Wednesday, June 28, 2006

One Step Closer

I had a good day today.

I got off work early to go into college to meet with my Professor again about returning to college. After quizzing me once again on why I'm such a terrible slacker, he agreed that it would be awesome for me to return, and sent me on my merry way to the Art faculty to do paper-work and red-tape stuff.

Unfortunate the lady I needed to speak to wasn't available, so I have to go back tomorrow to meet with her.

Assuming all goes well, I'm back to the educated life in September. This means I need money to pay for repeating and lots and lots of notes again. Anyone out there that can help me with either or both of these problems, feel free to contact me!

In celebration, I went out and bought two new DVDs. The two disk edition of Batman Begins, and the first Tomb Raider movie. I plan on watching Tomb Raider tonight, totally switch off, relax and enjoy the boobs action scenes. That bungee thing, affectionately refered to online as the Bungee-Ballet, in the main hall of the mansion is still one of my all time favourite action sequences. I realise it's completely unrealistic, as bungee cords don't work that way, but damn it's a blast to watch!

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

One Terrific Summer

While I'm discussing the movies of next summer, get an eye-full of this chap! It's movie Bumblebee! Due to difficulties getting Volkswagens permission, the new-look Bumblebee is a Dodge. Pity, but I think I'll live. He looks sweet transformed.

This looks like it'll be a fun movie too. But Summer 2007 is going to be the Summer of the Spider. Fact.

Spider-Man 3


The trailer is on-line! And it's amazing. Don't be fooled by the "teaser" tag, this is much more than that. We get to see two villians in action, another uncovering a hidden truth, the answer to the nature of the black costume, a change of heart, a troubled hero and much, much more.

God. I'm already loooking forward to this more than Superman Returns! Damn you Raimi! I didn't even like the second one.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Morning

Well, I didn't get to sleep in late. In fact, I hardly slept at all.

I got up early and went into town for breakfast in the Gingerbread House before meeting up with a friend for a bit. He gave me some action figures that had been shipped from America for me. I'll post pictures shortly.

Anyway. I'm home now. Must find something to watch. It's all too quiet again.

Friday, June 23, 2006

I Miss World Of Warcraft

I know, I know. Never thought you'd hear me say that one, huh? Well, I do.

Usually around this time at night, I'm sitting here at the computer, reading my usual websites, Stumbling for interesting pages, reading comics on the couch, playing DS, watching a movie, any number of other interesting things I could spend my leisure time.

But whatever I'm doing, Claire is sitting behind me at the table playing WOW. She might be completely engrossed in the game, headphones on, listening to someone bark orders about what to do against the newest big dragon. But she's there. I can share the funnies I find with her, gush over the cuties (baby animals, of course!) and stare in wonder at some of the astonishing photos I find.

When she's here.

Claire is gone home for the weekend, and I'm left here on my own. It's disastrously quiet. To the point that I'm sitting here typing this while letting something, I actually don't know what, play in the background just for sake of having noise.

We watched the movie Dagon, based on a H.P. Lovecraft story over at Karens place. Jonathon, Dave and Jp were there also. The movie was enjoyable, but not entirely my cup of tea. Though I was impressed at how much of it went into the inspiration for Resident Evil 4. Actually, that's probably the most enjoyment I got out of it. Nothing wrong with the movie, just not my thing.

Anyway, after the movie Dave and Jp went home and Karen and Jonath were too tired to stay up. So I'm left at home alone. Kinda sucks.

I give Claire a lot of stick for spending all that time in the fantasy lands of Warcraft. I bug her over not spending more time in the "real world". But the truth is, I know she's always there. I know that I can just turn to her and, so long as she's not in mortal danger, or protecting a fellow PC at a crucial moment, she'll enjoy whatever I'm laughing at. I like making her tea and telling her to go to bed. I like filling her in on the latest hot news online. I like her just being there, another body in the room.

But tonight, it's just me. Our apartment isn't all that big, but right now it feels monstrously empty, and ghostly quiet. I miss her.

I may just go to bed early tonight, and sleep in late.

Good night all.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Look! All Over The Internet! It's...

Superman.

The hype is reaching fever pitch by now. Lex Luthor has successfully hijacked the official Superman Returns website, www.supermanreturns.com and is not letting go. His Myspace page invites readers to "get to know [him]". He has even gotten his own comic, just released today, in the form of the Superman Returns Prequel: Lex Luthor. I think I'm starting to root for this guy!

However, the Big Blue Boyscout has been hard at work on his own Myspace site, though the casualness that he reveals all the secrets about his true identity is a little unusual.

Okay, okay. This movie is going to rock. But it's coming out two whole weeks in America before here! Why does that happen anymore? It makes no sense. With smaller movies I understand if they are reluctant to produce extra reel prints, but Superman is going to make millions! Billions! World wide release should be a snap.

Anyway. I'm taking the weekend of the 14th of July off work just so I can go see this movie lots. All that money I would have spent of X-Men 3 shall now go to Warner Bros.

Yeuck. I feel dirty.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Some Edits

Ok, I realise I could edit the individual posts, but this is how I choose to do it. I like being different.

About Hasselhof as Nick Fury. I should probably mention that I really liked him in the role. He was the best thing about the movie. He looked great, and it was obvious they spent a good deal of the budget on the costume. Come on. Look at the picture from the previous post. The man is Fury, ripped straight from the pages of the comics. Alos, while the effects sucked in general, the Helicarrier was done really, really well. I loved the design.

Captain America. Seriously. Rubber ears! What the heck were they thinking?

I mostly just spoke about the old Fantastic Four movie in the last post. Just to fill you in, I loved the new FF movie, though the ending is a huge let-down. It works better if you look at it as the pilot episode to a larger series. I think the movie will be much better once the sequel is released and we get to see how the story develops. Like I said, this one felt a little more like a pilot.

You have to see the Martian Manhunter in the live action Justice League thingy to believe it. Think "The Mask". Really rubbery and green. And he doesn't sound like J'onn Jonz should either. But then, I am spoilt after the awesomeness of Justice League Unlimited.

Moving on from edits to my previous post (this kinda feels like doing a flashback scene in episode 2 to events from episode 1!) I seem to have lead a much more eventful weekend than previous posts suggest. I guess it's all a case of how you look at it. Also, I find it hilarious that the post stating "That seems to be all my news for the time being" is immediately followed by two more posts within an hour. Man, I crack myself up.

Craptastic TV

Hoo! I almost forgot about my sweet haul over the last week or so. I managed to get my hands on a number of TV movies and not so TV movies that I've been looking for forever. Here's a brief rundown:

Nick Fury: Agent of Shield- David Hasselhof stars as the eye-patch wearing Nick Fury in this pilot for a series that was never made. I loved watching this at last, I've been wanting to see it for years but it's hard to find. It's terrible, with the acting standing out as some of the worst I've seen in a while. The dialog is cheesy most of the time, but there are some nice lines. I recommend this to be watched with a group of friends and heckled, Mystery Science Theater 3000 style.

Captain America- I haven't brought myself to watch this yet. It looks terrible, but not in the oh-so-enjoyable way that Nick Fury was. I flicked through it to see some of the action and the costume, both of which I could do better myself at home with a few mates. Ah, rubber ears, how I've missed you.

Fantastic Four- While I bought the new FF movie last week, I also got the never released, rarely seen 1994 atrocity. Mr. Fantastic is done using cheap home-movie style camera tricks, Sue is a photoshopped effect and Human Torch is a poor attempt at a cheap fire effect too. Only the Thing is kinda decent. He's made the same way those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were for the live action movies, and he comes out looking quiet good. Dr. Doom is well done also, if a little on the cheap side. At least he looks like Doom from the comics, unlike the newer version. The mask and cloak are direct copies from the comic page. Nice.

Oh. Yeah. The movie is rubbish though.

Justice League of America- Again, a pilot episode for a series that never got made. Interesting to watch, I'm sure. I've only flicked through it to see what the characters look like, but will give a full update on how bad it is once I have. This is definately another group heckling kinda movie, so it'll probably be the weekend before I see it.

While on the subject of things I got my hands on, I alos got some very poor quality episodes of Spider-Man & Friends, the 1980's cartoon staring Spidey, Iceman and FireStar. They lived together with Spideys Aunt May and had a secret base under the house. Yet again, another caroon I remember being much better than it actually was. Not that I was surprised.

Fellow Bloggers

In recent weeks Kindle and Cian have both changed the looks of their blogs damatically. I like the new look on both, especially Cians. Very clearly laid out, especially the boxes down the side for each topic he wants to highlight. It just shows that I really need to learn about html a bit so I can play around with my own blog.

Worse still, my little cousin has started a blog and immediately makes it look more professional than mine! That child is a genius when it comes to computers. So not fair.

I still have problems adding pictures to my posts.

Slowing Down

Wow. It's been a while since I updated. To be honest, that's because I feel like all I've been doing is going between bed and work, then back to bed. Not very exciting.

But we didi do some cooll stuff last Sunday. Our internet was down for most of the day, so Claire couldn't play any World of Warcraft! Yay! Instead we all hung out and watched movies before someone put on Legend of Zelda: WindWaker. It was a fun day, with everyone chatting together and just chilling out. Claire was in great form, even if she did tickle me enough to make my get sick a little (I was suffering from a little trapped gas and the tickling caused it to push some bile up into my mouth. EWWWW!!).

Anyway. Um. That seems to be all my news for the time being. Hopefully my life will get more exciting soon, or else this could become a very quiet blog!

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

What a Weekend

It's been a busy week, so apologies for not posting about my weekend sooner. After meeting with my college friends on Saturday, Karen, Bob, Noel and Sinead threw a barbeque at their place on Sunday. It was great fun, loaded with meat and deserts. Once things began to die down, around 11pm, Jonathon, Brian, Dave and myself all went for a drive to some beach and took a walk in the midnight air. Very cool.

Monday was a bank holiday, so I wanted to do something special. It's been years since I was at the beach, so I talked Brian and Jonathon into agreeing to drive us all to a beach of their choice.

It was awesome. We went to Garrettstown, a huge beach of beautiful sand and crystal clear waters. The weather was amazing yet again, so the place was pretty busy, but there was still tonnes of room. Noel and Bob were crazy enough to go into the water, while the rest of us just paddled, or sunbathed on the warm sands. Seriously, the whole place was straight out of BayWatch. I still can't believe we have beaches like this in Ireland.

All us guys took a stroll up around the grassy cliffs to find some nice rock pools, while the girls stayed back on the beach to bake. By the time we got back we relaxed for a short while more before heading home around 4pm.

Once back at the house, all I could do was collapse into bed for a few hours. Claire got fairly badly burnt, along with a few others I'm sure. I just got a little burnt, but most I got some nice colour.

Sweet.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Overheard In

...The cinema

After watching the trailer for Superman Returns at the start of X-Men 3:
"I thought that fella was dead. Sure, didn't he fall off a horse or something?"

While I'm plugging Superman Returns again, check out Bryan Singers amazing series of video blogs detailing in fun and informative ways almost every aspect of making a big budget movie like Superman Returns. Very, very interesting to watch if you have the time. I hope all these either get released on a DVD to themselves, or on a disc packaged with the movie on release.

Another Fun Day

Met up with some of my college mates today and had dinner in Captain Americas.

Started out going into town with Claire and getting a snack in Wagamamas, where we also met Andrea and Thomas. Then wandered around town until we met Sharon. Headed back to our place to let Claire get changed before back into town to meet up with Andrea and Thomas, who had gone clothes shopping.

Sharon went shopping with her sister while Andrea, Thomas, Claire and I went to LeisurePlex for bowling before food. As soon as I walked through the door I was stunned to find Mario Kart arcade game right there!! I never thought I'd get to play this game in Ireland! Thomas and I had a go, him as Donkey Kong, me as Toad. I got off to a bad start, but it was neck and neck for the last two laps. In the end, Thomas was victorious by just a few tenths of a second. Well done.

Food was great. I love meeting up with everyone whenever I can, and we regularly find excuses too. Someone was celebrating her birthday a few tables down, and some of the staff sang "Happy Birthday" to her. The others decided it would be funny to do that for me, so I ended up with a chocolate brownie with a candle in it while they sang. How embarassing.

And the sun was blasting down the whole time!

All in all, a great day!!

Friday, June 02, 2006

Return to Normal Blogging

Ok, the last two post have been long and rambling, to the point that I may have lost a reader or two (of the three I have!) because of them.

So back to proper stuff.

It has been a beautiful few days here. Scorching sun-shine, clear blue skies and people showing off that wonderful Irish pasty-white skin. My goal this summer is to get something resembling a tan. Not too dark, and I don't want to get burnt, but I want some colour. I may even invest in a pair of shorts!

I was going to post some pictures, but didn't bring my camera with me when we went to the park on Thursday. The pond had a stage erected on it. Not around it. Not over it. Actually floating on it. Very cool. Seems The Tempest is being put on for the Midsummers Festival this year in the park. Must try to get to see it.

There was a mummy duck and a bunch of cute little baby ducklings waddling around the pond, hoping over boardwalks and generally looking very happy with the weather. They were totally cool about have people running dramatically around their pond too, as if this happened every day. Such cuties.

Man, I really need to learn to bring my camera with me everywhere I go. It's easier for girls. They have handbags. I do not look good carrying a "manbag".