Dark Knight Rises?

So I'm a big Dark Knight (well Batman in general) fan. Always have been, always will be. I mean, I loved Batman Forever with Val Kilmer as Bruce Wayne and Jim Carrey as the Riddler. It was one of the first movies (then on VHS) that I bought with my own money. I still read the comics and even have Batman: Arkham Asylum for my XBOX 360. So when the teaser trailer came out at the Harry Potter premier, I was pretty excited how Christopher Nolan would whip up some new baddies. Lets face it, after The Dark Knight with Heath Ledger and then another Topher approved fan favorite Inception, he has some big expectations for me. I quite liked the teaser (for what little there was of it)

So, when I saw a much clearer picture of famous Batman villain Bane, I wasn't sure what to think:

He's played by Tom Hardy, who I thought was brilliant in Inception. We'll see, I'm not going to reserve judgement until I see a proper trailer for the movie, rather than some photos taken by someone trying to leak things online. The costume doesn't excite me, but Nolan is quite good about keep things up his sleeve, so we'll see.

In the meantime, I saw Captain America today, which was absolutely great. Two of my favorite types of movies combined: WW2 movie mixed with superhero action. Just right for a Sunday. Very excited about the Avengers movie for next summer as well, which looks like it will be fantastic.

Next summer is looking like it will turn out to be a wonderful movie summer, so cheers to that.

Enchiladas for dinner, which I'm super excited for. Wife is the best. Peace.

Holla, City of Squala

Its Saturday, just got back from Hangover Part II. It was really good, a little too similar to the first one, but I really enjoyed it. Honestly, they could make 20 of these movies and I would probably enjoy each one of them. They played it safe, which it seems like a lot of critics didn't like, but I thought it was funny on its own. Simple and funny. 

Today was nice though, the wife and I went to Sears, she got a few items that she wanted to get before but left, and we went to the movie.

Tomorrow we've planned out another movie (of my choosing, Captain America), Walmart, and some cleaning for Priyam's big Friends party on Monday. She's apparently inviting over some friends from work and they will have a Friends marathon. Unfortunately, I have to work. I hope that some of the wife's wonderful mac and cheese is still available for me to have for dinner afterward.

Wifey is very apprehensive about going to see Captain America tomorrow. I've offered to go alone, but she wants to spend time with me since i have to work during the week, so she's agreed to come with me. Actually, not sure that agreed is the right word, more like resigned: She has resigned herself to going with me. I know I'm going to be leaving the theatre tomorrow pleased with the movie but apologizing to her because she won't like it.

In other news, I've already figured out what I'm getting the Wifey for our anniversary in a few weeks. Good thing she gives me hints. Now I just have to drop a few hints for her to help her out.  She hates buying for me because she never knows what to get me. 

Into the Mouth of the Beast

Oh joy, just got jury duty starting Monday, August 1st. Get to call in every night before, cross my fingers, and hope I don't get selected. Unfortunately, the way this state (NM) is run, pretty sure I'll end up getting jury duty no question. I told the wife yesterday, "I have to be honest because I'm under oath, so I have to tell them that basically anyone on trial I will think is guilty. If you're sitting there, you must have done something wrong." Ah the state of our horrible corrupt and mixed up justice system.

We shall see what happens. I'll keep this blog up to date with my jury duty hell as it happens. 

Meanwhile, last night coming home from errands we come home to find that half of our apartment (pretty much our whole living room)'s electrical outlets are off. This is rather strange, because none of the other lights or anything else in the rest of the apartment isn't working. We call the emergency maintenance guy who can't seem to figure out what it is either. He thought he might have to replace the breakers, so we went without internet, TV, XBOX etc for the evening. HOWEVER, we did watch Twilight:Eclipse on my computer (which has a really high quality graphics engine and a blue ray player) which is nice. More on that movie in a second.

So the wife calls the maintenance guy this morning, who comes by and walks in, immediately turns a light switch near the door on and DING! Everything works once again. Apparently we must have flipped it when we came back from errands and just had no idea. TALK ABOUT DUMB. Oh well, one less thing to worry about. Thank goodness it wasn't something more serious.
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Dear Apartment,


I apologize for swearing at you at every opportunity last night, and I hope you won't hold it against me going forward. I was just upset because of previous electrical issues that apparently were not your fault either, but your cousin Mr.Air Conditioner on the roof. Thanks for your understanding


Signed,


'Topher

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ANYWAY, back to Twilight. Now, where do I begin. Do i throw it on my people I love to hate list? Not the whole movie. I'll start out with the positives. The fight scenes were decent with the wolves chewing on vampires and Dakota Fanning acting pretty bad ass  NOW FOR THE NEGATIVES. I'm not a detractor of vampires and werewolves per se, but this completely different. I will try to be as quick about this huge list as possible, but here it goes:

1) Plot Canyons and Bad Storylines: It doesn't even stick to the idea of what the original conception of the vampire. Vampires eat people, they don't want to fall in love with them. That is almost as bad as me saying, you know what, I'm going to marry a cow. Stop romanticizing a monstrous soulless demon inhabiting a human body. Poor Bram Stoker is rolling around in his grave. NEXT, since when would two strapping good looking guys go for such a boring, dumb, pathetic, annoying, plain, flip-flopping girl in the first place. Not to mention getting their families involved. I could understand if it was some brilliant hot most popular girl in school type of girl, but Kristen Stewart playing Bella? REALLY? If I was one of those werewolves in the wolf pack I would have eaten Bella for breakfast then been like, "Well, solved that mess, no one gets injured or has to do stupid shit for her ANY MORE." The whole movie I'm sitting there hoping the bad guys kill her, but so disappointed because I know its never going to come true.

2) I'm really tired of these marginal (if not horrible) actors getting 'acclaim' for this terrible series of poor acting jobs. Kristen Stewart is probably one of the worst actors I've ever seen, yet she walks around like she's god's gift to Hollywood. I hope you come crashing down to earth you pretentious asshole. Pattinson and Lautner are not much better, but at least you get the sense they want to produce a better performance, its just the bloody script is so bad.

3) Since when is it ok to get married at 17 years old, leave your parents behind and everything is all hunky doory? This is teaching young girls that its ok to fall in love with some mysterious stranger, marry them and leave your family, cus you know what? YOU'LL BE HAPPY. I would love to see the percentage of girls who have done exactly that, and how many have had a happy ending. I'm guessing most are pregnant, unemployed, living in a trailer park with their Aunt Mildred. THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES TO YOUR ACTIONS PEOPLE. If I ever have a daughter, there is no way in hell I'm letting her watch Twilight. NO. WAY. IN. HELL.

*Big Deep Breath* Wow, that felt A LOT better. Needless to say I thought it was a HORRIBLE movie with all of the wrong messages. End of rant.

I appreciate you following me through that. All is well once again in the world. (Que wife watching the trailer for the next movie) *Palm to the Face*

Fire and Water: Surfing with Flares!

So just got back from work and the day dragged on and on. I would think an hour went by and it turned out to be like 10 minutes. I got so bored because I finished most of my projects in the morning and did various little things in the afternoon so I finished EVERYTHING that I had by around 2 pm or so. From there I literally just worked on some spec work (facebook facelift, new version of the e-newsletter, etc) until it was time to go.

I think whenever I get some free time (spending time with the wife, apart from writing more of my book, watching TV, etc.) I think I'll actually spend some time redesigning my blog. Properly, with html/css/etc. Thats what I do almost all day at work (besides social networking etc) and I just get too lazy when I come home to really put in the work to design a new background, layout etc. Hmmm, list of projects....

Also, last night in between watching old X-Men cartoon episodes on Netflix and catching bits and pieces from the Juventus vs Club Amerca soccer match on ESPN, I came across this comic book blog website: www.acomicbookblog.com.

Its pretty neat, has reviews of comics, comic book movies, and even a section for those new to comics of where to start reading if your interested in certain characters etc. Anyway,

With that, I leave you with professional surfers using flares so they can surf at night...actually its not really nighttime, I think they're basically just screwing around. Enjoy!

BRUCE IRONS FLARE SHOOT from STAB on Vimeo.

Long Time, No Post

Its been almost a month since I last posted on my blog, WHAT A SHAME!

Since I last posted, I have a new job, which I really enjoy and the wife is back from India. I've been writing a bit of a short-story/novel sort of thing. Hopefully I'll be able to post an excerpt from it on here soon.

Its strange, at my new job of Viral Marketing Coordinator I spend a lot of time on twitter and facebook, and I realized the other day that it seems other people have a full online rep, tons of followers, and blog/facebook/twitter all wrapped up. I think my role as a Viral Marketing Coordinator, I should at least make an effort to put everything together....

I thought that as I typed this out I would have more to say but I realize that I probably should just take it day by day and post as needed.

I just got at Spotify account as the online music company spread from Europe to the USA. Its pretty cool, but I'm not sure if I would ever pay for the service. I've only had it for about a week or so, so we'll see if that changes the more I use it going forward. First impressions say no.

Anyway, I'll leave it there for now, but I'll post again tomorrow.


For now I've added a new section to my blog. I've taken off the People I Love to Hate on my sidebar and added a page on top for this specific topic. As I keep up with it, you'll find pictures, with links back to the blog post in which I first mentioned the list victims. Hope you enjoy that.

Also, I wanted to change my header to mix it up. Background it different as well.

Till tomorrow!