Entertainment – Page 3

It’s Bubba Ho-Tep!

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Shadowtwin — No Comments ↓

Since signing up for Netflix I have been watching a lot more movies than ever before in my life. I probably watch 10 movies a week now, where previously I would watch maybe 2-3 a month. As a result of this, and also having the ability to stream the movies instantly as opposed to having to wait for the mail to both deliver and return them, I have been watching pretty much anything with a flashy cover or catchy title; Mom always told me to always judge movies by the cover… I have watched some pretty bad movies lately as a direct result. To be fair I have also found a couple that were pretty good.

Behind the Mask

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Shadowtwin — No Comments ↓

Since recently canceling my account with Blockbuster and signing up for Netflix I have been quite pleased the service. Being able to download so many movies instantly, and for no additional charge, has allowed me to watch a lot of movies that I likely wouldn’t watch if I had to go pick them out, or if I was going to be keeping the wife from watching something she wanted to see while she waited for me to return the dreck I had rented. Netflix probably thinks I have some pretty odd -and likely demented- tastes in movies, but really I don’t. I just like a movie that I can immerse myself in and enjoy, which I really can’t seem to do with most of what is coming out of hollywood these days. I find that for the most part I can really only enjoy comedies that are current. I watch Continue reading Behind the Mask→

Wow Screens

Posted on November 21, 2009 by Shadowtwin — No Comments ↓

One of the things that I noticed while trudging through every page I have ever written was that I made a lot of posts about games. I suppose that makes sense, as I do spend way too much time playing them. What I found odd, though, was that while I have spent more time playing World of Warcraft than all the other games combined, I have posted less about it than any other game. I have 11 posts about Guild Wars but only 6 that even mention Warcraft. I mean seriously, I have 8 posts that mention Roller Coaster Tycoon FFS, and I barely played that game at all. As previously mentioned, I have logged more than 2400 hours of play time in WoW on my Horde characters alone. Were I to add the time played on Alliance characters that number would nearly double. That is way more time than Continue reading Wow Screens→

Amusing Videos

Posted on November 20, 2009 by Shadowtwin — No Comments ↓

I have just finished converting the last of my old webpages to WordPress. The total page count was 441, which I thought was a little bit low for every page I have posted since January 2004, but it must be right. Hell, I haven’t been posting much of anything lately, in fact I have only about 10 posts since January of 2008! While trudging through the content of all those old pages, I did happen across a few things that I had completely forgotten about. The first is Pandora. This is basically a radio station with a 30 second commercial every 15 minutes or so. You tell it a song or band that you really like and it will start picking out songs and artists similar to that. If you like what it is playing give it a thumbs up, if not give it a thumbs down. It will then Continue reading Amusing Videos→

PC and music

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Shadowtwin — No Comments ↓

My recent small flurry of website related activity seems to have stopped almost as quickly as it started. I got the pages that I wanted to reformatted, and started on a couple of the features that I had been thinking about for a while, and then my Laptop crashed. There are two extremely annoying aspects to the Laptop crash. The first is that it was just after we got back from vacation, and aside from the photos that I have posted on the Vacation Photos page (in vastly reduced size and quality), I had no backups of the images that I lost. A total of roughly 300 pictures, from vacation photos to pets, just gone. Damn it. The other annoying aspect was the loss of all the programs I use for the website: Leech FTP, Screen Hunter (image saving program, saves pictures to file with a click of keyboard button), Continue reading PC and music→

Monopoly

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Shadowtwin — No Comments ↓

My wife downloaded the Monopoly game for her iPod and we had it with us on our trip to California this year. I played the game a few times during the drive, mostly to keep me from staring out the front window. Even with sunglasses on, if I find myself looking out the window for extended periods on very bright days it gives me terrible headaches. The little monopoly game kept my focus inside the car, which seemed to have worked for keeping the headaches at bay. I also have trouble sleeping in hotel rooms. My sleeping is sketchy in the best of conditions, I don’t really know why. In an average night I may have three stretches of uninterrupted sleep that range from 2-3 hours each, with each one requiring me to go back through the falling asleep process (which can take from 10 minutes to more than an Continue reading Monopoly→

Audio editing

Posted on July 24, 2009 by Shadowtwin — No Comments ↓

Since I have been playing WoW so much less of late, I find that I have had some time to work on a couple of website related projects that I have been putting off for, oh, let’s call it 4 years. If you stopped by my page in 2005, then again yesterday, you would have noticed that my navbar (everything to the left of the body here) has remained unchanged for that entire time (and you would also have a freakishly good memory). Since converting to the blogger script way back when, I have to update my blogger template to change any of that. Of course when I do that anything that is already over there is just gone unless I take the time to archive it. What I have been working on all day is just that: archiving the Music Lost to History. I had to trudge through all Continue reading Audio editing→

The world of OMFG get a life man!

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Shadowtwin — No Comments ↓

World of Warcraft has become a time vampire of epic proportions for me. It seems that no matter how good I become at the characters, or how much gear I get to drop, there is always something else to do. Maybe it’s working on getting my reputation to exalted with some faction; maybe it’s getting my trade skills to maximum level; maybe it’s leveling my fishing skill… And when you find yourself fishing in a game, I’m pretty sure that is a warning sign (unless it is actually a fishing game, but that is probably a completely different warning sign all on its own). I have been getting bored with the game of late. Having not played at all for a week while I was on vacation, I found that it was dreadfully boring when I tried to play it once we got back. I have run a couple of Continue reading The world of OMFG get a life man!→

More dungeon, more metal

Posted on February 10, 2008 by Shadowtwin — No Comments ↓

With my posting schedule having dwindled down to nothing, I am always amazed when I check the site mail and find that there are still people reading, and that they still care to send me email. What is more surprising is the topic that is generating that email: Music. I don’t know a damn thing about music. Sure I can play the guitar (not as good as I could back when I practiced for hours on end every day, but I still have the gear just in case I get the call from Metallica..), but my musical tastes are, at best, questionable. The Dungeon Metal that I wrote about in the last post, and one some time earlier, generated more feedback than anything I have written here that wasn’t poker related. There are two possibilities here: 1) There are a lot more people who like this type of music than Continue reading More dungeon, more metal→

Dungeon Metal!

Posted on December 20, 2007 by Shadowtwin — No Comments ↓

I have always liked what I refer to as “dungeon metal”. I have never seen anyone else refer to it as such, but when I listen to old Yngwie Malmsteen that is still what I think of. This type of music was huge in the late 80s and into the early 90s, but I hadn’t really heard a lot of it lately. I happened to catch a Dragonforce video on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball (I thought they canceled that when grunge and hip hop pushed metal into the underground in the mid 90’s), and downloaded a couple of albums. Pretty good stuff. The guitarwork is excellent, the beat is fast, but the vocals are mixed so loud that they really take away from the song. In this type of music, the vocals are really irrelevant IMHO, the less you hear of them the better. This guy’s voice in particular sours me, Continue reading Dungeon Metal!→

Metallica - One

Citing Metallica's song 'One' as 'music lost to history' probably doesn't make much sense to most. In this case, I don't think the song is lost to history, but the video is.

When this video dropped (I'd guess it was about 1989) I thought it was the most powerful video I had ever seen. Now, nearly thirty years later, I still believe it is the most powerful music video ever made.

The story may not be completely unique (the imagery is recycled -but from a film that was so old that my -then fifteen or sixteen year old- eyes had never seen. My now forty-five-ish year old eyes had never seen it either) but that video is shot and edited so well that you will be crying by the end. If, that is, you have a heart.

The video for Metallica's One surpassed all expectations for music videos, set the mark for what music videos would, could, and should be. It rocketed the group from garage band to the biggest group that ever lived. This single video defines not just that band, but the entire genre.

No other video has ever had such an impact on on the world of music. Not Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video (which I believe to this day gets far too much credit) not The Beastie Boys song Sabotage which was a wonderful throwback to the seventies era cop show, but which I believe, also gets credit far beyond it's worth. Metallica's video for One, on the other hand, didn't try to look like anything more than it was. It was a hard-rocking song and Metallica used some masterful movie clips to add to the morose feel that the instruments generated. That video, for that song, was absolutely perfect.

It is without any form of doubt that I say the video for Metallica's song One was, and ever will be, the best video ever made. Don't take my word for it though, watch the video above (with low light and in a dark room) . If it doesn't move your heart, you're living this life all wrong.

July 2017

Cancer: 6/22-7/22
For 34 years you have been painstakingly removing a single hair from the head of each of woman you murder -with plans to weave them into a belt. A mishap involving a a candle-warmer, a vacuum cleaner, and the police breaking down the door to take you 'dead or alive' will bring your collecting days to an unfortunate end.

Leo: 7/23-8/22
Your plan to rook your boyfriend into marrying you by faking a pregnancy will fail this week. There are several reasons why this plan will fail: 1) you have denied him sex for your entire relationship, promising him that flower on the honeymoon. 2) You actually are pregnant. 3) You've been wearing a T-shirt that says 'Gold Digger' on it since the day you met him. 4) The single strand of hair that the Cancer (horoscope above) pulls from your head will be the one and only time he leaves his own DNA at the crime scene.

Virgo: 8/23-9/22
Okay, maybe the stars have been a bit harsh. They know you are a good guy, but you've made a lot of mistakes. The stars are willing to meet at Gina's Coffee Shop on July 12th at noon. If you aren't there, you may as well write off visitation of your kids.

Libra: 9/23-10/22
98% That is the specific number you will give your wife before you jump out of the plane. That optimistic chance of survival will slowly fade as you realize that gravity doesn't care a great deal if you have your arms out or not: Terminal velocity is terminal velocity. Your attempt to recreate the famous scene from the movie Point Break will end just as it should have in the movie: A horrible mass of flesh and bone several miles away from the guy who actually did have the parachute.

Scorpio: 10/23-11/21
The stars have a huge "to do" list. As such, your childhood wish to have sex with Anna Nichole Smith will finally come true this week. No, there's no way to stop it. The stars do apologize for the lateness of the fulfillment of this request, but they think your friends will count it anyway.

Sagitarius: 11/22-12/21
You've seen the movie The Number 23 exactly twenty-two times. You've built your life around avoiding that number. You''ll feel supremely confident when you leave your house on 07/12/2017. But, on 07/12/2017, you will step onto the sidewalk only to be struck and killed by a drunk driver. The time of impact? Exactly 11:01:00am on 07/12/2017. You will have exactly enough time to add up the digits of the date AND time: 1+1+0+1+0+0+0+7+1+2+2+0+1+7=23. Your realization that any date, time, or irrelevant number can be made to equal 23 will be moot.

Capricorn: 12/22-1/19
The stars have been watching you. And your daughter. Oh my, how we have been watching your daughter... Blah, blah, something about a star rising in Orion, blah, blah. The stars will definitely offer you better guidance once that daughter is of legal age.

Aquarius: 1/20-2/18
Every man wants to die a hero. That's human nature. But you have obsessed about it. When little Johnny accidentally starts a fire in his trash can this week, you should calmly walk out of the house with everyone else. If you happen to stand in Johnny's room screaming "take me, I'm the one you want!" That action may be ill-perceived by the police. The firefighters aren't even going to respond; the trash can fire burned itself out without even melting the plastic of the can.

Pisces: 2/19-3/20
Billy-Ray has been wearing that mullet for thirty damn years, so you figured yours would be fine, too. You'll soon realize that Billy-ray can rock that hairdo because he doesn't have to get it near the shake machine at Dairy Queen. You, on the other hand, have to get those lovely locks right up in there. Or, your now-naked scalp did.

Aries: 3/21-4/19
While the police report will read "failed attempt to jump the Grand Canyon", and the coroner's report will read "severe blunt-force trauma", everyone who knows you will know that they should have read "Eh, I think I can make it."

Taurus: 4/20-5/20
Rape. It's a big, scary word. It will also be the most appropriate word for what the biggest guy in jail is about to do to you. Please confer with a Cancer for advice on how to handle it.

Gemini: 5/21-6/21
Yeah, your Lyft driver is also carrying a knife. Unwanted advances will also result in removal of the penis. Keep it in your pants. Unless, of course, the Uber driver already handed it to you. In that case you can wave that thing around like a flag. You're probably not going to get a ride, but you are going to be one in a very exclusive group of men who can 'wave it around like a flag'.