Spider-Thoughts...

Spider-Man 3 was a really good movie. It wasn't as good as 2, or at least I didn't leave with the same feeling as I did with 2. I had read a few reviews that were very non-descript and pretty much said that the movie just kind of rolled along. I didn't really know what they were talking about until I watched the movie. It looked amazing and I love the characters but it just sort of had a clear path of where it was headed. In SM2 I was in suspense and wondering what was going to happen between Doc Oc and SM and it developed their story so well that you get caught up in the moment, but in this movie it just seemed to be all about getting to the end. There are some ridiculously hilarious one liners and everyone did an amazing job. On the other hand I hate Kirsten Dunst and she continued to make me hate her in this movie. There are some really unbearably cheesy parts that I had to look away at so I wouldn't kill myself but the zingers make up for it. The bad ass version of Peter Parker is one of the funniest sequences ever. Overall I think it was just a little too ambitious with too many characters (much like most of my movies) to be able to have any story really get flushed out. For so much to happen to so many people in only 2 hours, things have to get rushed. The movie is definitely worth seeing though. Overall on my rating system I give it a 7.8. It was a good movie but not as good as SM2, which is really one of the best comic book movies ever along with X2 and Batman Begins.

I just realized I haven't given you all an update on most of the movies I've seen lately. I have gotten pretty good at movie hopping and have seen a few that are worth checking out (and some that aren't)...













Hot Fuzz - The creators of Shawn of the Dead score again with this action spoof. The first hour or so is funny but the last 30 mins really make the movie worth seeing. Absolutely hilarious ending with really funny action scenes and a ridiculous plot. I give it an 8. After I saw that I hopped over to In The Land of Women (i know, i'm gay) and it was pretty much how the previews made it look. Adam Brody and Meg Ryan (i thought she was dead) star in this predictably lame chick flick. Some funny parts but overall a pretty lame movie. I give it a 5. I also saw The Lookout recently (I don't remember if i already reviewed this) but it was okay. Not much to mention there, I give it a 5.

Anyways, keep your ear to the grindstone. I'm out. blah blah blah.

-M, p & z

oh ps - looking forward to about a zillion movies this summer. If you remember my review on Pirates of TC 2 last summer then you know there really isn't anything in this world that could make me want to see the third installment, yet I find myself with this desire to see it to the end. I hate previews and more that that, as much as i love them, i hate trilogies. You got my money once and now you are gonna tell me that you're making 2 more movies so you can basically make me pay to see the same movie three times. I hate this industry and I can't wait to join them. If i could make all you people watch my movies and then make you watch it again with very minor plot changes I would be a rich man...that's the plan anyways. sorry for the rant.

pps - I'm so mad at grey's right now. I hadn't really planned on watching the spinoff next season and somehow they forced me into it. Those bastards mixed it in with grey's and acted like it was no big deal. It was like watching 2 shows on 2 different channles only switching when one of them went to commercial. Seriously ABC? Seriously. Good luck on your spin off, and good job casting notorious bad luck actors, it's like a who's who of recently cancelled terrible shows. Tim Daly? Taye Diggs? That chick from that judging amy show? Why not just have everyone on set break a mirror while walking under a ladder opening an umbrella as a black cat runs by. I mean seriously. That show was terrible. I don't care about those people so don't try and make me. Scrubs has not gotten tivoed 2 weeks in a row because of you (you can't watch live tv if it's recording 2 channels so in order for me to watch basketball i had to cancel the recording of one of them and i guess i chose poorly). dammit.

A Few Things...

Just a couple sports related items on my mind at the moment. Might not be able to blog for realz until I finish my thesis next week. But for now...
Awesome Pistons vid:


My boy and former Michigan State quarterback Drew Stanton was drafted by the Lions. Hopefully Jon Kitna dies (not really but I wouldn't mind a broken leg) so Drew gets out there.


















And finally, if you aren't watching the Warriors/Mavs series you are seriously missing out. The warriors remind me why basketball is so much fun. Baron Davis is a beast and I am most definitely on the bandwagon, you should get on too - it's fun.
















And that's it for now. Yadda yadda yadda.

-M, p &z

oh ps - quick update on things besides sports...heroes returned last week and it's been awesome. Yesterday's episode was awesome. If you watch american idol, do you love Blake as much as I do? My thesis shoot starts monday - hopefully I'm wrapped by thursday! Muki is moving to the corner of my living room by the couch which means there is one more corner if anyone else is interested. Spider Man 3, what more can I say... Actually I will probably blog about that on friday or saturday so stay tuned.

pps - if you look closely in the picture at the bottom of my last post, you can see me making my "oh god the ocean's so salty!" face. Holy frick that water's salty...

No Longer a Kid...

So I haven't posted in a bit. I've been jetsetting around the globe. Actually just to florida for last weekend and then I was busy this week. I realized something when I was down there and also during my subsequent return to the basketball court on tuesday: I'm getting old(er). I take aleve for my aches and pains. Aches and pains. Things that not long ago were non-existent to me. Things reserved for seniors with arthritis. My brother and I decided that as much fun as it was laying by a pool getting dark (too dark for anyone to marry says my mother) we needed to tackle the Atlantic Ocean. And by tackle I mean get railed by wave after wave. We hopped on some boogie boards to have a little fun and proceeded to get wrecked. The ocean is much stronger than lake huron. And saltier. There was one very large swell that knocked both my brother and I to the ocean floor (lucky for you the moment was captured on camera (above), that's my boogie board - you couldn't even seen any of muki or his board because he got wrecked worse than I did). I banged my right arm, shoulder and head on the ground but somehow amidst my thoughts of my impending death, managed to stand up and right myself in the 4 foot deep water. As much fun as that near death experience was I felt the effects for days and I still have a crick in my neck.

I then played basketball for a couple hours on tuesday to appreciate the nice new york weather. The problem was that though I have been running at the gym a few times a week, nothing compares to the strain all that jumping puts on your body. Sadly it was only the third time I have balled since moving to NYC and I felt it the next day pretty bad. I remember the days not long ago when I could try and flip off of a fence and land on my back and not feel any pain at all. Even more recent I remember freshman year of college when I tried to to do one of those bad ass run up the wall and do a backflip things only to land on my face and knee, yet still, 10 seconds later I was fine.

So why now, after almost a week, does my shoulder still have a lingering dull pain. Part of it is because I haven't done things like that in a while and my body wasn't prepared for it, but sadly it's also because I'm too old to have my wolverine mutant power of superhealing work as fast anymore (sorry if i got a little nerd-technical on you). Rather than succomb to my old age I am going to spend this summer tumbling. Doing somersaults down hills, trying to regain the ability of the back handspring, climbing trees and most imprtantly, jumping off things I shouldn't jump off of. As a kid I lacked sufficient power to properly do some acrobatics I always wanted to do, now that I'm bigger and stonger I feel like I should be able to do these things. Right? Right. I hope.

As always get your feet off the ground and reach for the stars. Go big or go home. Pain heals, chicks dig scars and glory lasts forever. Carpe diem. Your heart is free, have the courage to follow it.

hallelujah hollaback
-M, p & z

oh ps - speaking of getting wrecked by waves...I have always had a ridiculously strong obsession with wanting to surf but the problems are many, First off I'm pretty sure I'm petrified of the ocean. I mean sharks, whales, jellyfish - I've seen Planet Earth, what's not to be scared of right? Second and more importantly I am not the best swimmer ( i blame my father- to teach me to swim he took me out in the lake to a point where i couldn't touch and he held me and then looked me in the eye, let go and said, 'swim!' I cried) My question is, how silly would I look as surfer if I wore a life jacket? Honestly. I mean one of the best things about surfing is looking cool right? So would it ruin everything if I wore one? Let me know because when (if) I move out to LA I'll need an answer to this question.

here's us discussing our plan of attack

The Soundtrack To My Life...

So I was sitting in the bar the other day when I heard the Def Leppard song "Pour Some Sugar On Me." Like most people my age, the song is a life long staple, it's one of those songs that you have always heard for as long as you can remember. It got me thinking how much my life has changed in the last 20 years but there are still songs like that, that I've been singing forever. I remember the moment I first heard that song in 1987 when I was 5 years old at my day care. One of the older kids (he must have been 9 or 10) had a walkman and a Def Leppard tape. He let me listen and I loved it. That song, along with many others by bands like Poison and Bon Jovi got me through the late 80s.

Then thoughout the 90s as I grew up, music changed and so did I. Bands kept coming into my life, but unlike a lot of people who get rid of cds or get sick of cds and sell them, I kept mine. I have kept every cd I have bought since they first started getting popular when I was 9. I remember my first cds. It was Sept. 15th 1991, my 9th birthday. My dad took me to Kmart and I got a discman and 2 cds: Bon Jovi's, 'Slippery When Wet,' and Kris Kross' Totally Krossed Out. I still have both of those cds along with every other cd I have bought and burned since then. I have lost a couple here and there but for the most part they remain intact in a collection of almost 700.

It's amazing to look back on songs and see how they have changed or not changed as I've gotten older. "Pour Some Sugar," for example, used to give me the biggest rush in the world. I would immediately go outside after hearing it to hop on my skateboard while the song was still fresh in my head. Now the song has a similar effect, only it has turned into me standing on a chair at the bar, drunk of my ass, singing along with all the other people who remember what it was like to hear that song in 1987. I got thinking about all the songs that I have heard in my life and how many lyrics I know to songs I don't even remember until I hear them playing on some random jukebox in a dive bar I stumbled into. Music, for me, has the ability to take me to the point in time when I first heard the song or expose a feeling or memory in me that I had all but forgotten. When I hear Bon Jovi's 'You Give Love a Bad Name," I think of how much I used to love that song (and still do) but also the memory of me sitting listening to the radio with my fingers on the record button (before I had the cd) just in case I heard the song on the radio and my brother making fun of me for declaring it 'my favorite song in the whole wide world."

I'm not sure what it is that I love about music so much but I assume it is it's ability to capture a moment in my life. As if that cd not only has digitally recorded that song but also a specific memory of mine. It moves away from 'What's your favorite song?' to "where were you when you first heard this song?" Sometime's it is whole albums that bring the memory or just the idea of a certain band. My old roommate Bill and I had a particularly dark few weeks in the late winter of 04 when we got sucked into Elliott Smith's "Songs From A Basement." That album blew our minds away and we stayed there in the dark for weeks playing Halo and not really having too many happy thoughts. To this day listening to Elliott Smith reminds me of the depths of those few weeks and the relief that Phoenix's album "Alphabetical" gave us.

The cool thing is that there is so much music in the world that there will never not be something new and exciting and mind altering for me to hear. New memories to have. I'll hear a song tomorrow that I've never heard in my life and it will mean something to me. I bought Vicious Vicious' new(ish) album a couple days ago and put it on for the first time as I began to write this blog and I love it. It is very good an will no doubt inhabit my cd player for the next couple weeks and as I listen to it a year or two from now, I will likely remember my first spring in NYC and listening to it on my ipod as I walked through Chelsea.

As always, get your feet off the ground and reach for the stars. Go big or go home. Pain heals, chicks dig scars and glory lasts forever. Carpe diem. Your heart is free, have the courage to follow it.

get your tunes on
-M, p & z

oh ps - i stopped myself from rambling a lot on this blog so expect some return to music discussions along this line coming soon. it might not be succint but it stayed on a single topic, eh?