Author: galador

Movie: Get Smart

The second cinematic adventure partaken with my friends was to the local cinema to see Get Smart. This movie was awesome. As expected, there were lots of spy v. spy action and one-liners from Mr. Carell.

Maxwell Smart (played by Carell) is an agent who works for the top-secret organization CONTROL. He is considered by his superiors an amazing analyst of data, but his real desire in life is to be a field agent. Even when he takes the field agent exam and does superbly, the Chief decides to not promote Smart due to his abilities as an analyst. Things are turned upside down, though when KAOS (the bad guys, obviously) find CONTROL’s base and ransack it. All the field operatives are compromised except Smart and #99 (played by Anne Hathaway), an agent who underwent cosmetic surgery to continue as a field agent.

Without going much more into detail, Smart and 99 are after KAOS’s top dog, Siegfried, who has control of many nukes, and isn’t afraid to show that he means business.

Overall, it was a really good movie and I enjoyed it greatly. Go watch it!

Rating: B+

Movie: Indiana Jones

Yes folks, it’s that time again. “that time” being summer, which means my friends and I are getting together for cinematic adventure. The first of these cinematic adventures, as I hope you can tell from the Title and picture above is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, AKA Indy 4.

First of all: I’m going to have to slap the haters. I really liked this movie, and I thought it was a good addition to the Indy series. Yes, it’s certainly not “up to par” with the first three, but still a pretty good movie.

OK, so with that out of the way, I do have to say I’m a bit disappointed with the storyline. Not giving away the ending, but seriously, George? Is that the best you could come up with for the ending. Still “fits” in an Indy movie, but another reason would have been far better.

Overall, the movie was really good. Good characters, good effects, good music. Everything was good, but definitely could have had improvements. Overall, as I said, this is deserving of the name Indiana Jones (and possibly better than Temple of Doom), but there was definitely room for improvement as well.

Rating: B

Target Makes Me Angry.

So, basically since I got out of school, I’ve been trying to get a job. Unfortunately, companies apparently don’t like or me or something, and I am still unemployed.

The closest I got was from Target, but as I’m sure you can tell from the title of this post, that it didn’t go so well. I now recount why:

I got my first call from them on May 18. The lady said that I should be there for an appointment at about 1 PM on May 20 (Wednesday). Doesn’t say what I’m going to be interviewing for (I selected “Up for Discussion” or equivalent) on the application), just be there. OK, so I get there, and I have to wait almost 30 minutes before the person doing my interview comes available. A bit annoying, but not too bad. So, I do my interview and think I did decent. Not extremely good, but not bad. The manager in charge of my interview doesn’t give me a date that I should hear back by, but after a week I decided that it’s been (too) long enough.

I call back on the twenty-seventh to check back in on my application. The first person I talk to informs me that she’s not in charge of that area that I’m being considered for and to call back again later, because the person who is is on lunch break with some interns or something. OK, fair enough. So, I call back, ask for this person, who then tells me that they don’t know, and they’ll call me back. Again, I suppose this is fair enough, but to be honest, I wouldn’t have minded staying on the phone a bit longer so I could get an answer faster. So, later that night, she calls me back asking to come in for a second interview on Friday (the 30th).

Cool, a second interview, that’s usually pretty good, right? So, I got to the interview, do pretty good again, I think, and this time I make sure that she tells me when I should expect to hear back. She says on Monday. Monday comes around, I hear nothing. OK, I’ll give them a day, and then call them back. So, on Wednesday, I’ve still yet to hear from them, and I call back. The person who answers me tells me these exact words: “Yeah, I think they’ve made a decision, but I don’t know what it is. We’ll call you back or send you a card.” OK, two things: If you know they’ve made a decision, then I think it would just be proper to tell the person to stay on hold while you go and find out. I’ve already called them back at least 5 times by now to figure out if you’re going to do anything about my application or not, just to hear basically the same message (“We’ll call you when we hear something”, which is apparently never.)

So, I wait another week and give them another call. This time, the lady (same one who said that she thought they’d made a decision but didn’t know) answered again, and told me she’d find out and took my phone number. I’m like, cool, things might be looking up. Well, that Friday (the 18th, exactly a month after my first call), I get a postcard in the mail from Target saying this:

Hello, thanks for taking the time to apply with us. While we’re unable to offer you a position at this time, we do appreciate your interest in Target.

So, not only have the motherfuckers wasted my time (not only just a month of time wasted that I could have been looking for another job, but they gave me two interviews), but I didn’t even get the job. The Target hiring system (at least at my local Target) is incredibly inept.

Now, you may think the story with Target is over. I’ve been declined for a job, so there can’t be much more I can bitch at in regard to the management, right? Wrong.

So, (probably) the only reason that I got an interview from Target in the first place was because my dad works with someone who is the brother of the Target General Manager, right? Apparently the brother (not the manager) was wondering if my dad was going to help him re-tile the bathroom of his mother’s rent house (which happens to be where the manager is living right now). So, my dad was like, “Well, I don’t know if I’d wanna work for him, he didn’t hire my son.” So the guy called up the manager and my dad talked to him on the phone, and he said that I have a “meeting” with him personally in the morning. Pretty sweet, right?

Wrong. I get all dressed up for an interview-type thing that morning and drive all the way to Target. I go up to the Customer Service desk and ask to speak to the manager, and the person there says, “He’s left for the day.” “What? He said he would be here until 12:30” “Well, he must have thought we would be, but had a shorter day than he planned.” This was at 10:00 AM, mind you. Now, please, if anyone can explain to me how a General Manager of a Target store can only work from 8-10 and be “done”, then I’ll give you a cookie.

This whole thing just pisses me of.

And I still don’t have a job. =(

More Concertos

Last week, I saw two epic concerts.

The first was Foxboro Hot Tubs. Holy shit, this could quite possibly be one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. Foxboro Hot Tubs are a side project of Green Day, which means it’s basically their excuse so that they can play different music styles. =P This stuff had a very garageband sound. The guitar reminded me a lot of The Strokes.

The concert itself was basically awesome incarnate. What made it even better was that the friends I was with and I were literally on the stage. The only way I could have been closer to the band was to be in the band. ;) But that’s not to say the band got involved with the crowd. Billy Joe Armstrong crowd surfed at least four times, and he spilled beer on me at least three. The bassist would take cans of beer from the crowd and downed them, as well.

Speaking of crowd-surfing, a ton of people crowd-surfed just to get on the stage, and the band was cool about it. (If available), they would shake the people’s hands and stuff. Billy Joe made out with three girls on stage (one of whom went to my high school <_<), and someone gave the band a bag of gifts. The security people were not very happy, though. They basically tackled half the people who got up to the stage. Another thing... the security team had to place sooooo many bottle of alcohol for the band. For example, one placed a bottle for the rhythm guitarist, but Billy Joe saw it and took it, but before the guitarist even knew it was there (let alone gone), there was another bottle up. That show is definitely in my top 10 or so shows. I didn't know any of the songs, but the atmosphere was so awesome. Definitely a must-see if they happen to be playing in your town. However, they're only playing 12 shows. =( The second show was Better Than Ezra at Riverfest. This show was really good, as well. Again, I didn’t know any of the songs previously (heresy, I know, to some people), but I still enjoyed it a friggin’ lot. Their songs were really good, and they did some amazing covers (I’m still trying to figure out that one damn song >:[ ). Then, the lead guy did an awesome killswitch solo to end it. Quite epic. We were going to see One Republic at R-fest, too, but then we learned that they’re just a watered-down version of Coldplay or Jack’s Manneuquin with extra people. >_>

Overall, last week was a good week for music.

I Can Has Moives?

So, this article has taken forever to get up (sorry to the guest writer, whose article will be up after this one sometime), but here it finally is!

Last week, I went over to my friend Will’s house to do some regular “Hey, I’m bored, and so are you… let’s be bored together!” thing, when we decided to go see a movie. This particular move was “Forbidden Kingdom“. However, we missed the showing, so we ended up hanging out around Little Rock.

We decided to try again the next day at the local movie theater, only to be distraught when learning that they only show movies at 9:00 on Friday or Saturday. =/ So, Will and I, with Jason in tow decided to rent a movie instead. After perusing the aisles at the local Rental Centre, we decided on “The Prestige” (it’s one of those two movies about magic that turned up around the same time, the other being “The Illusionist“, which I haven’t seen). A quick trip to Will’s house provided us with a large plasma screen to view said movie on. The Prestige turned out to be a really good movie, but it was also fairly weird in it’s use of non-continuous plot presentation. There were multiple times throughout the movie where you would suddenly go back or forward in time, and it would take a while to realize it. Despite the drawback, the story was really good, and I would definitely recommend it.

Movie One (The Prestige): B+

Being a bit disgruntled at not being able to see The Forbidden Kingdom two days in a row, Will, Jason, and I made a pact to be sure and see the movie at 7. So, on Wednesday, we all went to the Morrilton theatre and paid our $6 to get in (which is rather disappointing, that theatre has charged $5 for non-matinée movies as long as I can remember). It turns out that our determination to see the movie was well-rewarded, because the movie was really good. Of course, it’s the normal “over-the-top” kung-fu movie, but that would detriment is overtaken by the fact that it has both Jackie Chan AND Jet Li. =O

Basically, what I’m saying is that the story elements were a bit lacking, at best, but the martial artistry was in full force, and the choreography was top-notch. Definitely a good movie to see.

Movie Two (The Forbidden Kingdom): A-

Also, it turned out that the next day, The Forbidden Kingdom was no longer showing at the Morrilton theatre, so we lucked out. =)

BSMF Amazingness, Year 2

As you may remember from reading the last entry regarding the Beale Street Music Festival, this is the second year in a row that my friend Jason and I have gone to BSMF. I think we plan on continuing the tradition, because it’s just so damn fun.

However, this year’s BSMF almost wasn’t, for us. We procrastinated even more than we did last year (which is sad), and we almost didn’t go. In return for our laziness, we were able to find an even cheaper Hotel this year than last year, and we reserved it approximately a week before the show. Pretty nice. Another thing was that this year we had a different guest in tow. This year, our friend from college, Erin Poerschke, joined us for the awesomeness. Finally, this year wasn’t so much about there being a ton of artists that we just had to see like last year (I’m pretty sure it’s going to be hard to beat the 2007 BSMF in terms of lineup, at least for me and Jason[unless it’s fucking Voodoo Fest ’07 which was superbly epic, but expensive and I couldn’t go]). This year was more about seeing some “fun” shows and just enjoying ourselves for the last weekend together (school, like last year, gets out the week right before BSMF, which is really nice for us).

If you’re familiar with last year’s entry about BSMF, you’re not going to have to worry about length as much this year (I don’t think) but it should still be a considerable length. So, without further ado:

Day One!

Concert One – Lord T & Eloise

Wow. These guys were just so ridiculous. I would try to explain them via text, but you wouldn’t get the full effect. So instead, I present you with a picture of the two, courtesy of last.fm:

Just super-ridiculous. It wasn’t a bad show, I have to say. Interesting, at the least.

Concert Two- Flyleaf

During this concert, I met up with some friends we knew from the Memphis area, that was pretty cool. We talked for a while, and there were serenaded by the weird Lacey Mosley. It was a pretty good show, though I’ll be the first to admit the reason I even knew of them is because of Rock Band (and that one of my roommates from the last year sung that song as incredibly screamo as he could). I will say that the bassist for that band is incredibly crazy — I’m pretty sure he took every opportunity he could to jump off the monitors in the front.

Concert Three – Hellogoodbye

It was at this point that Jason, Erin and I parted ways for the night. They wanted to go see Ben Folds (which would have been pretty cool, but I don’t really know much of him) and The Roots (a band I know absolutely nothing of), so I decided to stay with our Memphis friends for Hellogoodbye and My Chemical Romance (don’t judge me >_>). That turned out to be the better decision, for one reason: rain. See, it’s inevitable that it rains during BSMF. This year, it was on Friday. And it was a torrential rain. Really bad. Because of the rain, it turns out, the stage that Ben and the Roots were performing on (it’s the only one facing in the opposite direction of the other stages, which turned out to be its downfall) was basically shut down — the rain was able to get on the entire stage at their end, while the others were partly protected from the back. So unfortunately, Jason and Erin didn’t get to see their concerts, and I got to freeze my ass off in the rain and wind in return.

But the concert: I really enjoyed this one. I think if you didn’t get at least some entertainment from this concert (whether it was from the music or just being able to make fun of the singer for his weird mannerisms), then you’re probably not human. I’ll admit, I like HGB even though it’s kinda “girly” (>_>), and I really enjoyed the concert. I couldn’t see because the rain got on my glasses, and I don’t have contacts (that’s on the list to get before next year’s BSMF), but it didn’t really detract.

Concert Four – My Chemical Romance

I see you laughing there. STFU. This concert was actually really fun. The singer wasn’t drunk (at least not too bad), so he actually performed well, and it was a pretty cool atmosphere. I did laugh a bit on the inside when they didn’t play the first guitar solo from “Dead!”, but that’s OK, I guess. >_>

MCR was the last show of the day, so after that, I headed off to the car to learn that Jason and Erin had been sitting in it for a while due to show cancellations and rain. We went back to the hotel and died for the night.

Day Two

We started out the day by going to Jim Neeley’s Interstate Barbeque. Oh my God. If you’re in Memphis, EAT HERE if you want real, awesome BBQ. It was so super-amazing good.

Afterwards, it was back to the “daily grind”. ;P

Concert One – Al Kapone

First of all, a disclaimer: I don’t like rap. I would go as far as saying that I hate the genre.

With that said, I really loved this concert. Yes, it was rap, but it was really good. However, I may be a biased because he actually used real people playing real instruments to play his set. I was really surprised at that, and I applaud him greatly for the showing.

Concert Two – Tegan and Sara

Next concert was Tegan and Sara. Not a band I knew personally, but Erin really liked them, and since we were almost on the fence, we stayed for them. They were pretty good. Mostly singer-songwriter-style music, but they did have a lot of anecdotes (basically Sara saying that she’s a weak Canadian who doesn’t like the hear [her words, not mine] and other stuff), which were pretty good. Also, Tegan flipped Sara off once during the set, that was exciting. Strange, though, as they were supremely nice. After every song, they would say “Thank you very much” after the crowd clapped for them. Overall, it was pretty good. We did see some weird looking people in the crowd, but that’s not a story for now.

At this point, I left for the bathroom and random wandering around the park, because I didn’t want to say for Colbie Caillat. So basically, I didn’t really see any shows for a while, though I did get a few snippets — mostly bad. Like The Whigs and Cat Power. At Cat Power, we all rejoined with our Mephisian Friends and decided that she really sucked, and decided that Simple Plan would be a better choice.

Concert Three – Simple Plan

This concert was really good. I wasn’t all that familiar with them (I know a few songs), but I still enjoyed it.

After Simple Plan, we stayed a bit for Seether, but when the crowd started compacting (á là Godsmack last year), we decided that that was not the band for us. ;) We moved on to Lou Reed.

Concert Four – Lou Reed

This concert really sucked. I’m not even going to lie. It could have been partly due to the contact high I got from the little bit we were in Seether’s crowd that gave me a massive headache, but mostly it was that the guy just really wasn’t very good. The format was jamband-style, which I usually just enjoy, but this guy couldn’t pull it off. Nothing was particularly amazing (something that should happen with jambands) and the guy’s voice was really annoying and chanted the same lines over 2309745987 in the course of a song. This was not a concert I enjoyed.

Concert Five – Santana

How can you not like Santana? Seriously, though, this concert was super amazing. THIS is a jamband you need to see. Plus, it’s fukken Santana. I’m happy to say that I’ve marked off one of my “dream” concerts off the list (now I just need to figure out a way to see Muse live >_>).

Day the Final

For our final day, our Memphis friends decided to give us a short impromptu tour of downtown Memphis. Before they got there, though, we went down Beale Street a bit and watched some random Blues Band play in a corner. It was pretty sweet. The friends were met, tours were give, and good food was had at a place called Rum Boogies. It was epic.

Concert One – Carney

This may be the surprise concert of the festival. They were so good. They had a very blues / western rock (kind of like a Bon Jovi) feel. They also did a cover of the Beatles and it was sooo good. Awesome band. Go pick up their EP.

Concert Two – Rue Melo

This concert was decent. It would have been way better if the three instrumentalists just dropped the girl and became like a funk band. Her voice was so annoying.

Finger Eleven – Finger Eleven

This concert was superb. The songs they played were awesome and the band really got into. They were just super-crazy. Especially the rhythm guitarist. He would hold the guitar by the neck (whilst fretting the chords), and he would change the chords by tossing the guitar up and catching it in the correct position. That’s crazy. The drummer and lead guitarist were insane, too, but what they did were indescribable. I was really disappointed at the bassist, though. He didn’t really do… anything. The best part of the concert was when they did Covers of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” and Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out“. They were incredible, but I was a bit disappointed when they didn’t play Floyd’s solo ;).

Concert the Last – Fergie

Yes, I went to both an MCR and a Fergie concert. So sue me. I didn’t enjoy this one at all, though. It was basically just her being a whore (imagine that) and ruining classic rock. Suffice it to say, we left early for home.

So, after leaving Fergie early, we drove home with a stop for snax and a switchover so that Jason wouldn’t fall asleep during his driving and kill us. ;) Pretty uneventful ending to an awesome weekend.

Not Yet Dead

Hey guys! As the title would indicate, I’m not yet dead. The past few days have been simultaneously very exciting and very boring for me — starting with last weekend, the Beale Street Music Fest. I’ve watched two movies and been over to one of my friend’s houses everyday over the past four days. I’ve been job hunting (oh, the Joys of Summer), reformatting my laptop and re-installing Windows XP, and all sorts of other goodies.

So, you may be wondering, “What the hell is wrong with this guy?” How can he be bored after doing all of that? Well, besides those things, my life has been incredibly boring at home — internets = dialup, no Xbox 360 [It caught the RRoD bug =( ], and parents being mildly annoying. Just a day in the life, I guess.

But that also means I have quite a bit to write about, so be on the lookout for at least three more articles from me over the next day or so, and possibly even a guest blogger on the horizon. So, keep an eye peeled. ;)

Roofing, Yum

So, over the weekend, I helped my dad install roofing shingles on my Grandmother’s house (I’ll continue tomorrow afternoon after classes, too =/).

If that shit doesn’t make you want to ensure that you get a college education, I don’t what will.

Daytrip

Saturday (I would say yesterday, but because of a silly Philosophy paper, it’s Monday now =P), I took a little trip to Starkville, Mississippi with three of my friends. You may be wondering at this point, “Why?”, and I’ll tell you, friend: a Quiz Bowl tournament. Yes, my good fellows, due to the hard work of certain individuals, the University of Central Arkansas now has a team of people gathered together for the purpose of academic competition.

On this particular Saturday, Mississippi State University was hosting a tournament, and we were scheduled to compete. (Side note: the MSU campus is awesome. It’s big and seems like one of those places that’s just been there forever) Seven teams were in attendance, and a round-robin style bracket was had. In the end, we got fourth place, but we did really well. We averaged around 210 points a game. However, it was somewhat bittersweet, as we lost three (out of nine [not completely sure there]) games within 20 points (in the NAQT-style format that we were playing, each question is worth ten points, and if you answer correctly, you get “bonus” questions which are worth 30 points in total. You also get counted off five points if you buzz in before the question is finished with an incorrect answer). It was still really fun, though, and I think we did quite well considering that this is only our second tourney.

There’s one more thing I must mention. If you’re ever in Starkville, you have to eat at a restaurant called “Harvey’s” and hope that they have the Jamaican Jerk Tilapia Lunch Special going on that day. It is to die for. A mouthgasm, if you will.

Oh, one more thing. One of the people on the trip is a magician with music. He called up “Sweet Home Alabama” when someone said they wanted something classical rock, he found Rick Astley, Jewel, and Matisyahu on Sirius sattelite radio, among other things. ‘Twas epic.

Does This Mean I’m Bored?

Yes, very yes.

I’ve just spent the last thirty minutes or so importing all the old entries I made from various old blogs I kept (and by various, I mean my old WordPress.com blog and my Xanga). It was really rather easy once I got everything working, and now I have all my internet writings compacted into one place.

If you wanna go back and see some of the entries I made in my long-forgotten past (actually, about two years ago), you can go here for the WordPress stuff and here for the Xanga entries.

I’ll forewarn you, though, especially if you’re wanting to look at the Xanga stuff: that’s some of the longest content I’ve ever put finger to keyboard for. It also means that my XHTML compliancy on those pages are shitty (Xanga’s “editor” makes it look soooo bad).