Batting Around

Chris and Sean wanted to hit the ball around on Saturday so Chris called me up asking me if I wanted to join in. I’m always up for some baseball, no matter the weather and even though it was just the three of us I figured it’d be nice just to get some hitting in and to hang out with Chris and Sean, because they’re jokes.

Chris went up to bat first and asked me to check his swing to see what he could fix and all. The first pitch zinged right by my feet and I narrowly dodged it. I looked at Sean and went “wow, I can’t even see the ball!” This is largely due to the fact that the ball is grey and so is the gravel. Major league baseballs are rubbed in this mud mixture to give it this dirty brown look to it so that people can see it better. The next p itch Chris hit a line drive and it smashed me right in the head.

Lucky for me, I turned my head so it only hit me in the ear. The bad news though, was that I was temporarily deaf, and all I heard was ringing as I was on the ground laughing.

After that we decided to switch to the soft training ball that they bought. After a bit of playing we took a water break and Chris noticed that my ear swelled up considerably. Since we were near Kevin’s house we called him up and he promptly came by with some ice for my ear. I’m not sure how much my ear has gone down since then, but I’ve been looking it up and apart from hearing loss and nerve damage, I could also end up with cauliflower ear. Hopefully that’s not the case.

GG Ear!

Perez Hilton, You Smelly Ballsack

http://twitpic.com/8et2f

Just click and judge for yourself what he’s done.

At this point I want to reiterate how thankful I am to the tour manager of the Black Eyed Peas for punching him in the face, but at the same time, lament at how he wasn’t able to beat more sense into him.

Hopefully someone else will catch up to Perez and slap a little more sense into him. At least an apology for what he’s done.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Part 3: Action Pornography)

Alright this is gonna be the last of the three posts, because it raises my blood pressure whenever I talk about this film.

After much discussion with people about the movie, I think it’s safe to say the following can be said about Transformers:

- The action sequences were nice.
- The plot doesn’t make any sense.
- The acting is terrible.

This shares a very similar structure to a porno film, don’t you think? No one gives a shit about the acting and the story in a porno film, we only watch for the fucking, and it’s why they can continuously get away with stupid scenarios, because all they do is just provide the opportunity needed for the two performers to do their thing. Unfortunately in Transformers, they don’t quite get this point because they take their absurd plot too seriously. Cheese needs to be recognized as cheese, it’s why movies like Planet Terror work because the whole cast is on the same page and over-acts together. Transformers has a mix of characters being stupid (John Turturro and Ramon Rodriguez), being serious (anyone in the army in this film), and being philosophical (mainly Optimus Prime), which doesn’t mesh well at all because there’s so many things wrong with the plot that you can’t take any of them seriously when they try to be. It sinks the movie.

I came up with a few things about the plot that puzzled me or pissed me off and covered them in my last post, but since then, I’ve come up with a couple more:

- The whereabouts of Megatron and the remaining piece of the All-Spark is top secret, yet they are discussed on an unencrypted line, which is how the Decepticons get this information.
- There’s a scene where Optimus talks to Sam in a cemetery, I’m assuming they want some privacy or want to keep this secret. Except, it’s a thirty foot robot, they don’t fit in anywhere.
- There’s a hostage situation that is all sorts of stupid. Who kidnaps someone then requests a ransom in the middle of a battlefield?
- Robots can do anything except outrun humans and aim.
- There are robots in heaven. I still can’t get over this bit.

And there’s more. That’s not a definitive list. I’m certain if I watched this again and brought a book with me I’d be able to fill most of it by the end, but as far as the movie goes, this is what comes to mind so far. The movie would benefit from some consistency, either give a ridiculous plot and have the acting reflect it, or make a little bit more effort in the writing. The budget was over $200 million for this film, please spend more than Happy Meals on the writer.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Part 2: On the Army)

Note: I’ll try to avoid as many spoilers as I can. There’s one major one that won’t be disclosed, but everything else seemed fairly predictable. I’m not even sure I’ll get to a full-fledged review, there’s so many things wrong with this movie that I need to go through it all.

First off, “TJCrizzle” on Twitter, who I have never met or talked to before, sent me a tweet saying “dude the movie was amazing dont be one of those people who dis on it cause everyone likes it. dont do that” and I assure you, as big of a hater that I am, I tried to watch this movie in good spirits. I can see why some people might like the film, because it is a visual feast. It rapes your eyes and sodomizes your ears, and if you are brave enough to see this in an IMAX theatre, it’ll gang rape your eyes and run a train on your ears. But, if you look beyond, and you don’t have to look far to do this, you’ll notice that this movie really, really sucks. I don’t expect greatness from a summer blockbuster, but, it at least has to be fun to watch and recycling jokes is so lame. Especially when it’s not really delivered well most of the time.

There was one unsettling thing about the movie though and it’s in their portrayal of the U.S. military. They’re everywhere, and if they’re not there, they can bring their army there in six hours and turn that place into a war zone. Calls are placed and within minutes, something is getting bombed or shot at, and with another quick call, a nearby vessel is able to use its top secret rail gun to shoot at something. It’s like the world is at their disposal. This is explained through some secret treaty that is signed with the world that apparently gives the U.S. Army free reign to do whatever they want, wherever they want, in “pursuit of Decepticons.” Sound vageuly familiar? This new “War on Terror” basically gave the U.S. a pretty strong bargaining chip because they managed to get the world to sign over their sovereignty to the U.S. It’s ludicrous! Countries are signing over their sovereignty! It’s a movie about how the Transformers helped America take over the world, because lord knows that other weapons are useless against Decepticons, and the Autobots only speak American.

Thus, with this view, I didn’t find it very surprising that along with America, the two other countries that featured huge battles were China and Jordan (their superpower arch nemesis and an Arab country). I guess the opportunity to shit on these two countries were too great. I don’t see a fight in England or Canada anytime soon.

China appears first and people are running away from a “toxic gas leak” which I guess must be true since Chinese factories like to lace their toys with arsenic, lead and weapons grade plutonium. I like how we must be reminded how dangerous Chinese factories are, I’m just glad I didn’t see any children running away from the factories, then again, maybe they couldn’t find any Chinese children for extras because they were all busy in their sweatshops or something.

Next up is Egypt, which at first is mistaken for Las Vegas, but that is quickly clarified with some camels. The Egyptian/Jordan border is apparently a shack on stilts, led by a midget (no seriously, it’s the guy who played the Oompa Loompas in the Tim Burton version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Despite what looks like a backwater, piss poor, complete not-state-of-the-art Border police, their cameras are still hooked up with some fancy face recognition software so in case the people are the border are too incompetent (which they are), the camera will do all the work for them. Problem is it’s not even hooked up to the shack itself, the camera sends the information to some place else far from where the information might prove useful (like…at the border), which, surprise, surprise, allows the protagonists to get a head start on the people chasing them.

Ugh, and this is only two small aspects of the film. It’s a two and a half hour film, and just to let you guys know, I’m not done hating it yet.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Part 1: First thoughts)

I’ll give a more full review of this later. If you don’t wanna wait that long, I’ll say it now: it was shit. Even by Michael Bay’s sub-par standards, this movie was terrible. And I’m being fair here too, I’m judging this like it was a blockbuster film and not an Oscar contender.

But, here’s a couple of things I picked up from the movie:

1) Soundwave is in the movie! He is attached to one of Earth’s satellites and uses this to listen in on conversations on Earth and then broadcasts orders to other Decepticons once he’s done his reconnaissance. It’s very similar to his role on Earth back in G1 with the one exception that sound cannot travel in space, which means he shouldn’t be able to give out orders the way he should. The only sound wave in space is the character and not the actual waves that vibrate molecules creating sound, because:

a) molecules aren’t close enough to vibrate in space.
b) there’s no air anyway.

Oh the irony of Soundwave being in space! And his voice in the movie is nowhere near as cool as his voice in G1.

2) Robots exist in heaven. I don’t know what to think of this but does this mean that God is now known as Godimus Prime?

3) I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mechanic out of a jump suit while in the shop. Except if that mechanic is Megan Fox, then, she wears short-shorts.