Well hello again everybody! This has probably been the longest amount of time for me in between posts. Well I've had good reasons. First there was the whole week long annual conference for my job, and then well... honestly, the "good" excuses end right about there. Other than that it was just the fact I was too busy at work to type this up, and once I got home I was too busy with my DVR, video games or reading comic books to bother posting (sorry guys)!
But I should be back to updating on a fairly regular basis now, so lemme just catch up with everything that's gone on in the past 2-3 weeks.
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Ok, first things first- I wound up ordering the Optimum Double Play (internet and phone) to go along with my cable since my year contract with DSL had run out and for the price I was paying I figured I might as well upgrade to cable. The only sucky things about it were having to change my secondary e-mail address (which none of u had anyways, it was more for newsletters and stuff, but still annoying), and we also had to change our home phone number. That was not cool b/c even though I rarely use my home phone anymore, I've had the same phone number my ENTIRE life, so it's weird to have to learn a new one...
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Then there was the AEEE Annual conference (the one for my job). I had actually been sort of dreading going to it, b/c due to all the issues with Bush's proposed budget trying to eliminate most of our programs and tons of other programs in the NY area being defunded THIS year, I didn't think it would be a very happy time.
Luckily things weren't as bad as I expected, and I actually wound up having quite an enjoyable time at the conference. The food throughout was excellent (especially the buffet breakfasts... oh man, even just thinking about it gets me drooling) and we also had a very good time on the Monday night as instead of a regular dinner we were all treated out to a "Mystery Dinner Theater" show.
The show was absolutely hysterical. The actors were extremely witty and had great interactions with a good part of the audience (even getting a bunch of my co-workers). This was cool especially for me, b/c I started off the night a little upset I was there instead of back home going to MSG for the WWE Supershow I had tickets to (which I had to sell to my buddy Chris). But this show picked my spirits right up and I had a great time.
While at the conference (or during the breaks I should say), I also finished reading my last Star Wars book- Labirynth of Evil, which is the novel which leads DIRECTLY into Episode III. It was a pretty damn good book and I know I've said before "you don't need to read the books to enjoy the movies" but I think any true Star Wars fan owes it to themselves to read this book b/c it explains a LOT of some of the smaller details that were left out of the movies and I have a pretty good feeling may not be addressed in this last installment either.
Some of the things addressed were -who the hell Master Sifo-Dyas was (those of you who know the movies may remember from Attack of the Clones, the scene on Kamino- the cloning planet where that tall alien with the long neck was talking to Obi-Wan about who ordered the clones and stuff and his name was thrown out there with ZERO explanation to his importance or even who the hell he even was).
-Another thing briefly explained is a possibility to why C-3P0 and R2-D2 do not remember anything about Anakin and Obi-Wan in the original trilogy.
-Also briefly touched upon is the offer of Bail Organa (the person who would become Leia's adoptive father) to Padme Amidala to always be there to protect Padme and all of her loved ones.
So these things among others are just a few of the reasons you might wanna take a look at this novel.
-As for the rest of the conference itself... I won't go into detail about it here... at least not now. You should all know what is being planned by our government, but I don't feel like being pissed off and preachy today, lol.
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I did get good news as soon as I got home from the conference. Pat wound up picking me up and on the way home he informed me that tix for the 12:01am showing of Star Wars Episode III were onsale. So as soon as I got home, I ran to my computer and ordered tix to go see it. So I'm now set... May 19th can't come soon enough.... :-D
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Oh, I forgot to mention that the weekend before I went to the conference that me, Ariana, Christina and her friend Danny ordered Yankees Season passes for this year. It's only an 8 game set but it's still cool.
The first game we went to was actually on Thursday the 28th against the Angels. Ariana was too busy with final projects for school so my grandfather took her place but she wound up being the lucky one missing that travesty of a game. The Yankees couldn't freakin buy a hit that night, let alone string them together... it was terrible.
Hopefully things will pick up for the rest of this season, b/c the Yankees have been doing kinda cruddy lately. Their pitching is a mess (ok I know Kevin Brown is past his prime but he should NOT be sucking as much as he is this year- I know he's got some good games still left in him somewhere), their relievers aren't doing too much better (each one of them has blown at least one save), and their batting is inconsistent (which is inexcusable considering the money being paid to these guys).
The only guys who seem to be delivering are Matsui and A-Rod (speaking of A-Rod, how awesome was that 10 RBI game?? Fantasy baseball geeks must have had a field day with that one). But yeah, the team as a whole is just way too inconsistant. One day their pitching is great but they don't hit, the next they're knocking in runs like crazy but their pitching sucks. It's pretty sad when a team can score 8-9 runs in a game and STILL lose (especially to teams like the Devil Rays, just this past week).
Ehh, at least my Marlins over in the NL are doing quite well. I believe they are in a tie for first place at the moment, and if their pitching holds up for the rest of the season they should be able to hang in during this huge race for the NL East.
But yeah, speaking of Marlins pitching, how awesome are all these Complete games these guys are throwing? Dontrelle Willis alone has three under his belt along with a 5-0 record and a 1.86 ERA, how insane is that? Beckett and Burnett are doing better this year too, so things look to be pretty exciting down in Florida. Hell, if the Yankees can turn things around I still wouldn't be too surprised to see my idea for a rematch of the 2003 World Series still happen.
-[Oh I almost forgot to mention, did anyone watch the Yankees vs Toronto game this past weekend? The game itself wasn't anything exciting (the Yanks lost) but it was amusing purely b/c of the pitching matchup. The Yanks brought in their new prospect- Chien-Ming Wang and he faced Toronto's Dave Bush.
So yes my friends, not only was it Yanks vs Blue Jays, it was also Wang vs Bush... hehe, you can't make that kind of stuff up...]
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In other good news, I scored tix for Judas Priest at the Mohegan Sun Arena. I'll be going with Steve, Alan and Ariana. I'm pretty psyched b/c when we saw them there last summer it was one of the best concerts I had ever been to. It'll also just be a fun day as a whole b/c we'll get to chill at the casinos prior to the show.
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After I returned from the conference I realized I needed to add more music to my mp3 player (cuz I had gone through a great deal of it on the car ride over there). So I was going through my music collection putting stuff in and I came across a bunch of my old punk albums (like Rancid, The Living End, Homegrown, etc) and I just HAD to add those, and have also put those CDs into my car for when I'm driving around. It's pretty cool b/c even though I haven't listened to some of these albums in quite awhile, I used to play them so much back in the day that I still knew all the songs by heart. So I've been having a good time reminiscing with all my old punk music, it's a lot of fun.
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Had a belated birthday gathering the weekend following the conference. it was pretty last minute (b/c I was hoping that when I returned my mom's room would be done and all the stuff would be out of the living room so I could throw a party like last year, but sadly it was not, so I had to settle for making plans for the movies).
First we gathered at Pizza Hut for dinner (yum) and then we went to the movies to go see Kung Fu Hustle. It was a pretty amusing movie. I wasn't sure what to expect going into it. I was thinking it'd be "stupid" funny kind of like Kung Pow, but no, this was actually a tiny bit more serious than I thought it would be. It was more like a regular kung fu movie, just with some hilarious parts thrown in.
So while my vote for best "big Japanese movie brought over to the US" still goes to House of Flying Daggers, this was an enjoyable little romp.
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Speaking of Japanese stuff though, while dropping my friend David home from the movies that night, he offered to lend me a few CDs worth of episodes of a very cool anime called- Naruto. I read the manga monthly in Shonen Jump and like it a lot. So when David said he'd lend me the first 32 episodes (in original uncut Japanese, with English subtitles) I jumped at the chance, b/c I think the manga is WAY too violent to be brought over to Cartoon Network. (Although, I just recently learned they ARE planning to bring it to the US, but there is no way it'll be as good as the original b/c they'd have to edit it heavily).
I haven't had a chance to go through any of the episodes yet (b/c I wanna have enough time to dedicate a few hours to it), but hopefully I will soon.
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Getting the Naruto episodes gave me the idea to once again search online for torrents of the original uncut Japanese episodes of Dragonball Z. That is one of my all time favorite animes but the 5 years I did not have cable is when they showed the entire series on Cartoon Network, and once I got cable back, it was on it's way to being removed from Toonami, so that sucked, and I have been wanting to find a way to see all the episodes without having to pay like $900-$1100 to buy the entire series on DVD.
So I lucked out and once again, thanks to David I found a anime torrent site that has EVERY episode of DBZ available for download. So I downloaded episodes 140-291 (basically everything from the Android Saga til the end of the series). It was about 32 GIGS worth of space but thanks to my new Cable internet service, it only took me about 8 days to download, so that was pretty cool. Now I just gotta buy a ton of blank CDs so I can copy them over so I can watch on my own laptop at my leisure (b/c I downloaded everything on my mom's computer while they were away on vacation, heh).
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In regards to other recent awesome acquisitions- Henry and Maryellen gave me my birthday gift last Monday- they got me the Lego Star Wars game for the PS2. Sadly I had problems loading it on my system b/c it's one of the new "blue" discs that don't run as well on older PS2's (and my PS2 is from the original run).
But the problem was quickly resolved when my sister decided to buy the game off me so she could give it to her boyfriend and with that money I bought the X-Box version of the game.
The game is a lot of fun. I don't know if any of you have seen the commercials or the links I posted on my blog months ago but basically it's just as the title says. It's Star Wars in Lego form (kind of like how they have a Lego version of Monty Python & the Holy Grail on that respective DVD). The game is essentially an "all ages" game, meaning it's pretty easy BUT it's also sort of a puzzle type game where you need to move the lego blocks (with your force powers!) in certain ways to get specific items if you want to get all the secret items and stuff (which is a bit harder).
So yeah, a VERY big Thank You to Henry & Maryellen for the very cool gift.
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Going to the Star Wars vein (for the last time this post, I promise). I was in Bestbuy last week and my only intention was to purchase the aforementioned Xbox game, but as soon as I walked in an item caught my eye that I just HAD to own.
It was the official Force FX Anakin Skywalker Lightsaber. It's got a stand to display it on, and it's like 3 feet long or something. It's the official movie replica that activates and has sound effects and everything. I have seen these online and in catalogs and have wanted one for over a year but they were pretty expensive and I wanted to see it before I actually purchased one.
So now I had one in my hands, but the sucker was pretty pricey (I'll leave out listing the exact price, but yeah it's prob more money than any of YOU guys would think of spending for a Star Wars collectible). But this sucker is sort of like my grail (I think Henry can understand this- he's got Aragorn's sword from LOTR). I called Ariana immediately and tried to get her to talk me out of buying it b/c it was so expensive but she knew that would be futile. But in the end, things worked out, b/c I remembered that my grandmother never officially had gotten me a birthday gift (b/c I never really asked for anything), so now I had the perfect item for it, so I walked out of Bestbuy that day a very happy man. ;-)
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As I mentioned before, I finished reading my last Star Wars book, so now I need some new stuff to read. I don't feel like reading the new SW books yet, so I went around Barnes & Noble for some other stuff to keep me entertained.
I actually DID buy one last Clone Wars book, but the other 2 main things I purchased were: Angels & Demons (on paperback so I could bring it around with me easier) and as by recomendation by Alan- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm looking forward to reading all three. And most likely by the time I'm done with all of them, the new Harry Potter should be out, so that's pretty cool.
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And I will end this post on two notes about wrestling. The first is pretty sad, as just last Thursday, pro wrestler Chris Candido passed away. He was currently working in TNA, but any of you who watched wrestling back in the day may remember his awesome work from ECW, or as Skip of the Bodydonnas in the former WWF (although you would probably be more inclined to remember his girlfriend- Sunny/Tammy Sytch).
Dude was only 33 years old when he passed, and it came out of completely NOWHERE. He had JUST wrestled last Sunday at the TNA PPV, but in the match he suffered a broken ankle (and from what I heard it was a pretty nasty break). So he went into surgery the next day. Then the following day (Tues) he actually went back to work (in a non-wrestling role of course) and helped his team, The Naturals, win the Tag Team titles, then on Thursday night while at dinner, he passed out and died soon after at the hospital.
Turns out cause of death was due to either a blood clot or staph infection caused by complications with his ankle surgery, and that's just freakin sad... he had his whole life ahead of him, and TNA was JUST starting to push him & the Naturals again. It's a shame that had to happen b/c he was a natural talent and you could tell he really loved being a wrestler. He may have never been one of my favorite wrestlers, but he was damn entertaining and when given the chance could wrestle one Hell of a match (check out his stuff against Lance Storm in ECW as proof).
So yeah R.I.P. Chris Candido, you will be missed.
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And just not to end on such a downer, like I said there was one last note about wrestling I wanted to mention. I don't know how it happened but it seems that all of a sudden the writers and bookers in WWE are realizing what a huge talent they have in Christian. They are starting to push him and he is getting tremendous responses from the live crowds(despite being a heel) and I'm loving it.
I especially like all the riffing he is doing on SD's WWE Champ- John Cena (who I kinda dislike- not on a Randy Orton level, but he does annoy me). It's quite entertaining and I really hope they trade Christian over to Smackdown so those two can feud. I think it'd be pretty kick ass.
- And well that's about it, hopefully you survived this long ass post, lol. But like I said, I should be updating on a regular schedule again so see you all soon.
