Movies

Alright, I have a few movie recommendations for everybody that visits the site:

Wasabi
This is a great movie available on DVD and video featuring Jean Reno (Leon from The Professional). It's a French movie about a French detective whose love left him in Tokyo without a trace. Later we find that she has passed, and he inherits ... a Japanese daughter worth a couple hundred million! It's very good, and the English language track is even decent. If you're a fan of Jean Reno or at least would enjoy watching him play DDR at a Tokyo arcade, then this movie is for you. Also noteworthy, is that Luc Besson wrote this movie. If you're unfamiliar with Besson's work, he co-produced and wrote The Professional and Messenger: The Joan of Arc Story, and directed and wrote The Fifth Element.

The Eye
The Eye is a Chinese film about a woman who receives cornea transplants. She lost her vision when she was only 2 years old, and now finally is receiving transplants. That's the normal part of the story, it gets weird when she starts to see ghosts and phantoms. It's a very creepy movie with some sincerely disturbing scenes. This film is also available on DVD and VHS. The DVD did not have an English language track, so you have to watch it with English subtitles. The original name for this movie is Jian Gui. If at all possible, you must experience it in Dolby Digital. Trust me.

That wraps it up for this session. Give Wasabi a test drive, I think it's the best movie I've seen in at least a year or two. If you do get to see either one of these movies, by all means post a comment and let me know if you agree or not.

Friendster

For those that did not receive my e-mail about Friendster, or didn't get what it was all about, I am providing you with the following description:

Friendster is a way to find other people with similar interests THROUGH people you already know. In other words, it's not about finding some random person halfway across the continent that you have no ties with whatsoever. It's a neat idea, and I'm excited to see how my personal network grows. Basically, you sign up (it's free) either all alone or through a friend. If you sign up alone, you can still join a friend's network. After you sign up, you can: add information to your profile about your interests, upload your photo (this is cool, because you can see your friends' friends), mention whether you're looking for friends or relationships, or you can even just exist to help out. One cool thing about existing is that you're helping people you know find other people you know, and you don't even have to do anything. It's pretty nifty, and so far 2 people have joined my personal network. (Thanks guys, you know who you are!)

Today, I put together another bookcase, did laundry all day, ate lunch with my wife at Taco Bell, changed a bunch of light bulbs, dumped the cat litter, took the trash out, swept the bathroom, etc. I'm tired! So now I'm taking a little blog break. Hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving tomorrow! Can't wait to eats me some turkey-yumma-llama.

New Survey

Forgot to mention that I finally updated my survey. Please vote if you feel so inclined. I did a good deed tonight, I saw a fellow Volkswagen (Cabriolet) in the USI parking lot with its lights left on. Luckily the gay owner (presumption based on male-male symbol attached to back window) left his doors unlocked, so I reached inside and flipped them off. The car must have been there for a while, because the car was there when I arrived and also after I left. Of course, if you drive a semi-modern Volkswagen, you get the luxury of not running your battery down by leaving your headlights on. Basically, if you turn the key off, the headlights shut off automatically, however your parking lights still remain on, which was the case with the Cabrio. Chances are... the battery would not have run down, but just to be safe, I turned them off anyway.

Past Weekend

Originally, I was going to invite a bunch of people over for Thanksgiving, but since that particular event can float to a more convenient date and time, we decided to road trip to Erlanger, Cincinnati, and Covington. We went to Sugoicon, which was actually a major letdown, considering the following events:

• They did not accept credit cards or checks at the registration desk.
• Kristina walked about 3 blocks to the nearest ATM.
• The T-shirt salespeople felt that the best way to sell a shirt is to provoke and heckle the attendees.
• Crazy people would just run up and ask things like, "Are you having fun? Are you shopping?"
• Some of the younger immature artists (read: locals) had their own art tables, and would run around soliciting their goods with the following sales pitch, "Ooohhh, you're so tempted to buy my art! Please! We're starving artists, and we sell good art for cheap!"
• Some weird guy stopped us as we walked by a viewing room and was begging us to come in and try to persuade them to play a different show.

To sum it up, we should have avoided the convention. The only highlights of the convention were seeing these 2 guys modify their DDR mats, and of course, sorta meeting artist/voice talent Doug Smith (aka voice of Kintaro Oe from Goldenboy). The visit, however, was nice and it's always good to see Andrew and Laura. I think we might try to make a trip back before the end of the year.