10. Manatees have the same physique as a retired football player.
9. The sentiment of Indiana is "We’re gonna move!"
8. Elton John is a good mommy.
7. If a white guy gets angry, people call him a dick.
6. If you meet someone’s Mom, don’t hug them and say "Oh yeahhh..." and if their Dad’s short, don’t try to pick him up.
5. Pale people can shoot lasers out of their nipples.
4. And it’s possible to get paler.
3. People seem to comment on everything you say in a low whisper.
2. You can have a Hot Pocket for Breakfast, a Hot Pocket for Lunch, and be dead by dinner.
1. Putting bacon bits in a salad only creates a game of "Find the Bacon in The Lettuce."

Inspired by my co-worker Tim who sent a similar list called "10 Thing I Learned From Mitch Hedberg."

For those not currently in the know, I've recently set up a "legitimate" blogging acount at Blogger.

It can be found here: galileo908.blogspot.com. It's mostly like the blog here...except that I blog a little more often there than here.

So to not neglect this blog, I'll post two of the other blogs I've already posted there this week.

1) Stuff That Happened Today (3/4)

Well, some very interesting things happened today in the world of Useful Information.

First of all in Politics: John McCain clinched the Republican Nominee for Pres., and as of writing that blog, Hillary won Ohio, while the Jury is still out in Texas.

2nd: Brett Favre finally retired from football. My friend Tim absolutely loves Frank Caliendo's impression of John Madden talking about Brett Farb. One of these guys are obviously a bit dissappointed.

"I mean, Brett Farb is the greatest, you could cut off both Brett Farb's arms and both Brett Farb's legs and he'd still be the best torso in football. You could find a way to clone Brett Farb, make enough clones for a football team, and have themplay a team made up of clones of Brett Farb. I mean, the universe just might explode."

Finally, in Geek News, the creator of Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax, passed away.

I am *rolls dice* deeply saddened by this loss.

2) Words I Find Funny

As some of you might you, I'm an amateur comedian of sorts, and I try to find humor in all facets of my life.

For some random nonsense, to try to find humor at its core, here are some words that I think are funny:

Booze
Board
Monkey
Weasel
Ferret
Chick
Monkey
Chicken
Steak
Ball
Larry
Intercourse
Muffin
Poland

Expect Part 2 of The Greatest Animated Villains of All Time to be posted soon...but with school and all, don't expect it until after St. Patty's Day.

It took about 7 months in the making, but I'm finally ready to post my list of the 50 Greatest Animated Villains of All Time!

This is a list that has been seen far and few on the internets, mostly because of the challenge that lies within: There are so many greats, so many crappy ones, with several genres and companies to boot. You usually find "Best ___ Villains" like Disney, Looney Tunes, Comic Book Villains, 80s, 90s, etc.

There's also the problem of how many to include. It's notoriously difficult to limit the list to such a low number, like 10. One of my recent favorite websites ListuUniverse.com recently attempted a Top 10 Cartoon Villains List, and failed miserably. Seriously, 1 was Shredder?! Sure, he's an awesome villain (spoiler, he made this list), but I wouldn't put him at 1 (spoiler 2: He's not 1)

I thought 50 was a good number. Enough spots for everyone, but not too many. Why the wait since I formally announced it in June?

Well, for one, compiling the list itself proved to be a nerve-wracking problem. First there was who would make the list, why they were worthy, and what order to put them in. There were certainly a few last-minute changes. Also, for a while my Trial copy of Word expired and was not able to get it back up and running until September. As for the gap between then & now…let's say school and life got in the way.

It's time I finally got this list started! I've decided to split the whole list into 5 parts, with 10 villains in each part. Each villain was chosen by my own personal criteria, such as iconicness, impact on the show/movie he/she represented, impact on pop culture, or just being all-round evil and badass. But I must admit a small bias. As a child of the 90s, there are many late 80s/Early 90s villains represented, but I think I've managed to get great villains from all eras.

50: The Evil Monkey in Chris's Closet – Family Guy

Voiced by: Mike Henry.

We start the list off with the Evil Monkey from Family Guy. During the show's pre-revival days, The Evil Monkey was this random, mysterious character that freaked the hell out of Chris simply by pointing his finger at him, then running away.

In due time, especially in the post-revival episodes, we have seen more of the Evil Monkey, especially an origin story on how he became evil. If the cutaway is true, the Evil Monkey was a normal, talking businessmonkey who had walked in on his wife having an affair (the fact that other monkey wore a diaper must have been equally as scarring), and he suddenly reverts to his now Evil, Finger-pointing state.

Some have said that the Evil Monkey has become less Evil due to finding religion, but I must admit that he might be more frightening with the image of him standing at your closet pointing "The Watchtower" at you.

49: Richard Nixon's Head – Futurama

Voiced By: Billy West

While Futurama has had some great villains, I'd say that Richard Nixon's Head deserves his due as a great villain. First of all, it's Nixon, which should alone place him on a list like this one. He decides to run for President for a 3^rd time in the Year 3000 when he buys Bender's pawned body, and actually manages to win by a single vote when he gains some kind of giant Mecha body.

Aided by his supposed Vice President, The Headless Body of Spiro T. Agnew, Nixon's various crimes include Winning a 3^rd Term (and suspected of having more terms as he is still President as of "Bender's Big Score" set in 3007), planning to eradicate all of the World's Robots,  declaring various pointless wars, allegedly breaking into the Watergate, creating awards such as the Polluting Medal of Pollution and the Dirty Double Cross, losing Earth to the Scammers due to falling from a dumb E-mail scam in "Bender's Big Score," and threatening to "go into people's houses at night and wrecking up the place."

48: Gossamer – Looney Tunes

Voiced By: Mel Blanc

Creeping into Classic Villain territory, we come to Gossamer, the Red/Orange monster from Looney Tunes. Fortunately for you fine reader(s), he's not the only Looney Tunes villain making this list. He's one of the most popular of the truly minor LT characters, appearing in only 3 theatrical shorts, and he wasn't even named Gossamer until his 3rd cartoon.

Existing as a villainous monster in high-tops to scare Bugs Bunny and Duck Dodgers, I'd say he's pretty memorable due to the fact that he can be pretty creepy just by standing there. He's the perfect specimen to be seen chasing you in some abandoned haunted castle, and if he's not threatening to rip you apart with his unmanicured claws, he's killing you with an allergy attack with all of his hair.

I like his shoes. Apparently he & Marvin The Martian shop at the same store.

47: The Woodland Critters – South Park

Voiced By: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, others

A fairly recent entry to the list, their original claim to fame was their lone appearance in the episode "Woodland Critter Christmas," which began as a nice Christmas Story, and, as we all know South Park, degenerates into something much grimmer and darker than we could've imagined. They may look cute and cuddly, but they're evil Satan Worshippers who have Blood Orgies and plot to give birth to the Anti-Christ.

They almost win...until it's revealed that it was all a story concocted by Cartman. What cemented "Greatest Villain" status was their appearance during the recent Imaginationland Trilogy. Not only do they become the de facto leaders of the Evil Imaginary Characters, they manage to freak out Jason Voorhees due to their very conception. They also successfully kill Strawberry Shortcake, poke out her eye, infect themselves with AIDs, and then pee in her eye socket.

Damn.

46: Mojo Jojo – Powerpuff Girls

Voiced By: Roger L. Jackson

At 46, we have Mojo Jojo, the arch-nemesis of the Powerpuff Girls.

Well all know that monkeys can be evil, as evidenced by 50, but this one here seems to be much more evil. For one thing, he's a green monkey with an enormous brain and a textbook Villain outfit due to being exposed to the same Chemical X that accidentally created the Powerpuff Girls.

Exploits include the usual bank robbing, attempting to destroy Townsville, the world, etc with various guns and giant Mecha Robots, accidentally creating the Powerpuff Girls, turning all of Townsville citizens into dogs (twice), living in an observatory on top of a volcano, and mutating every monkey in the local zoo and have them attack Townsville.

You can totally imagine this guy existing, and kicking some major ass. You know you'd love it if he lived with you, and he was constantly pissed off and wanted fights so that every day when you came home, you had to fight him. I think that's awesome in itself. I'm pretty sure the show did a few episodes centered around this subject.

45: The Monarch – The Venture Bros.

Voiced By: Chris McCulloch

Next on the list is the archnemesis of the Venture Family, The Monarch. At face value, he seems to be a show's obligatory lame villain due to the fact that he's themed after the Monarch Butterfly (his origin story didn't even help his cause to begin with). But as the show progressed, he became this incredible badass of a villain.

He's been in jail, managed to break out, commands an army of butterfly-themed minions, and just looking & acting incredibly psycho. Plus, his girlfriend is the manly-sounding Dr. Girlfriend (now Dr. Wife I assume), as well the fact that it's never explained exactly why The Monarch hates Dr. Venture so much.

44: Stewie Griffin – Family Guy

Voiced By: Seth MacFarlane

For this next entry is Stewie Griffin, the evil closeted baby from Family Guy. I'm well aware that he's seemed to have softened up in the past few seasons, but when he's evil…he's evil.

It's been said that he was evil from the start, plotting world domination while in the womb while simultaneously planting a bomb that will detonate on Lois's 50^th Birthday (presumed to be menopause). An overly violent loan shark, celebrity murderer, President of The World, tying up a bully when playing "Roman Polanski's House," introducing Yoko to Lennon, inspiring OJ to kill, controlling Chris to buy weapons, plotting to eradicate broccoli, arson against his cheating ex-pretend wife, traveling in time to ruin his future, carjacking, running a pyramid scheme, talking like Rex Harrison, and being Darth Vader are among his many evilish deeds.

43: The Mooninites – Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Voiced by: Matt Maiellaro (Ignignokt), Dave Willis (Err)

They're the Mooninites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Ignignokt & Err. While the ATHF has some awesome villains (the Plutonians, MC Pee Pants, Dr. Weird & Steve, The Cybernetic Ghost), I think these guys are their greatest villains. 2-D, pot smoking thieves, they harken back to the Atari days of gaming, with their main weapons being powerful, slow-moving lasers, as well as their threats to spank nerds with moon rocks. One of their greatest villainy feats were organizing most of the villains on the show (save for the Plutonians and a few one-shots) into one super-villain group to unsuccessfully destroy the Aqua Teen once and for all.

In the real world, they're mostly responsible for that bomb scare in Boston last year promoting the ATHF Movie. That pretty much gets them a nod, aside from their other "evil" deeds.

42: Mr. Mxyzptlk - Superman

Voiced By: Gilbert Gottfried (DCAU Version)

Our first foray into comic book villainy is the trickster villain Mr. Mxyzptlk, hailing from the 5th Dimension. Depending on which medium or Age you've seen Superman in, there's a version of Mxy, mostly to serve as a real pain in the ass for the Man of Steel.

Even though he doesn't have "evil" intentions, he's an antagonist, messes with Superman's world for absolutely no other reason for the fact that he's bored with his own dimension and uses his other worldly powers to screw things up. Hell, he's capable of switching the DC-verse with the Marvel one, but those kinds of specials only come 17 times a year.

Pictured above (on the right) is my favorite incarnation from Superman: The Animated Series

41: Soundwave – Transformers

Voiced By: Frank Welker

We end our first list with one of the more bad-assed retro villains out there, Soundwave from Transformers.

Back during the Classic G1 days, Soundwave was the 2^nd-in-Command of the Decepticons, and showed it with his bulky build and his robotic voice. Just looking at him screamed awesomeness, even while looking through the Nostalgia-Colored Glasses that the people who were born from 1978-1988 wear. He was also the Master of Stealth…in 1980s standards.

Two reasons why this guy isn't ranked higher:

1) His alt mode is a tape deck. As in Cassettes, which also transform into smaller robots. While supporting-role humans of both 1984 and present day are dumb-as-rock filler characters, they would both distinguish a Tape Deck being out of the ordinary and wondering why it's just sitting there in the desert.

"eBay!" Says the dumb human while carrying it back to the Autobot's hideout.

The Transformers people have tried bringing Soundwave back for more recent series, but, since this is the iPod age, a music player wouldn't have worked (damn you, Michael Bay!). A few different robots with the Soundwave name appeared, but they just aren't the same awesome Decepticon we all remember.

2) Due to Megatron dying in the movie and being reformatted into Galvatron, along with a few new Minions, Soundwave was basically pushed into the background for newer toys faces like Scourge and Cyclonus. I hear he currently releases Party Mix Tapes through Time-Life infomercials.

And that concludes Part 1 of (hopefully) a 5-Part series. In short…this was much harder than I thought it was going to be, no wonder why no one does this.

It's my

It's my first post of 2008…27 days into it! Damn, where the hell was I? This time last year I had, like, 4 blogs by now! Let's just say that I had been partying for the last 3 weeks…and that College started up again.

I tried writing my now-trying-to-be-annual Year In Review 2007 blog three different times, with 2 times giving up due to lack of interest in doing so, and one time getting 3/4 of the way until myspace ate all my work somehow.

So, without further adieu, instead of wasting my whole night writing & researching my blog and suppressed memories, here is my Abridged Review of 2007:

(In mostly Chronological Order)

-My KB Toys store closed in January, making me focus completely on the CVS job.

-Got a new Kitten on Super Bowl Sunday!

-Bears lost the Super Bowl

-Frat Bro DJ got sick around the same time and was in the hospital for 3 months, very terrible

-Turned 19!

-Went on a Quest to find a Shamrock Shake: Unsuccessful

-During Lent, I did a quest on eating the Fish Sandwich at every local fast food chain: Successful (Also: remind me to never do it again)

-New Pledge Class came into my DPO Frat…I didn't get a "Little Brother" that semester for some reason

-Got a girlfriend in April following some really unlikely circumstance. Sam & I are still together 9 months later!

-Created an 11-Point To-Do List For Summer. I completed 8 of those points in May alone.

-Went to NYC 3 times over the course of the year. You can simply scroll down to see exactly what I managed to complete.

-Went to 6 Flags in May…in short: awesome time, that's the best time to go.

-Started a Facebook, sadly lived up to the addiction by somewhat neglecting the myspace page

-Saw SEVERAL movies over the summer, including the much-awaited Transformers and the Simpsons Movie…both very awesome.

-Ratatouille: Awesome

-Spider-man & Pirates 3: Slightly Awesome

-Shrek 3: Not Awesome

-[llama]

-[llama]

-[duck]

-For some reason, blogged the premiere of High School Musical 2 in Real-Time.

-Sadly neglected the blog, mostly due to busyness and lack of motivation

-Found the Shamrock Shake reincarnated as the Chocolate-Flavored Minty Mudbath Shake…might have been the chocolate, might have been the mint, or both…but I didn't like it.

-Holidays came and went

-STILL haven't finished watching all the DVDs I got for Christmas

That's about it. All in all, a good year.

And to make sure that you, the blog-reader, don't feel gypped by that, I'll get to another point I've been wanting to make that's more to my level.

And that is what might be one of the most anticipated Nintendo Games, Ever: Smash Bros. Brawl for Wii.

Hell, I don't have a Wii yet…but that's because I promised myself that I would hold out on it until the game came out. It's been roughly 1 1/2 years since Wii's launch, and Brawl finally has a definite release date for March 9 (quite the difference from what was originally supposed to be a Launch title back in '06)

And with this game focusing on the different Playable Characters, fans, nerds, and geeks alike have all been speculating what the final Roster will be. Fortunately, we in the U.S. will have to wait for long, as the Japanese release is slated for Next Thursday, and we'll certainly know everything then.

For those of you forgot some details from the previous game, Melee, had a total roster of 25 Characters, not counting the dual characters of The Ice Climbers and Zelda/Shiek counting as single characters.

Currently, Brawl on the other hand, currently has a confirmed starting roster of 21 Characters, with Solid Snake & Sonic confirmed as hidden characters as well as unconfirmed appearances by Luigi, Jigglypuff, Ness (Earthbound), and Lucario (a 4^th generation Pokemon). Counting Shiek, Zero Suit Samus, and the 3 Pokemon of the Pokemon Trainer (Squirtle, Ivysaur, Charizard) as their own separate characters, the starting roster becomes at least 25. And not counting the Hidden Chracters, which we know nothing about save for Sonic, Snake, as well as Luigi, Jigglypuff, and possibly Ness and Lucario…The total roster is rumored to be at least 40. That's a hell of a lot.

This bring me to my topic: The Fan Speculated Characters. If one has ventured to IGN, or even been into its message board for the past…year, fan speculation has been fierce and steady, with some ridiculous choices like Master Chief from Halo, various Final Fantasy characters, as well as several characters that have only appeared in one game that no one but that one nerd has ever heard of.

That's just stupid. It'll never happen and these theories only exist in these nerd fantasies, or like actual nerds, somewhere in the bottom of a garbage can covered up by various paper towels and tissues to destroy such evidence.

Before I digress yet again, This is my list of 5 Potential Smash Bros Characters That Probably Won't Happen. Unlike several fantasies, these are plausible and would be welcome additions, but they will probably not show up this time around. Maybe next time.

-Ridley (Metroid series)

This is the main villain from the Donkey Kong Country series, he basically looks like this, but his appearance has changed slightly with each passing game. With the addition of Diddy Kong as a playable character, many in the fan community have assumed that K. Rool should follow.

While unlike Ridley, I do believe that this guy's possible for playability, but I also believe that he'll be a Boss character. He's slightly bigger than DK himself, probably at Bowser height, and his speculation for moves would have to be creative, as I really can't think of many except for throwing his crown and doing mega punches/slams. The Smash Bros guys are more creative than I am.

-Geno (Super Mario RPG)

Now this character is a favorite of mine, and at this point we're heading to 50/50 Territory. This means that I believe that an appearance by this guy warrants an even division of "Possible" and "WTF Are You Thinking?!"

For a brief history of this character, Geno is actually the body itself, its very soul is actually a Star Spirit from the Star Road who had inhabited a doll and became human-sized to help out Mario's quest, and fought with a variety of energy beam attacks. And this bastard hasn't been in a major role since.

His possibly moveset can be very diverse, mostly focusing on projectiles. Geno Beam, Geno Whirl, and his Star Gun are all major possibilities for special moves, while his Geno Boost would be a creative idea for his Up+B move. Hell, I've theorized that his Final Smash could be the Geno Flash, Geno Blast or even the Geno Whirl itself which has been known to deal 9,999 damage in the original RPG. Can I just say that the very idea of this character would be kickass? I thought so.

Only problem? That little deal about Square-Enix owning most of the rights to the game, especially to Geno, but  Nintendo & Square seem to have reconciled in recent years and that a reintroduction to this classic game may come back, and adding Geno would certainly be a good start.

-Banjo (Banjo-Kazooie games)

The only thing stopping this guy from making a Brawl appearance is the fact that Microsoft made Rare their bitch 5 or so years ago. I forgot how long its been. Banjo (and Kazooie) are the stars of Banjo-Kazooie, and its sequel Banjo-Tooie, both for N64.

Banjo and his birdie companion Kazooie would've made one hell of a tandem character. Banjo was all the physical moves, all the close combat fighting would've been him. Many of the special moves would be provided by Kazooie, and there's basically no limit of combos or ideas for moves. The egg projectiles would have to be the regular B move, something like Beak Barge move, the Beak Bayonet or something akin to Banjo swinging around Kazooie for the Smash B move, Up B move involving flight, and the Down B being the Bill Drill.

For Final Smash, this could range for anything, we could do the Beak Bomb, we could have Invincibility with the Gold Feathers, hell, we could've had Breegull Blaster, the F'ing Sniper mode!

But nope…damn you Microsoft.

And now the Final Not Gonna Happen Character (this time anyway):

-Mega Man

Like it's gonna happen this time. You never know about a future game with this guy, but he certainly deserves his due. Appearing on the NES, SNES, and the various Game Boy incarnations (Mega Man 64? What Mega Man 64?), he can definitely join the ranks, but being owned by Capcom…he's not Brawling for a

while.

Oh sure, we could configure his moveset. Blasters, able to steal other player's powers, using Rush somehow, but there's no reason to do it. He's just not gonna be in this game. Hell, it's even been confirmed that Mega Man will NOT be in it. The end.

Well, that's it for me, but be sure to tune in next week when we find out the real Final Roster and I'll comment on it!

I hope everyone's having a Merry Christmas today! It's almost over and I thought the gifts that were on my list were not gonna come, as my mom ordered them off Amazon and got en email saying they wouldn't arrive til the 26th!

Fortunately, an Xmas Miracle ocurred and an Amazon box came yesterday!

Well...let's see what I got this year!

(It was the 2-pack, but I couldn't find a pic of them together)

(from Diaz. Go figure.)

(From Steve)

These were my favorite gifts this year:

..> ..>(From Sam)

There were also some other gifts with pics that I can't retirieve on the Net:

-A $25 Best Buy Gift Card (CVS Secret Santa gift)
-A White Castle Gift card from Steve
-An Orange Hoodie from Sam's Parents
-Assorted candy & money

-And most of all, a 12-pack of custom Jones Soda Bottles with me & Steve's picture on them from Sam, where she had written some nice stuff about us. I love it.

Well...that's it. For now. Merry _______, Everyone!

Well, Christmas is almost upon us, and I apologize for the lack of Christmas-themed blogs…and blogs themselves in general. Life, tiredness, lack of chutzpah, etc.

If you weren't around last year, here are the Christmas-Related Blogs I posted:

-Elements for Rankin-Bass Specials

-Favorite Christmas Specials

-Other Christmas Stuff

-My Gifts from Christmas '06

And Gifts I wanted For Christmas, But Never Got…just scroll down.

But tonight, I wanted to share with you all the various traditions that I observe in my life around Christmas time!

-Christmas Specials

Yes, from Charlie Brown, to Garfield, to The Grinch, to "How _____ Saved Christmas" and the 5,000 interpretations of A Christmas Carol, Muppet or Non-Muppet involvement alike. But most of all, I'm into the Rankin-Bass Specials. All of them…even the crappy ones no one's ever heard of. I believe I've proven this point before in the previous blogs that I linked above. ABC Family usually shows a Marathon of them on Christmas Eve that I always watch, and this year didn't disappoint…almost.

You see, they didn't just keep the specials just for Christmas Eve, ABC Family ran them constantly throughout December! But on Xmas Eve itself…it just ran 6 Specials from 11-6pm…only 2 of them worth watching (Year Without A Santa Claus & Santa Claus is Comin' To Town were the ones that closed out the "marathon") to make way for double Showings of "The Polar Express"…which they ran about 500 times already this month.  Its not even that good! And badly animated to boot!

-HESS Trucks

Yes, my one constant Xmas gift is the annual HESS Truck provided by my Grandmother. This year, however, it seems that HESS is running out of ideas. Unlike previousy ears of sticking motorcycles and/or Helicopters on a Flatbed, HESS made a completely new Monster Truck...With Motorcycles.

I have every Truck since 1988 or so…and most of them are still in their boxes. I can't wait til they become collector's Items…I mean more expensive ones.

-NORAD Santa Tracker

I'm one of those Agnostic Santa Believers, meaning there is a possibility that Santa may or may not exist. If there is a contest for Best Government Organization, I'd nominate NORAD for the honor.

Besides keeping our defenses safe in the air and for and against hackers, Every December 24^th, the NORAD website keeps a "Santa Tracker" which posts videos of Santa sightings all over Earth. The last 2 years, however, they've mostly kept the same videos, but putting different audio of different NORAD workers repeating the same damn message. But this year is the first time all of the vids are on Youtube!

But I don't give a damn. It's magical! And…I can't believe NORAD doesn't have a more sophisticated Computer Animation program…

While on the subject of Santa…

-Santa on the Fire Truck

This cheesy tradition dates back to my childhood. Every year around the first or second Saturday of December, the local Fire Department patrols around town with a Santa on the truck waving to all the little girls and boys in their houses. I realized that each Fire Department on Long Island does this and not just mine, and they do it at different days and times (he visited Bayport last Tuesday at around 9 at night). The truck usually blares Christmas music and has his "helpers" knock on doors of houses with open curtains to give out candy canes to the people forced to witness this event. This year was funny, as while the Santa Truck came, it blared a badly-sounding rendition of "Winter Wonderland" as it sped away into the daylight. The Santa, as well as some fire fighters, were ducking their heads under the power lines in order to save Christmas from being ruined…again.

This remind me of a joke of a comedian friend of mine, my Frat Brother Brian. He had this set that ask the question: "What if the Santa Truck had to respond to a call?" You would bet that the little kids would be traumatized, and that the coal that would be given for their naughtiness of committing Arson would do nothing to extinguish the fire.

And finally, we come to my last tradition:

-Advent Calendars

Throughout the last few years, I actually have 2 different Advent Calendars that I follow.

The first one is an Advent Calendar Adventure that is run by Matt of X-Entertainment.com fame. It started in 2002 of him taking pictures of the various gifts that come out of the Playmobil Advent Calendar (and in recent years, the LEGO one too) to comment on how awful the gifts were. In the years that followed, these advent calendars took on a life of their own, and these random riffing pics became epic adventures, involving not just the Playmobil and LEGO characters, but Star Wars LEGO Characters, a female Playmobil Chracter named after obscure Brat Pack member Mare Winningham, 2 Utroms (Krang-like creatures from the new Ninja Turtles cartoon) that have inhabited the bodies of the 2004 Playmobil Santa & Mrs. Claus figures, an annoying talking Snowman, a man wearing a Tiger costume, and even James Lipton! This year's calendar has been for the most part, Epic. It involved 2 Playmobil Bunnies and the Burnt 2006 Playmobil Santa attempting to kill the Heroic characters by summoning their demon god Leviathan…only to have it backfire on them and to reveal a guy in a Giant Bunny Costume taking the Head Villain to Hell, which all played with an ongoing month-long conspiracy of a site that was hidden in the December 23rd box of the calendar.You have to really read every Advent Calendar Entry to every Advent Calendar to really get what's going on. If you manage to do so…it's pretty awesome.

The other advent calendar kind of works like an actual one. There's this stuffed Santa with 24 different slots on his belly, and what my mom does is fill all 24 slots with Scratch-off Lotto Tickets (or in this year's case, 25 tickets). And on Christmas Day, I scratch off all of them, hoping to make some quick cash. There have been years where I didn't win anything, but I've been lucky for the past few years, averaging $15-20!

And that's all for me tonight, Merry Christmas Everyone!

Well, the Christmas Season is upon us yet again, and I'm happy to announce a few things:

1) School's ending basically next week, so I'll have more time to blog!

2) I actually have some goddamn Christmas Cheer this year. I'm actually looking forward to Christmas.

On a subject of Christmas that I haven't covered yet, we come to the almighty Children's Bible known as the Sears Wish Book Catalog. Yes, for those of you who don't remember or too young, Retail stores such as Sears and J.C. Penney's had catalogues that would come out in mid-November called Wish Books. Well, they still do release these books, but they no longer come in the mail, are called Wish Books, nor are as kickass.

For one thing, these catalogs had EVERYTHING known to man, especially stuff that you'd never find in an actual Sears, like the Toys & Games sections. Also, at its peak in the mid-80s, early-90s, these books were in excess of 500 pages (the 1985 Sears book clocks in at 532 pages ). And yes, these catalogues date back to Sears early days since before 1894. A catalog from that year only had 322 pages.

Before I digress, I, as well as the rest of my generation, as well as the older ones that gre up in the 70s and 80s, considered Wish Books to be one of the holiest books imaginable. This was well before Amazon and the internet itself where you could just click on the thing you want, and then order it by clicking again. All we had to do was search all the pages, or like most kids, skip right to the good parts with the toys, games, electronics and high-priced novelty items, and just circle the pictures of what we wanted. And if we were lucky, our parents had to call Sears up on the phone to order it. But most of the time, they just went to Toys R Us and got the stuff themselves.

And through the 20 years I've been on this Earth, obviously I've gotten a lot of gifts, even moreso since i'm an only child so my parents had more money to concentrate on gifts for one person. And out of all the gifts I had gotten, there was that tiny few ones that I had never received, and most likely never will even scouring collectible shops and flea markets. After reading Matt of X-Entertainment.com fame's article on gifts received and missed from the 1985 Sears Wishbook, I have decided to do the same.

What are my favorite gifts that I have never gotten? I shall show you.

Green DragonZord - Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

Yes, after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle craze died off, there was basically no boy back in the day that never had an argument about which Power Ranger was the best (Green/White for me!) and the occaisonal discussion of which of the girl Power Rangers were hotter (I was a Pink Ranger guy myself, mostly because the Yellow Ranger sometimes sported a package). Back in the day before my Transformers obsession took off, I had many a Power Ranger Christmas (aka, all the presents being centered around one central theme. Besides PR Christmas, I've also had TMNT Christmas, Nintendo Christmas, and in recent years, Transformers/DVD Christmas). And as the geek I was, I thought the show was incredibly awesome, so I had to get all the toys.

The concept behind the "Zords" were that they were the Giant Robots piloted by the Power Rangers that combined into a bigger "Megazord" that fought the Monster of The Day when it grew 1000x its size in the last 5 minutes of the episode. Sounds a bit like Voltron? It should, as Voltron basically a cartoon version of the various Super Sentai series in Japan made around the same time, which the American Version takes all its footage & concepts from.

The above toy is of the Green Dragonzord, piloted by the Green Ranger, and it was the most kickass zord of them all in the first season. It was Green. It was a Dragon. And it was a fucking Robot. You couldn't lose, and being able to combine with the 4 supporting robots of the original Megazord (Triceratops, Pteradactyl, Sabre-Tooth Tiger, and Mastodon) to make an even more kickass Megazord, while the red Robot T-Rex just stood there as it really couldn't do much on its down despite being a robot T-Rex, certainly helped its cause. For several years, I had all of the various Megazords and supporting vehicles with the exception of this one. I have no idea why, but it had somehow escaped my clutches. My cousin had it, though, and I am still jealous about it. (Yes, the very same Cousin that I mentioned a few blogs back that owned the collection of GoBots).

This brings me to mentioning its companion toy that I also didn't have:

The Dragon Dagger. It was used by the Green Ranger not only as an awesome dagger weapon, it was also a flute that was used to summon the damn Dragon bot. Once again, I had collected all of the weapons in the early PR series, except for this one. For one thing, believe I remember not knowing it existed until a kid showed up with it one day at recess, and by that time it was too late to find it.

Classics Megatron

Now we come to something a bit more...recent. This version of Megatron was released in the Classics line of Transformers in 2006. Out of all the non-recolor figures in that entire line, this is the only figure that I don't have. The problem with this is that this is the first Megatron since the original released 20+ years that transforms into a fucking gun! A futuristic Nerf Gun, but a gun nonetheless. Damn Anti-Toy Gun Laws, we can't even import the G1 Rerelease from Japan!

Because of this, the figure went from "Hard To Find, but Still Possible" to "OMFG! NONE LEFT IN THE WORLD!" status in the span of a month, and I unfortunately did not forsee this. "Why can't you just go on Amazon?" For one thing, Hasbro had moved on with this series ever since the Movie and the subsequent figures arrived, and now they fetch a high price an any Transformers buyer's market, even Amazon where the Toys section is now carried by an independant toy company instead of Toys R Us, which basically equates to "Enormous Ripoff" at a respectable site like Amazon." Also, I have most of the Megatrons that have ever been released in the U.S., save for the Galvatron recolors (not needed), the smaller "Heroes of Cybertron" line or any smaller, inferior scale figure, the Megatron from Machine Wars (KB Toys exclusive series from 10 years ago, but the figure was subsequently recolored for the Robots in Disguise line, which I own), and any variation of the Movie Version of Megatron. I need my completion status, damnit!

Garfield Cat Tales 3-DVD set

And now we move to the realm of DVDs. This set serves a purpose in which to remind us all that there was a time when Garfield was great and funny. Besides the great "Garfield & Friends" tv show, there had been 12 Animated Garfield Specials produced between 1982 to 1991, with quite a few of these specials predating the show itself. I already own the "Garfield Holiday Celebrations" DVD which has the legendary Christmas, Halloween, and Thanksgiving specials, while this set has...the other 9. I've asked for this last Christmas, and pretty much the year before, but still didn;t get it for some reason, but I still want it.

Slave I

Going back a little further in my childhood, we come to Star Wars. Back in those great years in my generation growing up in the mid-90s, Kenner decided to re-release the Star Wars figures & vehicles just before everyone's lives were tarnished by the Re-releases, and then Episode I. But the toys...Damn, they re-released all the great ones, especially the vehicles like Millennium Falcon, X-Wing, AT-ATs, AT-STs, TIE Fighters, Landspeeders, Snowspeeders, etc. I think my generation was the first to have figures of B-Wings and TIE Bombers, as I'm starting to see them on store shelves again along with all the other mainstays.

And then there was Slave I, the spaceship driven by that kickass bounty hunter Boba Fett. I don't really need to explain its awesomeness, you can see it for yourself and tell yourself "That's fucking awesome." Dear god, you have no idea how much I wanted this. The story that I have behind this is that I explicity told a friend of mine in elementary school to get this for me for my Birthday, so I would know that I'd get it and not get another Stupid, Thoughtless Gift. That's when my mom gave me this "message" that it was wrong to flat-out tell someone what present they should get you, and just suck up the surprise of getting a Stupid, Thoughtless Gift.

In the end, I think that friend ended up giving me a Stupid, Thoughtless Gift. That, and he's no longer my friend

A Metal Detector

Oh, come on, there hasn't been a time in your life where you asked yourself "Wouldn't it be awesome if I had a Metal Detector?" I sure have several times. You'd have fantasies of re-enacting that one episode of "Pete & Pete" where the dad used his Metal Detector to find what would become the Family Car buried in the sand at the beach. I'd always hope to use it to find some lost treasure in the sand, varying from Buried Treasure to Gold, to simply enough coins to spend on a soda. It doesn't really help with all those "Fantastic Buried Treasures and Where To Find Them" shows running on the Travel Channel to help your obsession either.

Just imagine, someone buried Wolverine or Collosus in the sand and forgot where they were and hired you and your metal detector to go find them. And then they'd reward you with the Pete & Pete car. Good times...

And now, the final gift from my childhood that I always wanted but never got:

Knockout

Knockout, my one burden on life. Don't recognize this game? I'm not surprised, it's one of the more obscure board games that Milton Bradley put out in the 80s, and then again in the early 90s. The game worked as such:

It worked as a variation of that game "Don't Break The Ice," where all the multicolored blocks are stacked up like so in the picture above, and then you roll a die to decide which color block you knock out of the wall with that little Electric Pouding Hammer. You lose if the wall collapses or if that big "Knockout" block falls off in any way. Sounds awesome? You know it did! And I wanted it so bad, I had specifically told my parents to get it for me the Christmas where I saw the awesome ad for it. For that entire season, I had been impatiently waiting until the 25th where I could finally play with it at last.

And on Christmas Day, guess what I open up?

A totally different game called "Wipe Out." This game is so obscure that scouring the internet comes up with absolutely no pictures of it. To describe it, it was a game where we have this big cardboard wave, and you had to get your little Surfer Dude down that wave before time runs out and a big cup of slime is released, coating everything in it and you lose.

Yeah, I was really thrilled getting this and not Knockout.  I only played this game once with a few friends, and long story short, slime got everywhere, from my clothes, to my friend's hair, to damaging the carpet which later led to its replacement about a year afterwards.

Well, Thanksgiving has come upon us once again. I apologize for not posting any blogs for a while, but school and such prevented me from not doing anything.

For those of you who have been reading this blog since the beginning, I posted a blog like this last year.

Once again, I'll devote this blog to say what I'm thankful for this year, although my list of things I'm thankful for has some change from last year, but similar themes still exist.

For instance, I'm thankful for my brothers of DPO. My first full year of the frat has been good, we've had ups and downs, but we're still together and still going strong. We also had our annual Thanksgiving Eve Party last night, but it was at our usual spot at Shamrocks rather than Caramel Lounge of last year. I'll have to say that this party went a hell of a lot better, as there was more space and just as many people. I had a much better time than last year, and there were no lines to get in after going out to get air, as there was more than once exit in the place.

I'm also thankful for my friends. I have made plenty of new ones this year and they're all glad to have me in their life, as well as I am with them. This is getting a little cheesy, but oh well.

What I'm really thankful for is my girlfriend. Sam & I have been together for 7 months now and I don't regret a moment of it. I was one of those people who never believed that love existed, but then Sam & I became a couple, and I've found that love is real.

As opposed to last year, I'm thankful that I'm not working an opening shift for Black Friday tomorrow. Since KB is gone, I no longer have to be at work at 4:30 in the goddamn morning. I can sleep in now! When my manager showed my this week's schedule and I saw that I was working from 2-8 tomorrow, I literally said to her "I love you."

And once again, I'm not thankful for ABC's Scheduling of "Charlie Brown Thanksgiving." They're still not playing it on Thanksgiving, but they did move its showing a day later than last year, on Tuesday as opposed to Monday. I do, however, fear the day when the special will suffer the same scheduling fate as "Charlie Brown Christmas," which, after reading last year's Thanksgiving post, aired on the 28th of November!  Fprtunately, I have yet to hear when this special will air, and with the Writer's Strike still going on, I'll assume that it'll actually air in December this year to make up for holes in programming.

Finally, sadly, I had no trucks jacknife in front of my house this year, so no more free cases of soda.

And that's it for me for now. That tryptophan's starting to kick in now, so I hope I don't fall asleep while typing this. I'm going to pop in Garfield's Thanksgiving Special in my DVD player and see if the humor can be amplified from my buzz.

Not to make any promises, but I hope that after my major work for school ends, I'll be posting Christmas-themed blogs like I did last year. Also, My Top 50 Animated Villains Blog will be coming soon, and hope to get it posted before the end of the year.

Well, there's still a half hour of Halloween left, and by god, I will post a damn blog!

Continuing the trend from last year, I took pictures of the costumes that people wore during my college's Fall Fest this year. There were quite a few costumegoers this year, myself included. I was only able to get 11 pictures because not every costume was great, as well as fear that the batteries in the camera were dying. This is the reason why you won't see a picture of me dressed as Mitch Hedberg.

Do you see what's wrong with this picture? I'll give you 5 seconds.

Ding! The answer is: The Hulk isn't a member of the Justice League! Totally Different comic book company! 

Believe it or not, this was actually one of 2 people dressed as Ron Burgundy. The other one had a blue suit on, but was carrying around a highball full of "Scotch."

Speaking of which, there seems to have been a Will Farrell Movie Theme going this year: this guy dressed up as Chazz Micheal Micheals from "Blades of Glory."

Ahh, my beloved Gf. I love her so. She went as a Tavern Wench. Definately a better change from last year's costume as LiveJournal.

I wish DJ was there for this one. Some okay-looking girls dressing up as some Sailor Scouts from Sailor Moon. It turns out after I took this pic, a 4th Sailor Scout showed up, and I was pissed. Also Not Pictured: Gratuitous Tentacle Monster. He was raiding the Haunted House at the time.

Here's one of the Nicer costumes. A girl still dressing sexy, although not in a scary or traumatizing way. The Blue Fairy/Fairy Godmother. It's one of those inside jokes at SJC.

I guess it's not Peanut Butter Jelly Time right now. Don't blame him, it's been a crappy Halloween Season. I haven't been high on spirits until just a few days ago. Now that I've finally gotten my Halloween on...it's over.

This is depressing and the costume isn't cheering me up like it's supposed to, so I'm moving on.

Ok, now this is REALLY confusing me. They look and taste so good...but...they're McDonald's mascots...they're slutty...AHHHH!!!!!

I never thought I'd say the phrase "Slutty Hamburgular," but I just did and it's being trademarked. It also sounds like an awesome band name.

Also, the one on the right is supposed to be dressed as a Fry Kid. Very good reference.

Now this is simply sad. Ever since Frodo threw the One Ring into Mt. Doom, the Ringwraiths have been out of a job, with this one shilling free Ice Cream Floats. The others were either giving pony rides, painting people's faces black, or just being creepy for people for a small fee.

This was by far my favorite costume of the day. Don't recognize him? He's dressed as Gung Ho, from the GI Joe cartoon. And now you know...and Knowing is Half The Battle!

I'll leave you with this picture. This year's Fall Fest gave away Free Soup, which really doesn't fit the definition of "Spooky," but they still dissappeared quickly. I almost deleted this pic, but then these lyrics from Stephen Lynch's song "Halloween" came into my head:

"A pinch of your brother,
a Teaspoon of you,
The Head of your Sister
would make a good stew.
I'd give you a taste,
But your tongues in the stew!
Irony!
That's what Halloween means to me!"

Well, that's it for me. Hope you had a good Halloween. I'm gonna go watch Homestar Runner Halloween Toons until I fall asleep.

In my extreme boredom and randomness, I wrote a poem. I hope you enjoy (or at least understand it)

Brussels Sprouts Magnolias

Root beer's my cracker jack

And now there's gumdrops in the sky.

What is meaning? I see none.

Is it all a dream of my worthless rut?

Marshmallow Candy Cane Rainbows

Are what I crave to make the earth spin.

Absurdity can be reeling sometimes,

I can see it plain and true.

Maybe I can think of a simpler tune.

I wish it was summertime.

The Air smelled of fresh lettuce wrappers,

Trailing through the breeze.

The confiding heat lulled me into satisfaction.

The leaves are crinkling, the air is becoming chilly,

Pumpkins are being mutilated,

And confections are being hidden in baskets, by the bushel, pound, and liter.

I can sense the time growing shorter,

As it's getting longer.

I patiently await my fate,

Although destiny is something I cannot decide.

When the snow falls,

And thaws anew,

I know that new awakenings are still unseen.

Should I stay my course,

Or should I don a new mask, cape, costume?

If the months could tell, it would be obvious

When the towers will ring.

As it rests, it waits and schemes,

A horizon is straying into view,

The season's just beginning.

Mash up conversations will do better

When gently soaked in market stew cola laps.

When doom deems itself worthy of sitting next to garland,

They should realize that the pockets are tearing without ducts.

Free books are a crock at integrity,

Justice cannot be served, nor taught, nor read,

As we rest in our seats, too sedentary to care any longer.

Monsters whip around insanity closets,

Trample around the dirt, gutting every passenger in the tramway,

Possibly as compensating for their shrilly noses, which cause their tiny voices

To pierce the souls of all who distrust them.

I fear that I am bulging from my senses,

My magical cocoon no longer stabilizing the vicious reality that is my mind.

I should never have let it wander, as I still had three more payments left.

In this great, big life of ours, I know that there's a lot of things that I think are simply fucked up. There are problems and strange occurances happening in our lives that no one just doesn't want to touch or explain...and I guess this geek is the one that has to explain it the best way that he can.

These are some of my theories on the little unsung aspects of life that no one just doesn't want to talk about.

1) Crossword Puzzles

Yes, the mighty crossword puzzle. I can thank one of my frat borthers for getting me hooked on these. For the 3 people who don't know what this is, you must fill in the spaces with the words provided in clues, and all these words interconnect with each other and have to fit the spaces as well. So if you're missing a letter to one word, you're missing the solution to 4 words itself. Then there are those long clues, like 19 Across. These are usually some multiword phrase that has a really witty clue, and usually makes no sense when solved except for a reason to tie the other 14 words together somehow.

My theory is this: Crosswords are the ultimate test of geekdom, but the clues that are given for these words seemed so witty and sophisticated that average people deem these as "Legit Quizzes." Case in point, I usually do the USA Today Crossword, and nothing makes me feel more like an idiot than spending more than 25 minutes doing one of those, because most of these words are so easy and obvious, but the clues are so freaking vague that sometimes I'm on the brink of sanity trying to figure out what word fits in the space.

Case in point, I'll use today's (9/27) crossword (note, it did not look like the one pictured). It ranged from obvious (5 letter "Ridley Scott film" = Alien), to the aformetioned vague clue, but easy word (4 letter "random number generators"...which turned out to be Dice) Then there are those words that only the intellectual elite would know that because the word either 1) fit the description of what they do or 2) have just taken the SATs. The clue for 24 across was a 4 letter word for "Apportion (with 'out')"...The word was Mete.

What. The. Fuck?! I'm pretty sure they made that word up to fit the letters into 4, 5, 21 and 26 Down. (Sesame, Antwerp, Steep, and Eder, respectively) Seriously, I've never heard of "Mete Out" or "out Mete" show me when someone actually used this. Cite your damn sources!

Another good example, 9 Down's clue was a 6 letter word for "Solar Phenomenon." The word/phrase was "Sun Dog." The hell? I'm from Long Island and I'm fairly up to date with science and scientific slang, but I have never heard that phrase before in my life. All I have to say is this: Fuck you, Eugene Newman, author of the 9/27 crossword. Fuck you.

2) Popularity

Ah, now onto a subject we can all relate to. Why are people popular? Why do people follow other people around? Well, here's what I have to say about it:

There are "legit" reasons that I believe cause fame and popularity: You're a politician or leader in power, you're an actor that starred in some big movie, or just made it, you're an athelete, you invented something to make the world better, you're a talented and/or funny entertainer, or you just saved the world somehow. These things make people follow these people around. It causes the press and random nobody bloggers such as myself to focus on their every move. These people become famous and popular quickly, and they can lose it just as fast.

With these "legit" factors, there are obviously my "Not Legit" factors. These include wealth, being the relative of a wealthy person, you're good-looking, someone who was recorded doing something embarassing against their will and the video of them doing it became a hit on youtube (Chocolate Rain Guy, I'm looking your way), you murdered people and/or tried to destroyed the world, and however Kevin Federline receives the attention that he so unjustly deserves despite never doing anything besides being a really crappy backup dancer and a incredibly terrible all-around person.

I think that popularity itself and its result of people following them around is simply because they want to share the success. People hang around the wealthy because they want some cash; people hang around inventors and companies so they can get free swag; people ogle good-looking people so they can have sex with them; and people hang around talented people in order to get jobs, or get them to appear in their crappy film adaptation of their crappy Sailor Moon Fanfic.

When these people do something that makes them lose this popularity, either they become old, they don't do anything for a long period of time, and/or make a really bad career choice (crappy album/tv show/movie, finding religion, appearing naked about 15 years after anyone wanted to, etc), the people that followed them around simply move on to the next thing that will somehow help their desire for free stuff, sex, promising careers, and free sex.

This segues into my next theory:

3) Corruption of Power

"The weakness of the power is the power itself." I believe that this quote came from an episode of the Zoids anime, but anime or not, this quote still rings true. To me, the only thing people in power and popularity want is to keep their power, and do anything they can to keep it.

Think about it...in my view, it's the reason that government won't actually do anything. The politicians would say what the people want to hear, like promises for health care, better taxes, education reform, housing reform, and ending the so-called war that should not have been started in the first place. But these things just don't end up happening.

But before I get that political, I'll just say that running for office costs money. And where does this money come from? Not the politicians. They get the money from fundraising, which leads to Lobby Groups like various companies paying for a politician, and I'm pretty sure the process is basically "vote this way or else you won't get any of our money!" This is why I think that we'll never get rid of our dependence on oil, cigarettes, and universal health care.

Health Care: All of these insurance & pharmaceutical companies are just this: companies. Their goal is to make money, and that is where the process fails. By focusing on making profits, I don't see any cures coming for anything. Think about every major medicine out there today...does it actually cure your illness in one dose? Not with me, even the common cold needs about 10 bottles of Robitussin to get rid of it.

If someone actually managed to cure everything...the company would not be able to make money off of it. Everyone gets it one time and that's it. Have you seen those Stride commercials where production and profit stops because the flavor lasts long enough for someone to be satisfied with a whole package for a lifetime? Just apply that to the pharmaceutical companies, I guarantee the same thing would happen if something actually important, like muscular dystrophy, got cured.

Cigarattes: The taxes are too good. Government wants people to stop smoking. Good. They raise taxes on cigarettes, which ultimately raise the price and the assumption that people will stop buying them and smoking.

Double-edged sword there. Yes, some people would deem the cigarettes too expensive, the taxes go to good causes and go to quit...which is where stuff like Nicorette and the Nicotine Patch come in. I work in a CVS, and a 48 pack of CVS brand nicotine gum costs $25. Don;t get me started on the patch...minimal price is around $20, and gets as high as $50. There's also the other end of the spectrum, and to quote the great Dave Attell "You don't stop buying cigarattes, you just stop buying other things." And the taxes on these cigarette packs should go to good causes...I hope.

Oil: Many oil companies have been merging to the point where there are only about 6 or so different gas stations. They can control the prices, even if they do blame fluctuating oil prices on stuff like the war, hurricanes, and damn dirty hippies. Of course, at the end of the year...Exxon-Mobil keeps breaking records for profit. Gee, maybe you can just take $1 billion of your $520 Billion to actually better fund your damn workers and employees! Not gonna happen. Instead, I'm pretty sure this goes to lobbying. They give the politicians money to not end our dependence on oil or create fuel-efficient cars so they can make money. Which reminds me...

4) Electric Cars: As much as i'm all for fuel-efficient cars, I have but one argument for electric & hybrid cars: Where do you think they electricity that the chargers plug into come from? A candy cane field, no doubt. Probably some big-ass Tesla Coil...but something has to power that too.

Where was I? Oh yes, corruption. Basically, this desire for greed and power just goes too far, and I have to wonder why certain people are still in power, even with other countries hating them. You know it's a bad sign that war isn't going to be popular when Germany doesn't want to get involved in it.

This is also another reason why wages are so low and rarely raised. Whenever minimum wage is brought up to be raised, I sometimes wonder that they think "Why would we care? We're all rich!"

Have I been strucking a chord yet? I hope so. How will we solve these issues? I don't know, I'm just some blogger just ranting at 2 in the morning, and I want to go to sleep.

Got anything that grinds your gears? Tell me, and I might have a theory about it!   

(Seriously, I appreciate the comments, and I know that more than 6 people read this)

We won! We won! We won!

Er, on subject, it's still Labor Day, and that means the end of another summer. Bummer, since it's my favorite season and I dread the day when schools starts again.

Just about 4 months to the day, I compiled this To-Do List for summer:

1. Be with the GF more (I'll have much more time, Sam on the other hand...summer classes + work)
2. Go to an amusement park. I got plans to go to 6 Flags Great Adventure on May 18!
3. Catch up on my DVDs. I have a few DVDs I haven'ty gotten around to watching yet: Transformers: The Movie, Clerks II, Ren & Stimpy, Adult Party Cartoon, and Pokemon: Lucario & The Mystery of Mew (watchin it with DJ, riffing on it)|
4. See the following movies: Spider-Man 3, Hot Fuzz, Shrek The Third (along with Shrek 2), Pirates of the Carribbean 3, Transformers, the Simpsons Movie. (the latter 2...seeing opening day, midnight showing if necessary)
5. Wednesday Nights! DJ's annual Summer hangout party night on wednesdays. I'm definately going to that, it's a summer staple...my 2nd year.
6. Hang out with my non-DPO friends. I have a bunch of them, and I haven't seem them in ages...I need to get on that.
7. Blog some more. I'll find stuff to blog on, you'll see.
8. Go back to NYC. No matter when, I wanna go back there. I also want to do the NBC Studio Tour, and it's been a big desire for me to see either Conan O'Brien and/or The Colbert Report
9. Find Americone Dream. The most elusive of all Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavors, I've been trying to find it, and I know I'm getting close to it.
10. Team Trip to White Castle! I'm tired of Going on White Castle Excursions by myself...One day, I'd like to get a group of friends together and then go invade a White Castle. Should be fun times.
11. Team Trip To A Buffet. Same as above, but replace with a Buffet place.

And now, with Summer's End, let's see what I got accomplished:

Be with the GF more  (I'll have much more time, Sam on the other hand...summer classes + work)

Did that. I've been with Sam more times than I could count, and we're on the way to being together for 5 months. It might not seem as much, but to me (as well as her)...this is big.

Go to an amusement park. I got plans to go to 6 Flags Great Adventure on May 18!

I did this too. I had an awesome time and got on just about everything major. You can see what happened here.

Wednesday Nights! DJ's annual Summer hangout party night on wednesdays. I'm definately going to that, it's a summer staple...my 2nd year.

Did this too. I went to all of them except for 1 because I got out of work too late.

Hang out with my non-DPO friends. I have a bunch of them, and I haven't seem them in ages...I need to get on that.

Accomplished several times.

Blog some more. I'll find stuff to blog on, you'll see.

If you scroll down, you can plainly see I did this.

Go back to NYC. No matter when, I wanna go back there. I also want to do the NBC Studio Tour, and it's been a big desire for me to see either Conan O'Brien and/or The Colbert Report

I actually managed to go twice. Once on June 8th (my adventure can be seen here), and August 15 (I've been too lazy to upload pics). Sadly, I was not able to do the NBC Tour either time. I did Top of The Rock the first time, and a Double-Decker Bus Tour the 2nd time. I want to go back...again.

Find Americone Dream. The most elusive of all Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavors, I've been trying to find it, and I know I'm getting close to it.

Check. Delicious. You can see my review here. I also found its "rvial" flavor, Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler. I thought it was also good, but Americone Dream wins the contest. By the way, both flavors are more available in stores now than when I first found & reviewed them.

Team Trip to White Castle! I'm tired of Going on White Castle Excursions by myself...One day, I'd like to get a group of friends together and then go invade a White Castle. Should be fun times.

Yep, I actually did this too. I went to a WC about 3 times over the summer, and one was the actual "Team Trip." Me and my friends Mike & Danny tore through a Crave Case...that's 30 burgers. I managed to get 13 in the course of that day. I definately felt that one the next day...and later on that original day.

Team Trip To A Buffet. Same as above, but replace with a Buffet place.

Did this several times, actually. Once at the local place that I go to, making Sam & Steve impressed at its sheer size compared to the one we usually go to.

Catch up on my DVDs. I have a few DVDs I haven't gotten around to watching yet: Transformers: The Movie, Clerks II, Ren & Stimpy, Adult Party Cartoon, and Pokemon: Lucario & The Mystery of Mew (watchin it with DJ, riffing on it)|

Sad to say that this entry was only half complete. I watched Clerks II & the Lucario movie, but I regret that I still haven't watched the Transformers: The Movie dvd (which I described last Christmas as "possibly the best dvd ever"), as well as the Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon set. I'll get on that soon, though.

See the following movies: Spider-Man 3, Hot Fuzz, Shrek The Third (along with Shrek 2), Pirates of the Carribbean 3, Transformers, the Simpsons Movie. (the latter 2...seeing opening day, midnight showing if necessary)

Oh, Hell yes, I did that. I managed to watch all of these with the exception of Hot Fuzz (but it's on DVD now for about a month.), plus a few others! I'm pretty sure I've beaten my personal record for the most movies I saw in the theater in a year...so far.

Here are some short reviews of all the flicks I saw this summer:

Spider-Man 3: Ok. I still didn't see Spider-Man 2 (I fail), but I liked Spider-man 3. Not loved it, but I liked it. I think they put too many villains in this, as we see New Goblin/Green Goblin II, Sandman (best villain in the whole movie), AND Venom.

Spoilers: Goblin dies, albeit in a kickass way by being impaled by his own board by Venom; Sandman survives and is revealed to be Uncle Ben's real killer. He apologizes remorsefully to Spiderman and flies away into the sunset; Venom & Topher Grace (wow, he actually cheapened one of the best villains in all of comicdom, as I could not see him in that role) are seemingly imploded by one of the New Goblin's bombs and are apparantly killed, but as comic books and movie franchises based on these comics go, it's a good chance they'll be back.

All in all, Bruce Cambell's 5 minute cameo was probably the funniest part. The fight scenes were all awesome and the special effects were well done, but there was too much going on, and lots of unecessary emoness by Tobey.

Blades of Glory: Yep, I actually saw this movie. It's actually the first movie that me & Sam went to see together. Lovey-dovey cheesiness aside, we were actually the only 2 people in the theater, which gave plenty of oppourtunity for some riffing (ex: Sam yelling at the screen that Will Arnett's character doesn't have balls, and that Amy Poehler's character wants them ) I thought it was pretty funny, but not the best movie ever. For those of you who hate either Jon Heder or Will Ferrell, good chance you might have avoided this movie.

Pirates 3: Saw this after watching Pirates 2 (liked it, thought first was better) in a very small theater in Mastic. I liked this one too, but there was way too much story packed in the two and a half hours, too many deals being made, this whole plot point with Calypso disguised as the carribbean mystic Tia Dalma, and how she resurrected Barbossa and why she was imprisoned and set free, and so on, that she's a so it was kind of hard to tell what was going on. If you went to the bathroom for 5 minutes, you probably missed a key plot point that made the last hour make sense.

Once again, VERY kickass fight scenes and lots of great CGI. The overhead shots of the Maelstrom battle between the Black Pearl & The Flying Dutchman really impressed me. I liked the ap The ending All in all, I liked it better than 2, but the first one was still the best.

Shrek III: I saw this after I saw Shrek II (it was ok, liked the first one much better) Despite the good animation...I was really not impressed. I liked it, it was a good way to kill 3 hours, but they could've done a hell of a lot better. Then again, I don't think anyone would think that Justin Timberlake would've sank in publicity since he recorded his part in the movie years in advance when he was actually semi-relevant.

Prince Charming gathering all the fairy-tale villains to attack Far Far Away was a good plot point, but I really miss Farquaad from the first one. You just knew he was such an sadistic douchebag, considering the scene where we meet the Gingerbread Man (finding out that he had torn off both of his legs, as well as the great "Muffin Man" dialogue between him & Gingy), as well as his own kingdom being a riff of Disneyland (complete with long line, costumed characters and "it's a small world" parody). I still don't know why they kept the transvestite Big Bad Wolf in the supporting cast, since he really didn't add anything (then again, none of the returning Fiary Tale helpers didn't add much this time around)

In short: meh, the first one was far better.

Ratatouille: Yep, I also saw Pixar's latest right on opening day. I have to say that the animation was simply fantastic, as we can see the almost photorealistic panoramic views of Paris, as well as the scenes where Remy the rat is being traveling down a sewar pipe. There were actually times when I was watching this movie when I had to remind myself that I was watching a cartoon.

The cast itself was also fantastic. Patton Oswalt gave an excellent performance as the title character of Remy the rat. Brian Dennehy plays his dad, Django. Brad Garret as Remy's inspiration of Chef Gusteau. There's also Peter O'Toole (possibly the most famous of the cast) as the intimidating food critic Anton Ego (disreagard the fact that the movie is set in paris, even though the main character has an american accent, and the legendary food critic sounding irish) Other voices include Janeane Garafalo, Will Arnett, as well as Pixar regular John Ratzenberger, whose voice is much harder to pick out in this movie (he plays Mustafa the head waiter) 

Unless you're into animation and trivia about movie casting, that last paragraph probably bored you. If so, I apologize...but not quite. This was definately a much better movie than last year's Cars (great animation and awesome little details, but the story was so-so). Since it came out, I thought that The Incredibles was my favorite Pixar movie, but after this one...now I'm not so sure

Transformers: Oh yes. Hell yes. I actually did one better than a midnight show: An 8pm preview show the night before on July 3rd. There was actually some guy dressed in a homemade Optimus Prime costume. I can't believe he:

1) managed to do it
2) watch the entire movie while wearing it.

All in all, Micheal Bay got lucky. I thought the movie was awesome, even though the story is different yet again, there was product placement everywhere (despite that the original show itself was a half hour ad for the toys), and that Frank Welker wasn't Megatron (even though it had been confirmed that they had actually auditioned him but deemed that his voice was too shot to do Megatron) but they decided to go with Hugo "Agent Fing Smith" Weaving.

There are some silly moments, like the inappropriate mood music that Bumblebee plays while Sam is trying to hook up with the Too-Hot-to-Be-In-High School female lead, the aformentioned product placement (a Mountain Dew vending machine becomes a transformer and launches cans at everyone), the scene where all the Autobots try to hide from Sam's parents (with a really unintentional bizarre vibe I got when Optimus said "My Bad"), as well as all of the "more than meets the eye" references. Also, how can you not love that Jazz's first line in the movie was "Wassup, bitches?!"

There was a pretty good cast here too. Besides Peter Cullen reprising Optimus Prime and Hugo Weaving as Megatron, we also got Shia LeBouf as Sam, John Turturro as Scene-Stealing FBI Agent, as well as an unexpectedly nice cameo by Bernie Mac.

Some slight spoilers: Every decepticon but Starscream dies, or are presumed dead and their remains are thrown in the ocean. Starscream flies off into space, possible returning for the 2nd movie (fan speculation is that Megatron isn't really dead either, as he died waaaay too easily when the Allspark was jammed into his chest) The only autobot to die is Jazz, when he gets casually ripped apart by Megatron. Prime didn't really even seem to care about him, he basically said "We lost a great ally, but we met all of these great, whiny humans!"

The Simpsons Movie (x2): You read that right. If I didn't tell you this already, I saw this movie twice, and in the same day, it's premire on 7/27. First a midnight showing, and then one at 7pm. The midnight show was a better experience for me, as the theater I went to, Loew's Stony Brook, had the entire theater filled to 99% capacity, as the limit was a good 430-something people. There was a man in the front row who would be a dead ringer for Comic Book Guy.

He was wearing the same shirt as a teen girl who sat a few rows in front of me (along with Sam & Steve), and she yelled to him that they did indeed wore the same shirt. In the row behind us, 3 guys behind us really looked like the 3 Nerds:

Doug (center), Benjamin (left) and Gary (right).

Enough geekery, I thought the movie was great. I had to see it twice to get all the jokes, as I was laughing so hard through it (the 2nd time aroun,d there were STILL a few lines I didn't hear because everyone was laughing so much over it). Even though I'm sad that they waited 18 years to release a movie, I thought they did a good job. I was slightly sad to not see Sideshow Bob appear (he had a small cameo, but it was cut), and that this movie would've been 100x better had Phil Hartman not die 9 years ago. Russ Cargill (A. Brooks) was a good villain, but I was really expecting Hank Scorpio (another A. Brooks character) or even Mr. Burns as the villain, but I thought they did a good job for the movie.

Even if you're a casual fan of the show and not an Ubergeek like I am, you would love the movie, or even just like it a lot (as some of my friends & coworkers mentioned it to me)

And just today I saw Mr. Bean's Holiday: I'm a fan of Mr. Bean, and when I found out that Rowan Atkinson was releasing another Bean movie, I wanted to see it. Amd I was not dissappointed. For all those who love Mr. Bean, or just good slapstick humor, this is a good movie. Sure, there were not many "laugh obnoxiously loud" moments, but I was laughing throughout the whole movie, and that should say something.

I thought it was a good little film that's really good for anyone to see. That's why we have the G rating, and it's movies like this that should prove why it shouldn't be an equivalent kiss-of-death of movies like ones that get the NC-17 rating.

Rowan Atkinson did a very good job in the movie, with Mr. Bean's trademark mumbling (he only speaks about 20 words of coherent english in the whole movie) and physical humor (dancing to the music in french Marketplace, dropping coffee onto a laptop and then trying to pour it out, goose-stepping in a german infantryman costume while filming a movie, as well as when he eats the Seafood Platter at the start of the movie are major highlights) I was really surprised to see Willem DeFoe in the movie as filmmaker Carson Clay, with most of the parts of the movie that he shows at Cannes (where Mr. Bean is trying to go) mostly consists of him traveling up an escalator while his voice narrates the entire movie. If you wish to see the movie, I don't want to tell you any more.

So...as well as some usual summer faire (ice cream, pool, parties,etc) I've had one hell of a great summer.

...So what did you do? Impress me!

Well, the Title says it all...mostly.

A few months back, I tried to post a blog about the 5 Weirdest videos I found on youtube at the time. I had done everything, it was all finished and ready to post.

Unfortunately, through some myspace error, everything I wrote down was lost, and I gave up and continued blogging.

Until now.

Yes fan(s), I have finally gotten the willpower to try again with this post, and with an updated list to boot!

The 5 Weirdest Youtube Videos I've ever seen.

With all the thousands of videos found on youtube, from the 4th repost of some random clip from "High School Musical" to someone lyp synching from a song from "High School Musical"....ok, I have to break out of that last blog entry. Let me start again.

*Presses imaginary "Rewind" Button*

The 5 Weirdest Youtube Videos I've Ever Seen.

You can find literally anything on youtube...up until a few months ago when the big corporations started figuring out that people are actually enjoying their copywrighted material and became douchebags by purging several beloved entertainment materal off the site, ranging from Looney Tunes, to Rocko's Modern Life, to clips of the Daily Show & Colbert Report, even dubs like Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged.

Even with all this, several thousand videos remain. And with all the popularity of actual entertainment, there is also the dark bowels of youtube. Many videos are reposts of said material, people badly lip-synching to this material, to people putting random clips of various tv shows together because they claim that Carlos Mencia steals from everyone...even you!

And some...some videos are just strange. This is where this list comes in. These are the videos that make you say "WTF?" "How/Why were these made?" and "Who truly had enough time on their hands to actually think this up, film it, then upload it to youtube??"

These 5 videos constitute the weirdest videos I've ever seen on the site...so far. I'm finding newer and weirder stuff every day, not to mention what the future of strange videos will hold for us. There are also those lost, strange areas of youtube that I've yet to delve into. But before I digress and press the rewind button again, let's start this list.

5) "You Are A Pirate" ~ Lazytown

What you just watched was the backwards version of a song called "You Are A Pirate" from the kid's show "LazyTown" shown on Nickelodeon. Generally the song is about, you know, pirates. But very simple, creepy, and catchy at the same time. The main message seems to make the connection "If you love to sail the seas = you are a pirate." I wish actual logic was this simple.

Now, if I didn't say that it was a backwards version, would you have thought that it was in some foreign language? Like me, one could ask "Why did someone take the time to actually look up this song and say 'you know what hasn't been done to this song? Backwards!' and then actually doing it, and uploading it?!" Thankfully, youtube has provided us with several versions of the song in several languages, including the original english one.

I posted this mostly because it sounds eerily similar to this version:

This is a forwards version in Icelandic (Iceland is where the show is filmed in...fun fact) Pretty similar? I think so.

With the way the song is coreographed, it's pretty difficult to tell if the backwards version was really backwards. Aside from a few obvious reminders (people digging in reverse, the ship sailing in the opposite direction), the actions shown seem palindromatic, as in you can see it both ways and the movements in both versions seem plausible in forwards mode.

For reasons for comparison, here is the forwards, english version:

4) Shit Pickle

Remember when I said that I find weird stuff everyday? This is a good example of it, as a friend of mine showed it to me just a few hours prior to writing this list and edging out what was the original 4.

According to its youtube page, this weird character was "born in the controversial Wizard of Oz spoof 'Wizard of Oz 3: Dorothy Goes to Hell.' He later made a cameo appearance in The Angry Video Game Nerd's 'Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu' review."

And then the Angry Video Game Nerd (or rather, Cinemassacre.com) made this weird, vulgar, yet amusing cartoon. I'll admit, it's weird, it's funny, but not the weirdest video I've seen.

3) The Merrill Howard Kalin Show

Well, I am indeed a masochist, as while I'm typing this, I am watching...*groans* the sequel to High School Musical on the disney channel. Why you ask? I have no idea. It's just...all that damn hype...

Now...I have never seen the original, but ask any 5th grader and they'll tell you the whole thing in a nutshell.

Basically: Basketball player and unnaturalistly hot mathelete sing songs about trying out for the high school musical, and they seem to get the part...but we don't ever see the musical itself. It's a pun! It's a musical...in high school! Very funny! Not.

In the next 2 hours that I'll never get back...I'll be repeatingly asking for death, which is what I'm doing now as I'm watching the first song...but please don't. I value life. But...the people who greenlit this apparantly don't, or have sold their souls to Lucifer himself. Or both.

8pm: The first song "What Time Is It" basically sums up this: The last bell rangand everyone decided to, you guessed it, sing about it. The black kid whose name I won't even bother telling you actually kisses the teacher. And the teacher looks like that stereotypical "Lunchlady Doris" waitress at your local sleazy diner. I hope he got tested afterwards.

Ok. 8:09, the first song gets back in gear and thankfully everyone decided to take it outside. Apparantly everyone knew all the lyircs to the song...or at least lip-synching to it. The songs this time...seems very polished, like they're lip-synching everything. But it's a tv movie...on the Disney Channel. And even though the budget for this one was probably a lot more than the original (possibly $200,000 than the original's $100,000), it still seems very...fake.

True facts: both movies take place in Alburquerque, but they were actually filmed...in Utah.

You'd think I'm paying attention to the movie as I'm typing this, but really...there's not much to pay attention to.

"Plot" this time: The school bitch, Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) and her closeted gay brother (don't even bother mentioning) are at the country club that their parents own and are expecting to win their country club's talent show...again this year. But coindicentally, all the other leads from the first movie work there. How's that for fate? Apparantly, the entire basketball team is there, and working as the cooks and such.

8:14...apparantly something is happening. Seems that Ashley Tisdale's little posse is singing about the very plot above, about being "very fabulous" with her brother being the gayest of all. And it seems Sharpay can't swim, or better yet, was very afraid of getting water on her very "fabulous" body. She's such a bitch that she doesn't get wet, the water should get her instead. Ay, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress.

Basically...it's High School Musical...but its summer! They're not in school now! Oh, the drama!

Yea...that was supposed to be sarcastic. I should really end this blog now. But, like a car accident...I can't seem to look away.

8:21, the cast just shouted pride for their team, the Wildcats, before going into some song in a kitchen that no one in their sane mind should care about.

Which reminds me of the Simpsons episode "Bart Star" where Bart's pee-wee football team was named "The Wildcats" and in one scene, they are facing a rival team...who is also named the Wildcats.

Coach Flanders: "Who are we?"

Team: "The Wildcats!"

Coach Flanders: "Who are we gonna beat?"

Team: "The Wildcats!"

Yes...very original, Disney Channel.

And with the song just ending now at 8:25...they spent the last 5 minutes singing & dancing, and not cooking. I don't blame the manager, who is the butler of sorts to the Main Bitch and Gay Brother, to be pissed why no one got their food yet.

And...the movie just seems cheesy to me, which is not a bad trait. There are people that watch this for this very reason...but not me. This is a "Disney Channe; Original Movie" so the standards are exactly this...and I'm wondering why people older than 12 are actually watching this on their own free will. I can understand that they might have been forced to watch it thanks to a younger sibling or relative, but there's a thing called the internet now where you can avoid all of this now. And I hear that it's a trend where kids have TVs in their own rooms now. I hope they take advantage of it. There's also the option of actually going outside, but Zeus himself must like this movie, as he made a tremendous thunderstorm occur on LI, and a tropical storm in Texas to boot. No, I don't remember if there's a Storm God in Greek mythology, but I'm not going to look it up.

Why are you even reading this? Obviously my fanbase usually doesn't instersect with the fanbase of this trashy flick, but just in case someone wanted to see some geek bash this in real-time...I hope you're having fun watching me suffer.

Fortunately, it's on its first commercial break now, so I'm wasting my brief moment of sanity by typing what you're reading now.

It seems that after every break, we see the cast at a pool telling some "anecdotes" about the production of the movie, and that the movie will be coming back. I want to change the channel to Comedy Central, but it's like I'm opening the Ark of the Covenant...I have to look away, but I can't. I hope my face doesn't melt off.

8:34, the movie is back. It seems the two good-looking leads have realized that there's a club talent show going on, and while the boy lead says that his singing career began and ended with the first movie, he has just now proved that he 's a lying douchebag by starting to croon along with the hot latina mathlete female lead.

8:40, Zac and the other boy's character just skipped along...together...

As I'm typing now at 8:44...it seems that the rich snobs (whose parents are, ironically, nice) are playing golf with the 2 boy leads...and I'm thanking Zeus that not even the Disney Channel will sing a song about golfing...I hope. Other than that, not much is happening, save for Lead Bitch tempting Zac with scholarships if he sings with her.

8:53...Finally, another break. I did get up a few times, and fortunately, neither you nor I missed a thing.

9pm: They're back. Coincidentally, since I work at a CVS, I saw a special issue of "People" magazine totally devoted to High School Musical 2. They explained the plot throughout the whole magazine (even though it could have been summed up in a single page), with the rest of 30-some odd pages being nothing but filler, pictures, and unrelated ads featuring the "stars."

Fortunately, this week's Tv guide condensed that entire magazine in 5 pages. Interesting tidbit, I'm sure.

9:05, Girl Bitch and Lil' Fag are being Bitchy & Faggy. Girl Bitch wants Zac's character, and will bitchslap anyone in her patch. Since it is Disney, the bitchslapping is only figuratively.

9:09: They're at a baseball game and...oh, dear, god, no!!! It's that damn baseball song I saw during all those ungodly previews!

I realized that Lil' Fag's name is Ryan, but I like the name Lil' Fag much better, and the song now pretty much cements it. He's playing "the pitcher" in the game. Who would have guessed?  

And it turns out that the entire song...had been about dancing. Wow. Classy, and stuff that the average teen baseball player is thinking about.

9:15, Zac's character is practicing with a college team that he is tempted to getting a scholarship to, the University of Alburquerque Redhawks. Redhawks...now that's a much better team name than the "original" Wildcats.

9:19...Rehearsing fo the big music number with Zac & Girl Bitch, and Zac touches on a speck of realism here. The reaction when the pyrotechnics and music starts up startles him and freezes him up in the same way in which I would have. He's somewhat dancing along, with a "WTF" look the entire time.

9:22...It's daytime all of a sudden. He just ran off stage in ther middle of the night just a second ago. That's it, I'm changing the channel to the Kevin James special on Comedy Central.

...Ok,.I didn't change it. Like I said, it's like watching a car accident.

Did I mention that there was a reference to "Grease" somewhere around this point? Girl Bitch tells Lil' Fag this exact quote about seeing the rehearsals for the other people who happen to be in the movie: "I wanted you to spy on them, noit turn them into the cast of Grease!" Ugh. Talk about cheese. Limburger is so cliched, so I'll go with Stinking Bishop in rank of crappiness in cheese. I so want to change the channel now and go back to Kevin James...but I can't seem to.

As another break comes at 9:25, Girl Bitch is at her bitchiest...She tells the butler/manager to make the classmates/waitstaff work the show so she won't be upstaged. This casues Butler/Manager to remind her that not only are they lowly dishwashers, they're also her classmates and her bitchiness will probably bite her in the ass in the end...and it only takes a second for her to decide to risk it, as I believe shes into the "biting her in the ass" thing. Insert your own Marv Albert joke here.

9:33...What did I say? Yet another person saying that Girl Bitch's bitchiness will bite her in the ass. Hot Latina Female Lead is breaking up with Zac's character in song...now this is basically stuff that actually happens in a musical. This only took them...and hour and 35 minutes to get something right.

9:40...Another song, apparantly Zac is singing about his "problems." Pretty much reminds me about that great quote I found somewhere: "I wish my lawn was emo so it would cut itself."

And like all whiny boy leads in musicals, he just sings about his problems instead of showing he has a pair and actually taking care of these things himself.

9:45: Time for the "Talent Show" where the "Big! Showstopping! Song!" will eventually play...just not now.

9:49...Sigh...it looks like theres not gonna be much ass-biting. Damnit, the antagonist is supposed to fucking crash in burn! Especially if it didn't happen in the first movie!

9:50...I stand corrected. And apparantly the "Big! Showstopping! Song!" is the one playing now, with Zac and Hot Latina Lead. Did I mention that I'm not a fan of most musicals? Especially ones geared towards little kids that I've outgrown 10 years ago?

9:55. And...it seems that Lil Fag ended up "winning" making his family the champs...again. And instead of an ass-biting, Girl Bitch is now...not as bitchy.

And the 2 people that you would think should have kissed by now...just did.

No, not Lil' Fag and Zac...but Zac and Hot Latina Lead.

And aside from a closing credits song summing up the last 2 hours...I'd call that a wrap. I'm outta here, and I'm now planning on suing Disney for the 2 hours I'll never get back.

No, I didn't see the Haunted Mansion movie.

And please...I'm very embarrassed that this even warranted a blog entry.