Another reason why I don't read the regular Spider-Man books anymore...

Ok, first off- OWW!

EDIT (11/29/05)
Second, umm, shouldn't Spidey be in way too much pain to be having an inner dialogue? Other than said "OUCH!" (and at second glance, he doesn't even make any pain "sound effects").

Actually... screw "inner monologue" the man gets his eye torn out and he has the wherewithall to scream "NOOOOOOOOO!!!?" How bout something more realistic like "AAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!?"

And lastly... they FREAKIN RIPPED OUT SPIDER-MAN'S EYE!!!! And not only that, the villain then EATS it??? WTF?!!?

Will I sound crazy if I say that it's times like these I actually miss the Comics Code? Granted, the code could be annoying, but it forced writers to be more creative. Nowadays writers just go for shock value and all of our favorite (or tertiary) characters are getting raped, deformed, killed off, etc. I mean fine I can buy "we did it for the sake of the story" for some major events, but aren't you kind of compromising the character of Spider-Man by ripping out the poor dude's eye? Who wants to read about that in a Spidey book? Do that to a more minor character (or a major character in a darker book) if you wanna explore that in a comic. Don't screw with an icon that badly.

And I know I'm probably complaining over nothing, b/c just how they fixed Batman's broken back, changed back "Electric Blue" Superman, and bring dead characters back all the time (see: Colossus, Bucky, Jason Todd), but that in itself is a reason to complain. If you're gonna do something, stick to your guns. This is an event that will DEFINITELY not hold water even five years down the line, if it even makes it past the year.

This is just yet another in a very long list of reasons why I feel that the Ultimate Spider-Man comic is now the definitive Spidey title (screw the regular universe...)

IT'S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!

Where he at? Where he at?

There he go.

[This is even more amusing to me, b/c I had only seen it for the first time a few days before it was referenced on this week's new episode of Family Guy. It's just so totally random and out there that I just had to share.]

Things Famous People Don't Want You To See

It's a fairly known fact that many American movie and TV stars will go to Japan in their off time and be offered ridiculous amounts of money to shill for Japanese products.

You hear about these things all the time, just like in that movie "Lost in Translation." But you've probably never seen any of them...

... until now.

My buddy Greg found a website that has a ton of these Japanese commercials starring many different celebrities. Some of these commercials go back more than 20 years too, so lots of classic stuff is to be found.

Among my personal favorites- the one with Arnold Schwarzenegger (and there are more than just that one).

They also have stars like Michael Jackson (back when he was still normal looking) and even the Simpsons! Some of them aren't amusing at all, others are just insane, but there are a few gems in there, so you should check them out.

Awk-ward!

This is story that also happened to me last week that I forgot to share in the crazyiness of the weekend. It's short, but man... experiencing it seemed like forever.

Last week I went to my comic store up in Central Ave. It had been at least 3 weeks since the last time I went so I had a lot of stuff being held for me that I wanted to pick up. Well when I walk in, it's just the owner of the store (a middle aged kind of odd Asian guy, named Steve) and two ladies- a middle aged woman purchasing something, and a younger woman who's kind of off to the side looking as if she was discussing something with Steve.

Well that's nothing strange at all in and of itself (unless you wanna crack jokes about how that was probably the highest female to male ratio the store had probably ever seen, but I won't go there). So I go to the file cabinet to pull out my file of comics for the week and stand at the side counter organizing and looking through my books. As I'm doing this, the first lady (the older one) has finished her purchase and leaves and then the younger woman and Steve start chatting in a kind of serious tone.

I'm not paying any real attention to what is being said, b/c I'm busy organizing my comics and trying to figure if I was missing anything I wanted, but since the store is pretty much deserted other than for the 3 of us, it was kind of hard for me to NOT overhear some of their conversation.

It sounded like one of those serious "we gotta have a talk" relationship things, but since I wasn't fully paying attention, I couldn't tell for the longest if the girl standing there was the girlfriend in question or a friend/confidant (I was leaning toward just friend/confidant at first b/c the girl in question was young or at least quite younger than Steve, and pretty attractive. And no knock to Steve, b/c he's a nice guy and all, but she was so totally not the kind of girl I would picture him with). But regardless the conversation turned to a few personal things, and at this point I'm starting to feel quite awkward. So I moved away from the counter and tried to ignore the convo while I looked in the comic stacks to see if anything came out that I didn't know about that I would want to add to my purchase.

However, at this point both Steve and the girl are in a full serious "I don't think this relationship is working out because..." conversation. There was no yelling or anything (actually it was kept quite cordial considering the subject matter), but you could cut the tension in the air with a knife. I so just wanted to get the hell out of there, and I totally would have just put my comics back and ran out, if it wasn't for the fact it was THREE weeks worth of stuff, and I had come fairly out of the way to come up here and get them.

I finished up and wanted to just go pay and leave, but I didn't wanna just interupt them either. So I tried to keep looking for an opportunity for me to step in, but for each agonizing second that passed the urge to just leave sans comics was growing stronger.

Thankfully, the girl glanced over toward me and must have realized I was done and was like "don't mind us, you can do your business." So I was just like "Oh, thanks, just didn't wanna interupt..." And then she just responded with "Oh don't worry about it, you're not interupting, it's just an old-fashioned break-up."

And in my head I'm just thinking "OUCH!" Poor Steve...

And then another thing that made it even more bizarre, is that as he is ringing up my items he seemed to jump out of serious-mode and starts commenting on some of the books and going into comic geek chat with me like we normally do. I returned the polite banter but just wished he would ring me up faster so I could end this awkwardness.

Finally we were done and I said goodbye and bolted for the door. And JUST as I was walking out, some poor soul (a middle aged quite geeky guy) starts to walk in. If ONLY I had made it out the door first, I would have warned the dude all like "You might NOT want to go in there... trust me." But it was too late. Oh well... hopefully he'll be smarter and bolt faster than I did.

But yeah, just had to share that story. Quite bizarre, wouldn't you say? What the Hell would YOU have done?

A toy collecting geek's dream!

Henry sent me the link for this... and even he, not being a fan got excited over it.

Star Wars meets Transformers.

I bet you all can only imagine my reaction to seeing this...

::drools::

And in more light hearted news...

Due to me not updating on the weekend, as well as the bad news that followed, I wasn't able report that- I took over 1st place in our WWE Fantasy!!

And surprisingly, I did it without even being first place for the week. That honor went to Chaz, who kicked MONSTER ass this week by scoring an absolutely ricockulous 256 points (in a non-PPV week mind you) to earn 13th place for the week OVERALL (that means against all 100,000 people playing the Fantasy game). So congrats to him! I'd be even more jealous if I didn't take first place in our league or score well over 200 points this week as well (also a record high for me in a non-PPV week).

And it's only half over...

I watched the Eddie Guerrero tribute episode of Raw last night. Man was that a sad show. I hadn't cried since I heard about his death on Sunday. I felt bad and thought about it a lot, but I held strong. However, just seeing all the WWE roster at the beginning of Raw, standing together crying as they did the 10 bell salute, just triggered something in me. So yeah, I'm not ashamed to admit, I cried... multiple times throughout the show.

But I will tell you for sure that I was not the only one who did. Actually, I'm pretty damn sure that more grown men across this country cried last night b/c of this TV show than for any other event in YEARS (and no, fans of losing teams of Superbowls does NOT count).

But yeah, there was good reason to cry. Seeing the wrestlers faces, as well as those in the audience, the testimonials the wrestlers gave about Eddie, oh and let's not forget the Tribute video set to Johnny Cash's version of "Hurt."

So yeah, sad stuff, but it was also very cathartic. It just needed to be done. We all had to mourn and get past it. It sucks, but it's life. I look forward to watching the final part on Friday during Smackdown. It'll suck b/c it'll still be painful but at least it'll be a few days in between.

But yeah, if you missed it, you can watch the tribute music video on the WWE website (actually scratch that, they don't have the "Hurt" video up yet but they do have a few other moments from the show). You can also view the testimonials there. You should check it out if you were a wrestling fan at any point in your life (I recomend at the very least checking out the one by JBL). Powerful stuff.

Tragic News...

I got one of the most unexpected shocks this morning...

I was at Ariana's place around 11am as we were going to go to her church today. While I was waiting for her to finish getting ready, I got on her laptop to check any final possible updates for the WWE Fantasy game (since this week they were setting the roster deadline today at noon).

Well when I opened the WWE homepage I immediately saw a graphic that stated that one of my all-time favorite wrestlers, Eddie Guerrero, passed away suddenly this morning.

I just couldn't believe it... especially considering that later that night he was scheduled to be in the main event of the WWE Supershow and quite possibly was set to win the World Title.

But the second I saw the graphic, I just literally shouted out "Oh My God!" Ariana ran into the living room asking me what happened, and I told her the very sad news.

We were just both in shock. I immediately tried to IM my best friend, Charles, to tell him the news. We got cut off though, so he wound up calling me, and I told him the bad news over the phone. He was just as shocked.

After hanging up with Charles I went back online trying to find out any information that I could, but I was just SO shocked and out of it, that my hands were shaky as I tried to move the mouse and type. It took all I had to concentrate... like I said before, I just couldn't believe it.

We had to go to church soon after, but I thought about the situation all day. And as soon as we came back I looked up and found a lot more information.

It seems Eddie's death was very sudden. He was found in his hotel bathroom with his toothbrush in his mouth. So people are figuring that the cause of death was a heart attack. Some people speculate drug abuse, as Eddie admittedly had addiction problems in the past. But he was also known to have turned his life around, become a born-again Christian, and had been sober for the past 4 years (according to his nephew Chavo, he JUST celebrated his fourth anniversay of sobriety three days earlier).

But regardless, the man was only 38 years old, and I can't even begin to express how sad this makes me. You all know what a big wrestling geek I am (umm, yeah, Hi, me and my buddies rented an actual wrestling ring, got training and beat the crap out of each other for 2 hours for our high school graduation present), so things like this hit me close to home.

This is about the most tragic wrestling death since Owen Hart back in 1999. And just as with Owen's passing, the WWE is going to celebrate the life of the Eddie Guerrero on both Raw AND Smackdown in two tribute shows.

The Owen tribute episode was during the height of wrestling's popularity, so some of you may have even seen or heard about that episode. It was one of the most emotional nights of television I have ever been witness to. I think it'd be a good idea for any person who has even just a slight interest in pro-wrestling to watch both Raw (Spike TV, Mon 9:00pm) and Smackdown (UPN, Fri 8:00pm) this week to see some true "reality tv." A warning though- keep some kleenex handy, you'll need it.

But yeah... I don't know what else to say. I can't properly eulogize the man, since I obviously didn't "know" him. But I knew the performer on TV, and with him in particular, that was just like knowing the man himself. He was a funny guy, charismatic, a great athlete and just an all-around amazing performer.

Among some of my favorite Eddie Guerrero moments:
- His final match in ECW against Dean Malenko. It was a Best of 3 Falls match, and remains to this day as one of the best ECW matches ever. It was also one of the earlier ECW matches I had seen and was what got me hooked on ECW.
- His match with Rey Mysterio at Halloween Havoc '97. It was just too awesome to put into words.
- And a moment I witnessed in person- the end to Wrestlemania 20 at MSG, with both Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero standing in the ring as the respective World Champions for their brands. It was just a great sight to see.

Some sites have lots to say about Eddie and his life and career. You can see a pretty good career perspective from a fan at this site, and an official one on the WWE webpage. Check it out.

And well, I guess I'll end this post here. It's gone way longer than I expected it to. But I just had a lot to say.

R.I.P. Eddie Guerrero
1967-2005

You gave the world, myself included, many great memories. Thank you...

The Halloween Post

To be honest, there isn't much to this post. Halloween wasn't made into a big deal this year for a a couple of reasons. First, me and Ariana could not find the costumes we wanted (we were gonna be Mr. & Mrs. Incredible, from the Pixar film). I was able to find the Mr. Incredible costume easy enough, but the Mrs. Incredible costume wound up being ridiculously hard to find. It was sold out or never in stock in a lot of places and any places that DID actually have it, jacked up the price on it so much that there was no way we were gonna buy it.

We could have looked for alternate costumes, but decided against it once we realized that no one we knew was having a Halloween party or anything. So we felt it'd be a bit of a waste to get a costume for nothing (although about 3-4 days before Halloween we were told of a party but it was too late by that point, oh well).

So our Halloween celebration was simple. On Saturday night (the 29th), me, Ariana, and Alan went to the New Rochelle Haunted House. It was fairly inexpensive (only $6) and was a lot of fun. I kept being evil and constantly scared Ariana every few minutes in the house. It was quite amusing, especially at one point when I grabbed her from behind which made her jump and she turned around to yell at me and then when she turned back around one of the actors jumped out from a corner to scare her even more. It was quite an assist, heh.

After the Haunted House, we grabbed some dinner with Alan and then we headed to the New Roc Arcade and met up with Henry and Liz. They had a special Halooween deal where for $20 u could get 2 hours of unlimited arcade gaming, as well as 1 game of Lazer Tag and some free pizza and soda for only $20.

So lots of video games were played, but the highlight for me was the Lazer Tag game. We played two 5-minute rounds and there were a total of 24 players (12 on each team). And I don't know what came over me, but I became the freakin Terminator in there. I got the highest score (by far) in both rounds. So that was pretty cool.

And yeah, that was about Halloween-wise. Hopefully next year we will be able to get some cool costumes, but this year wasf fun even if we didn't do much.

An amusing Halloween story

I'll prob do my post about Halloween weekend tomorrow but there was a quick story I just had to share.

This past Sunday, my grandmother found a bunch of the old halloween costume stuff my grandfather had saved from his old job (he used to work at a factory that made costumes as well as other stuff). In that box of stuff, they had some pretty cool (read: realistic) looking Yoda and Chewbacca masks.

So they gave it to me that day. Later on, we were all coming to my place to have dinner, cuz my mom was cooking pernil. Immediately, I knew it was the perfect chance to pull something amusing cuz it's quite rare that my whole family comes to my house. So when we got home, I ran upstairs, put on the Yoda mask and got this wooden stick thing I have from my old bureau and went downstairs. I got on my knees and waddled into the kitchen, where everyone was, and began talking in Yoda-speak, all like "Mmm, good food smell here, I do... Mmm..."

Then I started just grabbing things from the kitchen table and being a pain in the ass (a la Yoda from Empire Strikes Back). It was ultra geeky, yes, but freakin funny. My whole family was cracking up b/c I'm sure NO ONE (even my grandparents who had just given the mask to me) expected it.

So yeah, I just HAD to share that (despite the fact I'm sure many of you are now probably thinking "what a loser." lol). But screw you, it was funny.

WWE Fantasy has taken over my life!

I've mentioned in many posts how I'm a part of the WWE Fantasy game and how I'm in a league with a few friends (this season there are actually eleven of us).

Well we're in the 4th week of the season, and OMG it has completely consumed us! Ariana is playing also, and after every episode of Raw and Smackdown we wind up tallying up our points. It's pretty sad.

Even more sad was this past Tuesday when the WWE held their PPV event- Taboo Tuesday and we went to Phil's to watch it. Everyone at the house is in the league competing against each other, so through the WHOLE show we were tallying our points. We even printed out each of our rosters and were yelling and screaming at the matches on the TV... but not for what was actually happening, more for the points we getting or more likely, not getting.

It does make the wrestling shows a lot more fun. Cuz like for the last 2 weeks, Raw hasn't been good at all. But due to the Fantasy game, me and Ariana are still into it, cuz we just wanna win so bad.

As for how I'm doing- I'm doing quite well, and for that matter so is Ariana (who I'm very proud of). I was in second place at the beginning of the week, trying my hardest to pass Big James and take over first place. I started off doing really well with Raw and was only within a handful of points of him as of the PPV on Tuesday. So when we all went to Phil's for the PPV, I came in talking trash about taking the title from him.

Well, I wound up doing quite well in the PPV and I WOULD have taken over first, as I did pass James, BUT we got schooled by Chaz's buddy Matt who came up from 5th place to take over 1st by having an absolutely ricockulous showing at the PPV. So I remain firmly in second place (but with a good chance to take over first if I have a good showing next week).

So yeah, just had to update on that, b/c it's quite funny, especially when we all meet in chat rooms to discuss our rosters and what's been going on in wrestling, b/c we are quite a collection of characters.

We even have a webpage charting our progress, as well as some commentary. It's pretty funny. Check it out if you like.

When video game geeks have too much time on their hands...

... this is the kind of stuff we all talk about.

[The following excerpt was taken from a convo between members of the Phi Beta group I'm a part of. The lead in to this discussion was how one member hates that they are putting Mario into every kind of video game genre and how the other doesn't mind too much].

-"Super Mario Bros as the penultimate classic platform jumper is one thing. Grand Theft Auto: Mario Edition is something completely different."

Good God... Brilliant!! An all star Nintendo cast, wreaking havoc in the Mushroom Kingdom, Hyrule, Kong Jungle, Onett, wherever the hell Samus goes and all those Pokemon cities... It shall be called Super Smash Bros: Revolution. I can just see Link jacking some koopa kid for his coinage or DK spending some "quality time" with the Hyrule faeries. Then shooting them with the coconut gun (from DK64). Hell, if they can make Shadow the Hedgehog (straight outta Compton)...

"From the sidewalk he raised his hands triumphantly and said, "It shall be like the projects with less violence and more marijuana!""

****

It amused me, so I just had to share.