Gifted

Cody took last week off and went back to Moyie. While back home he went down to Sandpoint to get the all important stuff you can't get here in Canada...cereal. Cody brought back some Wheaties, Apple Jacks, Eggo Cereal (two kinds!) and some Boo Berry. Cody got these at the Wal-Mart there and also brought me back this t-shirt.

CHUCK! I think it's US law that Wal-Mart must carry Chuck Norris merchandise, well at least in Texas it is. The really weird part was that the Wal-Mart bag was white and not grey. It was unsettling.

I've been meaning to post pictures of these for the past two months, but I've been putting it off. Cody got me these for Christmas from Bianca Amor's, a sword and some throwing knives. Get them out.

Scary looking isn't it? The blade has cut outs in it for some reason which I'm sure is just to make it more bad ass looking. The reverse side above the handle has small serrated area for sawing?? The end below the handle is blunt yet sharp perfect for blugening. The handle itself is kind of small so you can only hold it with one hand. I guess that's so you can use the other hand to hold a gun or another sword. Two are better than one!

The sword in the sheath hanging from my wooden sword stuck in the couch. The sheath has that strap on it, so you can wear it over your shoulder. It's all black, so it'll match pretty much anything outfit you wear. That's always nice.

I've always wanted some throwing knives and now I finally got a set. They have yet to be thrown, but next time I go back to Cranbrook I think I'll take them with me and give them a try. I would use them here, but there isn't much to throw them at. I'm sure the landlord would frown on me throwing them at the new fence he just built or the side of the garage.

The knives in the sheath which on the back a belt loop on it. That way you can carry them where you go. It's cooler and stealthier to have them on your leg under your pant leg. That way when you are taken hostage by terrorists you can pull the old "gotta tie my shoe" sham and when you bend down to tie your shoe whip and the knives and take them out!!! With extreme prejudice!!! And say something witty!!!!

Short and sweet.

The other week(??) I posted about some records I bought and the severley scratched up Fat Boys single I ended up getting and then threw in the trash. I'd like to continue with the Fats Boys and show off my new Fat Boys 7" single that came in the mail today.

Huh, The Fat Boys did the theme song for Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master? I'll admit that I haven't seen Nightmare on Elm Street 4, but I didn't even realize it was a comedy!

That is all.

Richards & Fitch

Last week I pimped Cam's pimping of Audio Surf. This week I'm pimping a CD I've been meaning to write about for a few weeks now. Anybody reading my blog knows or has at least heard of Todd Hilborn aka Todd Smith aka Bobby Richards. Bobby has teamed up with Reno Fitch to release an acoustic folk album title "A Couple of F Holes".

I'll admit most of the music I'm listening to is pop, rock, punk or a combination of those. Acoustic folk isn't a genre I listen to much, but I really did enjoy A Couple of F Holes. Bobby Richards writes all the songs as well as plays guitar and sings on the album. Move over Slash! All the kids will be throwing away Guitar Hero and picking up Mandonlin Hero in hopes of becoming the next Reno Fitch. The music is good and I haven't heard a lot of mandolin before, but I like it. The lyrics are smart and funny too, you'll be listening carefully so as to not miss anything.

The CD has ten tracks and my favorite songs are Guitario, Who Stole My Gloves, and Stockboy to Satan. I remember Todd, er I mean Bobby, playing Stockboy to Satan years ago when he was living in Bankview. The overall CD quality is really good. I've got albums from bands on record labels that have crappy sound and cheesy packaging. A Couple of F Holes sounds great and the packaging is nice too. Even the case is a clear CD case, not one of those cheap ones with the black backer.

What I really wanted to say was, "This is a good CD, so buy it." but I thought I owed Todd a few more sentences than that. I tried to hype it up, but I'm not that good at it. Check out Richards & Fitch's MySpace page to hear a few of the songs on the album. If you like it you can buy the CD online from CD Baby. If there is one other reason why you should buy the album, then you should know that Todd has a wife and kids to feed. Not that I'm guilting you into it or anything.

Star Wars

This morning I got an e-mail from Mike with a Star Wars related link. It's what every Star Wars loving Canadian wants and needs (to keep us warm), a R2-D2 toque. The following link isn't the one Mike sent me, but the original one with instructions on how to make the toque. If any old ladies are reading this, please make me one.
http://carissaknits.blogspot.com/2007/06/r2d2-beanie.html

Later in the day I went to Market Mall and I parked outside Toys'R'Us like I usually do just so I have a reason to walk through it. When I leaving I checked out the action figure section and saw the coolest Star Wars figures I have seen in a long time.

Kawaii Chewie!!

It seems vinyl figures (aka Urban Vinyl) are the hip new collectible. Artists of these figures have devout followings and figures usually have limited production and can sell for over $100 for a single figure, sometime more. Star Wars figures have made the jump to vinyl figures in the form of Mighty Muggs.

The Mighty Muggs figures are super deformed mega-cute renditions of popular Star Wars figures. I ended up getting the Chewbacca figure and the Boba Fett figure. The line also includes C-3PO, Darth Vader, Darth Maul, Mace Windu, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Obi-Wan (Ep II). Each figure except 3PO comes with an weapon or accessory.

Chewie who comes with his bowcaster.

Boba Fett (he comes with jet pack) still in the package and there he shall remain! I know you can't read it but the little Mighty Muggs logo says, "made from 100% recycled awesome". Toys'R'Us are selling these for $14.99 which may sound a bit pricey, but they do look so cool. I had to have them! I hope to see a Stormtrooper version soon.

Get yer game on!

Today I actually got an e-mail from Cam S. which is weird because he never sends e-mails. So if Cam sends you an e-mail you know it's pretty damn important. I'm too lazy to retype everything, so here is the original e-mail ala copy and paste.

Just a quick note to let you know about a game that y'all need to know about. It's called AudioSurf and it's awesome - it takes any song you own (mp3, wma, flac, ogg, even straight from CD) and builds a three-lane racetrack from it, using the tempo, beat, instruments and voice data to create elevation changes and place colored blocks on the track, you then race this track on your WipeOut-style hovership thingy, picking up or avoiding blocks as required. These YouTube vids don't do it justice, it looks great full-screen.

Fresh Prince style:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHaaLjH3m5k

There's a Tetris-style block matching game, as in this Daft Punk video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOfdccaZnBU

But until the novelty wears off, I'm going with the less cerebral 'only pickup the colored blocks', as demonstrated by this Song 2 video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EsVyEnhxWY

It's very hectic and fun, but these videos are from the Pro levels, there's Beginner mode to just chill and cruise through a song. You can compare your scores to the global leaderboards and add friends to compete against (I'm CrackHoor). It's prompted me to start ripping a bunch of my CD collection, and I've re-discovered a bunch of old music that I haven't listened to in 10+ years. I've run Aphex Twin, the Beatles, drum & bass, Sepultura, Milli Vanilli (#1 on Girl You Know It's True scoreboard, punks!), and plenty of Metallica, and even some classical stuff through it, it's all awesome.

It doesn't require bleeding-edge computer hardware, and there's a demo for it if you're not sure it's gonna work on your PC. You will need to sign up to Steam, which is an online game service and totally trustworthy in my experience.

Demo:
http://storefront.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=game&AppId=12910&cc=CA

Full game, $9.95:
http://storefront.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=game&AppId=12900&cc=CA

Let me know what you think if you decide to check it out, I give it a very enthusiastic two thumbs up.

If Cam is pimping then I guess it must have some cred. I wasn't working this afternoon and I was bored, so I downloaded it and gave it a try. I'll be honest with you I'm incredible awful and sucked beyond imagination. I tried it on Easy and played with only one block color and still I wasn't very good, although I didn't manage to crack the top ten for Electic Surfin' Go Go by Polysics.

I then tried the next step up which is collecting block of one colour to collecting blocks of different colours. I didn't even finish the entire song before I quit because I was stinking up the place so bad. Playing the Mono mode I was used to collecting all blocks and with this one you pick up certain coloured blocks in certain columns. I think, that's what was going on, I never bothered watching the tutorial. So I was just grabbing all colour blocks at randown in whatever column and it was screwing everything up, so I just quit.

I went back to Mono mode for dummies and played another song, and went to play again, but the demo mode was expired. What the hell?! You only get so many songs and then your demo expires. It was pretty weak, I mean they want you to buy it, so you should get a few more plays than 4 or 5 or whatever. After the few times I played it I was so frustrated with it I'm wiping it off my computer. Maybe if I had a few more tries I could've gotten more into it but...TOO LATE! They already had their chance.

Cam says it doesn't require bleeding edge hardware and if that's the case then I think my computer has bled to death. I played it full screen and normal detail and it looked like shite. I upped the detail enhancement, but it wasn't even in full screen mode and it was exactly running smoothly. That is why I don't play games on my computer...because it sucks.

Yeah, that's it. Don't let my crappy experience with the game deter anyone from trying it. I suck at games, I mean I couldn't even handle the Easy mode on this. Anyone of normal intelligence should be able to kick ass at it and have fun, so give it a try. Sorry Cam, but I gave it try!

Speaking of music games with the popularity of Guitar Hero there seems to more music games coming out like Rock Band and eventually there will be Band Mashups on the Wii. It's a rythm based game featuring songs from Soundgarden, Black Eyed Peas, Commodores, Cypress Hill, the Ramones, Gorillaz, Def Lepard and more for 30 songs in total for the entire game. To put a twist on the game the songs can be played in one of five different styles; rock, funk/hip-hop, country western, latin and marching band. Insane In The Brain done mariachi style? Sign me up, but unfortunately I'll suck at that game too.

Records I buyed.

The weather has finally warmed up just in time for my day off. I didn't waste a minute of it and spent the afternoon watching DVDs and napping. Hey, it's not like I was going to outside or anything. In the morning I did go buy some groceries, go to the bank and drop off all our recycling. The recycling was kind of cool because the city guy was there emptying the giant bin of milk jugs. He was just finishing when I was there and was right inside the bin with a gigantic hose like vacuuming up all the crushed milk jugs. The hose was so big the suction on large, the suction on it must be killer.

After getting all those errands out of the way I went to Phoenix for my weekly visit. When I pulled in the back there was a City TV SUV parked there. I went into Phoenix and browsed around a bit then went over to the Meloydia side to have look. The guy working at Melodyia was getting interviewed by these indie rock looking girls. You know the ones with dyed hair, the straight cut bangs, skinny jeans, layered shirts and retro glasses. They were standing beside a video camera telling him not to look at the camera, but look at them. He screwed up a few times.

I was looking through some old 45s they had and ended up getting a few of some weird useless records. Here is what I ended up getting.

Neighbours of the World, the official song of the city of Calgary. Yes, you read that right. I didn't know Calgary had an official song. The back of the sleeve has the '88 Olympic logo on it, so I'm guessing this is some kind of tie in for the 88 Olympics. It's pretty stupid, but at only 25 cents I couldn't really pass it up. The record is even on the Columbia label. I wonder how many copies they sold and I wonder how many of those copies wound up in thrift stores?

The Canadian National Anthem! Everybody should own a copy of this and I have different copies. I totally forget about the first copy I have. This version is probably the neatest as the cover opens to a picture of the sunset (or sunrise?) over the water the maple is die cut on the cover. There are more pictures of scenes throughout Canada with the records sitting at the back of the book. The back of the book has the lyrics to the national anthem in both English and French.

Raiders!! I think I already own three copies of this, but again at only 25 cents I'd be pretty dumb not to buy it. The Read-Along Storybook was a staple of the 80's and came with a picture book and record which later on turned in a cassette tape. Some stories were issued in both record and cassette versions. The record versions seem a lot easier to find as the records were stored in the back of the book, but with the cassette tape version there really wasn't anyplace to put the tape and it would end up getting lost. All the record Read-Alongs I have all have their records, but the cassette ones are pretty much all missing the tapes except for a couple.

Take A Break! It's another book and record, but a book of exercises you can do to the music on the record. The book and record are presented by the Government of Canada Fitness and Amateur Sport. I didn't read it much, but it's probably from the early 80's judging from the artwork. I have a feeling nobody used these records.

Last but not least...The Fat Boys! The rapping beat boxing Fat Boys whose claiming to 1980's rap fame came with mostly with covers of Wipeout and The Twist. Wipeout was a cover of the Surfaris and somehow the Fat Boys got the Beach Boys to do the backing vocals. I don't think they had quite the success RUN D.M.C and Aerosmith had. The single I got was The Twist with lead vocals by Chubby Checker. When I took it out of the sleeve the record looked in goo shape, it just had some dust on it. Then I flipped it over...

Oh noooooooooooooo!!!! What the hell?! Side A was like mint condition, but the B side was totally scratched up. What kind of depraved sicko would do that to a Fat Boys record? What did the Fat Boys ever do? The scratches were obviously there on purpose, somebody made them. Crappy thing is that the B side was the Buffapella version of The Twist. Buffy was the human beat box of the group, not the vampire slayer. Now that the beat boxed version was wrecked there was no I wanted this record anymore, so I put where probably most of the Fat Boys other records ended up.

Sorry guys!

Black History Month

If you get the free movie channel Encore Avenue they are actually showing some decent movies starting on Friday night. I guess it's their way of celebrating Black History Month and from Friday to Saturday nights will be showing Blaxploitation double features.

Here is the line up:

Friday (15th) - Shaft/Shaft's Big Score!
Saturday(16th) - Cleopatra Jones/Cleapatra Jones & The Casino of Gold
Sunday (17th) - Super Fly/Black Belt Jones

I'm looking forward to seeing all these movies. TV pretty such sucks now, so anything different is welcome. Although, I don't think I'll learn too much about black history from these movies, but you never know.

RAMBO

I'm sure all of you are aware that back on January 25th Rambo 4 simply known as Rambo was unleashed into the theatres. The movie going public are complete idiots as they'd rather watch the mind numbing crap of Meet the Spartans and Rambo didn't make it to #1 for the weekend. It's been all downhill since then. Disney's Hannah Montana grossed 31 million it's first weekend, that's more than what Rambo has made in total so far.

Last summer saw the release of Die Hard 4 which I liked, but was a bit watered down in terms of violence and most of all language when compared to the previous films. Stallone who co-wrote and directed Rambo took the 4th installment the opposite direction pushing the kill factor, violence and gore threw the roof. Rambo is set in Burma which is in a civil war and even while promoting the movie Stallone tried to raise some awareness of the atrocities occurring there. I'm sure there are better ways to bring the problems there to the public's attention than having Stallone gut and blow apart dozens of men. Well if there is, I don't know what it is.

Cody complained that the movie was too short, but I didn't see anything wrong with it. Maybe it just seemed short compared to movies that run like 3 hours nowadays like LOTR, Pirates of the Carribean, and Spider-Man 3. The plot is simple and straight forward and delivers on everything you want from a Rambo movie. An aged Rambo is still trying to hide from his past and the things he's done. After taking some Missionaries into Burma, Rambo learns they have been captured and takes in some mercenaries back it to rescue them. That's pretty much it, well that and 236 people are gruesomely killed.

This isn't the old Rambo films where when somebody gets shot they fall over. People get shot and limbs fly off, blood and guts spray everywhere, and bodies get ripped in half. The violent kills aren't only for the bad guys. The evil Burmese soldiers mow down villagers and even shoot, bayonet, and burn little kids! Once Rambo gets in on the action, it gets totally insane. Jumping on a mounted gun he literally blows guys away one after the other. The theater we watched it in was pretty loud, so loud you could actually feel the action, it was awesome!

Well, I guess you can tell I liked the movie. I recommend it to anybody else who enjoys bloody action flicks because they don't come much bloodier than Rambo. Oh yeah!

Jackass

Way back there used to be an alternative to Saturday Night Live and that was called Mad TV. It had some pretty funny comedians on it like and even had their own Chris Farley in the form of Will Sasso. I remember watching this one sketch he did and at the time I thought it was frickin' hilarious. It was Kenny Rogers Jackass with Will Sasso as Kenny Rogers doing he own version of Jackass. There are lots of beatings with baseball bats, so it's not all bad. Check it out and laugh!!

My favorite part is his "Catch the bat with my mouth trick". If you search YouTube you'll find a whole bunch of more Will Sasso/Kenny Rogers skits like Kenny Rogers Fear Factor, Kenny Rogers Reality Show and Kenny Rogers Punkd which features a bunch of crotch shots. Comedy gold!

It's still cold!

It's still pretty cold, but not as cold as it was. Right now it's snowing out, just lightly though, but it's supposed to continue tomorrow and Tuesday. We only had a couple really days last year, and so far this year I think we've matched it with a couple more months of winter to go.

On Friday I made a run to Phoenix to see what they got. I had also asked Melodyia to have a CD ordered in, so I had to see if it came in yet. I didn't!! Anyway, I picked a couple new comics and a bunch from the $1 bins and as I was leaving I saw something on the floor that caught my eye.

It's kinda hard to see, but that's like a 3D rendering of the Friday the 13th movie poster from MacFarlane Toys[link]. It's was priced at $29.95 which was way too much, but marked down to $9.95 it's the perfect crap to class up our dump. MacFarlane also did similar things for The Godfather, Robocop, Elvis (?), and Nightmare on Elm Street which looks pretty cool. The picture below is said Friday the 13th 3D poster hanging on the wall. Cody said I should've put it blow the light, but it really should be lighted from below to make it more scarier. I'm not going to put that much effort into it.

I bought a DVD online! That doesn't sound very exciting, but I paid $3.99 for it, then I downloaded it and the artwork for it. After it's done downloading you can burn it to DVD and you are all set to watch it. It took way too long to download and I realized that DSL is the new dial up. If I downloaded more huge files then I'd probably want to switch to something else. It was okay I guess, but I'd rather have like a factory original DVD with artwork and all that. I know you get artwork with the download, but you have to print it out and I can't even do that because the printer is broken. I doubt I'll ever pay for a DVD download again, or a music download because it's all out there online for free!