the nicole kline experience

exhaustified

2012-01-31T22:44:00.003-05:00

ah, life. it's just a series of days, one following the next. lately, i've been fighting a cold, so i've been more tired than usual. but i've also been more determined than ever to start writing in here again.

what have i been up to? a lot! girl geek dinners, games in philly, warp zoned, press 1, geekadelphia, per contra, skeeball, dungeons and dragons, board games, blood bowl, gamma world, bookclubs, reading, writing, gaming, listening to music, watching movies and tv shows. we had an awesome event for the GGD last night; i've been writing a ton for the sites i'm involved with; we were the skeeball champions last skeeson (only lost one game!); and there's been a lot of gaming - on and off the top of the table. i've read loads of books and manga and comics, watched a lot of tv, finally saw tron and tron: legacy, and even went to the movies over the holiday break a few times. it has been a media frenzy up in here.

health-wise, things have been strange. my gastroparesis has been acting up again something vicious. my anxiety has been up and down, but i'd have to say that i've been more aware of it and i've been working through it. i feel like i've been getting better and better, but i still have obvious moments where i feel like i'm walking backwards, not forwards.

there's so much i want to talk about, but i just got done writing some articles and i'm tired. i do want to start writing in here again, but i put so much pressure on myself to have something to write about. i keep forgetting that it's a blog, and that the "about" part is just me. i can write whatever i want. i can do whatever i want. and what i want is to write.

How many licks does it take?

2011-11-18T19:21:00.006-05:00

I've tried to write this blog post half a dozen times, and yet somehow I've failed to finish a single one. So hopefully this time I will manage to finish a full thought, at least.

First: I'm writing this from my shiny new iPad! I love this thing. I barely have any apps on it yet - I've downloaded some, but for the most part, I don't really like them. The Facebook and Twitter apps suck; I can't find a blogspot app that doesn't suck. I don't like the Google chat app i found, either. I was hoping I could run the D&D character creator, but it runs on Silverlight, so that has been mostly futile. I did put Netflix on it, which has been absolutely ridiculously amazing. Other than that, I've mostly just been checking email and writing on it. The keyboard doesn't bother me at all - actually enjoy typing with it, though I'm obviously not as efficient as I am on a regular keyboard. For the most part, though, I really like it. It works for what I need it to do, and as I slowly get more acclimated to it, I like it more and more.

What else...there's just so much going on, I don't even know where to start. I guess I can start with real life. I had dinner with Michelle Pagnani a few weeks ago, and it was so fun! I hadn't seen her in years, but we had kept in touch, especially recently. We talked about everything, and mostly just realized how alike we are in so many ways. We want to plan a little happy hour with a bunch of the former English majors, which I would really love, if we could all find the time.

We saw Electric Six that same week. It was one of the most fun concerts I've ever been to! Anthony got me into them when we started dating, and I've been hooked ever since. We saw them at Johnny Brenda's with a bunch of people - Bailey, George, Kristin, Bill, BJ, and Aaron were all there. I spent most of the night drinking and dancing with Anthony. It was so...I don't even know. Liberating? It felt so good to dance and laugh and sing with Anthony, who is just so free and fun to be with. My words are failing me right now...which has been happening a lot lately.

Anyway, what else? Skeeball is a blast! We finished the regular season last night and remained undefeated! I rolled a 290 in our first game, and in the second game, during the mystery round, I scored a 190...rolling blindfolded with my left hand. It was a great moment. Finals are in two weeks. Registration has already opened for the next skeeson, and so far I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I could stick with my team, because we have a really great rapport, or I could make my own team with my friends, because so many people have expressed an interest in it. So I have to make a decision about it tonight.

I got my hair cut again, too, the day of the Geekadelphia Halloween party. It is shorter than my original cut, which grew way too fast into my eyes. Even now, three weeks later, my hair has grown so crazy quickly! I can't believe it. The party itself was ok - Ant and I were the two main characters from Breaking Bad, Walt and Jesse. Everyone loved our costumes. But I was feeling super fragile - I've been having some self-images issues recently, and dressing as a boy for Halloween drew out all kinds of anxiety. I ended up freaking out and Ant and I had a big fight that went on for most of the weekend. I did a lot of introspecting that weekend, but not before reigning destruction down around me. I know that I can't keep living my life like a bull in a china shop. I know I can't keep wrecking the feelings of the people around me. The people who stay are true friends who love me dearly and will stick with me no matter what, but knowing that doesn't always bring me comfort, because I cringe to think about the pain I've caused them.

In short: I'm lucky to have Ant, and Bailey, and Schneegas, and George. They've brought me through the awful haze that has been the last few weeks, and for that I am grateful. I'm lucky to have a lot of other people, too - Michelle and Veronica, and Chris and Ryan, and John and Holly, and Rachel and Vanessa, and Ian and Brian and Brett. There are too many people to name them all. I'm just a really lucky person who can't be grateful enough.

And I think I've reached my sap quota. I had taken off the week after the party, to work on my novel, which I didn't do. I did go the dentist, therapist, and Gastoenterolgoist; I did play and beat Uncharted 3; I did play a lot of Blood Bowl in our league at Redcap's; I did read a lot of 1Q84, the new Murakami book; I jdid play Skeeball; I did play three games of D&D. I had no cavities and my stomach doctor thinks things are getting better. My therapy appointment was a little mixed....my therapist left the practice, and plans on retiring soon. So that was our last appointment together. I actually ended up crying at the end because I was so sad. She is the first person I've ever really completely opened up to - I told her things I've never said out loud before. I had never given details on any of the sexual abuse I've gone through, not until three months ago when I told her. I felt sad that she was leaving; I felt anxious thinking about starting all over again with a new therapist. She was sad, too - there were tears in both of our eyes when we said goodbye. She set me up with another therapist in the practice, though, and I've seen her twice so far. I like her, and I think that the slow pace we're taking is exactly what I need right now. Everything has been so intense lately, and dialing it down feels good.

Last week was similar to the week before it - I played two more Blood Bowl games at the shop, and played D&D encounters...our last encounter, followed by dim sum at New Harmony. It was lame going back to work, and I also skipped Skeeball to pack for MEPACon, which was the 11th to the 13th. MEPACon is a D&D convention held in Clark's Summit, PA. I was nervous about it,but it ended up being an absolute BLAST! I played 7 mods total, and leveled 2 of my characters - Genza, my ranger, went from 8th to 9th, and Emberyll, my bladesinger, went from 14th to 16th. I did have a minor freak out on the second night, but I talked it through with Anthony, and we got through it.

This past week has been a complete blur. Monday after work I had an appointment with my psychiatrist, then I had a conference call about GameLoop Philly, and then I basically just passed the hell out. I was exhausted. Tuesday I had work, then went to Redcap's for Blood Bowl and hung out with everyone all night. We went back to my place afterwards, which was really nice. Wednesday was work, then the character creation meeting for our new encounter, and then Ant and I went to his friend Gil's place for a board game night. We watched them finish up a game of Dixit, and then played Pandemic with the expansion, which made things even more complicated than usual! Yesterday I didn't have work because I had two doctor's appointments, so I went home in the morning, did some cleaning and food shopping, went to my appointments, did some laundry, then went to Skeeball, where we proceeded to win our final two games. After that, I took the bus to Ant's and he made us some dinner and we decided to try out Pandemic with just two players. It was really fun, and both times we came close to winning...but of course, we lost. I mean, come on. It's Pandemic!!

Work was boring today, and now I'm just chilling at Redcap's, watching Ant play Roland in Blood Bowl while writing this. I was supposed to have a game tonight, too, but Sam cancelled on me. On, and I'm also reading the Uncharted book, which is surprisingly not that bad. I need to review that and the game and a bunch of other stuff. Hopefully my writer's block will get thawed out a little by this giant blog post I'm writing right now :)

There is so much more I want to write about - my therapy appointment yesterday, which was the anniversary of Eric's death, as well. How my anxiety has been. How today is the first day I've felt normal in weeks. The crazy dreams I've been having. What's been going on with my novel. My thoughts on self-image, being invisible, and androgyny. The book of poetry I am putting together. The socks I want to buy. The music I've been listening to. The anime I've been watching. The handmade jewelry I just had commissioned. But I think this is enough writing for now.

Halloween is awesome

2011-10-29T22:57:00.003-04:00

Anthony and I were Walter White/Heisenberg and Jesse Pinkman for Halloween. Behold:

Blue meth and all.

Philadelphia Film Festival

2011-10-24T18:23:00.003-04:00

This weekend, Anthony and I went to see two Philadelphia Film Festival movies with our friend Phineas. On Saturday, we saw a super weird trippy sci fi movie called Beyond the Black Rainbow, which was sort of scattered and strange but worth seeing. Last night's movie was amazing - it was a thriller called Headhunters and, much to my surprise, had Jaime Lannister in it! He was fantastic as the super sinister bad guy, which is unsurprising. There are a handful of other movies I want to see, including one on Thursday and one on Monday, but I'm not sure if we'll make it to all of them.

In other news, I joined a skeeball league! I am a freelancer (or freeballer, if you will) and I ended up on a team full of awesome people called the Alex Mac Daddies. We had two games on Thursday and we won both! My highest roll was a 250, hot damn. It's exciting and fun!

I also finished "Breaking Bad" - did I mention that? And Anthony and I have one more episode of "The IT Crowd," and not much left in "Better Off Ted." We've been playing a ton of Blood Bowl as well - the board game, as well as the PSP and computer games. I also finished the second Dresden Files book, Fool Moon, and I'm trying to decide which book to read next, though I've been carrying around the rulebook for Gamma World in the hopes that we start that campaign soon. I'm excited!

Speaking of excitement, I'm also going to my first ever Dungeons and Dragons convention! I've never done that before. I hope I don't get super burnt out! I'll probably end up using my high level Bladesinger all weekend, but that's ok - I really want to get her levelled up so I can start playing the higher mods anyway, and I'd love to see what she's capable of in the higher levels. She's pretty bad ass right now as it is!

What else has been going on... I did some cleaning and laundry yesterday, though I could really do some more. My two Halloween costumes are almost finished - well, one is completely done, but I still need one small piece for the other! We ended up having to get two because we had one all planned out and started buying stuff for it and then found out our other party was mustache-themed, so now we have two, which has actually been pretty fun to put together :). I'll take plenty of pictures, don't worry :) I'm still slogging through Resistance 3 and I finished up Ico and need to start Shadow of the Colossus. Mostly I'm just chomping at the bit for Uncharted 3!! I've also been taking lots of pictures lately, which has been really fun, and doing as much writing as I can. This week is packed with stuff as well...

tonight: dinner with Michelle Pagnani

tomorrow night: new Murakami comes out! plan to read all night :)

Wednesday night: dinner, D&D Encounters, Electric Six concert!

Thursday night: either Skeeball or PFF movie

Friday night: Indyhall/Geekadelphia Mustache party at Tattooed Mom's

Saturday: D&D all day, Halloween party at Brian's at night

Sunday: NOTHING all day so far, but PFF movie at night

I don't think I'll be sleeping much...

Oh, and also, I'm on a new medication - it's called Buspar. My anxiety has been flaring up pretty badly, so my psychiatrist added that to what I'm already taking. He forgot to mention I shouldn't drink on it, so Friday night at boardgame night at Kristen's I went from slightly wine tipsy to annihilated in three glasses. I will be sure to 1) eat dinner, 2) not drink so fast, and 3) not take Buspar with wine. Not a good idea.

Ok, off to dinner! Be sure to check out some of these amazing videos by my Skeeball teammate, Kristin:

Dirty Signs with Kristin

They are ridiculously awesome.

Nik out!

and i'm addicted to another book series

2011-10-17T22:40:00.001-04:00

but at least it's an easy series to read - it's the dresden files. the books are like candy! i've already finished storm front and i'm nearly 100 pages into fool moon after picking it up earlier tonight. it's just sweet, sweet candy.

i'm exhausted right now. i didn't get much sleep last night - anthony and i were up late finishing up the last two episodes of "breaking bad" after we watched "the walking dead." i managed to make it through work, then headed to therapy, which got cancelled, then went home and ate and played some resistance 3, then took the bus to my psych appointment. it was there and back (and sitting in the waiting room) that i did the majority of my reading. and now i'm home, checking the internet for things of interest, and getting ready to go to bed early for a change. but i can't decide if i want to read, game, or watch a show once i get into bed. decisions, decisions...

this week isn't nearly as busy as last week, thankfully. here's hoping i get some much-needed down time.

mass confusion

2011-10-16T10:16:00.001-04:00

Not that this comes as a surprise to anyone, but I am doing way too much stuff. It's at a point where I am massively stressed out over it. I really need to sort myself out, as they say.

In other news, new Walking Dead season tonight! I'm looking forward to that. I'm also really excited about the Philly Film Festival. I haven't gone in years, and, like the Fringe Festival, it's something I'm always interested in but never make it to.

Sigh. My life is in shambles. Will I ever learn?

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yay hard drives!

2011-10-11T22:40:00.002-04:00

i got an amazing hard drive reader off of new egg (per the recommendation of my good friend george) which came today. i checked out some old hard drives i had sitting around, and found tons and tons of old pictures, old writing, and ALL of my old music. it was a glorious evening. i sifted through them while watching episodes of "breaking bad" and taking some time to read more of the first dresden files book, storm front. i even did some writing! i've been quite productive.

yesterday, i watched breaking bad until i fell asleep, and took a nap. when i woke up, i headed to redcap's and played a game of blood bowl with gil. we're in the pre-season still, and that was my second game - i played nurgles and he played amazons. we tied, which was way better than my first game, when i lost to aaron (though i did beat his team up!). afterwards, anthony and i headed back to his place, and i watched more breaking bad while he worked on his blood bowl team. i passed out around two, and then when he got into bed at four, he woke me up, and neither of us could fall asleep. minus: didn't get much sleep, bonus: made it to work early because we got up just after six, so i actually started getting ready at a reasonable time. ha!

so now, i'm at episode 10 of season three, and i am going to finish this one up and then, if i'm still not tired (i think it's amazing i'm even coherent right now!) then i'll watch one more episode and go to bed. anthony has seen the first episode of season four, so i just have four more left before i'm caught up to him and we can start watching the latest season together. i just wish i had more time in a day...

tomorrow is work, then d&d encounters, which i'm really looking forward to. i also need to make some time to go to comcast to drop off my little cable box thingy... or maybe i'll just mail it to them. no time for thinking now. time only for walt, jesse, and sleep.

breaking bad

2011-10-10T16:09:00.003-04:00

there's nothing like being sick and watching an entire show from start to finish. i've watched seasons 1 and 2 of "breaking bad" since friday, and today, i started season 3. i could just lay around sick all day and watch the entire season, but i'm so tempted to do so many other things. i also finished up the yiddish policeman's union (which i absolutely loved) for the book club that doesn't suck and now i'm back to storm front, the first book in the dresden files series. i am really enjoying it so far, and i would love to get into the dresden game some of the guys are running. there are video games i want to play, too, and really want to go over the gamma world rule books anthony lent me because we want to start a game of that as well, and i'd like to do some cleaning, but i've just really got so little energy right now from being sick and a lack of sleep and the rough therapy session i had this morning, which has me out of sorts and anxious. so i think i'll just spend the rest of the afternoon with walt, walter jr, jesse, and the rest of the gang. if i'm feeling better later, i might work on some of the stuff i mentioned... that or i'll head to redcap's and play some blood bowl with gil. but right now i've got a fever and a rapid heart rate and a cranky disposition, so we'll have to see. :P

so... many... things... i also want to write, but my laptop is so hot on my lap, and my brain is all fuzzy from this headache, and wahhhhhhhhh.

i also want to write about therapy, and the book she has me reading now, and my dietary changes, but that'll have to be later, when i'm hopefully far less whiny and anxious. <3

yikes.

2011-10-09T20:30:00.008-04:00

when i take a hiatus, i take a serious hiatus. the whole point of a blog is to keep it updated, but i can't seem to keep up with it. i've been intensely busy lately with...

warp zoned
press one
geekadelphia
girl geek dinners
games in philly
the book club that doesn't suck
the video game club (that also doesn't suck, but we have no name for it yet)
two more clubs (one book club, which has me reading the girl with the dragon tattoo, and another club which has me primarily catching up on "breaking bad")
playing a lot of dungeons & dragons and board games
a blood bowl league (currently in pre-season)
work
doctor visits
writing a novel
getting a book of poetry together to get published
preparing for halloween
spending time with my amazing boyfriend

there's so, so much more than that, but that's all that has been taking up most of my time. therapy has also been going really well, and i've been working through things i never thought i'd untangle. i've been reading a lot and playing a lot of games and writing a ton and watching a lot of movies and shows and spending a lot of time with anthony, is what it all boils down to.

more later, but for now, my favorite photo of the two of us:

The Time has Come, the Walrus said, to Talk of Many Things...

2011-07-19T23:10:00.004-04:00

Wow - I got a huge outpouring of comments and messages about my last blog post! I can't believe how many people have, or know someone with, gastroparesis. It's intense! Thank you everyone for all of your kindness and concern! I truly appreciate it, and value all of my friends and family :) <3

What else has been going on... hmm. A lot of reading, that's for sure! I finished up A Storm of Swords, then re-read A Feast for Crows, and Amazon messed up and sent me my copy of A Dance with Dragons late - I didn't get it until Thursday! But I inhaled it so quickly that I was done it by Sunday. Whoops!!

There's been a lot going on other than that since my last update - I should probably start with Wednesday the 5th, when I met up with Mike and our friend Mike Castrovinci for some dinner, and then headed to Redcap's for D&D. It was fun! I feel almost like it gets better and better every week. The next day I came home and read after work, and Friday after work I headed to Mikey's and met up with some friends who worked at, or currently work at, our bookstore. Some I hadn't seen in almost a year! So it was really amazing to catch up with them. After that, I headed downtown to a Geekadelphia poetry reading called "Broetry," which was dedicated to poetry about... you guessed it... bros. It was held at National Mechanics, which is one of my favorite places to go. After the broetry was done, Mike showed up, and so did another writer at Geekadelphia and Warp Zoned, Chris Urie. We ended up chilling with him and our friend Jake most of the night, and afterwards Chris came over and we played some games and hung out until like 2 am. Friday was also when the doctor called to tell me about the gastroparesis, so I was a little shocked about that, for sure.

Saturday morning we woke up early, ate some food, and then grabbed a Philly Car Share car, picked up some Jimmy John's sandwiches, and headed to my sister Jenna's for the day to hang out with her, my nephew, and Jenna's family. It was an incredible time! My little nephew is getting sooooo big! He's so sweet and wonderful and affectionate. I had a great time with Jenna and her little sister, Rachael, too - we played some Just Dance, which I'd never played before (and have since bought!). It was nice catching up with her mom and stepdad, too - they are awesome people. They asked us to stay for dinner so we did, and it was delicious! We got home around 8 (after some minor drama with the car!) and hung out, played games, and read all night. Sunday we headed to my mom's to celebrate my stepdad's birthday. I wasn't feeling great, so I mostly just laid around and read some more.

Monday I was preparing for Dance with Dragons to come out, and trying to wrap up Feast for Crows as quickly as possible, but Tuesday came and went with no book! I bitched at Amazon, but they still didn't get it to me until Thursday. So Tuesday we recorded another podcast for Warp Zoned, Wednesday I met with my nutritionist to discuss my diet options, and afterwards I met the Mikes at my local diner and then we went to D&D. I was thrilled to get the book Thursday, and read the whole night at babysitting! And then again most of Friday night, after we went food shopping and picked up lots of food that I can actually eat. I ended up baking some awesome parmesan-encrusted chicken, which turned out amazingly well! I was excited about it.

Saturday I was very social! I started the day out doing some laundry, and then Mike and I went to Jersey to meet our friend Stacy, her boyfriend Ross, and her parents at PJ Whelihan's for lunch. Stacy and I met when we went to Ireland together for a wedding - I went with my friend Mike Cahill, and she went with her friend Carter Posey, and we ended up bonding and becoming instant friends. Our friendship has continued through the last three years! She and Ross are considering moving back up to this area from DC, which would be awesome, because we'd get to spend way more time with them. Afterwards, we went to Mike Castrovinci's and they played some video games while I read and napped, then we went to my mom's for dinner. She ended up dragging us to the mall to exchange her latest Pandora charm (I got her obsessed with Pandora!) and I stopped at H&M to get some new tank tops, then we headed home and read and gamed the rest of the night.

Sunday was the best. We sat around and did very little! Since we'd already gone food shopping, we didn't have to go anywhere. I did some stuff around the house, like some vacuuming, and we did head to GameStop so I could return a game, but other than that, it was just reading, gaming, and eating. It was so nice. I was kind of sad when I got to the end of the book, because I didn't want it to end, and who knows when Winds of Winter will be coming out!!

Yesterday afternoon we received a nasty shock at work - around 4:30, we got a phone call saying one of our faculty members died. It was very sudden. It's been a flurry of activity around the department since then, and many people are very sad. I didn't know the professor all that well, but it saddens me to see so many people hurting.

After work, we recorded our podcast, and then I played some more F.3.A.R., read more of Codependent No More, and did some writing. I've been trying to write as much as I can, but it's been tough. I wrote a preview of Catherine, as well as an article about my impressions of the Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception beta, and I'm working on a review of F.3.A.R., and also started the new BioShock novel, BioShock: Rapture today, and I'll be reviewing that as well. Whew. Busy! I've been doing some other stuff, too, but it's getting late, and I need to go to bed.

OH AND ALSO! My very first paper proposal got accepted at a conference! I found that out today. And, on my way home from work, I walked by a few people standing around a car. I looked over and saw kittens inside the car! I couldn't stop myself - I was drawn to them! I walked over and squeed, and asked how old they were, and she asked if I wanted to hold one! So I got to hold TWO of them! They were so sweet, and only a month old, and they were panting in the heat! One of them was panting right in my face, and his breath smelled like cat food, and I thought of Ralph. They asked if I wanted one, and I said do I ever! But I couldn't help but think of my poor kitties, and how they would freak out if I brought home another critter. It was nice just to cuddle kittens randomly in the middle of the day and talk to nice people. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face!!

Tonight, I washed the dishes, had some dinner, playing some Modern Warfare online with Mike and our friend, Ryan Littlefield, played more F.3.A.R., and read more of BioShock: Rapture. And now I think it's time to cuddle up with my 'tarns and go to bed.

Much turtle love! <3

In Which I Talk about Gastroparesis

2011-07-18T20:54:00.003-04:00

So remember all those medical problems I've been having? It all started last June. I was in the ER last year four times with tachychardia, which the doctors attributed to acid reflux, which they blamed on anxiety. I started seeing a nutritionist because I lost so much weight (all told: 30 pounds), went to a cardiologist (wore a heart monitor twice, and was given beta blockers which I never took), saw my family doctor a few times between ER visits (and was put on a proton pump inhibitor for the reflux), started seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist (who put me on anxiety medication), and then finally started seeing a gastroenterologist, who gave me an endoscopy and a gastric emptying scan. I changed my diet once I was diagnosed with acid reflux, and changed it back (partly, anyway) when I went on meds. All told, it's been 13 months, lots of tests and medications (most of which I haven't even touched), and A LOT of time spent in waiting rooms.

The results of all of my tests were exactly the same: everything is fine, no one knows what the problem is, here's a possible medication to help, go see another doctor... until the gastric emptying scan. My doctor called me a week and a half ago and said, "The results from your gastric emptying scan were very, very abnormal. It takes you 239 minutes to digest food, and it takes a normal person 90-120 minutes. You'll have to come in for another appointment - we'll meet and discuss a specific diet for you, as well as medication options."

I was floored. I wasn't expecting to hear that. I had assumed we'd gotten to the bottom of the problem - I was stressed out and anxious, and it was messing with my digestive system, and dealing with my anxiety would get rid of my acid reflux. But instead, it was something completely different - gastroparesis is ideopathic, which basically just means that doctors have no idea what causes it.

Anyway, I'll back up a little here - after I got off the phone with my doctor, I called his front desk to make an appointment. The soonest he can see me is September 9th. Oi vey! So I went online and did some searching on Google, which was how I found out more details about gastroparesis - which is actually what my nutritionist has thought I've had all along. So I looked at all the dietary restrictions and decided I'd start as soon as possible. I had an appointment coming up with my nutritionist anyway, so I got a head start on everything.

By the time I met with my nutritionist, I was already feeling better. Much of the problem was being caused by two things: foods I was eating that were high in fat (ice cream, chocolate, regular hamburgers, etc) and foods that were high in fiber (fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, and things like nuts and granola). Well, you'll never be able to guess what most of my diet was before this all happened. Let me give you a list:

breakfast - yogurt with granola and a banana
lunch - some sort of sandwich (usually with cheese) and some trail mix that I make myself (almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, wasabi soybeans, and dried cranberries)
dinner - usually something breaded (chicken fingers and tater tots) or high in fat (hamburgers or hot dogs) with a vegetable (usually broccoli)
dessert - ice cream or something equally fattening

Now, in all fairness, I did cut out a lot of high-fat foods - I don't eat cheesecake at all anymore, and I try to avoid stuff that's excessively high in fat. But I didn't realize that so many things I was eating - like fruits, vegetables, and nuts - were hurting me! It's no wonder I was always in pain and bloated. Here I was thinking that I was helping my acid reflux, when all I was doing was making it worse!

On Friday, armed with my new list from my nutritionist, I went to the grocery store to pick up all Nicole-friendly foods. The key is that the foods must be 5g of fat or less and 4g of fiber or less. One of the most difficult things to find was butter, because even some of the low fat sticks and the 'I can't believe it's not' stuff was high in fat. It was also tough finding anything to eat sandwiches on that isn't just straight up white bread (which I don't mind). So, now, my diet has changed considerably:

breakfast - smoothie (Starbucks Vivannos, but I just got a blender today, so I'm going to start making my own!)
snack - crackers or yogurt, or crackers and yogurt
lunch - sandwich (today it was tuna fish with low fat mayonnaise on a bagel flat or thin or whatever they're called)
snack - crackers or yogurt, or crackers and yogurt, or crackers and a Laughing Cow wedge
dinner - rice with frozen veggies, or stir fry I make myself, or lean burgers with baked french fries, or pasta, or baked chicken (just made some awesome baked chicken the other night!)
snack - Skinny Cow

Let me just say that Skinny Cow stuff is AMAZING. I bought the cookies 'n cream ice cream sandwiches, and holy CRAP. They're delicious! They're low in fat, fiber, and calories, and they taste like heaven. They're especially awesome in this hot hot heat!

So, the goal right now is to stick to this new diet and see how everything works out. After a month doing this, hopefully we'll be able to tell whether or not this is really what I have, and if it's helping the problem. My nutritionist thinks that I lost all the weight because my body wasn't digesting the food and I wasn't getting the nutrients, so this should stop my weight loss, which has still been going down. And I'm trying to get in some regular exercise to regulate everything - I just bought Just Dance for the Wii, which I blame on my sister, since I was playing the sequel to it at her house. It's SO fun!

So that's my update! Lots more is going on, but I wanted to write about all that health stuff. If anyone wants to see a copy of my diet, feel free to email me or hit me up on Facebook or Twitter or just leave a comment here and I'd be glad to share it. The one majorly bad thing is that I can't have popcorn, which is like on my top 5 list of favorite foods! But it's just too hard for my body to break it down, and it explains why I've been having such horrible pain every time I eat it. So looks like reduced fat Cheez-Its at the movie theater for me!

Hopefully more tomorrow. Much turtle love <3

F.3.A.R. multiplayer = yes

2011-07-05T23:44:00.003-04:00

So I finally dug into the F.3.A.R. multiplayer tonight. I am officially impressed! The modes are great, the maps are awesome, the pacing is perfect, and I love how smooth the gameplay is (which I'd noticed when I was playing single player as well). It doesn't hurt that I jumped into a random game with some awesome dudes who are now on my friends list. I love when that happens!

So yeah, after work I headed home, played more of the Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception beta, headed to Mike's, did another podcast for Warp Zoned, and then played F.3.A.R. the rest of the night. We're going to try to get into the habit of having a podcast every week instead of every other week, which I think will cut down on the length and the tangents. Tonight's went really well! Hopefully we can keep it going.

I need to do some editing, but right now I just want to curl into bed with A Storm of Swords and go to sleep. Tomorrow night is D&D (woo!) and Thursday I'm not babysitting, so Mike and I might go see a movie. Friday I'm meeting some friends for drinks and then going to the Geekadelphia Broetry event, and Saturday I'm going to see my sister and my nephew, yay! Hopefully somewhere over the weekend I'll be doing some cleaning and some laundry because I really, really need to.

Also: 51.14:11:32 until PAX ZOMG!! <3

sooo late!

2011-07-05T00:18:00.004-04:00

whew, here i go again - staying up too late the day before i have to go back to work! whoops! anyway, yesterday, mike and i played a lot of call of duty: black ops, then got showered and ready and packed up all of our stuff and headed to his grandparents' house for some lunch. his dad, his dad's girlfriend angela, and his brother keith picked us up after that, and we headed out to grab some dinner and a drink with them. after that, they dropped us off at the train station, and we had a nice ride back to philadelphia. i read more of a storm of swords and played more of link's awakening which i am in love with! we got back here and played codblops and read all night.

this morning, i woke up early after having some crazy dreams again. i swear i've been having them a lot lately! it's soooo strange. i finally got out of bed, washed the dishes, made some breakfast, and mike and i took turns playing codblop and reading. we watched more "24" while we were eating, though - it's been a few days since we've seen it. i can't believe we're on the last season! i hope jack doesn't die, but i'm guessing he probably will D:. anyway, after a while, we got showered and dressed and headed to superfresh to get some food, then came back here, had some snacks, took turns playing codblops and reading and writing and stuff, and just had a generally chill afternoon. i finished up my review of dream trigger 3d, worked on my feature about the uncharted 3: drake's deception beta, read more of codependent no more and a storm of swords, and did a little surfing around the internet, which i hadn't done in a few days. i also worked on some editing for warp zoned and oh yeah - i won an awesome t-shirt from one of the awesomest chicks on the internet, girl gone geek! she is totally amazing and i <3 her. i won this awesome mario kart league shirt:

:D! i can't wait to wear it! it's so adorable. mike said this morning that i have a knack for winning shirts online - this is the fourth one i've won. the other three were two behemoth shirts i won on twitter, and a lost planet shirt i won on twitter. and oh yeah, i won an awesome ninjatown contest as well! that one and one of the behemoth ones were both haikus. w00t! keep having contests, people! i'll keep entering them :D

ok, off to bed. i was hoping to have my u3 piece finished tonight, but the whole vacation vibe has been sapping me of motivation, so instead of being responsible, i read more martin and got more double xp. sorry, life. i promise i'll be more responsible tomorrow.

at the beach!

2011-07-03T09:39:00.003-04:00

so thursday was crazy busy, but i still managed to make it down the shore. i had work til 5, rushed home quick as i could, packed for the beach, headed to my babysitting gig, finished up around 9, stopped at the corner store to get cat food and cat litter, dropped it off at home, headed to varga for a meeting tristin and i had with flyclops, and then rushed back home to finish up the final packing, cat food- and water-ing, and last minute double checking of everything. i made it to patco in time for the train, which got me to lindenwold in time for the nj transit train, which was super late leaving anyway because they were waiting for the cops to get there to take some girl off. it was a strange night! i was working on homework most of the night, and then read a lot of clash of kings. we got back to mike's mom's after 1 and set up my ps3 so mike could check out the uncharted 3: drake's deception beta. i passed out shortly after that :).

friday was busy, busy, busy. we woke up early, got showered and dressed, and headed over to mike's grandparents. his mom is out of town for a month, and she lives across the street from his grandparents, so we've spent the last few days between the two houses, for the most part. we had breakfast, hung out with them, checked out the pool (i got burnt on my thighs in the half hour we spent there!), and then took their car to go pick up mike's glasses, get his brother keith from the train station, and stop at gamestop so i could see if i could find some of the games i've been looking for (which i couldn't). we did run into mike's friend, edd, who is super cool - i'd never met him before but i'd heard lots of stories! after that, we stopped back at mike's grandparents, then headed to his dad's to hang out with him and his girlfriend angela, as well as keith and his girlfriend karla, who just moved next door to willy and angela. we chilled, had an awesome meal - rib-eye steak, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, corn on the cob, salad, and a dessert of cappuccino pie, brownies, and ice cream - OMG, and then walked around the boardwalk. i think i may have been to that boardwalk before - seaside heights - when i was 19. i remember parts of it - it's so familiar. i think it's where i bought my crazy platform van sneakers and one of my favorite pairs of board shorts... which i can't find now. hopefully this summer's searches will yield them up! afterwards, we drove back to mike's grandparents, walked over to his mom's, played some call of duty: black ops, and went to bed. i also read a lot more clash of kings as well as the rest of my homework throughout the day, and played more of link's awakening, which i'm really enjoying.

yesterday was much more relaxing. we woke up, went to his grandparents' to eat, and headed to kohl's so mike could get some new sneakers. i found some amazing chuck taylor's - they were black and covered in little tiny studs, and they were only $16!! but they only had them in size 6, and my feet aren't quite that tiny :P. we headed back here, got changed into our bathing suits, and spent the day at the pool. it was soooo nice. we read by the poolside, then hopped in the water and swam a bit, then spent the rest of the afternoon reading in the sun. it felt soooo nice. around dinnertime, we headed back to mike's mom's, got showers, got dressed and ready, and headed back over to his grandparents' for dinner. they grilled for us - cheeseburgers and hamburgers, with corn on the cob and home-grown string beans, followed by blue bunny ice cream cones. it was all so delicious! i even had some wine, and i drink so ridiculously infrequently now that i got tipsy. whoops! we headed back to mike's mom's, and i played a ton more of link's awakening and finished reading clash of kings. i was tempted to start storm of swords but i was so happy and comfortable that i just drifted off to sleep.

aaand now i'm wide awake, and just feeling so pleasant and well-rested. i made the decision this morning to drop my class, because we've had such sporadic connection to the internet these last few days, and everything i need to do is online. the only reason the choice was difficult is because the class is so interesting. but with the project i'm working on with tristin, girl geek dinners philadelphia, geekadelphia, warp zoned, press one, and the fact that there are so many other things i want to do this summer - like clean out and re-arrange my apartment, as well as start working on that book i keep talking about - i just don't have the time for this class. it's time i made a decision on what i want to do, and as much as i love my coursework and want to get my degree, i love what i'm doing with the video game journalism stuff, and i would really love to start making actual money from it. and for once, i don't feel guilty about dropping the class. i feel like i'm really working in a good direction mentally and emotionally, and i haven't been this happy in a really, really long time.

the only other thing i wanted to mention is that i've been having some CRAZY dreams!! like beyond anything close to the realm of normalcy. a lot of people i've talked to have said they've been having weird dreams, too, so maybe it's the moon or something. but wow, have they been extra strange!!

ok, time to get in some more nuketown 24/7. i love double xp weekends! will post some pictures and more stuff later. happy fourth of july weekend, all :)

forgot to mention...

2011-06-30T08:07:00.001-04:00

I had a pretty rough anxiety attack last night. The research I've done, plus what I've discussed in therapy, added to my reflections on what has sparked these attacks before, have lead me to believe that I understand what caused it. Mike is down the shore - has been since Tuesday. I'm joining him tonight or tomorrow. But in the meantime, I have (previously inexplicable) anxiety, which I now think is because I hold my idea of safety closely tied to the person I'm dating. It also explains some of why my relationships move so fast.

This is all just speculation, but it feels like I'm unravelling a complex knot.

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ha!

2011-06-30T07:28:00.002-04:00

so that post i just published said it went up last night at 10:47...because that's when i opened a window to write a blog post. i think i am officially too darn busy :P

d&d!

2011-06-29T22:47:00.000-04:00

d&d last night was awesome! my friend mike and i got there late but everyone was late setting up so it worked out perfectly. we had a really fun time. anthony was jumping through windows again, which earned him the nickname "reverse defenestrator," until he later pointed out that a reverse defenestrator would be someone who threw windows through people. LOL!! good times.

afterwards i played tons more of the uncharted 3 beta - the patch has really helped it a lot. i played some uncharted 2 after that for some comparison. i think i've gotten wayyy too acclimated to FPS... i keep getting my ass handed to me in TPS. blergh!

ok, time for work, and then stopping into the girl geek dinners happy hour, then babysitting, then a meeting with another local game developer (flyclops tonight!), and then either heading down the shore tonight or sometime tomorrow. i have no time to pack, so most likely tomorrow, but i'd really really really love to get there tonight...

so much to do, always! and i really just want to lay around all day and finish reading clash of kings...

uncharted 3 beta!!

2011-06-28T23:41:00.004-04:00

i am so exhausted, but wanted to make a quick post about the uncharted 3 beta. it's here, and it's amazing so far! it's buggy and freezes a lot, but i was ready for that to happen. i like the multiplayer modes so far, the guns feel different but i'm enjoying using them, a lot of it is the same but so much is different. i'm writing up a piece for warp zoned, so i'll link that to here later.

what else...yesterday and today were busy days at work, for sure. last night after work, i met with some friends and local game developers to talk about a project we're working on, which went really well. afterwards i went home, grabbed some stuff, and headed to mike's. we watched "24," i read more clash of kings, and then we passed out. tonight i played tons and tons of uncharted 3 and recorded our podcast with ryan and adam. it was so fun! i hope we start doing a weekly podcast - it's such a blast.

time to get at least some sleep - tomorrow's another long day!! going to read some more of my book and pass out. :D

ps - i had some STRANGE dreams last night. i might write about them later, but wow. they are surely bizarre!

Sunday, Sunday...

2011-06-26T23:04:00.002-04:00

Oh, Sunday! You bring in the end of the weekend, and for that I am usually so sad. But I was in a good mood all day today! I woke up in a good mood, with Spot cuddling up to me in bed. I took care of the kitties, made breakfast burritos for Mike and me, and then we got all showered and ready to go to our book club meeting. We stopped at Whole Foods first and I picked up a fruit tart. I'll use pretty much any excuse possible to buy a fruit tart! We headed to the station and hung out waiting for the train - Mike was reading the final pages of A Storm of Swords, and I was leveling my characters in Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness.

We got to Lansdale and Sheila picked us up, and we met our friend Bill back at her place. We ate a delicious brunch and then went out on her balcony and discussed Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, which I was pleased to hear everyone loved! It was my first book pick, so I was a little nervous, but the book is just so easy to talk about because it's amazing. We had a great time discussing it! I hope they all read the second book, too, so we can discuss that as well, because I liked it but didn't love it. I wouldn't say I was disappointed, but I feel like the first book was a hard act to follow. After that, we planned out the next three months' worth of material, ate some fruit tart, and then Bill dropped us off at the station and we headed back home.

I had charged my 3DS at Sheila's, so I played a bunch of Dream Trigger 3D and unlocked a lot more stuff, and Mike wrapped up the rest of his book. He's obsessed! I kind of love it. We got home and chilled out a little while before I had my Skype meeting with Tristin and Patrick confirming all of our meetings for this week - I'm nervous and excited! Hopefully everything goes smoothly and I can start talking about this project soon. When we were done, Mike hopped into CoDBlOps with me, and I finally prestiged for the first time! It felt good, haha. I also started re-reading A Clash of Kings, downloaded and started Link's Awakening, and finished up the rest of my homework. I was going to do some editing but it looks like most of it is done, so I'm going to save the rest for tomorrow night and go wash the dishes and make my lunch for tomorrow. Whew! Sunday, you are so busy sometimes...

Ok, I best be off. Just wanted to share one more thing - these ridiculous glasses. They're the deal of the day in the Amazon video game section, and they are crazy. At first I just thought they were super overpriced glasses, but they are specially made so that you don't have to blink as much while you're playing, which absolutely blew my mind. Major League Gaming is a strange and interesting thing!

cat-astrophe

2011-06-25T22:22:00.006-04:00

So today we took the kitties to the vet. I haven't taken Spot in a long time - probably a few years, come to think of it. It might have been as far back as 2006. Anyway, I also haven't taken her anywhere since I moved here, so she's been in my apartment - other than the time I spent in Japan, when she was at my mom's - since 2007. The Pup is a different story. He was diagnosed last year with toxoplasmosis, after having a series of seizures. I had to take him to the vet a few times, and we had him on medication a few times, and it was really sad. But he's been ok for a while. He had two more seizures, and Spot is really fat, so we thought it would be a good time to take them both to the vet.

Normally, Pup is not pleased about being in the car, but he gets over it pretty quickly... so long as he's not in a carrier. But this new vet that I've been using the last year has a strict policy on that, so we borrow a dog carrier from my mom and put him in there. It's been a long time - since 2008 - since I've put them both in there at the same time, but I didn't think it would be that big of a problem. I knew they'd be miserable, but I had no IDEA what we were in for.

We got them both into the cage without much of a problem. To my surprise, Spot started freaking out almost immediately. The Pup was his normal spazzy self, but she cried and cried and cried. We got them to the vet quickly, brought them in, and put the carrier down. Another woman had come in with her cat, and Pup noticed and started growling. I turned the cage towards the other cat so they could see her, which was the stupidest thing I could have done. Mike was like "I'm not sure if that's a good idea..." There was also a cat loose who lives there, a sweet tuxedo cat named Diamond. Well, he started heading towards them, and the Pup went completely insane and started attacking Spot! It was like a crazy cougar battle inside a tiny cage. We had to rush them to an examining room and let Spot out and put the Pup back in the other room in the cage. Even after that, Spot still just sat in a corner and hissed most of the time, and when it came time for her exam, JFC. She was FREAKING OUT. She screamed so loud through most of it that they could hear her in the waiting room! I was near tears through the entire thing. Pup was an angel during his exam, but he always is. He just purrs and purrs with the doctor and her assistant like a cute little flirt.

The verdicts were at least good for both cats - Spot is fine, other than being really overweight. We need to put her on a diet starting now. Pup is a little skinny and we have to watch for his seizures. We got them back home and had to keep them separated for a little while because they were still hissing at each other, but they're doing ok now.

I was exhausted all day. I finished up most of my homework for the week, did some writing, started reading Codependent No More (which is really good and insightful), started F.3.A.R. (which I love so far), watched Lost Boys with Mike, and now I'm playing some Call of Duty: Black Ops with some friends online. I've got more writing to do, which I might get done before I go to bed. Tomorrow we're off to our friend Sheila's for our book club to talk about Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, which I'm hoping will be fun. I get to lead this time, so I'm a little nervous! And last night we had Mike's roommate's engagement party, which was SO fun! I really like his roommate Mark, and his fiance Chelsea, and their friend Dave, and all of their other friends were really nice, too.

All right, back to Blops. I'm about to prestige for the first time...finally! I'm so close. And I need to do more writing...and cuddle my kitties...and read more...and sleep.

Pup & Spot >^..^<

Animals Being Dicks

2011-06-24T07:27:00.003-04:00

This is, by far, one of the funniest websites I've ever seen:

http://animalsbeingdicks.com/

Damn. I laughed myself silly last night over the squirrel one!

I'm heading to work soon, but I'm feeling pretty awake and wanted to write in here for a moment. Tonight, after work, Mike and i are meeting his roommate Mark and his fiance and their friends to celebrate their engagement! I'm so excited. Mark and Chelsea are wonderful people. Tomorrow, we're taking both of my kitties to the vet - the Pup is still having seizures, so we're hoping they can run more tests and find out what's going on. Spot... well... Spot is really overweight, so we're going to ask them what we can do about that. Sunday we have our Book Club That Doesn't Suck meeting, to discuss Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, which I'm very excited about! And then Sunday night I'm meeting up with Tristin and Patrick via Skype to discuss a project we're working on that isn't quite public yet... but I think will be soon. In between all of that, I'll be doing homework, trying to wrap up A Game of Thrones and possibly start A Clash of Kings, working on Disgaea and Dream Trigger 3D some more, and watching some more "24." We're in the last season, and it's strange how many "big" actors are in it! Mike also wants to see Lost Boys and Flatliners to compare and contrast young Keifer with older Keifer. Ha! :)

Ok, time to finish getting ready. It's Friday, yay! Random picture spam:

Busy!

2011-06-23T23:22:00.003-04:00

The last few weeks have been very busy! Mike and I (and recently our other friend Mike) have been going to Dungeons & Dragons encounters at a local game store, and it has been amazing! It's every Wednesday night, and the people we play with are terrific. I'm enjoying it so much! We also had Wizard World Philadelphia this weekend, which was a blast. I'm still recovering from it, and this weekend will be just as busy! It's been kind of rough at work lately - first week of the term always is! - but rice + Ramune for dinner made it all better:

I've also been doing an unbelievable amount of writing, and I'm taking a class this term which means I've been doing homework, and I finished up inFAMOUS and I'm more than halfway through Dream Trigger 3D and Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, and I finished Johannes Cabal the Detective and started re-reading A Game of Thrones, and the show ended already but! I did just pre-order it today on blu-ray, the minute Amazon sent me the email to let me know it was available. Whew! I've been a busy lady. I also had a major breakthrough in therapy this week, which feels strange to say but feels good to say and think about. I think I might actually be able to work through all the negative (and previously unexplainable) thoughts and feelings I have. It feels suspiciously like progress, as Ryan Littlefield would say :)

More details - and pictures! - this weekend. For now, I'm going to hang out with the Starks and then head to bed.

empty promises

2011-06-14T22:52:00.001-04:00

I keep saying I'll write everyday and post pictures everyday and blah blah blah. But the truth is, I'm really busy most days and nights, and having a theme kind of makes blogging seem like a chore. I don't want to do something just so I can blog about it. It starts to take all the fun out.

Speaking of being out of fun, I've got a gastric emptying scan tomorrow. I'm a bit nervous about it, but I'm guessing that's a normal reaction. More details later...for now, sleep.

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way too late for me to be awake!

2011-06-06T01:00:00.003-04:00

i should definitely be in bed already, but i feel like this sunday got away from me. friday we had my cousin erin's wedding, which was BEAUTIFUL! and i had such a great time with my family. it was mike's first time meeting that part of my family - my stepdad's side, who i've known almost my whole life and i love very much. i don't get to see them often, but when i do, i'm reminded as to why they mean so much to me.

saturday we woke up late and i spent most of the day going through stuff in my mom's basement. i've lost 30 pounds since last summer, so i pulled out all my old shorts, cropped pants, and bathing suits. i also grabbed some shirts and a few pairs of flip flops, along with some awesome platform sneakers. i can't wait for summer!

we celebrated mike's birthday early with a good dinner and a cake, and then my mom and fran drove us home. i spent the rest of the night beating bioshock 2, which wasn't as bad as i thought it would be.

today we woke up, ate breakfast, watched some 24, then headed to my friend brian's for the bike race, which we completely missed. whoops! we hung out with his friends and family, and after they left, we re-watched the first two episodes of a game of thrones. mike read the book last weekend, so it would awesome to watch it with his and brian's commentary (brian's "re-reading" the books right now by listening to the audio books). brian was the one who got me into a song of ice and fire, so it's really awesome to watch the episodes with him (we saw the first one at a special screening in a movie theater - it was amazing!).

afterwards, we headed home, and ended up stopping and taking some pictures around the city. we so often forget what an amazing place we live in, and it feels so good sometimes when we stop to appreciate it. when we got home, i wanted to clean up a little, but it was so late by the time we got here that i just started up infamous. i'm actually kind of upset i didn't start it sooner! it's crazy amounts of fun...and why it's after 1 am and i'm still not in bed. whoops...

i have pictures of the t-shirts i've been wearing, but they're not readily accessible, so instead i'll post this one mike took of me on friday in the dress i wore to erin's wedding:

i need to stay on top of pictures more. i just uploaded the ones from mike's brother's graduation dinner, and i've got tons on my hard drive, camera, and phone - and now on mike's phone, too. and i just found a ton more in my mom's basement... i would love to start scanning them in and uploading those to facebook, but people would probably choke me, haha. :)

ok, really, time for bed! which means time to get into bed and read some more of johannes cabal the detective. sunday nights are the worst... i mess my sleep up too bad to be of any use at all monday. also, i can't believe e3 is this week!! it's so hard to believe that this time last year i was sitting at microsoft's kinect even, wearing a white poncho and bracing myself for all of the excitement to come.

more tomorrow. :)

another three-day weekend starts...now!

2011-06-03T00:53:00.003-04:00

whew. i made it through the week, and i've got another three-day weekend that started about 8 hours ago. my cousin is getting married tomorrow, so mike and i are headed to my mom's and then we're going to the wedding. mike's never met this part of my family before - it's my stepdad's family. i haven't seen them in ages (probably since the last wedding in 2007) so i'm very excited to see them all! i had to pick out a dress tonight - i narrowed it down to two, and i'm just going to bring them both. whatever, i'm allowed.

after work, we headed to mike's to grab our stuff, and then headed to my place. we had some dinner, watched another episode of 24, and then mike read more clash of kings while i played disgaea and bioshock 2. it was a nice, relaxing evening.

tomorrow i'm going to attempt to get up early so i can get some laundry and writing done before we head to my mom's. this weekend is packed - wedding tomorrow, celebrating mike's birthday at my mom's saturday, and brian's annual bike race party on sunday. hopefully i'll get a chance to game and write a bit as well, and maybe stop by and play some pokemon with chris.

oh, and today's t-shirt was another behemoth twitter contest win! it's another one from PAX East, though this one is from last year's expo.

whew. that is all. time to play more disgaea or read more johannes cabal the detective or maybe just sleep.

fresh cake!

2011-06-01T23:59:00.005-04:00

Today was nuts! Mike and I went to dinner when I was done work and then headed over to Redcap's for some D&D, which is awesome. I'm really getting into it! I think I'm going to try to make my own character this weekend. We walked back to Mike's after that and I played some Pokemon Black while he played Metal Gear Online, then I played more BioShock 2 while he read more of A Clash of Kings. Now we're just wrapping up and getting ready to pass out.

I started Johannes Cabal the Detective the other night, which I may have mentioned. It's surprisingly good so far! Not that I didn't think the author could pull it off... it's just that the first one was SO good, that it's hard to imagine him equaling that again. I hope he did! So far I'm feeling optimistic. And my book club is reading Johannes Cabal the Necromancer right now, meaning I'm going to get to read it for a third time :D

So much on my mind... hopefully will have time for a proper post discussing all the reviewing I've been doing! But I'm so tired now... zzz...

Oh! Today's t-shirt is called "Fresh Cake." It might just be the best t-shirt ever created!

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sleepy

2011-05-31T23:37:00.003-04:00

Today's t-shirt is Dr. Droidberg from Tee Fury! It was the second daily shirt I got (and the first mashup).

Yesterday, I did some cleaning, ran some errands, then Mike and I went to our friend Chris' place and hung out with him, his brother Ryan, his girlfriend Jess, and his friend Nate. We got a pizza and then went to Rita's for frozen treats! Yum. In between, we talked about books and played a shitload of Pokemon.

We got home late and I played more BioShock 2 and then we read in bed. Mike started A Clash of Kings and I started Johannes Cabal the Detective. We fell asleep late and it was a little rough at work with so little sleep. It's the last week of classes so it's busy!

Tonight we caught up on the latest episode of A Game of Thrones. That show is really well done! But Mike is starting to get why I've been so worried about the show and how they're going to portray certain things. They seem to be pretty good at it, but some of what happens to the characters is so gruesome that I'm kind of afraid to see it! Though I think my imagination might be worse... it was with the golden crown scene.

Other than that, we played some video games and chilled out. Tomorrow is another busy day. At least another three-day weekend is coming up for me - my cousin Erin is getting married Friday! So that should be a blast.

More tomorrow. Oyasumi-nasai!

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relaxing 3-day weekend

2011-05-30T15:32:00.004-04:00

thursday night was our first official girl geek dinner happy hour, and it was a smashing success. we met up with some ladies (and one guy - mike g!) at philadelphia bar and restaurant and discussed the scene as it stands in philadelphia for women of the geek persuasion. the food was delicious, the conversation was excellent, and it was just an all-around good time. i'm looking forward to more happy hours as well as our next quarterly event!

friday was a busy day at work, as the week of writing came to a close and everyone was running around for the writing awards. after work, i met up with mike at his place and we headed over to my place and then did A LOT of food shopping, after which he cooked us a feast. we watched some more 24 - we're in season 7 now - and i wrapped up l.a. noire while mike read more of a game of thrones. my final moments with l.a. noire were tearful ones - it's a beautifully crafted game, and has so many outstanding features. my review should be up at warp zoned sometime this week - maybe even today.

saturday and sunday were both spent largely lounging around. mike was completely obsessed with - and finished reading - a game of thrones, and today started a clash of kings. i wrote my l.a. noire review and some other stuff for warp zoned, finished reading the rise of endymion, played tons more disgaea: afternoon of darkness, and started bioshock 2. today i also did some cleaning up, moved some stuff around the apartment and threw away some things, unpacked from PAX East (finally!!), and now we're going to run some errands and then head to our friend chris' place. i really want to bake but it is waaayyyy too hot outside to do that, and i've been fighting turning the air conditioning on...though it looks like i'm going to lose that battle soon. as it is, i'm already wearing shorts (nooooo!).

so...yeah. we didn't quite make it down the shore for a few reasons - we were actually supposed to spend most of the weekend down there, but plans fell through with mike's family and with mine, so we just stayed here. i'm glad, because i had so much to do...and still didn't even do half of it. i'd like to get some laundry done, and do some more writing, and...well...unpack from PAX Prime. yeah, i still haven't unpacked from the trip we took to seattle in september. i got so much free stuff that i still have an entire suitcase full of it. PAX East was just clothes i hadn't unpacked yet...my freebies are in another, much smaller bag, because there weren't many to be had. but i think i got roughly 26 shirts at PAX Prime. oi vey!

anyway, time to get dressed and head out. and don't worry, i haven't forgotten about my "t-shirt a day" idea...i think i might start it on june 1st, considering i spent practically this entire weekend lounging around in a pink robe covered in turtles. probably not something that can be considered a daily t-shirt. :D

yesterday's t-shirt!

2011-05-26T17:21:00.003-04:00

Behemoth Battle Blocks shirt from PAX East that I won on Twitter. :D

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testing from my phone

2011-05-26T17:19:00.002-04:00

as is already painfully obvious, I'm not great at keeping up with a daily blog. perhaps using an app on my phone will help. we'll see :)

off to tonight's girl geek dinner happy hour! <3

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good intentions something something

2011-05-25T06:52:00.004-04:00

so the last few days have been really busy, in and out of work. monday after work i washed a huge pile of dishes and did a major run at the grocery store. yesterday after work i stopped at kmart to buy a giant thingy of cat litter and then came home to do laundry. at least, that was my plan...

laundry is sort of a !ZEN experience for me. i don't put any of my clothes in the dryer - only my towels and sheets. everything else gets hung up around my apartment, mainly because i hate failing elastic, faded and cracked t-shirts, and when anything shrinks. i haven't washed any of my clothes in a LONG time (yes, i have about 2 months' worth of socks and underwear), so i did a load of that stuff first. then i brought down my sheets and towels. i had a few minutes left on the cycle, so i turned to the dryer to empty the lint tray, only to see that the lint tray was filled to the brim with water.

it's rare that i gasp out loud, but i did when i saw that.

i brought my stuff back upstairs and pondered calling the laundry company, but instead waited and told one of the neighbors when i was outside waiting for chris, the newest writer over at warp zoned, who was stopping by to pick up a game to review. by that time i'd eaten and played some l.a. noire, and when he said he was close, i went out on the stoop and played some more disgaea (which is devouring any free moments i might have). i lent him brink, which i hope doesn't make him want to jump off a roof, and then went back inside and played more l.a. noire all night, until i crawled into bed with more disgaea and passed out.

today, it's more errands after work - i have to pick up my contacts (which i should have done yesterday but didn't get there in time) and make it home in time for the UPS delivery, which is bringing a new pair of shoes, woo! hopefully i can also finish up l.a. noire tonight so i can get that review written. spoiler alert: i love that game.

i also bought two w00t shirts yesterday. writing the daily scoop is making me go broke! i need to start posting daily t-shirt pics again, as daily shirt sites, video game companies, twitter contests, and expos have made my amazing t-shirt collection grow into something completely unstoppable with a mind all its own.

ok, time to get ready for work. more later - hopefully with pictures, and a detailed account of why people need to stop planning everything in the universe on wednesdays after work.

conscious effort

2011-05-23T23:12:00.003-04:00

it's time i made a conscious effort to start doing things the right way. i'm trying to lately - i've been eating three meals a day, sleeping somewhere between six and eight hours a night, and starting yesterday, i've been trying to catch up on chores and things around the house. i did some cleaning yesterday and grocery shopped and washed a mountain of dishes today. tomorrow i tackle the laundry - something i'm not looking forward to. i think what i need to do is get back into a pattern - eating, sleeping, exercising, and then taking the rest of my time and managing it better - dividing it up between gaming/writing and leisure.

not that gaming and writing aren't leisure activities, but i'm referring to more reading and watching movies and shows. i'm almost done the hyperion series - i'm on the rise of endymion - and i've been watching 24, a game of thrones, highschool of the dead, panty and stocking with garterbelt, and, just recently, i started re-watching dexter from the beginning. they're all really excellent but also time-consuming (not to mention watching a game of thrones is making me really want to re-read the books, which i haven't read since 2005/2006). there's so much other stuff i want to read and watch, and so many games i want to play, too. i made the mistake of starting final fantasy vi and disgaea right before l.a. noire came out, so i've been rotating between the three of those - but mostly i've been playing l.a. noire, which is excellent. too much media...

anyway, i know i said i'd have links and pics, but i'm laying in bed and all i want to do is level a bit in disgaea and then pass out. i am going to try to write in here every day though, so hopefully i'll be able to keep that up. it's been too long, blog. and not that i think anyone's actually reading it, but it's still nice to organize all of my thoughts in one place.

beyond busy

2011-05-22T22:38:00.003-04:00

my life has been beyond busy these last few months. i was one of the co-organizers of gameloop philly, an unconference for local video game developers. we had it yesterday, and it was a smashing success! afterwards, everyone got just plain smashed at national mechanics during the after party, and i've been paying for it all day. i've also been cleaning, throwing things out, playing l.a. noire, and writing my recap of the event (which will be up later this week on geekadelphia).

writing-wise, i'm still writing and editing at warp zoned, and i've got a new column up at press 1. i'm also putting a lot of serious thought into writing that book i've been saying i would write since i was in first grade. i think with a little time management, i'll be able to actually do it.

i haven't been in school the last two terms, but i'm registered for one class next term. i haven't been watching many movies - or, really, any at all - but i have been reading (almost done the hyperion series) and playing a lot of video games. i've started dexter again from the beginning as well, and i'm almost done with all of 24. i've also started to get back into anime again, whenever i have some free time. and i want to get pierced again, and get another tattoo.

so much going on...tomorrow i'll put up links to everything, but right now i'm tired and i want to get in one more case before i go to bed.

goal tomorrow:
-links
-photos
-more information

for now, sleuthing and sleep.

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

2011-02-15T06:56:00.003-05:00

I've been too busy to write lately (no surprise there), but I wanted to write a quick blurb about Valentine's Day in case I am too busy later to comment on it. Mike and I had a wonderful time yesterday - we took the day off and just spent it together. I found a great recipe for mac and cheese and we had a romantic time making it together, and spent most of the day relaxing and watching tv and doing a few chores together. It was wonderful and beautiful and relaxing and fun. We took some pics, but I'll just share my favorite one for now:

More later, hopefully. I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day! :)

I Surrendered to Winter Already

2011-02-09T23:06:00.003-05:00

I don't get why winter won't just let up - I already surrendered! I waved a white flag from under a mound of snow. Yet today it was 12 degrees when I woke up. Now it's just being cruel and unusual.

After work today, I had to run some errands, but only ended up running one - dashing off to KMart to get a hand mixer and some cat litter. I'm super psyched about the hand mixer because now I can take on some baking projects that are more ambitious. Mike and I stopped at my place to check on the cats and take out the trash and clean up a little, then came back to his place to eat dinner, watch some "24," and chill out. I had to work on some boring paperwork and write some news for the site (just one, but it's got me drooling). There's so much more I wanted to get done but now I'm utterly exhausted and I think it's time for bed.

I will say one thing briefly - I'm glad that I'm taking the time in 2011 to hang out with the people who matter to me. I had a great lunch today with my friends Dave and Kate at work, and I'm meeting up with my friend Sheila tomorrow after work. I also just made some plans with my best friend Krissy, and I've been trying to solidify a date to see my sister and her family for weeks now with no success. Hopefully that'll get cleared up soon! We're also supposed to go to NYC to spend some time this weekend with some other Warp Zoned writers - which reminds me, I have to buy those tickets as well tonight. No rest for the wicked...

OH! And I started reading The Fall of Hyperion, which is better than I expected. One chapter in and I'm already hooked.

OK, I'm fading fast. Hopefully more tomorrow...

My fortune was right - good books are BFFs.

It's Only Tuesday?

2011-02-08T22:59:00.006-05:00

I am sooooo tired, and I have been all day. This winter is so cold and draining! And there's so much more of it left. Sigh...

So last night, I wrote that blog post about cooking and baking, and it felt pretty good to get it all in one place! It's so gratifying to write about the goals I want to achieve and to think about the road I've taken so far. I also uploaded a ton of pictures to Facebook - I take so many with my Droid and then never do anything with them, so I wanted to put them all somewhere. I got the first folder's worth of pictures up, and then we went to bed.

Today, after work, Mike and I went to Gamestop so I could try to order some games, but we failed miserably. The selection at ours is so hit or miss - they either have everything I want and it's A+ #1 awesome, or they don't have anything and nothing is in order and the whole place is a mess and the cashier can't even answer a simple question. We came home and ate some leftovers from this weekend and watched some more "24," which has been our latest show. We've watched seasons 1 and 2 so far, and now we're at the beginning of season 3. It's been terrific. When we were done, Mike went to bed - he wasn't feeling well - so I took the opportunity to finish up my review of Dead Space: Extraction and upload some more pictures to Facebook. I haven't tagged them all yet, but I'll work on that tomorrow. Right now I need to wash my hair and then get my butt to bed!

First, I wanted to comment on what we've been watching and reading and all that jazz:

-over Christmas break, we watched 4 seasons of "Dexter," and we watched the 5th season the week after. We were obsessed.
-we've fallen behind on "30 Rock" and "The Office," but I did catch an episode of "Outsourced" and thought it was hilarious, and we watched the first episode of "Eli Stone," which I also really liked.
-Zombieland was fantastic! And I watched Scott Pilgrim...again.
-I belong to a book club for the first time in my whole life. We read The Graveyard Book. It was excellent. I'm still reading Monster Nation - I have to get back to it. I am deciding on either The Fall of Hyperion or Johannes Cabal: The Detective for my next book.
-I've been listening to The Dismemberment Plan pretty much non-stop the last few weeks, and we saw them on their reunion tour when they stopped in Philadelphia. It was incredible. I'm also listening to the Giant Bombcast and the Warp Zoned podcast, as vain as that sounds.
-I beat four games (and reviewed three!) in January - Lost in Shadow, LittleBigPlanet 2, Picross 3D, and Dead Space 2. I've beaten one in February so far - Dead Space: Extraction.

I'm also reading Kill Screen and trying to find more time for webcomics but it's so hard. I've got so much going on that it's really tough to stay on track of anything! Right now, I'm currently playing:
-Valkyria Chronicles II on the PSP
-Pokemon SoulSilver on the DS
-about to start Dead Space: Ignition on the PS3 and Return All Robots for the PC

There's more going on, but that's all I've got time for today. Random picture:

From when Mike and I got back together. :)

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have more time and some inspiration to do another blog post like last night's. For now...shower...then sleep. :)

In Which I Talk about Baking and Cooking

2011-02-07T21:54:00.014-05:00

So, free time has been really hard to come by around here. Between working full time, being the Senior Editor at Warp Zoned, writing for Geekadelphia, spending as many Wednesdays as I can at Indyhall and trying to do as many IGDA events as I can (neither of which I have done satisfactorily enough, if you ask me), being on hand for much of Global Game Jam, going to MAGFest, trying to clean and reorganize my apartment, and attempting to keep up on things like eating food and sleeping and doing laundry...well, let's just say I don't get any of those last three things done very consistently. Add in there the fact that the doctors are still trying to figure out what's going on with my heart and my stomach, and I've spent an inordinate amount of time these last few months at the gastroenterologist, the nutritionist, the cardiologist, and then my regular yearly check-up with the gyno and monthly drop-ins with my family doctor to keep her apprised of my situation. I've also started seeing a therapist to see if treating the anxiety itself will help with the other issues, and they seem to think that treating that directly will end all the other problems. I've even considered going to an acupuncturist, as some of my friends have had some good luck with that. The good news is that I haven't been in the ER since November. The bad news is that I've given up caffeine (with the exception of the occasional chocolate) and alcohol completely, and that I'm still having breakthrough acid reflux, even with the Prilosec. But as a result of the no caffeine and no alcohol, I've lost 30 pounds, and can now fit into ALL of my old clothes, which means I haven't spent any money on clothes lately. So...there's good, and there's bad, and I'm dealing with all of it the best I can.

Since I haven't been able to regularly write in here with anything, I decided I'm going to try to make my writing a little more structured here in order to give myself a more creative outlet. I've been wanting to really get into baking and cooking recently, so I thought that might be a good place to start.

Baking and cooking are things I've wanted to get into for a very, very long time now. My current living situation prohibits getting really creative - or, in many cases, doing even the most simple tasks - because I live in a very small apartment and, frankly, I just don't have the proper tools to get a lot done. For the most part, I just kind of go without and make something else if I don't have what I need to get it done. This weekend, I decided to change that attitude.

First, let me give some background. I started baking when I was very young, probably about six years old. I would help my grandmother bake at Christmas and Easter every year, mixing up the cookie dough, putting on the frosting, eating the batter - whatever I could do, I did. That went on until I was about 11, and then only sporadically until I was 18, and then, sadly, never again. When they moved, my grandmom gave up her tradition of baking Christmas cookies and Easter bread. For the most part, she also stopped cooking. She used to cook every meal for us (except Sunday breakfast - that was my grandpop's job), but since they moved out of the house I grew up in, there's been no serious cooking or baking other than those done for family gatherings.

My own experiences - solo, that is - have been sporadic at best. I moved out when I was 18 but didn't really start cooking for myself until I had my first apartment in Reading, PA...and even then, it was nothing more complicated than macaroni and cheese. My roommate, Rachel, did most of the cooking, and I did most of the cleaning up. Of my next roommates, Patrick and James, I was spoiled by Patrick's cooking, or ended up with take out, or got leftovers from my mom's house. (It's no surprise that at this time in my life, I was my heaviest.) I allowed all of my next roommates to cook as well, as I had little to no interest in learning. I dabbled here and there, but for the most part, I just wasn't into it. I made Irish Potatoes, and I made some awesome mashed potatoes, but in between, there wasn't much.

The true test came when I moved into an apartment alone in 2007. Would I die? Would I subsist entirely off of cereal and macaroni and cheese, as I so often had in Reading? I was really into Japanese culture, so the first thing I bought for myself was a rice cooker, and taught myself the fine art of making onigiri and tried to get into creating mythical bentos. I loved making rice, and made so many different things in my rice cooker - I learned how to make risotto, tried to perfect orzo, and oftentimes made a concoction of a can of soup mixed with a cup of rice and some fresh vegetables. I also loved using the steamer, and used it often.

I also did something else I'd always wanted to try: I made my own Chex mix, which was amazing. I would often make a ton of it and include it in my lunch every day as a snack. I made a few different varieties - sometimes I'd make it salty, and other times I'd make it sweet. But every time, I loved it. It's always been one of my favorite snacks to buy at the store, and learning how to make it was a joy.

When Mike moved in, I got a slow cooker, and became even more daring. I made chili, lasagna, teriyaki chicken, and even pizza in it. It was difficult at first, because I really had no idea what I was doing. Recipes that looked so simple would take me two hours because I had to time browning the meat and cutting all of the vegetables and getting everything opened and drained and mix it all together. At first, I was overwhelmed, but after a few times, I really got the hang of it and started to love it. I haven't used it in a while now, mainly because we haven't had the time, but we've had some ideas, and once we have a free weekend, I plan on diving back in and making some chili again, or maybe some more lasagna (which is Mike's favorite).

Using the slow cooker, and learning how to do other things with food, opened me up to different ideas. I've gotten more daring with the rice cooker (we had to get a new one last year because the cheap one I got when I first moved in ended up breaking), and I have more tools for bento now than ever before, with a few more on my wish list.

Another thing I got really into was making guacamole. I'd never really been all that into guacamole until I tried my aunt's recipe a few years ago. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever had in my life, and I HAD to know how she made it. So I got her recipe and started making it myself whenever avocados were readily available. It's a delicious and healthy snack that I try to have on hand, especially in the summer. I also really want to get into making my own hummus, but that will have to wait until I get a food processor.

Baking had still eluded me, for the most part. Over the summer, I bought an awesome Mini Cupcake Factory from Thinkgeek, which makes approximately a billion cupcakes per box of cake mix. I haven't made anything daring yet - just used boxes of mix and used store-bought frosting. I don't have a hand mixer, so making anything more complicated than that would be an anxiety-inducing nightmare. For now, I love having a billion tiny cupcakes everywhere, slathering on some icing, and covering them in sprinkles.

But this weekend changed everything for me. I decided that, for my grandfather's birthday, I was going to make some food. I'd made my cupcakes for everyone a few months before and they were impressed, but I wanted to do something that took a little more effort, and I guess finesse as well. So I decided to make some really cool dessert bars. I went to the store and purchased all of the ingredients, including the 9X13 baking dish that I needed (I got a really cool Pyrex one with a lid). The main ingredients were graham crackers, walnuts, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, and coconut, and they're amazing. I had sort of hoped they would be like the ones I got at Picnic, which have more of a brownie-like consistently to them, but these were more like candy bars. They turned out really well, though, so my next goal is to either find the recipe for the bars I'm thinking of...or branch out and try to make my own.

The truth is, I would really love to start making some more ambitious projects, including cupcakes, but without a real mixer, I can't do a whole lot. So one of the next purchases I want to make is for a hand mixer and maybe one of those baking bags to apply icing to the cupcakes. I've been shopping around the last few days, so once I'm comfortable with something, I'm going to pick it up.

This weekend, I also made some buffalo chicken dip, which was super hot but super awesome. I went with canned chicken because I didn't think I'd have enough time to boil and shred the chicken breasts, but this was a mistake - the canned chicken had the consistently of tuna fish, which made it less appetizing. But mixed with all the cheese and hot sauce, it was less easy to tell that it was from a can. All in all, it was a successful endeavor into baking, and I definitely want to try some more - possibly this weekend when we go to my sister's, if they don't mind being guinea pigs for another project.

All in all, right now, I'm feeling pretty confident. The only major things standing in the way of me really learning how to bake and cook are space issues as well as major time constraints. I'm busier now than ever before, but I feel like learning how to bake and cook will help me to deal with my stress, especially because I feel like it will help me make healthier choices. OK, maybe more with the cooking than the baking, but you know what I mean.

And now, time for some pictures. :)

Me doing some prep for the dessert bars :)

The ingredients!

Adding the final layer

The pup was waiting patiently.

The final product was slightly burnt but totally delicious.

Laying down the chicken layer of the buffalo chicken dip...and yes, those are my pajamas. :)

After adding more cheese than I'm comfortable admitting and baking it, this was the awesome result

Time for me to get some editing and writing done before I pass out. Hopefully someone out there is reading this and enjoyed this post and the pictures. :) I want to try to do some more of these, so look out for some as soon as the end of this week - if I have the time. Ah, that phrase, as always...

Happy New Year!

2011-01-03T23:40:00.002-05:00

This will be a short one: I have a new part-time job. I quit my position at Gaming Target and I now work for a site called Warp Zoned. I'm very excited to start the new year out this way!

I'm not taking a class this term, so hopefully I'll have some time this week to write an update. Though Lost in Shadow is out tomorrow so I'll be playing that, and Wednesday I've got a meeting, and...yeah. You know how it goes.

:D

Two Things I Forgot to Mention Last Night

2010-12-20T09:34:00.006-05:00

The first: Super Effective. It's one of the funniest webcomics I've ever read. This one makes me crack up laughing every time I see it:

It's an awesome mashup of two things I adore: Pokemon and Gurren Lagann.

The second: at game night this weekend, we listened to a lot of Weezer, and decided it would be ok if the apocalypse happened, so long as the Blue Album was playing. It brought me back to teenage years and simpler times. They also played some Foo Fighters, which always makes me smile. I need to get my finger back on the pulse of all this music I like. I heard something about Incubus having a new album. When did that happen?

Ok, time to get to work! These evaluations aren't going to scan themselves.

It's Monday Again Already?

2010-12-20T01:05:00.007-05:00

Damn! And to make matters worse, it's 1 am on a Monday, and I have to be at work in 7 hours, and I'm pretty much wide awake. D'oh!

The last week in review...

-As I mentioned in the previous post, we watched the VGAs last Saturday night, the 11th. It was pretty good, but there weren't really too many games that came out this year that I was absolutely in love with. Next year, though...that's another story. Next year is going to be completely crazy, and the premieres at the VGAs made that even clearer than ever before. For me, personally, January is going to be crazy - Lost in Shadow, LittleBigPlanet 2, and Dead Space 2 all drop that month. In March, F.3.A.R. and Crysis 2 come out on the same day (!!!). Killzone 3, Resistance 3, Uncharted 3...the list just goes on and on. It's going to be some year. I can't wait :)

Also, Mike gave me one of my Christmas presents early - an HDMI cable for my new tv!

-Sunday was Drexel's Holiday party. I've gone pretty much every year since I started working at Drexel, but this year we just had too much going on. Mike was studying his ass off for his exams, and I was trying to finish Final Fantasy: the 4 Heroes of Light, so we chilled at my place and then headed to his place.

-Monday I went to work, rushed home, had some dinner, and then went to IndyHall for a meeting with the OCMFers, which was awesome. Mike came, too! Afterwards we went home and watched Inception again. We were going to head to Movie Monday to see it at the Troc, but we had sort of an emergency meeting in which we had to take care of some serious business, so we just watched it at home instead on my nice new tv. It was awesome, even the 6th time around.

Oh, and also, I got a special package in the mail:

-Tuesday I went to work, came home, watched some 30 Rock with Mike, and then worked on 4 Heroes of Light all night. Also I bought a bunch of games on sale Monday and Tuesday - Modern Warfare 1&2, Bayonetta, Dante's Inferno, and Darksiders for 80 bucks total. Amazon needs to STOP having sales immediately :P.

Did I mention these cookies are freaking awesome?

-Wednesday was Mike's last final for the term, so after I was done work, we headed to Landmark and celebrated - not just him being done his last final, but also him being halfway through law school :) it was awesome. We head to his place afterwards and passed out super early.

-Thursday I went to work and then afterwards I was feeling super crampy and horrendous so we headed back to my place, watched 30 Rock, and I played 4 Heroes of Light for the rest of night, mixed in with some codblops.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, about two weeks ago I discovered one of our local food marts sells Ramune, an amazing Japanese soda. We usually stock up when we go to Maido, but lately I've just been grabbing a few there. They're SO good! This one is definitely one of my favorites, Lychee:

-Friday I called out of work because I was still feeling absolutely horrible. I vegged around all day and did nothing. We got an awesome package in the mail - our friend Ryan sent us some video games for Christmas! I got Picross for the DS (WOO!) and Mike got White Knight Chronicles.

We met up with the OCMFers for a little while to discuss more options about the event we're planning, and then I headed right back to bed. I played some more 4 Heroes of Light and codblops, and we watched some 30 Rock.

-Saturday we had to run some errands but I was still feeling mega-sluggish. We did end up running to Kmart and striking out for nearly everything I wanted to get, so we got some essentials like cat litter and some random food items and then escaped. I was feeling delirious around so many people. We went home, got ready, and then headed to Kristen and Dave's for game night with them and Chris and his friend Jen. I forgot my heart monitor and wanted to punch myself in the head because I was afraid to have any alcohol at all without it D:. Stupid, stupid mistake. We got home pretty late and I was up late playing more 4 Heroes of Light. Oh, and we took some cute pictures while bundled up waiting for the train to go home:

-Today was really nice - we woke up, had breakfast, watched more 30 Rock, and did some stuff around the house - I did a lot of cleaning and Mike went food shopping. We've been using Hulu Plus on the PlayStation which is pretty cool. We're up to season 5 of 30 Rock - we're almost caught up completely. When we're done, we're going to watch this season of the Office, and then I'm not sure what - maybe Dexter. Who knows! We did a lot of stuff all day, interspersed with some FF and codblops, and Mike's been playing a lot of WKC and Dante's Inferno. We've also been skyping with Ryan and his girlfriend Bri the last few days as well, which has been kind of fun, too :) After we did a lot around the house, we packed up some stuff and headed to Mike's place for the night. I got a shower and now I'm doing to a little writing and then we're going to head to bed.

Weekly wrap-up:

Currently playing:
PS3 - CoDBlOps, Dead Nation, Scott Pilgrim
DSi - FF:t4HoL, Crazy Sudoku

Currently reading:
Kill Screen, Volume 1
Moby Dick

Currently watching:
Inception
30 Rock

Current favorite t-shirt:
tie between my two new Kill Screen t-shirts - both pictured above!

VGAs Tonight!

2010-12-11T17:37:00.006-05:00

Tonight is the VGAs (Video Game Awards) on Spike TV. This has become something of a tradition for Mike and me. We watched it in 2008 and had a drinking game where we took shots whenever we were disappointed. Last year, we went to a bar to watch it because I'd cancelled Comcast and we didn't have cable anymore. This year, we have cable again, but didn't realize we didn't have Spike until this afternoon. Luckily, we just got the new digital box, and were able to call and upgrade our channels easily.

I'm really looking forward to the awards this year, mainly because I am excited about world premiere trailers (like whatever craziness Naughty Dog is going to have on hand for Uncharted 3!) and also because Neil Patrick Harris is going to be the host. That's when you can tell something has gotten totally and completely mainstream - when NPH himself is hosting it, haha. But really, Mike and I always have a great time watching it, and I'm really excited about it tonight. Right now our biggest decision is: should we order out, or make dinner? I'm leaning towards making dinner just so we don't have to spend money, but ordering pizza is sooo easy and delicious. Durp. But yeah, I'm really excited to see what the VGAs have in store tonight...especially Uncharted 3, Resistance 3, and Arkham City...along with whatever secret surprises they're going to drop on us.

In other news, Thursday I worked and went to a nice appreciation reception in the afternoon for schedulers. The food was omg so good - scallops wrapped in bacon, coconut chicken, some sort of parmesan risotto fried balls of amazing, etc.

Afterwards I headed to Mike's place and chilled out and mostly watched 30 Rock, played some codblops together, and played more of 4 Heroes of Light. Friday I worked all day, then came home and got ready to put on my heart monitor. I'd had plans all night but ended up cancelling them all - my friend Tina was having a happy hour at 4:30 but I knew I couldn't make it home in time. Cardionet was supposed to call at 6, so I made sure to have all the prep stuff done by about 5:45. I had to set up the wires and pads and start charging the monitor itself. I waited...and waited...and waited, but by 6:30 still had no call. I called the number and they said they were running behind. By the time they called me, it was after 7. It took a little while to get it all set up, and I was so frazzled by the end that I didn't feel like leaving the house to go to Eric's book release party (for his awesome book - Textual Healing. Go buy it!). We ended up vegging in, watching 30 Rock, playing more codblops and 4HoL. Mike made an awesome dinner that was delicious <3 and we even went to bed at a reasonable time.

Here is what part of the heart monitor looks like (and no, I can't update my heart's statuses to Twitter, unfortunately - Jake and I tried today):

I got up pretty early this morning and washed the giant mountain of dishes and made us some breakfast. We had our typical Saturday morning, eating breakfast and playing more blops and watching 30 Rock. I had to cut it a little short to get ready for my meeting with Jake and Tristin and Grant at UArts at 1. We're trying to get a gaming event together for May, and the location is finally falling into place (no pun intended). After we looked at some rooms, we chilled in Grant's car and talked for ages, laughing our asses off about random shit while talking about logistics for our event. During that time his battery died :P. Whoops. Some nice woman randomly gave us a jump, and then we all went our separate ways. I came back here and worked on 4HoL, taking a break to go to the store for some food for dinner tonight, but came back here still wanting to order a pizza. I'm really hungry though, so I think I'm just going to start working on cooking us up some dinner right now :)

I'm not sure what's going on tomorrow - Mike might have some family coming into the city, and Drexel's also having their holiday party, which we've gone to the last two years. I could also stand to do some laundry and get some cleaning done around here, but I feel like I'm saving most of that for the 10 days we have off over the break. I'm still reeling from this term. Oh, and I found out my grade - I got an A+! My numerical grade was a 97, hot damn. All that hard work paid off. 4 courses down, 11 more to go! I'm feeling pretty great about it all right now, even though I'm not sure if LIS is what I want to do, or if I want to switch to IST or something else that might be more lucrative. As always, there are so many decisions...

Also, I've started to already thinking about my New Years' resolutions. I don't usually have any, or I make a weak last-minute attempt at it, but this year I think I'm going to really try to stick to it. One important thing is that I want to get back out of debt. It seems that every year I either find myself climbing out of it, or at the bottom of it. This year is the latter. So I think that one sure resolution is going to be that I won't buy any additional games, books, or movies until I've played, read, and watched all the ones I already have. And I have enough to keep me occupied for well beyond a year...possibly an entire decade. Also, I don't think I should ever buy another t-shirt. I STILL have yet to unpack from PAX. Last year, I got 23 t-shirts (21 of them free); this year, I beat that record - I can't remember the number, but as soon as I unpack, I'll post about it. That's another thing to save for the break...

Ok, time to get some dinner done! Look at me, two blog posts in a week! Also I think I'll keep a log in here of all the stuff I'm playing, reading, and watching as well...

Currently playing:
PS3 - CoDBlOps, Dead Nation
DSi - FF:t4HoL, Crazy Sudoku
Wii - New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Currently reading:
Kill Screen, Volume 1
Moby Dick

Currently watching:
Inception <3
30 Rock
VGAs :D

Current favorite t-shirt:
Candy Corn Vampire <3

Another Month Bites the Dust

2010-12-08T22:10:00.005-05:00

To say I've been busy in the last month would be an egregious understatement.

Highlights include:

-Mike and I had our 2-year anniversary dinner on November 5th, and it was lovely. We got dressed up and went around the corner to a nice Chinese food place we love.
-The next day, we went to the annual Amblers Halloween party, which was a blast. We had good beer (some of which Brian made), won some beer pong, ate delicious foods, and hung out with awesome people.
-I pre-ordered Scott Pilgrim on blu-ray. We watched the shit out of it.
-that Friday, the 12th, we met up with my friend Stacy and some of her friends at Mad Mex for happy hour. I hadn't seen her in a few months, and it was awesome to catch up. I love her. <3
-we skipped Barcamp on the 13th - too much homework and other crap to do - but we did make it to the kickin' afterparty, where we celebrated my friend Ray's birthday and generally had an awesome time with Ray, Mel, Jake, Amanda, Tristin, and Renae.
-we saw Aqueduct at the Trocadero on the 14th, and David hung out with us afterwards, because he is the coolest dude ever. <3
-on Monday the 15th, we went to the Geekadelphia Scott Pilgrim Movie Monday at the Troc. I dressed as Envy Adams. Edgar Wright later tweeted our pictures. It was a pretty epic time.
-later that night/early the next morning, I woke up with heart palpitations - the worst yet - and went to the ER, AGAIN. It was horrendous. I haven't had a sip of alcohol since.
-I laid low until Thursday the 18th, when I attended TEDxPhilly for Geekadelphia. It was a beautiful and unique experience. It wore me OUT. I was supposed to do a lot that weekend but cancelled to try to catch my breath and get some homework done.
-Thanksgiving week was just how I like it: low key, quiet, and full of food. I played a lot of video games, too. I also finally caved and purchased a Wii - the red collector's edition that comes with New Super Mario Bros. Wii. It was $199 with a $50 gift card on Amazon. It was totally worth it.
-Monday the 29th I gave myself a pep talk. I'd been feeling sort of down and depressed about the health stuff and also about homework and video game reviews piling up. I told myself everyone gets into funks, and that I should probably just start chipping away at my to-do list. I started that day and began to feel better immediately.
-On 11/30, Dead Nation came out. I played A TON of it. It is awesome.
-Wednesday, December 1st, we had a Philly game devs meeting (the OCMFers). It was the longest meeting we had, and the most beers drank. We had a lot of great ideas. It was just what I needed.
-Thursday was the department holiday party, which was relaxing and fun.
-Friday night and all day Saturday were spent finishing up my homework and doing my final. I was successful in both endeavors, which cut my term by a week. I was THRILLED. No more school 'til January 3rd. :D
-on Sunday, we went to my mom's - she and my stepdad wanted to give me my Christmas gift early. It was a television - the exact one I wanted. We brought it home and set it up and it's. GORGEOUS.
-On Monday, I left work early to see my doctor to talk about the heart monitor she had me wear in October, my recent ER trip, and what my options were. She encouraged me to still see the cardiologist, and also to listen to my nutritionist's advice and get tested for celiacs.
-Last night, Mike and I watched the Inception blu-ray, which I pre-ordered so long ago I had to go to the "6 months or older" orders tab in my Amazon account. It was my fifth time seeing it, but my first time with the wedding band knowledge. It was beautiful, elegant, and subtle. It was perfect.
-Today, I left work early and went to the cardiologist and talked to him about my options. He thinks it's stress related. They did an echocardiogram and want me to wear a heart monitor for 2 weeks just to be on the safe side. I also went to the lab and got the bloodwork done. I came home, did the dishes, made some dinner, and set up my new Wii. When Mike got here, we ate dinner and watched 30 Rock, and then played some CoDBlOps, and then I played some NSMB Wii and then more Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, which I'm reviewing for Gaming Target.

General stuff:

-The Walking Dead is so worth watching. I've loved the comic for years and I'm so glad it's getting so much attention.
-We're tearing through 30 Rock - we finished season 3 tonight. I can't wait to be caught up, but we're not sure what we're watching next - maybe Dexter?
-We've been playing a lot of CoDBlOps. 'Nuff said.
-I'm trying to finish up Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, but it's proving to be tedious. I'm hoping I can get through it.
-I re-read the Scott Pilgrim books as well as Johannes Cabal: The Necromancer. I also finished up The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Excellent books all.

Writings you can read:

For Gaming Target:
-I reviewed God of War: Ghost of Sparta for the PSP, and
-I also reviewed the FANTASTIC Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem!

For Geekadelphia:
-I loved TEDxPhilly;
-I interviewed Alison Haislip from G4TV; and
-I wrote about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' viral marketing campaign.

I think that might be most of what's been happening. I'm so relieved that school is done - I can't even adequately explain it. But the stress is at a point where I need to re-evaluate everything. I've also been doing a lot of cleaning up in the apartment, and I think i'm going to get some new furniture to try to fit everything better. And hang up my posters. And...you know...unpack from PAX. It's only been 3 months.

OK, time to play some video games. I will try to update this more frequently - I do still want to post some pictures. Stay tuned. :)

PS - I just hit platinum status in my Club Nintendo account. Shit. Yes.
PPS - I also started knitting again.
PPPS - I am slowly getting to all the things I've pre-ordered in the last few months. I finally played Katamari Forever...and beat it in two days. I also beat CoDBlOps quickly and I'm addicted to Dead Ops Arcade. Pokemon's on hold until FF is done, though I've been sneaking in Crazy Sudoku here and there.

holycrapiambusy.

2010-11-04T07:09:00.002-04:00

highlights of the busy-ness:

-finished up disney sing it: party hits and wrote my review;
-had a fun time tuesday night at a friend's birthday celebration at fox & hound, where i think i may have joined my first ever book club;
-went to the game devs meeting last night and celebrated good news all around;
-am nearly done with god of war: ghost of sparta already (!!!);
-signed up for nano but haven't even written word one - haven't even narrowed down my topic yet, though i do have several;
-celebrated our two-year anniversary yesterday with mike by having a nice lunch at ajia, which will be followed up tomorrow with dinner and a movie. :)

i really need to read the library books i took out ages ago and just keep renewing, and also i must get to all the things i've pre-ordered, which include video games, movies, and books. i am bad at keeping up with everything!

also, did i mention mike and i started watching 30 rock? like we needed another addiction...

ok, time to go to work! more later. hopefully (really!!) with pictures :)

for anyone who wants to see our costumes...

2010-10-30T17:10:00.003-04:00

mike as ash:

me as lyra:

whew. almost too much to keep up with...

2010-10-30T14:13:00.005-04:00

so there was a lot i've been meaning to write about the last few days...let me see if i can remember it all!

first and foremost, i forgot to mention that last saturday night, mike and i watched kick-ass, which i thought was fantastic! i'd been meaning to see it for ages, and had the netflix disc for about a month and a half. i love mark millar - i haven't read kick-ass but i read wanted and i thought it was really over the top and terrific. that movie was awful, but i knew this movie was being directed by matthew vaughn (hell YES!), so i went into it with higher expectations, and i was NOT disappointed. i'm really looking forward to reading the comic as soon as i get my hands on a copy! and monday night, we ended up watching the mortal kombat movie, which i hadn't seen in years. it's such a fun movie! i love it. i wanted to watch the second one but it's not on netflix streaming, so we'll have to get the disc. how barbaric :P

also, i've been trying to get back into the daily debate, something i've been involved with for a long time on twitter. it was started by will powers, the winner of the sony playstation show the tester last year. he would just have hour-long debates about video game topics. it turned into kind of a big thing, with a lot of people getting involved. through it i started interacting with amanda brockman, who was also on the tester, and we became friends, and even got to hang out at this year's PAX prime, which was incredible!! will has gotten really busy, so a few of us took over - really mainly amanda, our friend alicia royer, and me. we try to divide the week up, but lately i'd been so busy that i wasn't even able to participate, let alone moderate. i've been getting back into it more lately. feel free to check us out at 7pm eastern standard time with the hashtag #dailydebate on twitter :).

what else? tuesday matthew quick was on campus, and i was also very impressed with him. our department has a writer come every year - well, they pick out a book, and the entire incoming freshman class reads it over the summer, and then the author comes in the fall term and gives a presentation and has a master class with a select group of students. i've never seen so many students so into a writer before him, though! the book was called the silver linings playbook. i didn't get a chance to read it beforehand - we've been doing this for seven years, and i've only had time to read the books of three of the authors beforehand - but i really wish i had. it's set in collingswood, and mentions the town i grew up in, westmont, more than a few times. i'm going to try to get a copy and read it when i have some free time. i got a chance to talk to matthew, who is a brilliant writer with tons of great advice and stories. he's very open and honest and caring. i'm very glad i got to meet him! that night i just crashed in and did homework - i was so tired and still feeling sick and worn out from the weekend. i also got some stuff done on my to-do list, but never enough :P. also matt, my editor at gaming target, was in town, so mike and chris met up with him and mike brought back god of war: ghost of sparta for me to review early. w00t!

wednesday i had work, and then after work, i rushed home to get some stuff done, then headed over to indyhall for a meeting. it was very productive! and a lot of fun. afterwards, mike and i finished up pixeljunk shooter (i beat it when it first came out, but we played it through together this time and it was even more fun!), and then we went to bed.

thursday after work we had some dinner and watched another episode of 30 rock, which we started watching recently. everyone has always told me how hysterical that show is, and i'm glad it's living up to the expectations!! it's hilarious. i did some more homework and then passed out really early. i was SO exhausted!

friday after work i picked up my copy of final fantasy: 4 heroes of light from the local fedex place, and squeeeeeed all the way home. mike and i had some dinner, then got changed into our costumes - we're pokemon trainers, ash and lyra. no one has recognized me, but EVERYONE recognizes him, which is cute for me, and kind of embarrassing for him, haha. we went to the geekadelphia/indyhall party at tattooed mom's and had an AMAZING time. i've only been writing for geekadelphia for a little while, so i hadn't met anyone in person yet, and it was really fun to meet people for the first time. also, jake from indyhall was there with his wife, and their costumes were so clever i didn't even recognize them until the swedish chef yelled "NICOLE!" across the room and i looked at him and said, "oh my god, jake???" hahaha. my friend olivia came as well, and my friend brett showed up, so we all ended up having a really amazing time!

today we woke up pretty early and had some breakfast. weekend breakfast is one of my favorite things in the entire universe. after that, we lollygagged around a bit and played some more of the killzone 3 beta, which i have to admit is pretty rad. then we headed to kmart to get a new litter box because our old one was beat. we ended up wandering around, looking at household appliances (i totally want an electric griddle) and ended up in the electronics section, where i somehow managed to escape without buying any games or systems or accessories or dvds or blu rays. go me! we came back home and i went through the fridge and gathered up all the stuff that had to be thrown away and we took out the trash and i put a big box of books outside with a sign that says "free books!" on it in the hopes that people would happily oblige. then we did our most traumatizing chore: giving the cats a bath. they've been stinky lately and i can't remember the last time i bathed them, so we dove in. they were NOT pleased, but at least now they smell and look much nicer! and hopefully it'll help with mike's allergies as well.

tonight we have another halloween party - we're going to the 6th annual vampires and vixens at tavern on broad. i've wanted to go but always dropped the ball. luckily, this year some of our friends are going and invited us. woo! we'll be wearing our pokemon trainer costumes again, so we can geek out, haha. we also have cute little "pop and play" pokeballs which actually pop open. they're pretty awesome! right now, i think i'm going to try to finish up this week's homework so there's less hanging over my head for tomorrow. tomorrow night we're going to a halloween party at yakitori boy, and depending on how fun it is, we may be leaving early to go back to mike's and watch the premiere of the walking dead on amc. i'm pretty excited about it - i've been waiting for this moment for about 3 years now! those comics are amazing, and i've heard nothing but good stuff about the show. i've been trying not to watch anything but i couldn't stop myself from watching the trailer, and now i'm excited for it. i know zombies are saturating the market right now, but i love that comic so much that i can't help but be excited to see it so accurately brought to life...err...undeath? right now i think i might play a few rounds of either call of duty 4 or killzone 3 or medal of honor...too many choices! i've really been feeling modern warfare, surprisingly...i even had a 10 kill streak last night. hot damn!

to anyone who made it through all those words: congratulations! you've earned a trophy: caught up with nik. :) happy halloween!

busy day

2010-10-26T23:43:00.002-04:00

There's so much to write about, but it's nearly midnight and I'm exhausted. I spent a lot of tonight doing homework, which was less grueling after finding out this morning that I got a 96 on my midterm. That felt pretty good. Matthew Quick was on campus today as well, which was awesome. I got some other stuff out of the way tonight, too. There's more - there's always so much more to do all the time - but at least I chipped away at it a bit. And at least I got to play some of the Killzone 3 beta, which is awesome.

More tomorrow - hopefully with pictures.

delightful packages + onigiri = hearts

2010-10-25T19:30:00.004-04:00

I forgot to mention that we got some awesome packages last week - our pokeballs came for our costumes (Mike is being Ash and I'm being Lyra/Kotone from Pokemon). My package from J-List came as well, filled with snacks (some awesome KitKats, Ramune, some crazy beef-wrapped onigiri corn puffs) and lots more cute bento stuff. Very fun! I also got more of my Lyra/Kotone costume from a place called Sock Dreams, one of the most amazing websites I've ever visited in my life. I got a pair of white thigh high socks and some grey sock garters (I wanted black but they were sold out and they said they weren't sure if they'd get them in time for Halloween), as well as some really cute soccer-player-inspired white over the knee socks with purple stripes at the top, some black leggings, knee-high socks covered in ice cream cones, and my first pair of Tabbisocks, adorable Japanese socks with the split toe - I got a pair with an all-over sakura print. Kawaii!

This is all in addition to some other great packages we've gotten the last few weeks - I got a cute prize pack from the Behemoth with some stickers and other adorableness. I also splurged and got the special edition GBA SP that looks like a Nintendo controller (<3). And finally, we got some review copies - Mike got John Daly ProStroke Golf, and I got Disney Sing It Party Hits and Valkyria Chronicles II. I'm addicted to both of them, strangely :P. Coming in the mail right now is Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light, which I have to pick up tomorrow. I'm very excited about it! I played it for about half an hour at E3 and I loved every second.

Right now, I'm making some sushi rice with dumplings and edamame, and I'm going to practice some more with my bento stuff. I can't wait! Lunch is the hardest meal for me to plan for, especially since I've been trying to cut out processed foods (bye-bye, easy sandwich lunches). Anyway, time to get some stuff done around the house before the food finishes. I've been feeling pretty sick still, so I'm going to take it easy, but there's still always so much to do...

weekends are too short.

2010-10-24T23:30:00.002-04:00

So, Thursday night we played some games and went to bed at a pretty reasonable time, around 11 or so. I woke up Friday feeling pretty terrible - I wasn't sure if it was just a lack of sleep, or what, but I didn't get up until close to 7, so that felt like it should have been enough sleep. I was dragging and aching all day. After work I took the train home because I had a bunch of stuff with me, and then we had to rush to Mike's place. I packed up my costume for the party and all my stuff for the wedding the next day in my small suitcase and we headed over. We got dressed and ready and headed to the bar the party was being held at. It was for the law school students, so I just assumed I wouldn't know anyone there...except we ended up seeing Antonio, one of my ex-boyfriends. He and I had dated for four years, from 1999-2003, and I knew he was dating a girl in Mike's law school class, but I didn't think we'd ever actually run into them. I saw a guy staring at me and was a little confused about it, but when I saw his girlfriend walk up, I realized I hadn't recognized him...which is odd, because he was wearing the same costume he'd worn with me on Halloween years earlier. The last interaction we'd had was not a positive one - we had a hostile e-mail exchange in 2006. Well, my e-mails weren't hostile, but the last one he sent was one of the angriest things I'd ever seen, so I just let it go and didn't reply. I felt bad that he was still harboring so much anger after so much time had already passed - and he'd already been dating the girl he was still with now. So I didn't think replying would be at all productive, nor did I have any desire to approach him at the party (though people have been asking me how he's doing. Sorry, everyone - I don't know!). I hope he's doing well, but I assume that part of what keeps him doing well is avoiding me, and I'm more than happy to oblige.

Anyway, we stayed at the party a little while, then headed back to Mike's and passed out. I still wasn't feeling great. We woke up Saturday and I was feeling worse and now I was even feeling feverish, which sucked. I ended up not going to my friend's wedding, which was really disappointing. I just couldn't even manage to stand for more than a few minutes at a time. We had some breakfast and I just laid around all day playing some games and reading a book. Mike ran back to my apartment for me to check on the cats, because he is the sweetest boyfriend in the universe <3. We also FINALLY got a chance to watch the Netflix movie I'd had for a month and a half - Kick Ass. It was AMAZING!! I was blown away, and I really want to read the book now, because I loved Wanted so much and I hope it's just as good, if not better. We also broke in the new slider machine I bought for Mike - it's like a George Forman grill, but it makes mini burgers. It was pretty much the awesomest thing ever. We went to bed at a reasonable time, and woke up pretty early today because we had a family thing at my cousin's. I wasn't sure if we were going to make it or not - I still wasn't feeling 100% - but we packed up my stuff and headed to my place. I had to make some cupcakes, so I fired up my mini cupcake machine, made about a million, got a shower, and got dressed, and I was feeling pretty ok. We headed into the jerz and my mom picked us up and we spent the day with my family. I wasn't sure how everyone was going to react to Mike, but it ended up being overwhelmingly good - my family really adores him, and they were all glad to see him - and to see him so happy. Everyone was beaming and hugging him, and we got to catch up with them all, which was sweet and wonderful. The occasion was that one of our Australian relatives was visiting and wanted to meet everyone, so we got to meet her as well, and hang out with all the other members of my family we hadn't seen - and we also got to watch the Steelers win, which was great because my Uncle Amos is the assistant special teams coach. So, all in all, it was a very family-oriented day. My mom dropped us off at the speedline with a bag of goodies (including some new sandwich containers!) and we headed back here. Mike went back to his place to work on some homework, and I played more Medal of Honor until he came back. I'm trying to get some more of the multiplayer trophies, and it sucked me right back into how much I love that game.

So, I didn't get much done on my massive to-do list, but there's still tomorrow after work. Tuesday we have free tickets to a movie screening; Wednesday I have a meeting at Indyhall; Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we have...Halloween parties! So tomorrow and Thursday will just have to be my catch-up days. We'll see! I also need some time to do homework and laundry...sigh. As always, the fall is the busiest term...

And now it's time for bed. Hopefully more tomorrow!

Maybe updating every other day would be smarter...

2010-10-21T22:30:00.003-04:00

So yesterday, after work, I got home, exercised, did some yoga, made dinner, and ended up chilling out all night playing video games with Mike. I got a copy of Disney Sing It Party Hits to review for Gaming Target, and I actually really enjoyed playing it! Afterwards, we played some Sports Champions, and joked about how we've turned into casual gamers. I also played some Valkyria Chronicles II, as I'm reviewing that as well. We went to bed at a decent hour.

Today, after work, I had to stop at the bank and at Walgreen's (I should just live there, seriously). We also stopped at a costume shop because our costumes are still in the mail and we got invited to another Halloween party tomorrow (that's 7 total). I'm thrilled to have the chance to wear what we wore last year, but we had to get some extra stuff for them as my tights ripped and Mike didn't have any additional makeup for his. We got home, I cleaned up and made us a quick dinner, and Mike's been working on his homework while I've done some stuff I've been meaning to do - I submitted my midterm for class and typed up the notes from one of the meetings I had with the local game dev folks. I also played some more Sports Champions and Valkyria Chronicles II. Mostly I am just tired, though - I think my allergies are acting up, or something! I don't know what's going on.

I'm going to try to play a little more Disney Sing it and get this review started. I also need to order train tickets, reply to some emails, do some writing...and maybe sleep. This weekend is going to be busy - Halloween party tomorrow night, then Tim and Durda's wedding Saturday night, and a party at my cousin's on Sunday to meet one of our Australian relatives. Good times :)

I have returned!

2010-10-19T23:51:00.004-04:00

So, things have been busy, to say the least. Mike and I started talking again in August and got back together at the end of that month, culminating in him spontaneously - as in, that morning on the train taking me to the airport - coming with me to PAX and having the most incredible weekend of our lives. Things have been wonderful since, and I have never been happier!

Life has been crazy:

Writing!

I've been doing a lot of it. I'm still doing the Senior Editor gig at Gaming Target, and I've been busy doing a lot of writing and editing there, as well as continuing my column at Press 1 and writing for Geekadelphia. It's been awesome. My latest piece at GT, a review of Medal of Honor, has garnered a lot of attention around the internet. The next day, I was quoted in a Philadelphia Inquirer article about a game called Hipster City Cycle made by a local game developer. And later that week, Valerie Fox gave me a copy of her new book, and I'm in the acknowledgements for helping her edit. I also discovered that a quote from my review of 3D Dot Game Heroes is on the buy.com product page. All in all, a pretty rad week. This week, I've got a nice piece up at Geekadelphia on Space Whale Studios, with another piece set to go up hopefully this week. And I have another column up at Press 1 - this one's about E3.

Gaming!

Also been gaming a lot. Mike and I have been playing a ton together - he just helped me beat Final Fantasy V (I didn't even know the PS1 version supported co-op) and we're also playing Diablo 2 and Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. I'm playing Valkyria Chronicles II on the PSP for Gaming Target (love it!) and I just got the first Modern Warfare which I've been playing whenever I have spare time. There's also Pokemon Soulsilver, which I'm playing with Mike - we restarted our games when we got back together. (It's much more fun this time around. :D)

I'm also still meeting with those game developers, and I went to my first IGDA meeting and hope to make that a regular occurrence. We've got some awesome things in the works.

Reading

I'm taking another Library and Information Sciences master class this term after taking two terms off, so I haven't been doing much leisure reading, unfortunately. I read Never Let Me Go, which depressed me, and Hyperion, which I LOVED. I want to re-read Johannes Cabal: the Necromancer now that the second book came out, and I've been reading the Sherlock Holmes books on my Droid (with the handy Kindle app that I adore). I also inhaled all the Scott Pilgrim books over the summer, which were absolutely amazing. I'm trying to finish up the Monster Island/Nation/Planet books, and catch up on webcomics, but I haven't had the time. I've got a pile of books I got from Amazon and another pile from the library that are all collecting dust.

Movies

This is another disappointing area. Though I did get Netflix again, I've had the same movie sitting on my tv from them for over a month now, and there's no hope that I'm going to watch it anytime soon. It's Kickass, which I've really wanted to see, too. Hopefully I'll have some time this weekend. The last four times I've been to the theater I've seen Inception every time. I regret nothing. I do wish I'd had the time to see Scott Pilgrim, and I am hoping to catch Never Let Me Go if it's still at the Ritz.

Miscellaneous

My health has been sort of crazy - the rapid heart rate issue is still there, so I had to wear a heart monitor for a few days. And the doctors gave me Prilosec for the acid reflux, which was working but for some reason yesterday I was sick again, so it's been back to bland food today. Also, the pup had another seizure, so he's been on meds the last month as well. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

It dawned on me that I've been knitting on and off for almost 9 years. I really want to get back into it. I have Ideas.

I'm loving steampunk - from books to anime to video games to fashion, I'm falling for it harder than before. There are some cool local events I'd really like to get into if we have the time and the money.

I've been cooking and baking a lot more these days. Cooking has been fun, and I'm really getting into the bento thing - right now I'm just waiting on some supplies to do another round of practicing. It's very fun! And I got a mini cupcake machine, which makes 7 cupcakes in 5 minutes. I love filling my kitchen with tiny cupcakes!

I've always loved stockings and socks, and with the discovery of an amazing website, my passion has resurfaced. Pictures and details to come when my second package arrives, for certain.

Mike and I went to Maido this weekend to stock up on Japanese goodies, from sushi rice to Ramune (delicious and fun Japanese soda) to snacks and bags of gyoza and shumai. Eating okonomiyaki at the counter really made me want to get back into Japanese again - I really miss my classes and my teachers! And Japan, of course. :) I finished Gurren Lagann a few weeks ago. So wonderful! I really want to play the DS game but without more practice, I'd never last!

We have some trips planned in the next few months - I'm very excited. We're going to MAGfest and PAX East so far, with a few more ideas slowly starting to bloom. Mostly we're just having an awesome time together, even when we just sit around all weekend and do nothing but play games. It's been truly magical. I'm working on a piece right now about PAX Prime and how perfect it was.

That's all for now! It's very late; I just finished up my midterm and wanted to start writing in here again because too many exciting things have been happening. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with it every night again :) with pictures as well, because I have many to share!

Oyasumi-nasai!

Wow.

2010-08-13T15:13:00.002-04:00

So this has been a crazy week!

Monday I worked, then came home, did tons of laundry and washed the dishes and cleaned, and played some Uncharted 2 online.

Tuesday I worked, came home and did more cleaning, then had an excellent sushi dinner at Haru with a friend.

Wednesday I worked, went to the philosophy club for a little while, came home, played some LittleBigPlanet (yay Marvel DLC!!), then played more Uncharted 2.

Yesterday I worked, came home, went to make dinner and be productive, saw my friends were online playing Uncharted 2, and proceeded to play it from 7pm until 5:30 am.

WHEW.

This morning I woke up early to call my doctor's office when they opened to make a follow-up appointment for tomorrow, then slept a little longer, got up, did some editing for Gaming Target, and met my friend Andrew for lunch at Midtown II. Now Christina is coming over to play video games for the rest of the day :D Yay!

Also, it is BEAUTIFUL outside. I can't remember a day this beautiful. I am sitting here with the puppycat purring on my lap, enjoying a lovely breeze. Tonight I'm going to do a lot of writing. But for now, it's relaxation time.

:)

I Did Get One Thing Right

2010-08-09T07:24:00.004-04:00

I did A LOT of gaming this weekend.

All the other stuff...not so much. Especially the eating and sleeping part.

I played lots of Critter Crunch and Borderlands with Anthony, and then last night played another 4 hours of Uncharted 2 multiplayer with my Canucks (and some new friends, including a very interesting guy from Moscow).

Tonight, I really need to play games I'm reviewing (oooh, I should review Critter Crunch! More like Critter CRACK), and do some writing. Also laundry. Also...sleep.

Off to work.

PS - My laptop finally broke yesterday :( the hinge gave way at long last with a gut-tearing snap. I am sad.

Inception, Evil Cats, Cupcakes heart

2010-08-08T12:56:00.002-04:00

So Myke, Eric, and I went to get some food, and then saw Inception on the Imax at King of Prussia. While not as amazing as the Franklin Institute, it felt great to see it again. I can't wait to own that movie so I can watch it whenever I want. It's just so good.

Afterwards I came back here and played more Uncharted 2...I'm close to the end. Well, I'm way more than halfway done, but set on Hard makes some of the firefights a little difficult. This morning I made it to my favorite chapter, "Heart of Ice," and then hopped in for some multiplayer. I caved and bought the DLC, mostly because I want those trophies and didn't realize they were exclusive to the DLC pack.

Also, my Nintendo DSi wasn't holding a charge - I tried to charge it yesterday and when I busted it out for some Pokemon, it wouldn't go on. Blzzzzzooop! On and off, on and off. This morning I scrutinized it, looking at the charger, Googled it and looked at some images, and went so far as to try to troubleshoot on Nintendo's site when I realized the damn wire had been chewed through. Thanks a lot, pup. With the application of some kitten tears, I was able to get it to work, and my DSi is charging in the kitchen.

In other, unrelated news, anyone want a cat?

Anthony is headed over today to play some Borderlands. Woo! It's been too long. I'm looking forward to getting back into it. I have to do lots of other things today, including finish this article I started this morning (well, technically, I started it ages ago in a notebook I can't find, so today I just wrote the intro and I'm hoping I'll be able to find the paper copy I wrote. I know - how barbaric!). I also need to take care of some physical mail, do some laundry, and get some groceries. (I was made fun of last night because I write hearts on my grocery list next to the food I like. :P) Oh, and I want to finally break in my cupcake factory and see how great these mini-cupcakes really are.

Hopefully when I return, I will be filled with icing and success.

Naps, Trophies, Dinner

2010-08-07T12:43:00.004-04:00

I napped after work last night, which is always a death knell for productivity. Afterwards I did play some of one of the games I'm trying to review (the Soldner-x games), then tired of it and re-started the Uncharted 2 campaign for the fourth time. I got a handful of trophies and made it pretty far into the story. I was interrupted by text messages, instant messages, and drunken phone calls. I feel myself becoming less certain of things and more confused by them, but I just think that my plan of going with the flow is the best one I have right now. I woke up about two hours ago, fed the cats, and have just been reading more of this crazy book Hyperion. It is very good.

It seems that I have lost the fine art of dinner inside the apartment, and even outside, I generally order breakfast or some other strangely alien food I must learn to consume in my post-acid-refluxalyptic stomach. Last night, I mixed some Cheez-its with cashews and almonds in an attempt at making an instant party mix in a bowl. It was good, but neither satisfying nor filling; here I am, awake and hungry and unsure even of what I want to eat. Well, I know what i want to eat, but I can't - a bowl of cereal with milk and a glass of orange juice. How I miss orange juice. And to hear the coffee maker's purr as it fills the apartment with that sweet aroma...

I think I'll make pancakes and try to see if I can have Vitamin Water. If not - Nicole 0, Acid Reflux - 350.

We're seeing Inception again today in a few hours. I plan to do yoga, make breakfast, play at least another hour or so of Uncharted 2, get a shower, and then after the movie, perhaps try to finish the Soldner-x games, as unforgiving as they are. Easy discouragement does not a good reviewer make.

EDIT: Vitamin Water - the one with the guarana in it - is another thing I cannot have. Acid reflux rearing its ugly head, heart pounding out of control. Hopefully a shower will slow this down.

Can I Get A Wha Wha?

2010-08-06T07:20:00.002-04:00

My life is full of distractions and bottlenecks.

Translation: I want to spend the next 2 hours playing Double Dash.

This weekend is going to be full of catching up on some major things: sleeping, eating, gaming, cleaning, and writing. At least, I hope that's what's going to happen. I have no plans tonight (other than to play some more Uncharted 2 with my Canadians) or Sunday (other than possibly catching up on Borderlands with Anthony). Tomorrow Myke and I are going to see Inception AGAIN because it deserves another viewing (and we have free tickets to the King of Prussia Imax).

Today, however, I need to go to work. Sorry, Mario Kart. But our princess has to go to another castle.

More later.

How Could I Forget?

2010-08-05T00:13:00.002-04:00

I forgot a very important game from the list I made the other day, and that is BORDERLANDS. I beat the game when it first came out - playing as the Siren by myself - but now, my friend Anthony and I are playing it together, split-screen co-op once a week at my apartment. It's been fantastic! I forgot how much I really love that game.

After work, my friend Myke and I had dinner, and then we headed to meet with a group of local, independent game developers. They have a meetup once a month. This was our second time in attendance. I was really nervous the first time - I have no experience with development, and I was worried I'd feel out of place. But the group is incredible, very open and awesome, and exchanging ideas with so many like-minded people was exhilarating. This meeting was even better, and I look forward to working with them on many projects in the months to come.

Myke and I walked home and continued many of the discussions started at the meeting, which went on in my head even longer after we separated. I would love to get into video game creation and be a writer. For now, though, I do love working for Gaming Target and writing about games. I don't know what I'm going to do about school right now - I feel like I'm at a strange and wonderful crossroad. I got home, played some Uncharted 2, did some editing, and now it's definitely time for me to sleep...

Shutter Island = SOB

2010-08-03T23:56:00.001-04:00

So I didn't hook up that router last night, but I was determined to do it when I got home. I decided to watch Shutter Island first - without making dinner - and proceeded to get completely obliterated by it. I sobbed for the entire ending. It destroyed me! I then fought with the router for half an hour, and when I finally bashed it into submission, played some more Uncharted 2 with some new Canadian friends - and an old one! Good times. Right now I've got a terrible headache, so I'm off to bed.

Also, I'm reading a terrific book right now that my friend Dave lent me - it's called Hyperion by Dan Simmons. (I re-read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World last week - another one that made me cry. What's with me??) Hyperion is really amazing so far - definitely recommend it. I'm also reading Monster Nation, an online zombie novel by David Wellington, and I'm working on getting back into The Walking Dead. So many games/movies/novels...sigh.

Ah well. Off to dream :)

Games I'm Playing

2010-08-03T00:00:00.002-04:00

Well, I had an entire blog post mapped out in my head for this evening detailing all the games I've been playing for fun, but instead I played Uncharted 2 multiplayer for 4 hours with a bunch of Canadian kids, so I'll give a brief list with comments instead:

Medal of Honor Beta: sadly over now, but was a blast! Very looking forward to the game in October.

Metal Gear Solid: downloaded it on the PSN and I've been playing it on my PSP. I enjoy it, but don't have enough time to play it.

Pokemon Soul Silver: first game I bought with my DSi - played it quite a bit at first but now only play it here and there. MGS has taken over my portable gaming time.

Uncharted 2: recently got back into the multiplayer which, on nights like tonight, reduces my productivity greatly :P

I am also nearly finished Final Fantasy V, which I put down when XIII came out, and I'm about halfway through the original F.E.A.R., which I picked up ages ago when I first bought it on the cheap at Gamestop and haven't gone back to since. And let's not forget Resistance: Retribution, which I still haven't finished (or Death, Jr!). It seems my portables are the most neglected lately...

Add to that the three games I'm playing to review, the demo I'm previewing, and the fact that in the break-up, my ex got our PSN account, so I want to re-play all of my PS3 games to rebuild my trophy collection, and...yeah. Let's just say I'm having a lot of fun with gaming right now :) I'm actually sort of overwhelmed by the choices, and seem lately to default directly to Uncharted 2.

But ok, it's VERY late, I was supposed to set up a a router, so I'm going to do that and then get to bed.

Long-Overdue Update/Shadow of the Colossus

2010-08-01T19:39:00.005-04:00

So, I've been absent from this blog for quite some time. Grad school was kicking my butt, and in February, I started working at a site called Gaming Target, which has been amazing. I took a break in the spring from school and got really into writing at Gaming Target and Press 1, where I still have a column. In March, I went to PAX East, and in June, I got to go to E3, which was AMAZING!! I had an incredible time out there. After that, I broke up with my boyfriend, I was in the hospital twice for tachychardia (from stress), I've been diagnosed with acid reflux (from stress), I had a (VERY) brief love affair, and I've finished tons of games, books, and movies, and I'm very nearly at the end of Gurren Lagann, which I've been watching for ages. I do plan on writing a lot more in here - especially about my experiences at E3, which I think are worth writing down on a personal level as much as they were on a professional one. I was also promoted to Senior Editor at Gaming Target, which is pretty awesome! I tried to write about everything I saw at E3 but only managed to scratch the surface. There are tons of reviews I need to get back to, and a lot of games I want to play as well.

Which brings me to the second part of this post...

I just beat Shadow of the Colossus.

Backtrack: when I saw the trailer for the Last Guardian last year, I became obsessed with Fumito Ueda:

I went out and found a copy of Ico (pronounced EEE-CO, not III-CO), his first game, after reading all about it, played it, and promptly fell head over heels in love with it. Ico is a beautiful story of a boy, born with horns and cursed to be sacrificed, who escapes from his fate and helps a ghostly girl escape from hers. (It's more complicated than that, but I don't want to spoil anything.)

I bought Shadow of the Colossus after but I was afraid to start it with all the things I'd heard about it. Having gone through a break-up and then what was basically another heartbreak at the hands of the brief love affair boy, I decided maybe it was time to exercise some catharsis in a depressing game. Normal girls would probably just watch The Notebook; I wanted to play a game in which my moral choices to brutally murder beautiful creatures would make me sob into my cat.

Shadow of the Colossus is the tender tale of a horse and his boy, similar to the Neverending Story, except instead of riding on Falcor to save the girl, you stab him in the fucking head, repeatedly and mercilessly. (Did I need to curse there? Have you PLAYED this game? If you have, then you understand expletives can be necessary in this description.) You are Wander, and you want to bring a dead girl back to life, so you go to the End of the World and appeal to the powers there. The powers that be see that you've got the magic sword needed for just a certain little job he needs done, so he sets you to it - you must kill the embodiments of the 16 colossi that line the walls, and then he will grant your wish.

You go out, get on your trusty steed, Agro, hold your sword up in the sunlight to pinpoint the location of the Colossus, and ride off to find it, your bird soaring high above your head. You find the Colossus and discover very quickly that things are not what they seem. There's no impersonal swordplay, or grenade-lobbing. There's no Quicktime events, or RPG battle systems. You plain and simply find the symbol on the beast, climb up the beast, and then stab it to death. And you must do this 16 times. 16 times!!

I stopped crying after the 4th, but at the 14th, my weeping started anew (how couldn't it, with his tiny little body that moved like a sweet dog?). But it was the end that I couldn't bear.

SPOILERS AHEAD!! WARNING!! Please be warned!!

It was one thing to lose my precious horse - watching as Agro fell, listening as Wander screamed his name. It was another to be judged by my townspeople, taken over by a demon, and then turned into a baby - just as my love awakened! Will he ever atone for his sins? But at least Agro turned out to be alive, and now we can all be together as a happy family - right?

However, I've heard people say that this is supposed to be the spiritual predecessor to Ico - that this boy born with horns is a sign. Is he Ico? I thought Ico was born in a town in which every generation, a boy was born with horns and had to be sacrificed to the castle? Or, perhaps, is this where it all begins? Does the beautiful girl grow bitter towards the townspeople and grow evil, causing a boy to be born each generation with horns, forcing them to sacrifice them to her? Does she change the castle - is this really the castle from Ico thousands of years in the past? Already the end of the world seems so old, and yet perhaps it is far older.

That is all for today - I have some more editing work to do. Tomorrow I am going to comment on all the games I'm playing (and the ones I was playing that have since gone stale), and perhaps comment on some other things.

-nik

Review - God of War Collection

2009-12-19T11:27:00.001-05:00

When it comes to certain games, I am a late bloomer. This is true about the much loved – and much hated – God of War franchise. My first Kratos-related quicktime event occurred earlier this year at the Penny Arcade Expo when I tried out the demo for God of War III. I had previously avoided the games for two reasons – the first being that I loved Greek mythology and couldn’t stand seeing it raped by the media. I’d had too many disappointments to think this would be any different. The second reason was that I knew someone who once employed an “anger stick” after each session of the first God of War – meaning he went into the basement and beat the couch with a stick. He also used to order a “car burger” to eat on the way home from fast food restaurants to slake his hunger until he got home, so perhaps I shouldn’t have trusted his word – or that of his terrified wife.

Judgments aside, I’m glad that I waited so long to try the game out, as Sony very recently released the first two games together on one handy blu-ray disc, along with the demo for the third, coming out this March. This was a dream come true for someone as anal retentive as I am – I can’t stand playing games out of order. So I dove right into the remastered God of War and subjected myself to all the fun…and all the frustration.

The story of the first God of War is very simple: Kratos, an ambitious young Spartan general, calls out to Ares for help on the battlefield, and becomes his servant. Kratos soon discovers that being the servant of the God of War lends itself to no end of rape, pillage, and generally unpleasant situations. After years of servitude, Kratos simply wants to be released from his suffering and torment. Athena appeals to him for help when Ares attacks Athens, and Kratos sees a chance to get revenge.

At first, I loved the game – the puzzles, the battles, even the bosses and their wrist-numbing quicktime events – all of it was great. I couldn’t understand why people were frustrated while playing the game. I began to see it as I hit a few bumps in the road, places where the game mechanics were terrible. I painfully started to understand the mythos that surrounded the game.

And then I got to Hades.

Sweet mother of mercy, did I hate Hades. My boyfriend, Mike, had watched a lot of videos about the games after playing them, and he said that even the director, David Jaffe, admitted the horrendous flaws in Hades. That section was added in because they felt the game wasn’t long enough, and it was the only part of the game not strictly quality-controlled…and boy, does it ever show right through the veneer of lava and flames. I crawled my way to the end, determined to just finish it.

I debated whether or not I wanted to start God of War II…ever. Mike convinced me it was worth it, that there was nothing nearly as frustrating as Hades, that there was a great storyline to this game and I was going to love it. (His argument is always that I love Battle of Olympus despite the fact that it’s not true to myth – but taking something I adored as an adolescent based on my favorite Greek myth is totally different than taking all the most famous stories and jumbling them into one convenient delivery system for Kratos – even if they DID get Harry Hamlin, Perseus from Clash of the Titans, to voice Perseus.) Against my better judgment, I stepped into the Titan-fueled waters of God of War II.

I’ll admit to several betters – the game play is vastly improved. The battles flow much more fluidly, and it’s easier to dodge and block out of special moves. There are no horrendously glitchy platforming sections, either. Any time a section of the platforming is less than stellar, it’s because either you haven’t figured out what you’re supposed to do, or what you’re supposed to do initially seems so ridiculous that you can’t wrap your brain around what they’re asking. Fortunately, they’ve also improved this game by giving better hints – that is, giving ANY hints at all. The story is also much better, and while not at all even remotely canonical (can I say canonical about Greek mythology?), it is interesting to see the way they incorporate the characters.

However, these things brought with them inherent flaws. My wrists and elbows are killing me from incessant quicktime events. I hurled a controller for the first time in 22 years – since playing Zelda II: the Adventures of Link as a kid. (Can you guess what part? I’ll give you a hint – it involved the hammer.) The story, while better, lost cohesion, and I frequently found myself asking why I was in a certain place and what exactly I was trying to accomplish. In spite of all of this, the ending is epic, with a plot twist almost ridiculous in its predictability.

There are several bonuses to getting the God of War Collection – it’s remastered, though only in game play. The cut scenes are still in the original rendering, and the transition can be jarring at times. It has two sets of trophies, one for each game, which is a major plus for me. And, of course, the God of War III E3 demo is available on it as well, so that you can play that controversial scene of ripping Helios’ head off over, and over, and over again, right in the privacy of your living room.

Final analysis: worth the buy. I’m hoping my next PSP purchase will be God of War: Chains of Olympus. And now, I’m going to go put my right elbow on ice.

Review - Batman: Arkham Asylum

2009-12-19T11:24:00.001-05:00

This was my first blog post at No Game Network. I still haven't finished my PAX review!

***

Please note: my PAX review is on the way, and will be here soon. For now, satiate yourself with this tale of the caped crusader, and know I slave over a keyboard to bring you more words.

Batman: Arkham Asylum does a lot of things for me. It doesn’t feed the cats or wash the dishes, but it does make me feel like I have just administered a lot of justice…with my fists. It is a highly satisfying brawling game composed of one part ass beating, one part stealthy sneaking, and one part puzzle solving. More than anything, it is a Batman fan’s dream come true: it features a plethora of villains and is rife with enough back story to make the most devout comic book fan squee with joy.

The game starts with a cinematic of Batman bringing the Joker to Arkham Island. Batman is highly suspicious of the Joker, who – uncharacteristically – has given up without much of a fight, causing Batman to insist on escorting him into the asylum. This is where things go very suddenly – and very terribly – wrong. We discover the Joker meant for it to happen all along, and with the help of Harley Quinn, begins to quickly and efficiently take over the island.

At first, the game seemed too easy. I was playing it on normal, and I kept thinking to myself, either this game is really simple or I have gotten totally amazing at video games. The foes were easy to defeat (though even as they got harder, it was so much fun to fight them that while it felt challenging, I just kept coming back to the word “satisfying). The Riddler has hidden trophies and set up puzzles all over the island, which, initially, were also quite easy. But then, abruptly, the game became very hard, and I realized the entire beginning sequence of the game was something of a tutorial – a warm-up, so to speak – for the rest of the game. Not long after that, the game became totally awesome. The creators were trying to do something dark, and succeeded in a way that was more than a little scary.

I don’t want to give any spoilers, but this is my review, so I’ll just say if you don’t want to know what happens, you might want to stop reading here. I simply wanted to comment on my favorite parts of the game, which were, by far, the scenes in which the Scarecrow (how I wish they got Cillian Murphy to voice that villain!) drugged Batman and things go completely – no pun intended – batshit fucking loco. The first time it happened, I thought I was going crazy, but once I caught on to what was happening, I slid into the sudden change in gameplay and let it roll over me. It was amazing.

The one complaint many people have is that the game is too short. I beat it in just 6 days, so I can see where they’re coming from. But for me, the game was so satisfying from start to finish that I can’t voice that as a complaint. I didn’t spend nearly as much time as I wanted gathering the Riddler trophies and solving his puzzles because I was wrapped up in finding out what happened next in the story. I do plan on going back and finding everything, which, to me, is what a great game is all about: it’s one you want to go back to, one you crave, even after you beat it. This is why I buy games instead of renting them – if I were a renter, I’d end up with a stack of games that I couldn’t let go of. (And for everyone who says they want to “try the game out first,” my only reply is: isn’t that what demos are for?)

Tangent aside, my final word on Batman: Arkham Asylum is: yes. Yes, very much so.

Update

2009-12-19T01:36:00.003-05:00

The good news is: I've been writing! A lot. I'll be posting it in here as soon as possible. It's been a really great time for me writing-wise the last few weeks.

The bad news is: I haven't had nearly enough time to play all the games I want to play. The main reason for that is because I got into grad school and it kicked my butt the first term. I took two online courses in the Library and Information Sciences program at Drexel - Action Research (statistics) and Information Users and Services - and worked hard and got two A's! I'm very proud of this accomplishment.

I have beaten a lot of games, but I'm still working on the Final Fantasy series, which I started at the beginning and want to finish before XIII comes out here in North America (on the day after my birthday!). We'll see if I can do it - I'm so close to the end of 4 I can taste it, and I've got 5 ready to go. I'm planning to write a feature for Press 1 about this, so I'm hoping I can get it finished in time.

Keep an eye out for some work coming up soon, hopefully tomorrow. I've also been watching some movies (*gasp!*) and Mike and I watched The Office (American) and now we're on Sopranos - season 4. I've been reading a ton and I picked up knitting again, which feels sooooo good. And I am so ecited for Christmas I could stay up all night over it :)

Hope you are doing well! More to follow.

Latest Happenings

2009-09-17T21:57:00.006-04:00

Hi, everyone! I've been working on some writing lately - in fact, you can see some of it at my brand new column at the magazine Press 1. I write video game reviews for them now - you can see my first official one here, with the tentative title "Geek with Tan Lines." I also have some things about to go up at No Game Network, including my PAX review, so stay tuned for that as well. For now, I guess you'll just have to see this, and understand that i will be rolling around my apartment in just 5 days.

I may write some stuff about fashion, so I hope you're ready for this jelly.

-NKX

PS: Grad school application is in, and other projects are a GO. More on those later.

Review Forthcoming

2009-09-01T09:22:00.003-04:00

Hello, everyone! I have been very absent from the internet for the last few months - I've deleted my Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, and I've stopped using internet communication devices as my main source of contact with the outside world. I spent most of the summer playing video games, writing, and preparing for grad school, to which I applied yesterday. Now that my personal statement is finished, I am ready to start writing again! I've beaten close to a dozen games since last I wrote in here, but most likely, I'll be writing about the game I just beat last night - Batman: Arkham Asylum. I've also got a review I wrote for Ghostbusters: The Video Game, but that will be on a REAL website (as opposed to this blog), and I'll link to it as soon as it's available. But for now, I have to get back to work. And if you don't hear from me in the next few days, relax - I'm at PAX, writing up a storm. :)

Video Game Review: Resistance 2

2009-05-11T23:15:00.002-04:00

It’s been ages since I wrote my last review, for a plethora of reasons:

- I turned 30!
- Spring term started – we’re currently in week 7 of 10 – and I’m taking 3 classes (making up my incomplete in Japanese 201, a class on the literature of comics, and readings in fiction)
- I’ve gotten involved back in the philosophy club and with a local writer’s group
- We’ve been busy every weekend since the term started
- We got an AMAZING new TV.

In the time between my 30th birthday and the new term starting, I managed to beat 3 games – Resistance 2, F.E.A.R. 2, and Dead Space. (We also started watching Curb Your Enthusiasm and got through 3 whole seasons. It’s hilarious!) I’ve started and finished a bunch of other things since then as well – along with the literature I’m reading for my classes (and all the Japanese I’m studying – oi vey), I finished book 4 of the Dark Tower series, and re-started two Final Fantasy games – 7 and the original (well, the remake of it that looks sort of like Final Fantasy as a Saturday morning cartoon). I also started playing Battle of Olympus and Marble Madness again on my laptop ever since getting this awesome piece of geek heaven:

To top it off, Mike and I have been giving the Gamecube some play – now that we can have all of our consoles hooked up, we’ve been taking advantage of it. I started playing Mario Kart: Double Dash again and have almost everything unlocked (damn you Rainbow Road on 150 CC!!) and Mike’s been dabbling in the Megaman Anniversay Collection as well as the my collector’s edition Zelda disc (right now he’s playing Ocarina of Time).

Add all of that to our regular coursework and spending time with our families as well as all the other things that come up on weekends – and the fact that my mom is getting a knee replacement surgery this Friday – and we have been busy kids. But I’ve been really wanting to write a review lately, so here goes nothing…

Resistance 2 completely redefined the concept of a first person shooter for me. That isn’t really saying much, frankly – I’ve only played a handful of shooters, and I don’t really think I’m qualified to say that anything redefined anything, so to speak. But having played a handful since I got my PS3, I can say with confidence that it’s like nothing else I’ve ever played.

First and foremost, the Technicolor quality really is like Dorothy stepping forth, as I said in a previous post when I was commenting on the omnipresent grey of the first Resistance game. The colors are vibrant – almost too vibrant at times when you’d rather be seeing less detail than more – and add a really vivid and occasionally almost surreal quality to the game. The scene I mentioned in a previous post is applicable for this one as well – when I was in Twin Falls, searching for my team, I came upon dozens upon dozens of pulsating cocoons. Once I met up with one member, we discovered everyone else was back where I’d started…only now, predictably, as we were heading back, all the cocoons were exploding, and Chimera that I can only describe as “fast-moving zombie-Chimera” – formal name of Grims – were attacking us on all sides. I finally got through the backyards and almost out of the last house I had to get through when Mike casually mentioned, “oh yeah, there are going to be a million outside.” I thought he was kidding, but in reality, he was only applying slight hyperbole.

Despite the fact that it took me several tries to get through that part – and dozens of other parts – and I did, at times, submit to overpowering frustration – the game was very enjoyable. It really did change the way I thought about the shooter genre. It forced me to think about what gun to use, which options on the gun I should use, where I should come out from, who I should shoot first, and just what kind of general strategy I should employ with each scenario. Again, I’m sure dozens of people have come to this realization in dozens of games, but for me, this was my first shooter that really helped me to employ an intellectual strategy.

The weapons are far more powerful this time around. The Auger – barely a mention in the last game – has been ramped up to be able to see enemies behind walls. The Bullseye is also more potent and the tagging system seems to have been improved. I love the Rossmore even more, and the best part about the pistol is the secondary fire, which is an explosion – you shoot, it sticks, you explode it. (This was especially helpful in the aforementioned scene with the Grims.) But by far the best weapon in the entire game is the Wraith, which not only shoots out 200 bullets in rapid succession, but also incorporates a shield as its secondary fire. I approve!

On top of having amazing graphics, what I felt was an incredible storyline (far better than the first one, though I think it really shows how they were coming into the story and improving on it and making it into an interactive experience more so than just “here is video game, you play A to B”), and an ending that I would consider to be “cinematic,” the Resistance 2 online experience is ridiculously addictive. Mike and I have played a lot of co-op and competitive but my favorite is the team deathmatch. It’s sort of like Unreal but less frenetic and plopped down right in the middle of some of the best moments in the game (I think so far my favorite one is in the mansion in Louisiana).

All in all, I would have to say that the Resistance series has been added to my list of favorites. The PSP game recently came out, and while I bought it already, it’s been collecting dust on the shelf. I’m also not caught up completely on the comics (read: at all) and I just found out the book came out and we didn’t notice. It may seem silly – well, actually, it would have seemed silly to me a few months ago to buy a novel based on a video game series. But this one is so good that I’m willing to give it a chance. Actually, I once read a Harry Potter novel that I thought was a leak of the seventh book but turned out to just be really long fan fiction – and I finished it even after finding out it wasn’t Rowling’s. (The writing was about the same level, so I barely noticed.) I still read the 7th book anyway. If I can waste time reading those books – and I’ve read them more than once – I think I can give a book based on Resistance a chance.

This was way longer than anticipated, and far rustier! Fear not, loyal readers – if there are any of you left – for I will reward you with more reviews in the coming days.

And now, back to my regularly scheduled homework.

And Now, For Something Completely Different

2009-03-03T10:02:00.004-05:00

I started this a week or so ago in the hopes of somehow cataloging my video game experience, and I'm not sure if it came out the way I wanted it to. It reads more like "My Summer Vacation" than my typical reviews. But anyway, here it is: the somewhat complete history of my video gaming.

Enjoy :)

Since before the days of elementary school, I found myself drawn to video games. I played Centipede in arcades, standing on crates my mom would lug over so I could reach the buttons. Later, I spent all my pocket money playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game between bowling matches. I got a Nintendo and played Marble Madness, Paperboy, Tetris, Zelda II: the Adventures of Link, Gauntlet, Gradius, Contra, and Battle of Olympus to exhaustion. When the Super Nintendo came out, my stepfather surprised me by buying me a pile of on-sale Nintendo games, including Ultima III: Exodus, The Immortal, Milon’s Secret Castle, Wizards and Warriors, Solstice, and Legacy of the Wizard. I borrowed – and beat – the first Final Fantasy game, as well as Shadowgate and the first Legend of Zelda. I had fewer games for Super Nintendo – Paperboy 2, Road Runner’s Death Valley Rally, Final Fantasy II & Mystic Quest, The Secret of Mana, and The Seventh Saga – all except the last of which I beat. I also delighted in the Super Mario series of games, as well as the Castlevania games – beating all except the fourth, which never ceased to frustrate me. And let’s not forget Megaman – I can’t remember how many there were, but I know I beat all the ones I could get my hands on. So, I would have to say that, initially, I was mostly into side-scrolling games that were considered platformers, and a handful of RPGs.

Once I got to high school, I started playing sports and joining clubs, and stopped playing video games almost completely. This changed when I got to college – my roommate’s boyfriend had a Playstation, and I started playing the first three of the Crash Bandicoot series – another set of platformers – constantly. The third, “Warped,” was my all-time favorite. After that, it was on-again, off-again with video games – I got heavily into both Grand Theft Auto III and Final Fantasy VII during my winter break my senior year of college, and then put it down when classes started again. In 2003, I started playing again – mainly Diablo II on my PC, my first time playing any game at all on a computer. I owned my first computer at age 8, but it was a Tandy 3000, which wasn’t amenable to much other than word processing and making my own music. On my new computer, I also played some Quake 2, Doom 3, and even a little Tribes. I collected a pile of games I never played – Enter the Matrix, God of War, Kingdom Hearts, Castlevania: Lament of Sorrow, Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy, and Ratchet and Clank, all for the PS2. The reason I never played these could be attributed to two more major addictions – the first was Mario Kart: Double Dash, which brought me to a new level of cursing with the introduction of blue shells into my life. The second was Katamari Damacy and We <3 Katamari, both of which I beat within a month of owning them. But things really changed for me in 2005, when I got my first hand-held gaming system.

It started with a Game Boy Advance, and simple games, like ports of Zelda II and Mario 2. Then I got a DS, and mostly played Mario Kart (and later, New Super Mario Brothers, Speed Racer, and Ninjatown – the last of which being the only one I’ve beaten). In March of 2006, I got a PSP, which changed my view of handheld gaming completely. I was playing Me and My Katamari (the only game I’ve beaten on the PSP so far) and Death, Jr. – the two main reasons I got the system – and later got N+ and Loco Roco. But the real treat came at the end of 2008 – in August, I went to the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle; in October, I got my PS3; and in November, I met the love of my life, who I ended up taking to the Video Game Expo in Philly later that very month.

The Penny Arcade Expo was incredible, as I’ve mentioned previously in this blog. It was overwhelming and amazing to really feel like I was around a bunch of people who were like me. It felt like home. I get the same feeling whenever I’m around Mike – that I’ve found someone who finally gets me, who I can be myself around and not hide any aspects of my inner geek. The Playstation 3 has been a ton of fun and has been instrumental in getting me into the new world of gaming, in which games can be downloaded as well as played online, something I’d never done with a console. The first game I got for it was Little Big Planet – I scored a post-recall clean copy a week before it was supposed to come out – and Dead Space. I went back and forth between the two games, playing Little Big Planet for hours until I felt like changing it up a bit, and then playing Dead Space until I felt I needed to change my pants. It was just before this time that Mike and I met, and we started discussing video games all the time – I got him interested in Fallout 3, and he got me into Resistance 2, both of which I bought after we started dating. Resistance 2 was so amazing that, on black Friday, I got a copy of Resistance: Fall of Man. I mostly played Little Big Planet until I beat it, and then I started in on Resistance. When Mike got me F.E.A.R. 2 for Valentine’s Day, that was all I played for a week or so, and then I went back to Resistance, because he had started playing Resistance 2 online again and I wanted to get to where he was. (I should mention I’ve got an annoying habit of wanting to play games in order, and read books in order, and see tv shows and movies in order, etc; however, in this case, it was also that I wanted to beat Resistance and Resistance 2 because I felt like those were good places to start in order to get better at playing first person shooters). Since Friday, though, the main thing that’s been in the PS3 has been Killzone 2, which was my Valentine’s Day gift to Mike, and which is SO insane and intimidating that I haven’t played it for more than 20 minutes or so. I’ll get there, though…I will make it to Helghan!

So, there it is – everything I can remember about my video game history. I’m sure I’ve missed a handful here and there, especially with Nintendo and Super Nintendo games. I tried to make it sound creative, though it seems more matter-of-fact than imaginative. Hopefully it’s not too pedantic, and gives my faithful readers a little more background into this side of me.

Video Game Review: Ninjatown

2009-03-01T20:44:00.007-05:00

I did, in fact, take that mythical trip to Oz, not this morning, but starting last night. I am definitely pleased with the gameplay of Resistance 2, but holy FUCK, it is nigh impossible. The guns are far more effective (especially the Auger), but the enemies are harder. The colors make everything more beautiful, but sometimes, I find myself regretting asking for more color – specifically running through the town of Orick, being chased by Grims, which exploded from cocoons all over the damn town and scared the shit out of me. GOOD TIMES!

Really, the game is great, but I need to take a break from it to do some homework and laundry, and to let Mike play more Killzone 2. Now that I’m full of dinner and I don’t quite feel like finishing up my homework, I thought I’d write another review of a game I beat about 2 months ago, Ninjatown.

The characters in Ninjatown come from the mind, palette, and soul of Shawn Smith, the creative genius behind Shawnimals (www.shawnimals.com). I had the pleasure of meeting Shawn at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle in September of 2008, after seeing Wee Ninjas and Wee Devils running around the convention center (I even got my picture taken with them, as you can see). I was intrigued, and decided to check out the game. I was interested in the pins as well, scattered across a table with a sign begging people to be honest and take only one – which, in addition to the fact that they were the cutest pins I had ever seen, made me want a pocketful. My evil plot was thwarted by the appearance of Shawn himself, who explained how the game was played on the demo that had been set up next to the pins, and also recognized my Patrick the Wolfboy shirt and commented on it. It turns out that Art and Franco had worked on his Ninjatown comic! It was a righteous coincidence.

Ninjatown itself is a painfully adorable tower defense game for the DS. You help Ol’ Master Ninja defend Ninjatown by strategically defending it from Mr. Demon and his angry hordes. A variety of ninjas can be called upon to help, starting with Wee Ninjas and later getting volunteer Business Ninjas and even Lava Ninjas. Each Ninja has specific powers and is ideal against certain devils – I find the Anti-Ninja to be the best defense against the Chubby Devil, and the Business Devil is best defeated by his swift Ninja counterpart. Each level requires another area to be defended, and you can choose which Ninja Houses you want to build – depending on how many Ninja Cookies you have. Yes, that’s right, I said Ninja Cookies – that is the monetary value you’re dealing with here in Ninjatown, and Mr. Demon is trying to steal the recipe.

Not cute enough for you? What if I were to tell you that you can gain tokens with each level beaten, and that the tokens include Baby Ninjas, who are so cute the Devils must slow down, as well as Ninja Droppings, which…well…that one’s obvious, now isn’t it? You can also enlist the direct aid of Master Ninja, who flies above you in a hot-air balloon. You can unlock various powers for him to help you in your defense of your beloved town.

On top of being cute, it’s also addictive. I found myself playing levels again and again, trying to best mixes of Ninjas to defeat the onslaught of Devils, addicted to seeing that grade of “A” after each one was finished.

So, the gameplay is fun, the characters are fun and lovable, and it’s a level of challenging I found quite satisfying – it wasn’t so easy I beat it in a day, but it also wasn’t so hard that I got frustrated with it. All in all, I would say Ninjatown is definitely a game I heartily recommend to everyone.

Video Game Review: Resistance

2009-02-28T20:04:00.001-05:00

For the last two weeks or so, I’ve been playing the original Resistance, broken up only with frustrations at playing Phantom Hourglass on my DS and frustrations playing Death, Jr. on my PSP. Both of those handheld games have their obnoxious sides; the former is a kid's game full of puzzles and riddles and going through the same fucking map 10 fucking times, the latter, a not-so-kid's game that I’m sure I’m not playing in the right order because I’m constantly getting my ass kicked. When I am home and playing Resistance, however, I can say that I have very few complaints. It’s a very good FPS (first person shooter, as they call it in the biz), other than the fact that everything is GREY, grey, grey. I can't complain about the fact that I have a health bar and it's not just the typical "if I hide behind this wall, I’ll regenerate like any normal person" FPS health meter. Not that there's anything wrong with that, that's how things are in Resistance 2, which I’m really looking forward to getting back into, now that I can tell the different between a black Carbine and a Frag grenade and the grey ground/wall/door/dirt. I love the guns in the game - the Bullseye, with its tagging feature, allows you to shoot around walls, and the Auger, while not as powerful as I’d hoped, allows you to shoot your enemies through a wall, which is pretty amazing (I should point out these are both Chimeran guns - though I will also grudgingly admit I like the shotgun in this game – the Rossmore – more than I have in any other FPS I’ve played, and that the Carbine has grown on me exponentially every time I fight a wave of Leapers). The firefights never get boring to me; they're not too impossibly easy or hard in either direction, and in addition, things get changed up constantly. My one and only complaint is that it is LONG as all hell - I really can't wait to be in the colorful world of Resistance 2, which will feel much like Dorothy must have felt when she walked out of the house after the twister and realized she wasn't in monochromatic Kansas anymore. I’m also eagerly anticipating the release of Resistance: Retribution on the PSP next month, which, according to what I saw in the latest Qore episode, promises to be anything but a disappointment. All in all, two thumbs up, and I hope to be finished with it tonight and well on my way to Oz by morning.

Addendum: an hour after writing this, I did, in fact, beat Resistance. The final fight was definitely a worthy one, though the ending itself left much to be desired in comparison to the ending of the second one (which I saw when Mike was playing it, and now wish I hadn’t). But I dutifully watched the credits and I was rewarded with a partially satisfying scene that made me want to start the second one even more. So, hopefully, I’ll have a follow-up review for that one within the week – that is, if I don’t end up writing my critical essay due Tuesday, or work on my application to graduate school, or do any of the work for my travel writing course, or, you know, sleep.

Life Review

2008-11-18T16:53:00.002-05:00

I have totally fallen off the face of the internet. Several things happened:

-I went to Japan for two weeks.
-I went to see Shudder to Think for an entire weekend.
-I went to a dozen Halloween parties.
-I bought a PS3...and 4 games.
-I sort-of fell in love.

Those events are listed in chronological order. And they are all fabulous.

I will be writing more in the upcoming weeks - I promise. I was trying to do NaNo but please see list above for reasons why it simply hasn't worked out. I'm in that early stage of the relationship (can I call it "blithesome"?) and it's wonderful. But I'm going to get back into the swing of things. I've been:

-reading the Stephen King "Dark Tower" series;
-watching loads of horror movies;
-playing tons of video games.

So, I have plenty of fodder for the blog cannon. And I think it's time I got the creative juices flowing again.

Band Review: Shudder to Think (part 2)

2008-10-04T02:44:00.002-04:00

I just got back from the show. I'm 29 years old. And I still - and always will - love Craig Wedren.

You'll always be my number one, Craig. <3

Band Review: Shudder to Think

2008-10-03T16:49:00.001-04:00

I wrote this completely corny review yesterday, and I am a little self-conscious about it, but whatever. I'm corny! I don't care. I'm seeing Shudder to Think tonight and I couldn't be more thrilled. So, enjoy! -n

In my teenage years, one of my favorite hobbies was to stay up all night watching MTV. This could happen any night, and occasionally fell in a Sunday, when they used to have a show called “120 Minutes.” It was an amalgam of what was considered “alternative” music, back when that genre was still relatively new. It was on one of these beloved night/mornings that I discovered a band that would change my life forever: Shudder to Think. The video was for “X-French T-shirt” on what remains my favorite album, Pony Express Record. And from the moment Craig Wedren’s voice poured out of those shitty RCA television speakers and started to Shake My Halo Down, I knew I was in love, and that nothing would ever be the same again.

When they broke up, it made me Grow Cold. I had finally been able to procure all of their albums, thanks largely to a used record store in Reading called “Warrior Music” – I hope that, somewhere, my old Saab still has their “Screw Corporate America!” bumper sticker I so affectionately placed on there – and they broke up. I was devastated, certain that it was The Saddest Day of My Life. I continued listening to them, and they remained my favorite band, despite the many bands that have ebbed and flowed in and out of my eclectic musical taste.

Then I heard The Call of the Playground: they were getting back together for a reunion tour. No way! It can’t be! I could not believe these Lies About the Sky. I, of course, bought tickets to both the Philadelphia and New York shows, determined to see them as much as I possibly could. I’ve been listening daily to every Day Ditty, and suddenly, this morning, while listening to “Just Really Wanna See You” from the First Love, Last Rites soundtrack, it hit me like a Love Catastrophe: I’m going to see Shudder to Think tomorrow.

Tomorrow night, I am going to walk into the TLA and see them perform, live, and I will most likely sob my heart out the entire show. Tomorrow, I am going to be in the same room as Craig Wedren and he is going to perform the songs that have helped me to get through some of my most awkward and painful moments. Tomorrow, I’m going to hear, in person, some of the words that, like the loving grip of a friend, squeezed my hand in my time of need. Tomorrow, my dear Earthquakes will Come Home. And I’m sorry to anyone who tries to love me ever again, for I am So Into You, Shudder to Think: you Own Me.

A word or two on PAX, before reality seeps back in.

2008-09-01T13:11:00.002-04:00

so i just got back from PAX. it was...an incredible experience, to say the least. i got to check out (though not as much as i wanted to) a gorgeous new city, seattle. i FINALLY managed to make it to the west coast for the first time in my life. i got to see and play all kinds of awesome new video games as well as pick up loads of awesome (and lots of free!) merch. i got to see mc frontalot perform...AND he signed my cds...AND i got my picture taken with him. i got to see an amazing q&a with the penny arcade boys, as well as watch them play rock band (AWESOME!) and vs. excitebike. i got to experience the omegathon in all its geektastic glory. the creator of ninjatown recognized my patrick the wolfboy t-shirt and talked to me about art and franco (shawn says hi, guys!). i got to see a fantastic spore demo and realized IT IS COMING OUT NEXT WEEK - after YEARS of waiting for it. and...possibly the best part...i got to see a panel (and new exclusive stuff - live!) from the rooster teeth guys as well as get my stuff signed AND get my picture taken with them. they were...just...amazing. really fantastic.

i have to admit, i'm no stranger to conventions. this was, i think, my eighth year going to philadelphia's wizard world comic-con. it was my third year going to monster mania in cherry hill. it was my first year going to otakon. it was my first pax. (those last three all happened in this month of august, in fact.) while i love the comic book convention (it's got my favorite geek flea market) and the horror convention (there's nothing quite like breathlessly accusing tom savini of being a genius) and otakon was a blast (so much KAWAII), i can honestly say that PAX was the first time i felt like i was really home. i guess it's because of those four things - comics, horror movies, anime, and video games - i've been into video games the longest, since my mom used to haul crates over to arcade games at the mall so i could play them when i was 3 or 4 years old. it took going to PAX to bring back the full nostalgia of it for me and remind me how much of a gaming geek i am - and always have been - at heart. i also have a hard time choosing between watching movies, reading books, and playing video games (and even playing the guitar and knitting), but i think for a while i know which mode i'm going to be stuck on again.

the other thing that i want to comment on is just...seattle. WOW. i could never imagine wanting to live anywhere other than philadelphia. my second favorite city is boston, and my third, baltimore. but seattle...seattle just blew them all away. i could see myself living in dublin, and even belfast, but i could never imagine calling those places my home. the same with boston and baltimore. but seattle...i could see myself living in seattle and calling it my home, really. it's laid back, and from what i saw, it's just my style, from the clothes to the food to the attitude. i utterly loved it there. i'm not sure if i'll be singing the same tune in a few weeks, after i get back from japan, but these are just my rambling, sleep-deprived, jetlagged thoughts as i'm having them.

PAX changed me. it re-opened a place that i had in my heart that's been buried under failed relationships, japanese grammar, netflix queues, and complications of life. too much of my energy and passion is constantly misdirected. but i promise myself - i will never let that place get buried again.

<3

Movie Review - Alpha Dog

2008-07-15T11:37:00.001-04:00

I wasn’t interested in seeing Alpha Dog until I saw Emile Hirsch’s performance as the title character in Speed Racer, and even after seeing it, I still feel the latter is possibly the best delivery he’s ever given. But I will say one thing: I had no idea Justin Timberlake could act. Sure, I’ve seen his silly performances on Saturday Night Live, and I love Black Snake Moan, but let’s be serious – who was paying attention to him in that movie, really? Christina Ricci utterly consumed all focus. But Timerlake was given the chance to truly shine in this movie, bringing out a side of him I had never seen.

For anyone unfamiliar with the plot, Alpha Dog is based on a true story – that of “Jesse James Hollywood,” who was the youngest man to appear on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list. This tragic tale centers on Hirsch’s character, Johnny Truelove, and his relationship with one of his underlings, Jake Mazursky. Mazursky owes him money, and the two start a feud that leads to Truelove kidnapping Jake’s younger brother, Zack. Thinking this will blow over quickly, Truelove puts Frankie in charge of watching Zack. Frankie – played by Timberlake – and Zack both begin to take the situation lightly. Frankie starts to like the kid, and Zack, who had just gotten into a fight with his parents, loves the freedom (ironically) and the party-all-the-time lifestyle. He’s somewhat of a celebrity to all the kids, and the girls can’t keep their hands off of him. But when the reality of what has happened catches up with everyone – a seriousness evident as an undercurrent throughout the film with the reactions of the Mazursky parents, as well as Truelove’s father’s reaction to what’s going on – Truelove makes a drastic decision that shatters the rock-star lifestyle they’ve all been leading.

Touching, naïve, and tragic, Alpha Dog has many themes – the mentality of the “immortal and untouchable youth,” the fear of taking responsibility for one’s actions, and the herd mentality all combine for extraordinary characters and an unforgettable story. I wouldn’t recommend this to the overly-sensitive or the weak of stomach or heart, though. It’s a tragedy that will remain with you.

Movie Review - The Fountain

2008-07-14T16:45:00.002-04:00

First and foremost, I’d like to make something clear. Had I not read the little sleeve the movie came in when Netflix shipped it to me, The Fountain would not have made a whole lot of sense. It describes the three iterations of the two main characters – in 16^th century Spain, as soldier and Queen; in modern times, as scientist and sick wife; in 26^th century space, as an astronaut and…er…a tree. However, if you don’t read that little blurb, or have no previous knowledge of the movie, the scenes in which the two main characters are in the future make very little sense. There is neither an introduction to, nor an explanation of, the scenes in which the “astronaut” and his tree are in a bubble in space and, given the context of the movie, it could mean something very different than what they were trying to accomplish.

The two main characters are played by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. I feel they did a fantastic job portraying the lovers throughout the ages. But the weak connections, disjointed plot, and confusing timeline bogged down the movie and undermined their chemistry. The costumes and scenery are beautiful, but again, the disorientation and lack of explanation leave crucial information to the imagination, which is a sign of a poorly-developed design. And I’d rather use the word “scant” when I’m referencing Weisz’s wardrobe than when I’m discussing the amount of sense the story made.

The one really positive thing I will say about the movie is this: I really, really liked the ending. Weisz’s present-day character, the scientist's wife who was dying of cancer, had a beautiful view of what immortality was, and tried to explain it to Jackman, but he was too obsessed with finding a cure for her – and a cure for death – that he wouldn’t listen. It took him another 500 years – and a trip to a star nebula in space – to figure it out. The way they achieve their goal is very cool, but sadly, doesn’t make up for the time wasted to get there.

Movie Review - Punch-Drunk Love

2008-07-14T15:42:00.002-04:00

SPOILER ALERT! There are spoilers in this review. Please don’t read it if you don’t want this movie spoiled for you.

When I first saw the trailers for Punch-Drunk Love, I was intrigued. I had seen Emily Watson and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the other movie they did around the same time, Red Dragon, and I was interested to see them in this movie as well. It took me much longer to see this film, obviously – I saw Red Dragon in the theater in 2002, but didn’t see Punch-Drunk Love until about two weeks ago.

In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t waste my money on it – well, other than my Netflix fee.

Barry Egan, played by Adam Sandler, is an anguished, depressed, completely dejected salesman. He is cruelly verbally abused by his seven sisters, causing most of his depression, as well as extremely violent behavior, and a tendency to cry “for no reason.” His most obnoxious sister – aptly played by bitchy-as-hell Mary Lynn Rajskub, best known for her part as Chloe on 24 – is the worst offender, constantly riding his ass about going out on a blind date with one of her friends, played by Watson.

Utterly disjointed, connected only by scenes of oftentimes completely unnecessary and confusing violence, and excruciating in both its constant torture of Egan – who is thrown from one extremely bad situation to another – the movie is painful to watch. At a family dinner, he smashes three huge sliding-glass doors at the house of one of his sisters, and then confesses to one of his in-laws that he has a problem with crying, and proceeds to burst into tears. He calls a sex line – not surprising, considering he literally has no one to talk to who doesn’t completely insult, degrade, or curse at him – and the next day, the woman threatens to steal his identity when he tells her he can’t help her out financially. Her boss, played by Hoffman, sends thugs after Barry, and they proceed to rob him and beat him up. All of these things have massive build-up, with the only positive light in his life being points he gets from buying Weight Watchers foods which he plans to use to get Frequent Flyer miles using a loophole in the rules.

Not making any sense? It didn’t make any sense when I was watching it, either. The culmination of ridiculousness occurs when he is in bed with Watson, and they are making out, and he tells her that he wants to smash her face in, and commences more “pillow talk” in the form of describing all the violent things he wants to do to her. She responds in kind, and then they make a comment along the lines of “this is fun.” I’m sorry, but if I started kissing a darkly disturbed dude who was known to lie and had gotten us kicked out of a restaurant because he destroyed the bathroom (which, in all fairness, she found out later, BUT STILL), if he started talking about smashing my face in, I’d probably get the hell out of there pretty quickly.

At the end of the movie, all I could think was, “no movie has made me that depressed since There Will Be Blood.” Surprise! It was the same director, Paul Thomas Anderson. I also felt the same way about Boogie Nights, though don’t worry – I know that depressing stories about drug-addicted porn stars aren’t supposed to make me happy. In all fairness, I DID love Magnolia. But I’d still like to send him a personal thank-you: for making me depressed with poorly-constructed movies and setting my teeth on edge with horrible scores since 2007.

I’d like to add one more comment: this movie, aside from being one of the worst, was one of the cruelest I’ve ever seen. I would rank this in the same category as movies like Saw – the totally unnecessary and awful torture of people by other people, simply because they think they are superior. The only difference between the two is the amount of blood and the entertainment value – of which I think Saw had more of both. It may seem extreme to compare the two movies, but honestly, I couldn’t even crack a single smile through this entire film, and feared the ending would result in the main character’s suicide…which I felt would actually have been a relief. In comparison, sawing off one’s own foot seems mild.

Movie Review - The Fall

2008-07-14T14:55:00.000-04:00

When I heard that Tarsem Singh, the director of The Cell, had done another movie entitled The Fall, I checked out the trailer. I was overwhelmed with how lovely it seemed, and finally got around to seeing it last night. It went well beyond any expectation I had for it.

The plot is simple, and the delivery both unique and fascinating. It is set in Los Angeles in 1915. A Hollywood stuntman, Roy, is hurt when trying to pull off a stunt. A quirky and curious little girl, Alexandria, has broken her arm while working in the orange orchards. She wanders around the hospital, searching for ways to alleviate boredom, and discovers Roy. In exchange for doing him favors – mostly stealing medicine – Roy tells her a magnificent story. Shown from the point of view of imagination, the story itself is intertwined with the lives of both characters.

First, let me say this: Lee Pace, the atheist brother of Jaye in the short-lived Wonderfalls, is stupendous in his role as Roy Walker. Roy suffers from more than physical injuries: his heart has been broken, and the pain he feels is so evident – and so accessible – throughout the entire film. His obvious inexperience with children is adorable in some scenes, terrifying in others. He underestimates the effect he has had on little Alexandria, and this oversight nearly causes the child her life. The final scenes with the two characters had me beside myself – their love for each other had me in tears. As for Catinca Untaru as Alexandria…what a fascinating child! It’s so hard to believe that someone so young could be so incredibly expressive and so fully capture the essence of confusion required of Alexandria, whose English is, as Roy says more than once, “gibberish.” The two performances were remarkable.

Second, and I expected no less: the scenery was breathtaking. The entire movie, which spanned 18 different countries (WHOA!), was so utterly gorgeous that I found myself repeatedly in awe. Two scenes in particular stand out in my mind: the scene with one of the secondary characters, known only as “the Mystic,” in which he is tattooed while his brothers sing – I don’t want to spoil the scene too much by giving it away – and Darwin realizes what is happening and forces out a gasp of surprise, barely shoving out the words, “they’re giving us directions!” The other scene is the wedding – I can’t even put it into words. Nothing like the conventional wedding one might imagine, the lack of noise found here is overwhelming. Again, I couldn’t help but cry through almost the entire scene, it was so fantastically beautiful.

This is how movies should be made. It was the kind of movie that simultaneously lifted my spirits because it reminded me of the beauty so inherent in the world, and yet broke my heart, for fear that I’ll never make anything this lovely in my lifetime. I enthusiastically recommend this movie to everyone.

Movie Review: Speed Racer

2008-05-14T09:02:00.004-04:00

This weekend, Gina and I were discussing movies that do – and don’t – translate well to the cinematic medium. Throughout the night, we discussed the good (Hellboy, Casshern), the bad (Dune [take your pick], Ghost World), the ugly (Spawn, Troy), and the resounding (the Narnia and Lord of the Rings series). I had admitted a secret to her – it involved Dune – and we wandered down the path of writers and directors being into the movies they translate and how important it is for them to really dedicate the passion and adoration necessary to make a beautiful piece of work.

Speed Racer was one of those movies.

Yeah, I just compared Speed Racer to the Lord of the Rings. I went there. I called Speed Racer a motherfucking masterpiece. And I believe it with every fiber of my GO-MACH-GO-loving being.

It was the perfect homage to the cartoon. It had all of the kitschy elements of that darling classic: you had Spritle and Chim Chim, surprisingly not as annoying as you would imagine…in fact, they were refreshingly adorable, and while they did still have their random interludes (not as random as, say, driving through the countryside in top hats and monocles), they were funny and cute. I wasn’t sure why Sparky had an Australian accent, but the Racer parents were perfectly portrayed by Susan Sarandon and John Goodman. Speed and Trixie – I can’t even say enough about those two and how amazing they were. And don’t even get me started on Racer X. I would have paid the admission price alone to see Matthew Fox run around in black leather, which he does throughout the entire movie, except one scene in which he is FIGHTING IN HIS BOXERS. As Trixie says, “Hubba hubba!”

The acting was refreshing and the dialogue was a devoted tribute. With every scene, you can see how much everyone loved this movie – the writers and the actors. I had goose bumps for the first 20 minutes, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Speed’s mom told him how he “took her breath away” with his driving. And I’ll admit, when I saw the trailer, I thought the racing scenes were going to be over-the-top ridiculous, but when we went to see it again last night, I found myself looking forward to each of the races, and cheering Speed on.

If you liked the cartoon, there’s even more in store for you. The attention – and dedication – to detail was startling. The first announcer in the movie was the original voice for Speed in the English-dubbed cartoon. There’s a scene with a James Bond movie playing in the background. Cruncher Block has pet piranhas…in what appears to be a nod to the Mammoth Car. And a very enthusiastic high five to anyone who can spot the Tatsunoko logo in the movie! (Thanks, Gina!)

I can’t say enough good things about this movie – nor can I express how shocked I am that it’s getting destroyed by critics. The affection with which this movie was written, cast, and created takes my breath away. I haven’t been this excited about a movie since – holy shit, I’m going to fucking say it – Fight Club.

Go see it. Now. You can thank me later.

addendum:

Gina's comment was so awesome that I felt the need to add it here for all to see:

"This movie...what else can I say about it? Sigh. Imagine all the characters from the cartoon. Got that picture? Ok. Then imagine them as having fully fleshed-out, multi-dimensional personalities and feelings. Then imagine those personalities and feelings of real people interacting with each other, loving each other, working through grief, fighting injustice. Pretty fucking awesome. The depth of these characters was, quite frankly, breathtaking. Especially given what they had to work with from the original. Then imagine Matthew Fox in his underwear with a silk drape artfully wrapped around his mouth, fighting ninjas. Sweet Christ, it was like Hanzo Hattori meets Playgirl.... Worth the $10 ticket price alone."

She's absolutely right - especially about Hirsch's portrayal of Speed. His innocence and naive simplicity - not to be confused with stupidity! - are truly like the cartoon character come to life.

Go, Speed, Go!

and for those of you who need more persuasion...HOTNESS:

Movie Review: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

2008-05-08T10:57:00.001-04:00

Sometimes things happen and you regret them later. Maybe you put too much sugar in your coffee, or performed some heavy flirting with a married guy, or pushed someone down a flight of stairs. Either way, there are things that happen that make you think to yourself, “I really wish I had a time machine right now.”

That’s the situation I’m currently in.

I was in the Superfresh a few weeks ago – the classy one down on South Street – and this obnoxious scene-tard was going on and on about movies while standing by the Redbox. “Oh, this is the BEST MOVIE I’ve seen in a LONG time,” he said, waving around a copy of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. I took it as some kind of dare, and rented it. If I had a time machine right now, I would go back in time and tell him his taste in movies sucks, because yeah, I got to see Marisa Tomei’s boobs, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is basically awesome in everything he’s ever been in (Happiness, anyone?), but that’s about all that was worth seeing in it, and it could have been compressed down to about an hour and a half or less.

(See? I’m not always happy with a longer movie. Take that, people who don’t agree with me that I Am Legend would have been better if it was longer and, you know, more coherent.)

Anyway, the movie wasn’t worth watching, that guy in Superfresh is a toolbox, and my coffee is way too sweet. But I’m seeing Matthew Fox in black leather tomorrow, so I don’t have a care in the world.

Movie Review: Expelled

2008-04-29T09:10:00.003-04:00

First and foremost: sorry for the slacker-age. I've been soooo unbelievably busy that I've had very little time for myself. But I'd like to do something unprecedented here and write a review of a movie I haven't seen: the “most controversial” pile of dog-shit, by up-and-coming Michael-Moore-wannabe Ben Stein: Expelled.

Are you joking? Seriously. Is he kidding here? I really hope that, at the end, he jumps out of a cake that is shaped like a bible, and he’s got on fake wings and is wearing a halo and tutu and says “PSYCH!” Because for real, people. How did this happen? How did Ben Stein – Ben Stein! How did Ben Stein make a movie about intelligent design, and how is it that people are actually taking it seriously? This would be like me making a movie about how natural selection is bullshit and targeting only crackpots in my interviews for the movie and making sure I take kids in wheelchairs to K-Mart’s headquarters and OH WAIT! I’m not actually an expert on any of that, so why on earth would I make a movie about it?

I’m getting a bit off the mark here because I’m just so frustrated by the idea that any jerk-off with an assload of money can just make a movie about whatever because they are too bored, or haven’t gotten any attention in years, or whatever is going on in Ben Stein’s head. Come on. Ben Stein?!!? The monotone teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, who has been in such cinematic masterpieces as Dennis the Menace, My Girl 2, and (Myke, don’t die) Son of the Mask? How does anyone take this guy seriously – anyone without RED-EYE, I mean?

I’ll tell you what Ben Stein should be doing with his money: giving it to me. In large sums. After we battle it out, Jeopardy-style (I would love to say “Suck it, Stein!”) and then go on our merry way, never to have to face each other again. Because other people winning Ben Stein’s money is clearly the only good use that money ever got.

Movie Review: There Will Be Blood

2008-02-22T16:03:00.002-05:00

There Will Be Blood was yet another traumatizing movie for me. I think part of it was the score, which had my teeth grinding mercilessly (thanks, Johnny Greenwood!), but another part of it was the endless suspense in the movie. It was building and releasing much like the pressure of oil shooting out of the earth, so I guess it was actually pretty accurate.

So there’s Daniel Day-Lewis, and he’s an oil tycoon, and in a series of unfortunate events, he and his adopted son, who doesn’t know he’s adopted, roll up on a miserable pile of land that is supposedly rich in oil, and basically proceed to get totally fucked.

Look, I could go more into it, but it’s a seriously long movie, and anything I would say would kind of ruin the plot, but I can assure you – it’s a great movie. I mean, if you like this sort of thing. It’s really long, and has a good plot (albeit slow), and the acting is fantastic, and did I mention it’s super-ultra-mega-cupcakes-long? Also: if you don’t like to see really violent scenes, don’t worry, you’ve got plenty of time to look away before they happen (men at the bottom of a deep hole while other men are sending heavy metal objects up and down with rope and technology FROM THE LATE 1800’S = a recipe for dental – and skull-related – disaster).

Oh, and if you want an idea of how great Daniel Day-Lewis is, I’ll quote my friend James: Cloverfield would have been better if it had a 200-foot-tall Daniel Day-Lewis in it as the monster.

Need I say more?

Movie Review: No Country for Old Men

2008-02-22T15:50:00.001-05:00

Everyone kept telling me I had to see No Country for Old Men. I didn’t know a thing about it, other than Tommy Lee Jones was in it and the Coen brothers directed it. Not finding it at all suspicious that no one had told me anything about it, I decided to watch it…alone. Hey, The Hudsucker Proxy was one of my favorite movies! So light-hearted and adorably fresh! This had to be great, right? Why, I’d bet my Pulitzer on it!

Sweet fancy Moses do I wish I could have turned back time and not watched that movie by myself. The first ten minutes alone had me feeling ill in the stomach. By the time I was halfway through the movie, I was wishing someone would come in and kill ME with one of those crazy punch-guns they use to kill cattle (though two nights later, when I woke up covered in sweat and saw a shadow under my door and swore Javier Bardem was standing outside and was about to punch in my lock and kill me, you can bet your ass I was wishing someone would certainly NOT come in and kill me with one of those crazy punch-guns!).

It was one of those movies full of graphic violence that was probably necessary, if you really take the time to think about it, because there are some things that you truly need in order to express the fathomless depths of how insane some of the characters you’re portraying really are. And it was also full of those moments where you think, well that was kind of unnecessary, but I guess that person was killed because of this, and suddenly you realize you just justified the actions of a serial killer to try to see his point of view, and you start to get that ill feeling in the stomach again because, well I mean, at least for me, I don’t want to be able to fully comprehend the reasoning of a serial killer.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a beautifully done movie. I have no arguments with the story, how the story was achieved, the character development (in fact, props to that one), the dialogue, anything other than I could have done with about 20 more minutes of Tommy Lee Jones. The movie just left me feeling ill and depressed afterwards. Which makes it pretty successful at achieving what it set out to do, I know.

One final comment I’ll add here for the sake of a chuckle: I kept complaining that it was too literary at times, and that symbolism belonged in a Carson McCullers novel, not a Coen brothers movie. My friend Beth was the one who finally broke the news to me: it was based on a Cormac McCarthy novel. I kid you not, I nearly threw my backpack into the Schyulkill River when she said that. Had someone told me that beforehand, I would have a) done some research, b) been prepared for the movie, and c) possibly not even watched it. I supposed, in retrospect, it’s better that no one did tell me, but still. DAMN.

Movie Review: Re-Animator

2008-02-22T15:32:00.000-05:00

Wow. Re-Animator. Just, wow. Kathy and I decided to watch it when we were sitting down to have some dinner, and it actually made her lose her appetite. (Sorry, Kathy!) I haven’t read the original story it’s based on, but I can see why many people didn’t take it seriously. The scene at the end with the head and the…well…yeah. You have to see it for yourself, really.

Re-Animator is the story of a mad doctor (not angry mad, like CRAZY I-can-totally-play-God-and-win mad) who has been dabbling in bringing the dead back to life. He was originally experimenting on animals, but with the help of his new, totally handsome and popular roommate, he starts experimenting on humans…with disastrous results.

I would be forced to say this isn’t necessarily your average zombie movie, either. I mean, I guess it is, technically – the scene towards the end in particular (with creative use of a fog machine!) might make it a zombie movie – but it’s more like a super campy mad doctor movie that happens to include re-animated corpses (and that oh-so-typical ending!).

I have to admit that despite the fact that I’ve used words like “campy” and “typical” and “totally,” I did enjoy this movie. I wouldn’t call it one of my favorites, but I would say that there’s a pretty good chance I will one day see the sequel. And that this time, when I meet Jeffrey Combs at a horror movie convention, I will shake his hand and say “well done, my boy!” Well done indeed.

Book Review: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

2008-02-22T15:21:00.002-05:00

Salutations, all! I am very sorry for my lack of updates, but life decided to kick me in the ass. I’ve been busy with work, school, family, and when I can fit them in, my friends, and I’ve been avoiding the internet as much as possible. But here I am! And I feel it is time for another review.

In contrast to my last review, I’d like to discuss Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I started my Murakami odyssey with Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World last year, and I was a smitten kitten after that. I didn’t have access to any of his other books, but I decided that, this term, I’d do an independent study in modern Japanese literature, and the teacher I chose to help me with it happens to LOVE Murakami, so it all worked out for the best. The second book I read by him was A Wild Sheep Chase, and while I originally thought it was lacking something, after having read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and currently being enmeshed in Kafka on the Shore, I’m partially convinced that it’s simply a facet of his style to leave loose ends and to at times be vague and not necessarily satisfy the questions he himself has created within his own stories. There’s nothing wrong with that; I think that I was just more into the story of Wind-Up than I was Sheep.

Anyway, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was a remarkable tale of…wow. I’m not even sure how to describe it. It begins as a story of a missing cat, migrates to a missing wife, delves into the mysteries of the mind, makes a few brief detours into grisly war tales, returns to Japanese suburbia, and then, much like Hard-Boiled, dances in and out of what is “real” and what is “of the mind.” In my pursuits online, I’ve found many people using words like “MurakamiLand” and “MurakamiWorld” in their descriptions of his books, and those are charmingly accurate. Murakami doesn’t just write novels; he has created an entire universe in which characters come and go, have sex and murder, wax philosophical and…talk to cats. He is a compelling and unique author in both his style and voice.

But focusing on Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (that’s what this is supposed to be about, right?), I felt lovingly drawn to all of the characters in the book, especially the main character, Toru Okada, whose cat has mysteriously gone missing, and whose wife, Kumiko, goes missing soon after. Wait, scratch that – I was never lovingly drawn to Noboru Wataya, Kumiko’s brother. He’s a nasty piece of business. But I did love May Kasahara, and the strange mother and son known only as Nutmeg and Cinnamon. The colorful array of characters Murakami has created populate another part of his universe and dance in the hauntingly surrealistic ballet that is the chronicle of the wind-up bird.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to get into Murakami or Japanese literature in general. It can be a difficult read – surrealism and hard-boiled detective stories are not everyone’s cup of tea – but it’s worth it.

Book Review: A Wild Sheep Chase

2008-01-29T15:02:00.001-05:00

I don't get it. Am I supposed to?

Movie Review: Cloverfield

2008-01-29T14:58:00.001-05:00

To everyone who talked a bunch of shit about J.J. and Lost and Alias (I totally think that show blows, so whatever) and viral marketing and SLUSHO: eat it. Cloverfield was awesome. As far as I’m concerned, it lived up to all the hype. I understand a lot of people had a lot of problems with it. Most of these people have not seen the movie. Let me address some of the things I’ve been hearing:

1) “You don’t get to see the monster.” Uhh, really? Who told you that? Because you absolutely see the monster. Like, a dozen times. And it’s scary. The ironic thing here is that everyone is complaining that it’s not Godzilla or Cthulhu and that it’s “stupid” because it’s not a well-known monster. These are the same exact people who are complaining that there’s nothing original in Hollywood these days and that everything is a remake. This goes to show that people will complain about anything, no matter how hypocritical it makes them look.

2) “They are using 9/11 to scare people.” Well, yeah. Anything taking place in a city, with collapsing buildings, that is even remotely realistic, is going to remind us of 9/11. So should we stop making movies like that for this reason? Should we continue to do things like pull out that scene in Spider-man 2, the one that was never shown, the one that was supposed to be the original trailer, in which he strings up the robbers’ get-away helicopter in a web between the two World Trade Center towers? Yeah, let’s just shit on everything and take out anything that reminds us of that and bury it and never remember it again. Because having movies in which buildings collapse is more disrespectful than trying to pretend like it never happened.

3) “The story is not clear/undeveloped/bad/stupid/it should have been a movie about them escaping and not about them going into the city.” Wow! I didn’t realize this was the latest Francis Ford Coppola movie, or an independent movie with a deep plot, and not actually AN AMERICAN MONSTER MOVIE. What the fuck were you looking for, Casablanca? The Usual Suspects? Are you seriously going into Cloverfield with these kinds of lofty standards? Are you looking for philosophy in Godzilla? Cry me a river. Go download it off the internet, cheap bastards.

4) “The ending is bad.” The ending is what? What did you want? You knew what the ending was going to be in the very beginning when they showed you the layout of the movie. The VERY ending is actually pretty awesome, because it gives you some insight into where the monster came from (though I have heard two very different ideas that are both awesome). But seriously, it’s a monster movie. If you want to see a GOOD monster movie with a GREAT plot that will absolutely suck you in and give you everything you ever needed, rent The Host. Otherwise, for serious, shut up.

Whew. Ok. Rage abated. And if you want to read an article that is hilarious and includes major spoilers, go to Encyclopedia Dramatica. Oh, and read their write-up of the last Harry Potter book, too.

Movie Review: Juno

2008-01-29T14:35:00.000-05:00

Dear Ellen Page,

Seriously, you are so cute, I just want to eat your little face. I loved your portrayal of Juno, the itty-bitty pregnant teenager, who was sort of like a character from Napoleon Dynamite wrapped up in a modern version of someone John Cusack would have been in love with in any of those 80’s movies with a tablespoon of my own teenage years and a pinch of Kitty Pryde. The dialogue was witty, the love triangles were acute, and the adorability of Michael Cera rose to an all-new high. Seriously, I just can’t take that kid sometimes. He is so cute I want to laugh and cry at the same time. The two of you together in one movie made me want to hug things (much to the chagrin of my cats). The soundtrack was also a delightful treat, full of whimsical numbers that made me want to take a time machine and go back to the easy-going days of high school. Well, minus the teenage pregnancy. But plus the armchair on the lawn.

Your Pal,

Nicole

PS, we should totally be friends!! I love you for real.

Movie Review: The Orphanage

2008-01-29T14:19:00.000-05:00

The Orphanage is about a woman who is an orphan in…an orphanage. Right. And then she gets adopted and grows up and adopts a son of her own. And then she buys the shitty orphanage she grew up in and opens it up as a special needs orphanage. And then crazy ghosts come and kidnap her son, and the ending is horribly depressing, and I was so sad I couldn’t even cry. The end.

Ok, ok, I’ll back up. This is a movie produced by Guillermo Del Toro, and after Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone, I should have accepted that this was going to be a depressing piece of work. I had no idea that it was going to be so bone-crushingly awful, though. It was marketed as a horror movie, but instead sapped me of my will to live. If I hadn’t immediately disassociated myself from my feelings when I realized exactly what was happening at the end, I probably would have stepped out in front of a car afterwards.

The main thing that pissed me off was that I saw through part of what was going on right from the start. The ghosts play a trick on the son and the son shows the mom how to play the game. I knew, right from there, that as soon as the son disappeared and the mom found her first clue, that she was supposed to play the game with them. I was practically yelling at the screen, and by the time she figured out what was going on, I had given up on any hope of her actually unraveling the mystery.

You know, I’m almost too disappointed in the movie to finish the review. The story was choppy, parts of it were totally unnecessary, it didn’t connect with other parts, and the advertising for it was misleading (which works sometimes for me, but most of the time, no way). I was glad they ended it the way that they did, because with Pan’s Labyrinth, they left it open to interpretation, and there is NO WAY I was going to stand for it if they left this one up to interpretation and I had to listen to people say how the two movies ended so happily because SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, that is TOTAL CRAP and it’s delusional to think there is ANYTHING happy about these endings.

Ok, enough of this, thinking about the movie is making me want to eat thumbtacks. Four thumbs down on this one, including my toes. Well, maybe not four, but at least one.

Movie Review: Volcano High

2008-01-29T14:05:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of things I could say about Volcano High – it’s a colorful comic-book movie hailing from Korea. It was also remade into English with, uh, Snoop Dogg and a bunch of other rappers, which I wasn’t aware of until after I already saw it. I’m glad I opted for the Korean version, but that may have actually been pretty funny.

The main story is – the students at this high school are supernatural kids. They have powers. And the principal has…some kind of magical manuscript kind of thing. And whoever has it, has “the power.” And then something happens to the principal (something supernatural!) and the school gets turned upside down – all the students, and the teachers, are now vying for that power.

Hysterically enough, this movie reminded me of a film version of a book I read when I was kid, called The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids. Yes, the book was as awesome as the title suggests. The book was a little less supernatural than the movie, but not by much. Either way, they were both completely over-the-top awesome.

I definitely recommend Volcano High as a fun movie to watch with some friends – so long as you don’t mind subtitles (or alternatively, maybe you LIKE Snoop Dogg and want to be regaled by his voice acting!). Two scary-Japanese-bees-sized thumbs up. (For those of you just joining us, that reference is from this horrifying piece of hilarity: http://www.cracked.com/article_15816_5-most-horrifying-bugs-in-world.html. Enjoy!)

Show Review: The O.C., Season 4

2008-01-29T13:55:00.000-05:00

Yes, I’ll admit it – I’m addicted to The O.C. I was obsessed completely when I saw the first commercials. Something about Benjamin McKenzie just completely kicked my ass. I know many people think he’s – I don’t know, I guess they think he’s too pretty, or maybe they just dislike everyone on the show because, well, it’s The O.C. Many people tend to hate mainstream shows simply because they are mainstream. (I tend to dislike most mainstream shows simply because they appear totally unappetizing.) But whatever the reason, I love this freakin’ show, and that’s that.

I recently got to catch up on the series and watch season 4. I was going to avoid it, but I stumbled upon a review of it on Amazon.com one day, and it said that it went back to the roots of the original first season. I was intrigued by this. The first season was awesome – it was smart and funny – low on drama and high on quick wit. It was filled with one-liners from Ryan Atwood, Seth Cohen, Sandy Cohen…all my Newport favorites.

Seasons 2 and 3 were boring – it seemed they took out three parts wit and added equal parts drama. What?? STUPID. I wanted less Marissa and more…well, ok, anything other than Marissa and her annoyingly bad decisions and constant other boyfriends and blah blah blah. Who cares what she’s doing? The only thing I ever liked about her in the show was that she looked relatively normal – as compared to how she looked outside of the show, which was a total go-fug-yourself party. In a word: suckfest.

I will say one thing: the music was consistently awesome. Seasons 1 and 2 were by far the best (recall Halloween, Alaska and, of course, the love of my life, Aqueduct), but season 4 pulled out the stops with some amazing music – including Jason Schwartzman’s solo project, Coconut Records. Way to keep it fresh, dudes.

Season 4 went back to the basics. It had the same great rapport between the characters, the quick wit was back, Taylor Townsend was actually kind of cute, and best of all, Marissa was dead! Yay! There were a few overly dramatic moments – let’s have an earthquake and make like everyone’s dead! But other than that, it was right back to where we started…and that’s where it ended.

All in all: this was a great season and a great way to end the series. The last episode had me in tears…from the first beats of Phantom Planet’s “California,” to The O.C. and the line running through it, to the end, and the shot of the poolhouse. I was all choked up. I was going to miss Ryan Atwood especially. But at least they had a chance to wrap it all up…in a way that didn’t leave me wanting more, and gave a proper ending to the show.

Movie Review: Barking Dogs Never Bite

2008-01-25T13:36:00.000-05:00

If you’re anything at all like me, you not only love movies, but you tend to fall in love with directors as well. You enjoy a certain style, the way the dialogue is brought to life in a scene, or the way a certain scene is shot. I end up liking a movie, looking into who “did it,” and following up by watching their other movies. I started, in this case, with The Host, a fantastic Korean monster movie directed and written by Joon-ho Bong. I moved on to his Memories of Murder, a movie about the first documented Korean serial killer, and from there I discovered the one I’m going to talk about here: Barking Dogs Never Bite.

Please note: this is not a movie for the animal lover who can’t bear to see a single moment of cruelty to animals. Trust me. I’m not one of those people, and some of the scenes made me cringe.

The story starts out with a man and his pregnant wife living in an apartment complex. He is working part time at a local university and trying frantically to secure a full time position. Between his periods of inactivity and his desperation to become full time, he is not quite sane, and snaps one night when a neighbor’s dog won’t stop barking.

One thing leads to another, and soon there are posters around town for not one, but two missing dogs. The girl who works at the municipal building becomes involved with the owners in trying to find the dogs, and through a cunning plot twist, the professor and the clerk end up befriending one another.

I don’t want to spoil anything about what happens to the dogs OR the people, but I’ll say that it’s definitely a quirky little movie and worth watching, especially if you’ve seen Bong’s other movies. You’ll enjoy the performance here by the clerk, who played the aunt in The Host, and was great in both movies. (Also, her best friend, who works in the coffee shop, is one of the women in jail in Chan-wook Park’s Lady Vengeance.) Keep an eye out for those! And enjoy.

Movie Review: The Crow II - City of Angels

2008-01-25T13:18:00.000-05:00

I discovered a few months ago that there were 3 more Crow movies made after the original. Since the first one has always been near and dear to my heart, due to the proximity of its release to my teenage years as well as the stellar choices for the soundtrack, I was curious to see what kind of movies these other ones would be. I found all four of them and started in.

So far, the only one I’ve watched – aside from re-watching the first one again – was The Crow II – City of Angels. This one is about a man and his son who witness a murder and are then murdered by the same group of violence-happy troublemakers. This movie is set up almost identically to the first one – man and son are killed, man is resurrected, man takes his vengeance on bad guys starting at the bottom and ending at the top, guy at the top is a crazy nutjob who has a weirdo chick beside him who happens to be into the supernatural and tells him to kill the crow, etc. So, this wasn’t much in the originality department.

In fact, it wasn’t much in anything but the bad department. One of the main characters is Sara, the little girl from the first movie, who is now all grown up and totally, like, gothed-out, man, and she’s a tattoo artist. (She even has Gabriel the cat!) While her story is interesting, they try to play too much on sympathy for her. There’s even a scene where she tries to help out a young girl, who is then barely seen in the rest of the movie, but is in the ending, I suppose to pave the road for the third movie.

So I guess what I’m saying is, if you liked the story so much you wanted to see it played out in a cheesier way with different actors, you could probably rent this movie. Or you could just watch the original again. Or you could totally torture yourself and watch all four of them, which is what I eventually plan to do. Hey, I heard David Boreanaz is in the last movie – how bad can it be?*

*This is sarcasm. I’m not a Buffy or Angel fan, and I don’t find him to be at all attractive. Sorry for ruining the joke with an explanation, but I didn’t want any strangers thinking I was “one of those people.”

Show Review: Trigun

2008-01-25T13:03:00.000-05:00

Schneegas kept telling me I had to see this awesome anime called Trigun – he wouldn’t give me any details, just kept saying that it was amazing and I should watch it. So when I finally reset my Netflix queue (I had 500 movies in it, and one day just deleted it and started over. Sometimes, you need to do that!), I put that at the top…and I am glad I did.

This is by far one of the best anime series I’ve ever seen. It centers around Vash the Stampede, the Humanoid Typhoon, who seems to wreak havoc wherever he goes. He is trailed by two members of the Bernardelli Insurance Company, Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson. The rumors say that Vash is an insane killer – a monster in a red coat with a blonde Mohawk. He has become a worldwide liability for the insurance company, and these two have been sent to assess - and control - the damage. But as they come to terms with who the real Vash is, they discover that things are not at all what they seem. This surreal environment extends even further when we are introduced to the priest/gunman, Nicholas Wolfwood. When Vash and Wolfwood team up, they are unstoppable. But more often than not, some conflict is always getting in the way.

It’s easy to fall in love with these characters, especially when the bad guys start to line up around them. But this is one of those shows where even the villains are cool. (Schneegas still argues that Legato is the best character, but Wolfwood will always be my favorite.) And keep an eye out for Kuroneko-sama, the cat who appears in every episode!

The story begins on a bright note but descends into the deep, dark, and tragic; yet the cheerful and light-hearted nature of Vash consistently tries to shine through it all. The change in temperature of the show seems to confuse, and even repel, some viewers, but I like my anime in many layers, so it made me enjoy it all the more.

I highly recommend this show to everyone – whether you like your stories complex or simple, this is one that everyone can follow, enjoy, and love.

Movie Review: Pulse

2008-01-25T10:22:00.001-05:00

I rented the re-make of the movie Pulse over the summer because 1) it was a horror movie and 2) Kristen Bell is in it, and she is totally adorable. But, it was a total flop, and I didn’t like it. When I discovered that it was a re-make, I rented the original Japanese, and…my opinion of the movie didn’t change.

Basically, the premise is a little different in the original, but it’s just as dry. There are people, and they are all separated by modern living, and idea is that we’re all depressed because we’re so isolated. But this is just the way that the “sickness” spreads – the actual problem is that someone found a gateway into the world of souls, and opened that gateway, and let one into our world. And this is the real problem – because these souls are feeding off of the living.

It’s a weird concept, and all in all, it doesn’t translate all that well to the screen. The movie is basically just replete with young adults killing themselves left and right – some jump off buildings, some hang themselves, others seems to just die of sheer ennui. In the end, I couldn’t even distinguish between the surviving characters or how they had met each other. Once they became “depressed,” it was hard to figure out what was going on.

If you’re looking for something scary, don’t rent this (or the re-make). They have their scary moments, but in the end, they didn’t deliver.

Movie Review: J.S.A. (Joint Security Area)

2008-01-25T09:19:00.000-05:00

I rented J.S.A. (Joint Security Area) because I loved Chan-wook Park's vengeance trilogy - Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance - and I wanted to see more of his work. From the write-up, I was expecting something without much substance - something decent but lacking in the witty-plot-twist department, something with a good story but without much delivery. I was completely wrong.

This movie chronicles, and highlights, some of the problems that exist in the Korean psyche - whether it resides in the northern or southern division. It shows how this split affects the people - specifically those in the armed forces - and their morale. Not only that, it also weaves a rich tapestry of what life means for Koreans. Chan-wook Park always paints with a vibrant palette of characters, but he went above and beyond with this movie in developing not just characters but also the personification of a divided country.

It begins with a confusing situation – there has been some kind of scuffle between soldiers manning the border, and as a result, two North Korean soldiers are dead, and one South Korean soldier is imprisoned for the murders. The accused insists he was jumped while going to the bathroom, kidnapped, and murdered the kidnappers when he broke free. The only North Korean survivor of the situation has a different story - he claims the accused broke in and just began shooting for no reason. A Major has been chosen from the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commissions by the Korean government and is assigned to determine what has happened. She is Korean in heritage but not in citizenship, and it is interesting to see how little she knows about her country. She does manage to unravel the mystery, but not in the way they have intended her to. She wants to know the truth, and fights to uncover it. She interviews the surviving soldiers, growing more and more desperate to understand what they are covering up - and the truth of the matter is both shocking and heart wrenching.

This movie was a cinematic introduction for me to the international tensions between North and South Korea. Park has created a beautiful story here, one with deep and beautiful characters and a message that is at once deeply patriotic and yet personal. If you are looking for another masterpiece from this director, then trust me – J.S.A. delivers.

Movie Review: R-Point

2008-01-18T14:45:00.001-05:00

Ok so there are these Korean guys, and it’s during the Vietnam War, and they’re missing, and the guys at headquarters get an urgent radio message from the missing guys, and so they send out a platoon of guys to go find them, except they fail to mention that freaky shit is happening at R-Point, which happens to be the name of the film. By freaky shit, I mean that this jawn is straight up fucking HAUNTED, bro. And seriously, no one should be going there to do anything, especially not to look for missing people, because if they are missing there, then let’s get serious, they are probably dead.

No one heeds the warnings I’m yelling at the television, and the platoon goes to R-Point to find their missing comrades. (Can I say comrades? I guess it depends if they are Northern or Southern Korean.) And here is where I’m going to drop a spoiler, because this was the first thing that got scary for me – I mean, parts of it were a little scary, but this was when I started actually paying attention. (I had become frustrated at their equivalence of a dumb blonde chick running UP the stairs away from a murderer. You don’t go to R-Point! Come on, dudes!) Anyway, here’s the spoiler: people start dying. I know, you’re shocked. And the first guy who dies, well, they call headquarters, and when they tell them the name of the guy who died, it turns out that he was one of the guys they were supposed to be looking for. “You assholes!” the general is yelling into the radio, “that guy is missing! What do you mean he’s dead? Did you find him?” That was the first scene that really scared me.

After that, I spent half the time reading subtitles and the other half of the time jumping at every sound my cats made and looking behind my couch every five seconds (I didn’t even bother looking in my loft – I just pretended like it wasn’t there). If you like psychological horror movies and you don’t mind some gore thrown in, then this would be a good movie for you. Translation: Tina, don’t watch this.

Movie Review: Tetsuo: the Iron Man

2008-01-18T14:35:00.001-05:00

I described Tetsuo: the Iron Man to my friend as “taking acid and then getting really, REALLY angry.” Having never done that myself, I don’t know if it’s an accurate description, but it really made me feel like I was angrily hallucinating. Kind of like that scene in the Simpsons when Ralph Wiggum is on pills and he says, “I’m happy AND angry!” Except minus the happy, and double the angry.

It starts out with a man ripping open his own leg and inserting a piece of metal. Oh, and then there are some maggots. I sat down to watch this movie while eating a tuna sandwich and quickly regretted my choice of food, though I suppose some sort of pork or rump roast would have probably been less appetizing (or beef and broccoli – yech).

The movie spirals further and further out of control. The main character continues to sprout more and more pieces of metal and get angrier and more repulsive. He even grows a giant drill penis and tries to nail his girlfriend with it! That scene reminded me of the DRILL BRA in the upcoming film Machine Girl. Thinking about that made me happy, but that was the only thing that did.

It eventually ends with a huge angry duel and a lot of metal and angry music and crazy. Um, and oh yeah, there were some chase scenes first. And I finished my tuna sandwich.

I think I covered everything.

Movie Review: Death Bed: The Bed that Eats

2008-01-18T14:24:00.000-05:00

When looking up random movies and clicking around, I discovered Death Bed: the Bed that Eats under one of those “if you like this, you’ll love this” options. I was curious, and after reading the IMDB plot summary, I simply had to see this movie. Ironically, after seeing it and talking about it, several people told me about a comedian who had done a skit about it, though he misnamed it Death Bed: the Bed that Eats People. Oh, no. It eats more than just people.

I was definitely not disappointed with this campy 70’s horror film. It truly is a movie about a bed that eats. It is divided into 4 different scenes – Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Dessert. And no, I’m not kidding. The first unlucky meal is a horny couple who just happen upon the bed…which is on the grounds of an abandoned mansion, with no people around for miles. But they just happen upon it, with a bucket of fried chicken and a bottle of wine. This is a pretty classy couple, as you can imagine.

Are you wondering how the bed eats people (and fried chicken in a bucket)? Well, I’m not going to tell you. Ok, I’ll tell a little. It involves some sort of digestive fluid being secreted and then the item being sucked into the bed. But the complete and total insanity and impossibility of the space-time continuum way this bed eats things – you’ll just have to see that for yourself.

The acting is so utterly over-the-top cheesy that you will be distracted from the amazing 70’s hairdos (and don’ts) of the actresses – and their wardrobes. There’s also a great scene detailing how the bed became so evil as well as a montage of just a few of the people it has eaten over the years. One of the victims is now trapped behind a painting in the room, and he is the narrator of this intriguing tale.

I won’t spoil the best part of the movie, but all I have to say is: skeleton hands. That scene alone, and the actor’s reaction, is enough reason to see this movie.

Book Review: A Personal Matter

2008-01-18T14:04:00.001-05:00

Kenzaburo Oe’s novel A Personal Matter is one that is both private and traumatic. It details the life of Bird, a 27-year-old college dropout whose wife has just given birth to a deformed son. The child has a brain hernia, which means that even if he does live, he will most likely be a vegetable all his life. It would appear to Bird that the answer is obvious – let the child die, as opposed to dealing with the shame of having given birth to a monster. This sentiment is reflected in the view of his in-laws as well as the doctors at the hospital at which the baby is born. But then a divide occurs at the second, specialist hospital – those doctors want to keep the baby alive, and want to go so far as to perform an operation. Bird struggles with himself, trying to decide what to do – does he let the baby die? Or allow it to live, knowing it may never lead a normal life?

To me, this novel depicts the schizophrenia of a post-war Japan, with Western culture and traditions trying to bully their way in. Bird’s attitude is that there is no point in the child living if something is wrong with it. His shame is compounded by the way his mother-in-law treats him, and affirmed by the doctors in the first hospital. One of the doctors actually encourages him to take control and not allow the doctors in the second hospital to operate, saying that it is his choice. But in the second hospital, there is a more Western view – they feel that the life of the child must be prolonged no matter what. This is the attitude that is given, much to Bird’s chagrin.

Unable to face this problem alone, Bird seeks out an old girlfriend and holes up with her, giving in to alcohol and continuing to fight with himself to come to a decision. Would he rather let his misshapen son die rather than prolong the life of something that would cause him some much personal shame if others discovered it?

Distracted and tempted by the idea of letting the child die and running off to Africa, his life-long dream (well, the Africa part; I doubt it was his life-long dream to let his deformed child die), Bird stares into the face of his own mortality and the path he has chosen in life. Does he do what is responsible; does he save the life of the child and dedicate his life to him? Or does he run away from this problem, risking the chance that he may never stop running once he starts?

I don’t want to spoil the ending, so I’ll stop there. Bird is one of the most compelling, conflicted characters I have ever grown attached to. I was surprised and pleased with the ending of the book. I highly recommend it, especially for anyone interested in Japanese culture and/or modern Japanese literature.

Movie Review: Monster Squad

2008-01-18T13:16:00.000-05:00

Monster Squad is basically a total pile of awesome. It’s an 80’s movie about a bunch of kids who are monster geeks and have a club (that is, of course, boys only) and pride themselves on their knowledge of monsters. Well, they’re in luck, because guess who’s coming to town? That’s right – Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, Gillman, and…a Mummy! Thanks to their knowledge and 80’s American know-how, these kids are going to try to do what Van Helsing failed to do: send these icky monsters to the netherworld.

My second favorite part about this movie – other than the great one-liners, the predictable entrance of Phoebe to the club, and the ingenuous depiction of the monsters (impressive for the ‘80’s!) – was Rudy, the “tough guy” the boys recruit into the group because he is so cool. He passes their entrance exam and, while he is more of a peripheral member of the group, has some of the best lines in the entire movie. My favorite line is towards the end, when he is about to go kick some monster ass, and the boys ask where he’s going. He pulls out a crossbow and says, “I’m in the god damn club, aren’t I?”

Without a doubt, my favorite part of this movie was the character labeled only as “Scary German Guy.” He’s a creepy local who lives in a run-down house and the kids are terrified of him and are convinced HE is a monster. In the end, he helps them by translating Van Helsing’s diary (which Sean’s mom picked up at a yard sale) and also plays a critical role in the final battle.

You’ve probably already seen Monster Squad, but if you haven’t, my recommendation would be to rectify that problem. Post haste! Just don’t let creature steal your twinkie.

Movie Review: Lady Snowblood

2008-01-17T13:44:00.000-05:00

WARNING: if you in any way love Quentin Tarantino, think that he is a god, make love to your copy of Pulp Fiction, or think Kill Bill is the best thing you’ve ever seen, don’t bother reading this review, because it is going to put your blood pressure through the roof, and I ain’t payin’ for your crappy hospital bill.

ANYWAY, I have never been a big Tarantino fan. I saw Reservoir Dogs and loved it, but everything else by him that I’ve seen, including the above-mentioned (ok, with the exception of Four Rooms and Grindhouse, in which the weakest parts were directed by him), I thought were total crap. Yes, folks, CRAP. I saw Battle Royale a few years ago, and over the summer, I watched Thriller: En Grym Film, and those made me dislike him even more. But nothing, no, NOTHING, made me hate him more than when I watched Lady Snowblood a few weeks ago.

Lady Snowblood is a Japanese ass-kicking extravaganza, with the protagonist being a mega-hot, kimono clad, tiny BADASS. Her father was brutally murdered and her mother forced to serve one of the murderers. After going to jail for, in turn, killing the killer, she got pregnant as quickly as she could and then sent her daughter off to train to get vengeance for the death of her parents (her mother died in childbirth). Snowblood trains her whole life, and then seeks her revenge, in one of the most amazing bloodbaths I have ever seen (one of the blurbs I read about the movie referred to it as a “violent ballet,” and that is the best way to describe it).

The movie starts in medias res, and the audience is given the background throughout the movie. Hmm, what does this all sound like? That’s right – almost everything, from the layout of the movie, to the camera shots, to the style of the music, to the ridiculous fountain-of-spraying-blood – all of the things Tarantino used in Kill Bill were present here, in this movie made in 1973. TARANTINO, YOU SUCK. Despite the fact that some die-hard fans know where he got these ideas from, I think that Kill Bill should be subtitled “An Homage to Lady Snowblood,” or maybe “I Stole this Right from Japan,” or even, “I Totally Freaking Suck.”

ANYWAY (picture me sighing before both of those), I think that Lady Snowblood is definitely one of the greatest vengeance films ever made. It’s definitely worth seeing. It is also definitely worth seeing, and then setting your Tarantino DVDs on fire. Take your pick!

the nicole kline experience

exhaustified

How many licks does it take?

Halloween is awesome

Philadelphia Film Festival

and i'm addicted to another book series

mass confusion

yay hard drives!

breaking bad

yikes.

The Time has Come, the Walrus said, to Talk of Many Things...

In Which I Talk about Gastroparesis

F.3.A.R. multiplayer = yes

sooo late!

at the beach!

forgot to mention...

ha!

d&d!

uncharted 3 beta!!

Sunday, Sunday...

cat-astrophe

Animals Being Dicks

Busy!

empty promises

way too late for me to be awake!

another three-day weekend starts...now!

fresh cake!

sleepy

relaxing 3-day weekend

yesterday's t-shirt!

testing from my phone

good intentions something something

conscious effort

beyond busy

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

I Surrendered to Winter Already

It's Only Tuesday?

In Which I Talk about Baking and Cooking

Happy New Year!

Two Things I Forgot to Mention Last Night

It's Monday Again Already?

VGAs Tonight!

Another Month Bites the Dust

holycrapiambusy.

for anyone who wants to see our costumes...

whew. almost too much to keep up with...

busy day

delightful packages + onigiri = hearts

weekends are too short.

Maybe updating every other day would be smarter...

I have returned!

Wow.

I Did Get One Thing Right

Inception, Evil Cats, Cupcakes *heart*

Naps, Trophies, Dinner

Can I Get A Wha Wha?

How Could I Forget?

Shutter Island = SOB

Games I'm Playing

Long-Overdue Update/Shadow of the Colossus

Review - God of War Collection

Review - Batman: Arkham Asylum

Update

Latest Happenings

Review Forthcoming

Video Game Review: Resistance 2

And Now, For Something Completely Different

Video Game Review: Ninjatown

Video Game Review: Resistance

Life Review

Band Review: Shudder to Think (part 2)

Band Review: Shudder to Think

A word or two on PAX, before reality seeps back in.

Movie Review - Alpha Dog

Movie Review - The Fountain

Movie Review - Punch-Drunk Love

Movie Review - The Fall

Movie Review: Speed Racer

Movie Review: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Movie Review: Expelled

Inception, Evil Cats, Cupcakes heart