Lonliness is underrated

Hello friends, sorry for my absence. I was respawning.

Anyway, smells. I was walking through the mall today and I realized just how great smells are and how they are so attached to certain memories. I smelled coffee, and cinnabon and perfumania, and randomly smelled tanning oil. But it was nice.

So:

Good Smells --7 Beards and 1 Mustache

Bad Smells --2 Beards, but only because it is fun to smell something bad and then get all your friends to smell it too, and you bond over the awful smell.

Children Of Men

The lady and I watched Children Of Men the night before last, as I needed to refresh it in my memory for a paper I was writing and she had never seen it. Released in 2006, this movie ended up in the top of many movie critics best movies of the year lists. Directed by Alfonso Cuaron, who also brought us Y tu mama tambien and the blockbuster Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, and starring Clive Owen. Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine (omg, i'm so excited for Dark Night!). The movie is apparently loosely based off the novel by the same name, but how similar they are I don't know. Who reads anyways?

The premise of the movie is rather original, to me, and lends to creating an excellent setting. In the future women inexplicably become infertile, which leads to a massive change in the human social spectrum that causes much of the world to collapse. The movie follows Theo Faron (Clive Owen) in a futuristic, semi-police state, Britain trying to get by when he is suddenly swept up into a crazy scheme by his estranged wife, Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore), who is the head of a rebel group, in order to save mankind's last hope at survival.

So, yeah. The film is gripping, powerful, emotional, and chockful of ideas about humanity, social relations, government, gloablization, race, and sexism. It definitely makes me feel like someone opened a window and let some pollen in at the end. The cinematography is fantastic, and the dialogue is equal parts human, intelligent, and witty. Sadly, as Kate pointed out to me, the character development is lacking, especially in Jasper's wife. (crickets) You'll get it after you see the wife. But, seriously. Other than Theo, and to some extent Julian, most of the characters are very static. Besides this, though, the movie is pretty excellent.

Children of Men gets 8 Beards and A Mustache, for excellent story, excellent cinematography, and one of the most intense and emotional long shots I've ever seen in a movie.

The Best Around!!!

Taking a moment to look back the 80's; it gave us lots of things, Nintendo, GI Joe, Transformers, the Indiana Jones movies, the Back to the Future Trilogies, The Empire Strikes Back, The Return of the Jedi, Micheal Jackson (still black), Ninja Turtles, pop rocks, beat street and all four awesome writers of this here blog. (9 beards)

However it also gave us a lot of shitty stuff, MTV (Which for its time get 7 beards), the song let's get physical,the idea that women look sexy with giant shoulders, Crack rocks, that horrible horrible excuse for fashion, murder she wrote, Reagenomics, assassination attempt on JP II and New kids on the Block. (1 day-glow colored beard)

But if you ever thought"I wish there was one thing that could sum up the 80's in an neat 127 minute package, maybe a nice martial arts underdog story"

Then have I got the movie for you it stars a on Ralph Macchio tutored by a Mr Noriyuki "Pat" Morita; awesome 80's soundtrack, best use of 80's fashion, one of the best uses of the montage and one of the best heart gripping fight scenes that includes the greatest damn line ever. Rated 16 of 20 best on-screen fights by Rotten Tomatoes.
So all in all the Karate Kid gets 9 crane kicking beards for "putting me in a body bag...yeeeaahhh!!"

Drunkard

I found this story today about a 67 year old man in Bulgaria who apparently had a blood alcohol level of 0.914, but was still conscious and conversing with police and doctors. They had to test him 5 times before they'd believe it. The thing to keep in mind here is that, according to the article a BAL of 0.55 is usually fatal and that the legal driving limit in Florida, Canada, and most other places is 0.08. So, yeah 0.914.

In other, geekier, news. Randy and I played the Army of Two demo last night. And it was freaking ridiculous. The graphics were very clean, and the game play was reminiscent of Gears of War with that strange over the shoulder third person view. The controls are set up fairly simply, but like always it's sometimes a little confusing switching from one shooter to the next. The demo was promising, and I'm excited for the full game and all the fist bumping after endless murder it should provide.

So, for the good stuff:

The old guy who drank half the contents of the local bar gets 8 Beards, for drinking an assinine amount, but loses one to my jealousy.
Army of Two Demo gets 8 Beards because it was an excellent demo that little me shoot people from a turret and got me all ramped up for the actual game.