Scene 01: Freshman year of college, camping trip in Yosemite. I stayed up late at the fire, whittling daggers and dirks out of sticks, with a simple red Swiss Army Knife. Called it quits around 11pm, woke up at 1 am (when the bear invaded) to throbbing, swollen meat hand the size of Andre the Giant's, totally immobile and achy throbbing mess.

Scene 02: Taking Lung's grinder to the old frame that comprised future-fix-e, sitting in the sun fully covered and behind a mask and goggles to avoid the particulate deaths. That night, my arm ached something fierce.

Scene 03: Unpacked Guitar Hero: World Tour, a gift I gave Wifebot(tm) this year. We rocked all day and again later at night. We rocked hard. And we paid for it. When we returned to it int he evening, we already noticed trouble: my abs hurt, her back hurt, and we were noticing jelly fingers. JUST AS WE WERE IMPROVING. So by the time I went to bed, I knew I was in trouble. And it was bad. My left hand's fingers, palm, wrist, forearm muscles, and triceps were so achy and inflamed I kept waking up. I turned to wifebot(tm) at about 3am: "There's nothing more pathetic than aging rock stars."

:::

As usual, I'm way behind the times per the kids today (I still like LOLs and I mind my zigs) but Wifebot(tm) became aware of GH: WT when she saw them playing it on Gene Simmons Family Jewels (a fauxreality show about Gene Simmons' family; in this ep, he mocked his kids who were playing the game, or Rock Band, it's competitor, whichever, and challenged them. They showed up the next afternoon and he had all of KISS (current lineup) in there... and the band got their asses kicked, as it's not a straight parallel between playing real instruments, so they were stymied)

So, months later, here we are: I got the game, the standard strat-styled controller, and the Les Paul controller. I won't go into great detail about the game mechanics, because most of you probably already played and moved on, or play and know more than me. But the basics are that it's like a combination of stylized musical references (timing, getting into the music, working together) and the pattern mimicry of Dance Dance Revolution, or in the case of my generation, Simon Says. Your guitar has five fret buttons, each a unique color. You have a strum bar. To hit a note, you hold the note's fret button and strum. You have a whammy bar as well, to add a little english on long notes. You have to perform short notes, sustained notes, slides, all sorts of stuff. The game is set up that you are cruising around doing different gigs as a band. There are many game modes: battles, head to head, quick plays, recording your own music, online stuff, etc. Anyway, you customize your rocker, and you're ready to start. Like Rock Band, the competing game spun from the same developers early on, this edition of the game lets you play as a band, with guitar, bass, drums and vocalist, each with a unique controller, and means of input and handling the songs. We just have the two guitars, and play as guitar and bass players, with the drums and vocals being AI band members. The game uses almost all master tracks, no covers, so the song is the real deal, and the vocals are the original artist. You work your way through the gigs, playing a setlist and an encore, and if you survive, make cash to buy outfit or instrument mods, (based on the Tony Hawk engine) and unlock new gigs and songs (86 in total, before downloading more).



The gameplay is represented by guitar necks at the bottom of the screen, and notes coming at you as if coming down a track. You have to hit the notes at the right count and stay focused. Every note missed counts against you, every note hit correctly adds to your score, and the band's overall score. Weaker players are compensated by more required of the other band members in order to survive the song. Too many mistakes, and you're booed off the stage. Long sequences of perfect notes give you point multipliers, and star notes, if all hit in sequence properly, give you a 'star power boost', which, once you have it, as long as you don't make a mistake and lose it, you can initiate by swinging your axe to heaven in a rock star manner, which gives you this period of about 15 seconds of blue lightning and bonus points for every note hit.

The songs sort of start easier, and get more complex as you go. We are playing it on EASY mode. They built the songs in this edition of the game in a totally new way: they gave each track to the development team, who prepared tabulation in separate teams, working in parallel. They brought each team's work together, looked for commonalities that each team translated into the tabulation, and tested it against an algorithm to make sure it was technically playable. Once satisfied that it actually worked, this became EXPERT mode. Each mode below this, they remove notes and spaced out the chords and sustained notes appropriately. As a result, the same song can be challenging again and again, as you increase difficulty level. I tried a few songs on MEDIUM but I'm not there yet for career play. I miss too many notes.

So, it's totally dorky and you see people play this and they look like idiots, bouncing around and foot stomping to keep time and rocking out with all the groovin around as you hit notes. Totally cliche right? Well, tell you what, I played the first hour sitting down, being technical, trying really hard, much like most of my real musical instrument practice days int he past. But soon, I was bouncing a knee to keep time, and found myself rocking out a bit. Eventually, I was like, you know what, I need to stand up. VY NOT? And sure enough, you can't help yourself. Well, I can't, anyway. Wifebot(tm) was laughing hysterically at me, dipping the neck and swinging the axe and bouncing around. Ridiculous. BUT AWESOME. You get INTO it.

The lead guitar is challenging, even on easy mode, as you work your way through note sequences. But my favorite is bass. Having played bass in college in the 'garage manner' meaning me and a buddy who was a drummer jamming together in fairly rudimentary fashion, I always love bass, and that's what I'm more or less used to. So, I pluck UP with fingers instead of strum down with thumb, out of habit (though both actions are of course used in both instruments, depending) and I'm accustomed to following the often obtuse rhythm part that is hard to follow unless you pay attention to it. Big difference though: I sucked at bass in real life. I never practiced enough, I only learned songs from bassists and bands I loved (Soundgarden, Alice, Janes, etc) and I fumbled my way through it. So I freely admit that this game taps into that unresolved desire to really rock out with some sense of capability, in that fantasy way that most guys who never got anywhere with musical instruments never get to do. Sure, it's fun for people who play instruments already, and even challenging, being more of a pattern and timing game than an instrument simulator. But once you just let go, get into the music, and play? It is addictive. And since the songs are mixed so that you can hear the familiar guitar work if you are hitting the notes RIGHT, but here the galling absence of the instrument if you mess up? You totally know when you are losing it. And your partner knows. And your unborn awesome knows. And the computer crowd knows, and starts booing you.



Since we are on guitars, our lead and drummer changes from gig to gig based on the music style of that gig, and occasionally we have real performers who have been character modeled and rotoscoped for the performance. I was distracted by Hayley Williams of Paramore, who I guess the kids today know from the Vans Warped Tour, but who caused me to screw up, even as a CHARACTER. Ha.

The weaknesses I'd say are that sometimes the tabulation doesn't follow the song notes as much as I'd like it to, at least on easy mode, though it might be better in more advanced play when you are hitting more notes on faster count (easy mode is mostly 4ths and 8ths) . The song selection is a wide mix from 70s to current, so you're bound to not only hit songs or styles you don't like, but get stuck playing and replaying them because you can't complete the level. And you can ruin songs you LIKE. We now both cringe at No Sleep till Brooklyn, since it took us about 10 tries to get the last 15% of the song right. And there is just an obvious, understandable frustration that ALL the songs you WANT aren't there... just like trying to find tabs for songs back in the day. Wifebot(tm), a GnR and Aerosmith freak, has already announced we have to go get Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Guitar Hero: Metallica. Also, at least so far, while you have a lot of style and clothing options for your characters, you don't seem to have the ability to completely change their overall look. I think it may be because we edited existing rockers instead of creating them from scratch. I'll have to investigate.

Last note, so to speak: it's funny to see our different tastes, not only in song preference, but character style. She selects Eagles and Steely Dan and such. I select Janes Addiction (Coming Down the Mountain was one of the first songs I learned on bass, and it's fun here) and Nirvana and such. We both cringed at some of the newer music for the kids today, or even some of the stuff from the last decade like Korn... but have to admit, the weird time signatures and song structure were challenging and fun. And stylewise, Wifebot(tm) built up a very familiar Slash-like rocker with the boozy bell bottoms and boots, bare chest under a vest, big hat, sunglasses, etc. and i went for what I like: my chick has shirt and tie and catholic skirt on. HEH.

Anyway, so far, 100% minimum awesome.
And painful.

Sounds like I'm off to get the Aerosmith one, and GH III, which has some songs we want, like the Who, GnR, and others... madness!!!

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it's been interesting to me to see how tv has grown over the last few years, and how advertising has responded. so i've embedded a poll in this post to see what we feel as a group!

i think the real television-changing revolution started with tivo. as far as i know, tivo was the first DVR. there may have been super bleeding-edge types hacking old computers into DVRs prior to this, but best i can tell tivo really defined a new age of television-watching. it allowed the power-watcher to catch almost everything, and it allowed the casual watcher to streamline when they watched their little bits. the added benefit, for the user, was that you could finally skip commercials. (to a degree.) and this is where the advertisers had to step up and find new ways of invading your privacy.

related, though i don't know exactly the timing of it, we've now got a bunch of consumer-friendly tuner/DVR soft/hardware out there, which is the same concept as tivo, but less boxes in your house -- it's all run through your computer.

from there, it seems to me that the networks started showing full eps on their site. this was a win for everyone, really, in that power-watchers could still see their shows if tivo wasn't an option, and casual watchers could FURTHER streamline the unending tide of crap on the airwaves for themselves. it was (and is -- this is what i do) damn near as convenient as a DVR. plus, the advertisers win, because every show on a network's site is embedded with three commercials. (also, three 25-second commercials, as a USER, is actually quite tolerable, though i'd always prefer the opportunity to just skip em all together.)

somewhere in between the above two ideas came television shows on DVD. this is great for the network, because they still get their shit out there, terrible for the advertisers, cause they can't get their hands on it, and with the sole exception of having to wait a season, exceptional for the user, too, because they can see the show without commercials, netflix anything they're only marginally interested in, and purchase anything they want to have fo-evah.

so here's the poll (which is probably embedded above, and you may have already answered it) -- how would you OPTIMALLY like to enjoy your television shows?

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well, i finally caved. i did it. i watched the penultimate chickFlick last night.

"the notebook," from 2004, is actually a pretty good story. i don't know if the reveal was meant to be a twist in any way, in that it's pretty immediately apparent what's going on, and you're really just left to wait to figure out who allie chose. but i did really enjoy the way the story was told, through the notebook, in flashback.

i also really loved the visual style of the story. the scenes from the past were mad old-timey, though they were saturated with these amazing colors and modern versions of the styles. for instance, i know for a fact that grrls in the 40s didn't run around the carnival in midriff-baring, cleavage tops in bright yellow. but i appreciated that visual. really. i mean REALLY appreciated that visual. hahaha!!! no, but seriously, the movie is visually gorgeous. really beautiful production there.

and the love story is actually quite sweet. i'm sure everyone has wondered at one point or another what would've happened if they'd stuck it out with person x. this theme is really driven home by joan allen, as allie's mother, finally changing her tune after revealing to allie that she had made the "smart" decision, yet still harbored deep feelings for her first love.

the end of the movie is where they getcha. they're trying desperately to pull tears out of you by the bucket, and i'd imagine it works like 50% of the time. in fairness, though, it was pretty beautiful. we should all be so lucky to go like that. i loved that it took place during a moment of clarity for allie -- it made it very emotionally stirring and a fitting end to a life of deep passion and love, despite overwhelming odds, both social and, in allie's case, physical/mental.

the performances were good, overall. james garner was actually AMAZING. the female lead, gena rowland, was convincing as an ailing old woman, and her performance was bolstered by her moments of clarity and her passion therein. and for the first time ever, i LOVED james marsden. the standout castmember, though, was rachel mcadams. she was fucking AWESOME. oh, also, whoever played noah's dad was kick-ass. the worst castmember? this kid called ryan gosling. i've seen his name in all my crappy celebrity blogs, and now that i've seen him ... um ... no, i don't wanna call it "acting" ... uhmmm ... now that i've seen him ... on screen, i'll make sure and avoid everything he's ever in, ever, from here till my own death bed.

anyway, i know you can tell that i'm not really passionate about this movie one way or the other, but i will say that overall, i enjoyed it. i've seen better and i've seen worse. this was a nice, tolerable middleground, and i CERTAINLY didn't HATE it.

in fact, i'll give it a 7/10 CLANKS! for the performances by mcadams and garner, as well as the ending, which i really did think was beautiful.

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THESE are friggin sweet. they supposedly work on any mobile phone, but they're advertised as being for "NDS (nintendo DS)/iphone/cellphone," so i'd imagine that they're more likely to work better on the two products specified prior to "cellphone." either way, it works like so -- if your phone is metal, you just magnetize the lens right on there. if it's not, you stick the adhesive-backed metal ring on your phone, around the camera's lens, and stick the lens to THAT. (maybe the ring is magnetized, i don't really understand exactly how that part works, but you get my point.) that's it, now you can pop the lens onto and off of your phone as the need arises.

available in wide-angle, fisheye, and macro varieties, for only $17USD.

also available at the above site, and iphone specific, are telescopic and telephoto lenses. $1USD more expensive.

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go to the slideshow link HERE for more.

also found out HERE that soundwave, devastator, and jetfire are all in this one. devastator is described as having "arms and legs ... built out of other transformers," while jetfire, perhaps more interestingly, is described as "a villain whose age and broken-down physicality leads him to help the autobots."

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whoa.

this movie was absolutely spectacular. i may have given it some extra tolerance because it's in san francisco, because it highlights a cause that's near and dear to my heart, or because i saw so much of it being filmed. but even separating my personal attachment to the subject matter or even the cast, i think this is an amazing movie, and a relatively historically accurate biopic of a brave civil rights leader. maybe one of the last real great civil rights leaders the nation has ever had.

if you don't know the story, here's the bottom line : harvey milk was a regular joe from new york who wanted to change his dead-end life. so he moved to san francisco, whose castro neighborhood was becoming a very "out" gay neighborhood. once here, he started a camera shop with his boyfriend, and almost immediately began to realize that even within the freedom of the castro, there existed bigotry. and outside that one neighborhood, the rest of the city still hated, misunderstood, and feared gay folks just as much as the rest of the nation. so he organized the gay community and got them working together, where they could have a voice. and then one day he stood up on the corner of market and castro streets with a megaphone and announced that he was running for office. after many years of losses, he finally won a seat as district supervisor, becoming the first openly gay politician in the nation. then he and the mayor were murdered by another city supervisor, mr. dan white. i'll get more into him in a completely separate section near the end of this review, because one thing this film did for me was to shed some new light on that guy, believe.

i think performance-wise, you have to hand every award you can to sean penn for his performance here. he completely transformed himself into the ebullient, charming, and unyieldingly brave title character. milk's persona was one that could not have been easy to undertake -- a gay, jewish new yorker. and that's just the superficial character. the personality of harvey milk the individual was one that was at the same time sweet and hard. (oh, the euphemisms -- leave it alone! haha!!!) milk was completely grounded. grounded in his beliefs, grounded in his sexual orientation, grounded in his growth as a human being. but he was also a loving and compassionate man. so many times you find people that are hard as nails -- they don't take no shit from no suckas, but they also don't ever show an emotion. milk (and penn, as milk) was a beautifully balanced man -- strong when he needed to be, and tender when that was appropriate. watching this movie, i felt like i would've liked to KNOW harvey milk. he had a great sense of humour, he was an easygoing and fun-loving dude, and yet when the chips were down, he was at the front of the pack, ready to take a beating if that's what it took, but NEVER yielding in what he felt, what he KNEW was right. he was like an effeminate braveheart. hahaha!!! less arrows, though, and more ... yeah, nevermind.

the other cast standout was james franco, as milk's one true love. they didn't stay together for more than about 5 years or so (which is like a thousand years in gay), but they loved each other dearly. franco has always been kind of a throwaway for me. he's a pretty boy pop culture star without much to his resume outside of harry osborne, which ain't much. but he took the chance here. he and sean penn had some pretty intimate scenes in this movie, and both of them were so believable that i was beside myself with as much admiration for franco as for penn. i really hope that this catapults his career into a new level. i really do. it was amazing.

as to the film content itself, i respected not only how wonderfully the characters were crafted and represented (by ALL the cast, not just the two standouts above), but how well my CITY was represented. geographically and socio-politically, this was a great san francisco movie. it was more than a little disturbing to me to see those early scenes of SFPD arbitrarily pulling people out of gay bars and bashing their heads in with billy clubs, but the growth of the city's world-famous tolerance, born from that low point, was beautiful to witness on the big screen.

as far as milk himself, i appreciated how the filmmakers honored milk as one of the prime representations of the modern era gay dude. so many times the conception is that gay dudes are these girly types with lisps and chaps. which is true sometimes, sure. just like any group of any people has it's little sub-groups. but milk finally brought out the reality that gay folks are just like straight folks. just regular dudes and chicks with regular jobs and regular wants and needs. he wasn't sashaying all around the city, wolf-whistling at construction workers. same as how all straight dudes aren't wearing a backwards ballcap and jordans or whatever our stereotype is. this was important for america to see, and in fact, they made a point of showing milk's realization of this fact and shedding his hippie hair so that he could up his chances of being seen as just a man. not a gay man or a hippie man -- just another dude.

i had no idea that milk's first few attempts at garnering public office were epic fails. but i loved the dialogue when they re-zoned his district to be just the haight and the castro. "when they rezone this, it'll be just the hippies and the gays -- you'll win by a landslide!" hahahahaha!!!

i think the most politically poignant thing that milk did was to organize his community. one dude isn't gonna change the world. but a quarter of a city's population can definitely change a couple of the rules, and that's what milk was tapped into. there were a couple of distinct examples of this. one was when the teamsters approached milk for his support, some time after his first failed bid for assemblyman. the teamsters had a problem with coors beer (i don't remember the specifics of the problem, but they didn't like the coors company for whatever reason). and the head of the teamsters union knew that milk commanded a large part of the city's voting power, not to mention having a billion and three bars all to themselves. it was an untapped market, if you will. so he approached milk and said, "if you can get all the coors pulled out of all your bars, we'll support you in all of your upcoming political bids." boom. the fuckin TEAMSTERS, man. milk pulled all the coors from all the gay bars, and i'm here to tell you -- you lose the gay bars in THIS town? you're done. move to another city, it's a lost cause. another great example of milk's organization of his community and the power it afforded all involved was, unfortunately, the very thing that led to his demise. milk and mayor george moscone were political allies. moscone knew that his city was becoming more liberal and progressive by the day, and milk knew moscone was a fair and non-bigoted man. so they were a real team, not to mention good friends. (milk even sat as mayor one day while moscone was sick or something -- that's from history, not the movie.) but when moscone was about to make a decision that milk thought would harm his community and moscone's city, he told the mayor, "you (do this) and i'll organize the gay vote against you. you will NOT be re-elected." whoa dude. mad AND displayable skillz, indeed!

milk only held his office for a little over 10 months, but as it happened, the entire country was at that time firmly in the grip of one of the religious right's many attempts to resign gay folks to second-class citizenry. in this instance, it was laws being passed around the country which allowed for the firing of any homosexuals from their jobs. specifically, teaching jobs. (you know, where they "recruit" kids.) but milk took em on face-to-face, whether on his turf or theirs, he didn't care. he was so fucking brave. and because of his CONTINUAL pushing of the issues, he developed something beyond a san-francisco-based or a castro-based constituency. he developed a CALIFORNIA-based constituency. one disrict supervisor in one city was organizing one of the largest voter bases in the nation. AND THEY BEAT IT. prop 6 would've passed with no problem, had harvey milk not been the man with the plan. i'm just so glad that he got a chance to see it before his life was so violently and unfairly cut short.

i was really glad the movie showed milk as the first to liken the gay rights movement to the black rights movement. he compared what was happening to his community at many times and in many ways to the blacks' struggles for equality. he wondered how he could tap into the same fire "...that the black use...". he wondered how he could organize his community in the same ways "...that the blacks do...". another birth of a modern era ideal.

i'm getting SO long-winded here, so let me close off what i felt about this movie with the following insight it gave me into milk and moscone's murderer, dan white. dan white was a supervisor of the neighboring district to milk's. the castro, in milk's district, used to be a working-class irish-catholic neighborhood. when gay folks started moving to san francisco, and into the castro, all the working class from that neighborhood were forced out, into the next district over. (part of the reason why the district with the castro was re-zoned, allowing milk to finally win the supervisor's seat.) that next district over was where dan white lived. so he ran for supervisor because he was passionate about making a better life for HIS people. just like milk, in fact, and just like every other district supervisor ever. and once they both made it to the board, milk's charm won white over, too. white liked milk, or at least you were given the impression that he did. white invited milk to his child's christening. and he offered a political olive branch to milk on two occasions. what happened, though, was that the trade-off that white was looking for from milk on these political issues conflicted with milk's beliefs. so he didn't end up helping white, on either occasion. this looked like a betrayal to white, and he retaliated by voting against milk as a rule. and no matter how much milk tried to express to white that he wasn't backstabbing him and that he was committed to working together on anything that they BOTH believed in, white continued to battle with feelings of being pushed out. so white quit his job. but then he changed his mind and asked for his job back. and moscone was about to give it to him. this was the occasion i mentioned above, when milk told moscone that if he did it, he (milk) would make sure that moscone lost the vote next time around. wrong move. white killed em both.

what this representation of dan white's emotional state showed me was that he was pushed to the edge of his sanity by gentrification, apparent betrayal despite offers of friendship, and "losing" the mayor to the very people that had pushed his hard-working neighbors out of their homes and businesses. i think a lot of people would snap in that situation. i'm not forgiving white, don't get me wrong. allow me to repeat myself. I AM NOT FORGIVING WHITE. i'm just saying ... i get it.

i think of the 2-hour runtime of this movie, i spent MAYBE 20 minutes of it dry-eyed. i was shedding tears of joy AND tears of sadness. this movie was an exhausting emotional journey, but one that i wouldn't at all mind taking again. one of the things, obviously, that made me feel sad about this is that the gay community doesn't have any more idealists with the power and magnetism that milk had. if they did, perhaps prop 8 wouldn't have passed last november, which, in essence, began the long route of the reversal of gay folks' standing back to second-class citizens, and eventually, will cause them to become slaves or concentration camp inductees. it's a sad truth, made so much more sad by watching prop 6 lose in the movie's timeline. it tore my heart to pieces.

anyway, there were more than a few moments of light-heartedness here, my favorite of which was when someone on milk's campaign staff said that he needed a generic campaign platform to run on. something that would help him get more than just the gay vote. and as they went around the room suggesting what he should stand on, someone said "the smell of urine in the tenderloin." the entire audience ROARED with laughter, because that, my friends, is STILL a platform san franciscans hope someone runs on. hahaha!!!

i'm sorry i took so long with this review. 10/10 CLANKS!

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this movie was a really mixed bag for me. i avoided it like the plague for a long time, because i thought it was such a completely ludicrous concept that i didn't even want to pollute my mind with it. and that didn't change, even after finally accepting that it might have some redeeming qualities (which it did) and knuckling down and watching it.

look, i get that this is a disney movie. and i tried HARD to just take the concept of a rat communicating with a man and accept it for what it was. i mean, after all, cinderella talked to birds and mice. beauty (of "beauty and the beast") talked to friggin CANDLESTICKS. but the difference between those masterpieces and this movie is that those were based on brilliant stories, and the talking mice from the former and candlesticks from the latter were not the main characters. also, those were fairy tales. this movie based itself in reality in every way, and as such, the versimilitude was so completely fucked up that my mind couldn't process the fantasy aspect of it. i don't know, maybe i'm old and bitter, or maybe i'm just a hater (yes, and yes), but there was a sticking point somewhere, subconsciously, that would not allow me to accept that principle, and the movie suffered for it in my mind.

but that stated, i have to say there was some BRILLIANT animation in this film. the first time remy (the rat) found himself inside the kitchen and the camera was following him around at ground level as he ran? holy SHIT, that was awesome. all the attention to detail -- the flames under the ovens, the clogs that every chef wears in every restaurant's kitchen, the floor tiles -- it was fucking AMAZING to watch. there was another bit of animation that really stood out to me -- when linguini confessed that he was not in charge of the brilliance coming out of the kitchen, and colette was so hurt by the fact that he'd lied to her that she went to slap him, refraining at the last minute -- when she was about to lay the palm down, she was shuddering with rage, and her eyes were watering. that simple little scene, all of about 3 seconds long, was some of the best animation of human emotion to come out of pixar ever, and yes, that includes both "the incredibles" and "wall-e," two of the best FILMS ever made, animated or no. more animation highlights included the rat's movements. when remy walked upright, i was bored. but when he and any of his denmates were on all fours, they moved JUST like real rats. i was fucking beside myself with admiration for pixar's animators' talents.

another thing i really liked was the metaphorical representation of the tastes of food. remy always liked to make a big deal of how one food tastes one way and another tastes another way, but put them together and they taste yet a DIFFERENT way. and the representation of this, with the subject closing their eyes and all the background dropping away to black, followed by different swirls and visual pops moving around beside their heads to represent the different flavors of all three states (individual taste 1, individual taste 2, and combined taste) -- i thought that was REALLY imaginative.

in the end, i have to say i thought this movie was a very strong showing of pixar's animating talents and attention to detail, with some great imagination thrown in. but the story was crap from front to back, and in fact insulted my intelligence so much that if you'd animated me on that black background, the swirls and pops that aniLung would've "felt" would've looked more like knives and lint.

4/10 CLANKS! brilliant animation, shite everywhere else.

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i don't know if it was the unENDing hummus jokes or what, but this movie was fucking ridiculous. ridiculously BAD. i'm not expecting theatre when i see a sandler comedy, but seriously, give me something more than this.

i will admit that i appreciated sort of all the socio-political sub-statements that it incorporated, and how it handled them really kind of cool. homosexuality, the israeli/palestinian conflict, and so on. and zohan's love advice was pretty awesome, too. but in the end, this was just a throwaway.

3/10 CLANKS!

(ps : please, please, PLEASE -- a desperate plea to all of hollywood -- don't EVER let mariah carey talk again. ever. what a vapid mess. you can hear the stupidity spilling out of her when she fucking BLINKS, man. what a dolt. nice boobs, though.)

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WHOOPS.

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as server farms grow, people buy domains, and the data a person has begins to far outweigh their computer's ability to contain it all, a new trend started to surface -- offboard storage. digital media saddled everyone with gigs upon gigs of entertainment bytes, and even with hearty hard drives onboard their computers, folks still have to offload a bunch of shit these days. and now what's starting to come along is offboard computing. "cloud computing," they call it. this is very appealling to me as a concept, and i started embracing it simply -- with my email. i started using gmail about a year ago because i needed a temporary solution while i was doing some domain maintenance. and while i was using it, i started to realize that there was no real reason for me to go back to an on-board email client. with gmail, i could use my email whether at work, at home, or on someone else's computer. and with a simple plug-in, my computer uses gmail as my default now, so when i click a mailto link, it opens my message there. it has plenty of storage space, and it works great. so that was a good starting point, and it got me paying attention to all the things google offers in their robust exerience. the next thing i started playing with was gmail's calendar. i quickly discovered that not only did the gmail calendar work just as well as the one i have on my computer at home (apple's ical), but it even boasted some additional functionality. AND i discovered a way to sync my google calendar to my ical, so with the simple integration of a weekly sync, i have essentially duplicate information both on- and off-board. and again, like with my email, i have the same information from wherever i access my sensitive shit. you'd think that as soon as i switched to gmail, i'd have imported all my contacts to there, but for some reason, i never did. but now that i was using the mail and the calendars, i got to thinking maybe the email's contact list could help me on this new road. so i began using gmail's contact list. i imported all the contact information i had from my cellphone and my computer's onboard app (apple's address book), and finally got everything consolidated into one concise holding space, all tightly organized by groups. again, like with the calendar, i discovered a way to sync this info to my onboard app, which is a much more complicated sync process, but my contacts don't require a weekly sync, so it doesn't matter. anyway, i rolled like this for a short while and fell in LOVE with it. all of my daily shit, unloaded from my computer's drive, important shit backed up thereon, everything accessible from any location, and the deletion of my email program.

and now, google docs has gotten me interested in trying to go further with the idea. google docs is a series of online applications that mimic microsoft's office suite. there's a version of word, a version of excel, and so on. now i'm a designer, so i really have very little need for word docs and excel spreadsheets. i'm the target market. so i've begun experimenting with the powers (and limitations) of these apps, and so far have found them to be getting pretty close. one thing they need for sure is some more formatting preview options. by way of an example, you can place printing page breaks anywhere you'd like in a google "word" doc, but there's no way to preview the printout to know WHERE to put them, if you're trying to not break a certain paragraph or whatever. but you can format pretty well, and real MS word docs open and function pretty flawlessly with it. i still keep a copy of office on my computer, because this isn't there yet, but i can feel this being completely viable before another year, tops. and when that happens, my computer(s) will essentially be bare of anything but design apps and work. which, to me, is as it should be.

in the end, i'm never going to be a power cloud user, but i think there's some real meat to the possibilities of it, and i think that i can integrate enough of it into my daily to really slim down what's onboard any of my machines.

and that's just what i can do now, on the bleeding edge, solely with google. i know there's other shit out there, and i'm sure there will be more, so it'll only get better and better as time goes on.

there's downsides, for sure. for instance, if i don't have an internet connection, i don't have email. because i sync some stuff to my onboard, i'd still have all my contacts and calendars, which is great, but you can see where not having a signal could affect the full possibilities. what if i really need that one particular word doc or whatever and there's no signal? but again, for me personally, the only things i ever TRULY need are my designs. and those are always around.

it's been a wierd break for me, but it's been refreshing just the same, and i think the only thing that makes me feel afraid of it or whatever is that computers are "supposed" to be where you keep everything. so why would i need to move stuff OFF of it, right? well, we all know that until onboard storage experiences some technological advancement that allows it to be tripled AT LEAST, clould computing will always have a market.

and i'm it!

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