I'll call you on the way home. If you're not having a good birthday, you should be.

Movie Review - House of Wax, The Island

Yes, it's been another movie week. Pretty soon I'm going to have to change the blog title to something along the lines of Movie Central. Anyway, we finished our holiday shopping early, and with Barbara Walters specials taking up the time slot on my favorite show, it was movie time.

The Island - Not a bad flick. Basically, it's a futuristic Society where people have clones of themselves made in case they need donors for body parts and skin transplants later in life. It's pretty expensive so it's mainly a rich and famous thing. The clones all live in a containment dome because the outside world was contaminated and are told that one day they'll get the opportunity to breathe fresh air and populate the Island. They're fed a strict diet so they are in perfect health and they get to work out all day, but aren't allowed sexual contact, or allowed to ask questions. Ewan McGregor accidentally gets some memory from his sponsor and starts to question the entire ordeal. When his love interest, Scarlett Johannson, wins the lottery and gets to go to the island, he escapes to learn the truth, and then tries to rescue her to get to the real world and find their sponsors. It's a good action flick, I really liked it. I'm not saying you should rush out and buy it, but it's worth a rental - especially if you have Netflix.

House of Wax - This should be called House of Sux. The ONLY redeeming quality in the movie was Elisha Cuthbert. Not because she's a great actress but because she's hot. She acts her part well in the movie, but the premise of the movie is pretty dumb. Paris Hilton also stars. The good news is someone stabs her in the head with a very large stick near the end, but not before she has the opportunity to do some sort of strip tease in a tent for her boyfriend. After stripping down to her underware, she decides this is the opportune moment to tell her boyfriend she's pregnant. She doesn't get that chance because they both get abducted by the psycho's in the movie. Basically, the movie is about six stranded kids headed to a championship game of sorts, and they take a shortcut. One of them has car trouble so they go in search of a town. The town is made completely out of wax, and two psycho brothers have taken it over, killed everyone and made them wax figurines. Honestly, I'd stay away from it unless someone gives you a copy. Someone gave us one or I probably wouldn't have seen it. If you want that copy, let me know and it's yours. I'm hoping Elisha Cuthberts next movie is a little better.

Up next we've got Serenity, the Unrated Version of Old School, Chasing Amy, and Clerks for this week. I'm sure Christmas will yield a few more movies for us. That's all for now.

Movie Review - King Kong

We had some friends that had gone to see this movie early in the week and said it was just awesome. We decided to see a matinee yesterday around 5:00 because we had also heard it was long. The movie was good. The effects and filming were both believeable, realistic, and everything you'd hope they would be going in to a King Kong remake. I think the movie would have been just as good if we had watched it at home and been able to hit the pause button. The movie itself was three hours and seven minutes long. Add at least 20 minutes of previews, and now commercials, to the mix and it's a day long event. We went in at 5:15 and didn't get out until abot 9:00. I guess Peter Jackson thinks since he did Lord of the Rings, everything else he does has to be of epic proportions. I honestly think this movie could have been cut by an hour and a half and still been a good movie. There were a lot of scenes that drug, and were unnecessary. Plenty of the fight scenes between Kong and the monsters on the Island, and the creepy creatures attacking the shipmates seemed like Peter Jackson thought "Man, if we don't have these, this movie won't make it to two hours. Better make these a lot longer." Jack Black could have also been cut. Every time he was on screen I kept hoping for someone to punch him in the throat. I would have gladly done that for them given the opportunity. Anyway, Adrien Brody and Naomi Watts are both good in the movie, as is everyone else. I would say the movie is good, and you should see it, just make sure you have a tolerance for Jack Black, and an afternoon where you don't have any other plans.

In other movie news, the Hot Wife was nice enough to let me get the Unrated Version of The Dukes of Hazzard. It's not that much different than the theatrical version, they just cuss more. Seeing as how we got it free with Fun Cash from Columbia house, it was a good buy. Some of the deleted and alternate scenes are funny, but some of them aren't. I think this movie could have done without Willie Nelson too. Not a big fan of his, but I'm not sure who would have played the role. The Unrated version doesn't feature any more of Jessica Simpson than the theatrical version, but there is a bonus feature about her shorts and her talking about how much she had to work out to fit in to them. Oh yeah, and the music video is on there as well...as it should have been. As I said before, if you are a big fan of the original TV series, don't bother with this one. It's completely different. I did think it was a good movie, and for sure worth a free purchase.

Today is my sisters birthday so we get to do lunch out here in just a little while. Outside of that, the weekend has been uneventful but my cold has gone away so I'll be ready for work this week with a vengance.

Tiki Bar TV

Has just posted a new episode. It is hilarious. Go check them out.

Damn you Habib!

So I've been fighting off a cold. I feel miserable to the point that I couldn't come up with anything to blog about for most of the day. Thanks to Habib I now have it. I went over there to get some sore throat lozenges and hopefully some DayQuil. Mostly because my wife says I can't take NyQuil during the day. Not sure what that's about. I looked all over the store, up and down the medicine, candy bar, and snack aisles. I'm freezing cold because it feels like my fever is raging and I finally asked "Habib, do you have cold medicine somewhere that I'm missing?" Then I remembered just as he said it. "No, I'm on probation right now because of stupid people." If I never mentioned it before, to undercover FBI agents went in to Habib's store earlier this year and said "Hey, we want 57 packs of sudafed to go make meth with. That cool with you?" His response (in your best Ghandi voice) - "As long as you don't get me in trouble." He was arrested on the spot and his defense is that he didn't understand American culture well enough to know what meth was. Amazingly he knew that meth would get him in trouble. Do the math there. Anyway, I just had to leave with Chewy Sweet Tarts and a Sprite because there was no cold medicine to be found.

Speaking of people trying to pull things over. This is the big buyback week, and another reason there has been no time for blogging. Some lady came in today and had some sob story about how she was out a bunch of money on this book because of the bookstore. She was almost in tears so I checked it out to see what I could do. While I had her there I checked online prices as well to see if she could get anything for it. Upon turning it back over (she handed it face down) I noticed a sticker from a local used book store that read "50 cents" and was dated 11/05. The book was a 1992 edition of something and scanned as out of print. I informed her of this and she was "shocked" and "appauled." I wasn't rude, I just said (as I turned the screen around) that it was showing up as out of print. Then she sobs again "But they're buying it back for $80 on campus, and you guys ALWAYS give more than they do." I said "If they offer you $80 for it, you should take it. I can't give you that, but if you really want I can give you the 50 cents you paid for it at McKay's last month." At this point she knew I was on to her and said "Well, it's Christmas time and I'm broke. I just try to sell my books to whoever will give me the most but this semester I have to go to the campus store because you won't help me." Being this sick and angry it was all I could do to hold my tongue...and I did.

My fever still hasn't broken so hopefully tonight will involve a lot of NyQuil and a lot of sleep.

Movie Review - Narnia

So we got to the theater a little late on Friday for the 9:40 show. It would seem our waitress didn't understand that when we gave her a credit card for dinner that she should run it and bring it back to the table. We really did wait like 30 minutes for her to get anywhere near the table again. Then she said she thought we were done and that's why she didn't bring it back. Somehow the credit card sticking out of the check holder we gave her didn't seem like something she should bring back. Go figure. Anyway, because of Misti, we had to swap our tickets for the 10:32 show. Not a big deal unless you have to be up first thing in the morning to get the front end aligned on your wifes car. Again, not really part of the story. So we swap to the 10:32 show and instead of sitting on the very front row we were first in line for the 10:32 show.

The movie was awesome. From what I remember about the book it was almost word for word. I can't remember the ending of the book very well, but I think it was pretty close. I normally don't care for Tilda Swinton, but she was really good in this movie as the White Witch. Everyone, most of them unknown, made the story believable and my wife left the theater ready to see the remaining books in the series as movies. It really was overall a great movie, and well worth the price of admission.

Narnia

So we have tickets to see the 9:40 show tonight. We've had them since last Sunday when I had the misfortune of seeing Aeon Flux. The movie looks good, so hopefully it will live up to the hype. I'll post a movie review probably on Monday. Saturday I'll be in Atlanta for the day, and Sunday we're doing our family Christmas with my grandparents down in Auburn. Should be fun, but I think I'd rather just get together and have a meal with them rather than exchange presents. There is always too much discussion on spending limits and actual number of gifts beforehand, so I'd rather just forego the gifts all together and just get to see everybody for a while.

Courtesty of Netflix we've watched a few movies this week. We got to see Shallow Hal, and Team America: World Police Unrated and Uncensored.

Shallow Hal - I hate Jack Black. I'm not sure why we rented this one, but it wasn't bad. Something about Jack Black always makes me want to change the channel and watching him try to do a movie with a message made me want to hit him very hard. The movie also starred Jason Alexander with a really bad attempt at not looking bald. It looked like they'd put miniature golf carpet on his head and died it black. I think this one was recommended to us by Netflix. There are two really hot girls (Gwynneth Paltrow on the right, and one of my favorites - Susan Ward here on the right) in the movie, so if you haven't seen it I can spare you the time by saying "Don't judge people by how they look" and presenting you with these two pictures...









Team America - This movie is hilarious. Watch the unrated version with caution, it can be disgusting at times. I watched some of the extra features and watching how they made all these puppets and put it all together is pretty cool. They originally wanted to do Armageddon totally in puppets without changing a single word but Jerry Brukheimer wouldn't let them. They also talk about how much they hate actors in the extra features, and it's pretty obvious in the film too. The Film Actors Guilde let by Alec Baldwin aligns themselves with a terrorist and are against Team America. One of the funniest quotes I heard in the movie was when the actors were talking about how America doesn't know what's right for them, so it's up to the Actors to help create a better society, one of them says "It's our job as actors to read the newspaper and repeat it on TV as if it were our own idea." Sadly some of their depictions of actors are dead on, and the puppets look just like them. Just like them to the point that it's scary. It is done by the South Park duo, and it's funny as hell. If you don't like South Park or that kind of humor you won't find it funny. Chances are your wife won't find it funny either, but I still thought it was. Probably the best way to describe it is by saying that it's a corny 80's action movie (like the Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Karate Kid type movies) done with puppets and uncensored in that special South Park kind of way that could only be done by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

This weekend we have Cinderella Man coming but I doubt we'll be home long enough to watch it. We might watch it on the road Sunday, but I doubt it. I hope everyone else has a good weekend!

Blog Addictions

Everybody has them. My latest one, Tiki Bar TV. You have to have iTunes to watch it, but they're pretty funny. If nothing else you'll learn how to make really good drinks, and the girl on there is pretty hot. I'd post a picture of her here to continue with the latest trend, but there don't seem to be any. Anyway, make sure you have speakers and five or six minutes free to watch, but you can find them at www.tikibartv.com

Movie Reviews and Christmas Lights

Okay, so since it's cold outside obviously we're watching a lot of movies this winter. On this weekends review list is Aeon Flux, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Hostage. I also managed to get the Christmas Lights strung up on the hosue. you can find pictures of that here. They looked a lot more blue on the picture on the box.

Hostage - Not a bad movie. It's got Bruce Willis and of course he's a hostage negotiator that loses his edge when a kid that's being held hostage dies on his watch. He steps down and becomes a police chief in a small town. Then his family gets taken Hostage and you can sorta see how it goes from there. There was a small twist at the end that I didn't expect, but it was a good flic. Worth seeing but not worth buying.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith - This was a good action movie. I really liked it. Basically Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are assassins working for different groups. Neither one knows what the other does. When their employers find out they're married they plot to have them offed. The movie is funny, and has a lot of good shoot out scenes so it's definitely worth seeing.

Aeon Flux - I was actually really looking forward to seeing this movie. To be honest I wasn't really impressed with it. It was okay, but not worth seeing at the theaters. Charlize Theron is basically an assassin (getting the idea that I like assassin movies yet?) in a futuristic society. As attractive as she is, don't see this movie because you think she's hot. The action sequences are good, but the plot is empty. If you're a fan of Charlize Theron, I've provided the following for your viewing pleasure...


Not only that, I've saved you the $7 you would have spent if you'd seen this hoping to see her run around in tight leather outfits. She's way hotter in that picture than in any scene of the movie. She does a fine job as an actress, but the plot is just empty.

Outside of that the weekend was uneventful. Lots of rain, lots of maintenance to be done to the wifes car, but we are in good shape. Most of the Christmas shopping is done so hopefully we can avoid the malls for a few more weeks.

Movie Review - Stealth

On my free Blockbuster card the other day I rented Stealth. I was sure the movie wasn't going to be that good, but I figured it had Jamie Foxx, Josh Lucas, and of course Jessica Biel. She's hot enough that we'll forgive her or Summer Catch. The movie was really not that good. I forgot it was a Rob Cohen film (Fast and the Furious, and Triple X) so I should have known going in to it that it just wasn't going to be something I would want to own. I couldn't get the computer to copy it...it was trying to tell me something. I should have listened. Blade Trinity was really good, and of course Jessica Biel was hot in that. The flight scenes and animated stunts are semi-cool but not really worth two hours of your life. Even ogling at Jessica Biel isn't worth this movie. For all Jessica Biel Fans that want to see Stealth because she's in it, let me spare you.


That's more skin that you'll see in the movie, and she looks way hotter there than any scene in the movie. If you have a good surround system, some of the explosions and high speed chase scenes sound cool, but that's about it. If you were a really big fan of Fast and the Furious, and Triple X, this movie isn't quite as good as either one of those but you might like it. Netflix was nice enough to send us Mr. and Mrs. Smith (haven't seen it), and Swingers (great movie) to watch this weekend. Hopefully we'll have time to watch and review those.