in my best impression of dane cook doing his impression of steve irwin, "well hello! hi! follow me on an adventure, c'mon, let's go!"

i've just been a sweet lazy fuck back in college station. can't say i'm too disappointed that classes start up tuesday cuz i can't live like this for too long, y'know?

i've tried to be productive since i got back to cs (almost a week now), but it's productive in my own way. that's the tricky part. that basically involved watching a few movies i had missed, cleaning off the hard drives, and playing GC games. i've been able to do all those except play GC, for some reason i just haven't made it much of a priority.

i rented underworld, X2 and bad boys II. basically all 3 of these i should have seen in the theater, but it's pretty impossible to see every movie you're slightly interested in in the theater. i guess if i wanted to put some IMDb numbers on 'em, i'd go underworld 7.5/10, X2 7.8/10 and bad boys II 7.5/10. underworld and bb2 were better than reviews suggested, and X2 adequately lived up to its hype.

i give underworld a lot of credit for stylistic elements along with a good overall theme and soundtrack, and it wasn't as much of a rip of the matrix like some people suggested. beckinsale was great along with a few of the other actors, but several of them were noticeably poor, which is really the biggest reason i'd say it wasn't better. the action was good and it was an overall good idea.

i basically picked up X2 cuz it was only $2 for a rental through hastings, but it was a good flick for a comic movie. i haven't seen all of 'em, but from what i've gathered so far most of the comic movies have sucked in my opinion, even spider-man and spawn. i saw the first x-men movie kind of in bits and pieces, but it wasn't entirely required to be caught up for the 2nd. overall the special effects were real strong and luckily the lines weren't too corny or anything. jackman's actually pretty believable as wolverine, that's kinda how i always imagined him when reading the comics. nightcrawler and his teleportation was really done well, although i thought storm and cyclops seemed kinda weak. plus as cool as magneto can be it's hard to get over the fact that it's played by such a flaming homo, doesn't matter whether it's gandalf or not. X3 is set for 2006 and i might get around to actually seeing that one in the theater ;)

i guess bad boys II was about what i expected given the trailers i had seen. smith and lawrence can sorta grate on your nerves after a while, but there were enough funny parts between the two to keep it interesting. any of the cheesy parts were pretty much understandably so. the stuntwork and action scenes seemed pretty flawless to me (assuming you don't examine their physics *too* much) for the most part. it's really a guy's movie, although there wasn't really an abundance of T&A, more like just lots of violence and cool cars. as others have said it was definitely too long, they prolly could have edited out a good half hour or so to keep it flowing a little quicker.

at latest count i've got about 50 albums to burn and about 40 to trash. i've slowed down a bit on bringing in a shitload of new albums to help push out some older shit. lately i've been burning more newsgroup quota on anime more than anything else. luckily i rounded up all 13 episodes of hellsing and all the episodes of gunslinger girls so far. i'm also looking into cowboy bebop and last exile.

at this point i've got ~107 dvd titles, just added american wedding, alive, ocean's 11, heat and 28 days later. combining those with the GC boxes, i'm really running out of room now. i've got almost 3 racks full and i'm tired of buying more. i think i'll prolly hold off and just wait to put everything in a bigger better rack when i move into the next apartment.

redballs (the new codename for the social-freak roommate) came back with an xbox and already set it up in the living room, saying i could use it whenever i want. that's cool and all, but it's too bad he went with an xbox instead of something else. would have been better if he'd come back with a PS2 and he could just go out and blow like $100 on 5 greatest hits games or something. plus if i bothered to get an xbox (my last pick of the 3 major video game consoles right now) i'd deck that fucker out with nothing but online multiplayer games, but in the living room he's not close to one of our broadband jacks. i'm actually sorta interested to see how often he actually gets out there and plays on it, given that he only watches tv out there maybe 4-5 hours a week and he's already holed up in his room just like last semester. i guess the idea is that hopefully he'll social up a bit if he's gonna be out in the main part of the apartment playing often at all.

i've only got this one semester left and it'll prolly be just like any other one. 16 hours, but less computer science this time around and less to lose based on my GPA and such. so the pressure isn't really on me too much. the engineering career fair and related festivities drop at the end of this month, but i'm almost positive i'll end up bailing on them, signing the offer i have already and just forgetting all about it.

they're a far cry from new year's resolutions, but here's some tentative goals for the next month/semester:

• the usual pledge to keep working out. this semester is the last for me to be able to use the rec center (which i won't be able to work out in anything that big after a&m) so i intend to be there 3-4 times each week, mixing up strength training with reserving one of the 14 racquetball courts.


• keep tivo'ing as much as i did before. added new season passes for airline, the john henson project and MXC. still keeping up with PTI everyday, and following friends till the end (quite ready for it), hoping scrubs gets a little better and seeing that ER doesn't get too corny. outside of sports, i've almost completely lost interest in live tv and sometimes it really helps when you can just record what you want and watch it when you've got the proper time.


• hit up more movies at the theater. no, it has nothing to do with getting sentimental and thinking i'll miss the somewhat run-down (1) local college station cinemark. at least from what i've seen there should be more movies to see at the theater this semester than last, which was by far the worst semester for movies since i started at a&m in 2000. last semester all we saw was kill bill and the matrix revolutions. this semester i'm (at least somewhat) interested in: man on fire, miracle, the butterfly effect, kill bill vol 2, mindhunters, the alamo, and taking lives. we'll prolly see along came polly tomorrow. if it was showing for real cheap and somebody was game, i'd actually bother to see torque. and as a sidenote, jersey girl looks like complete shit. i'm a huge kevin smith fan but i'd hafta try really hard to get excited about this one. affleck is 100% overcast lately, even if he and smith are tight mothafuckas.


• rent a lot of older "essential" anime and get caught up. right now i'm in more of a mood for anime so it's a good time to go back and rent a bunch of somewhat classic anime. blockbuster's absolute shit for that, but hastings typically has a pretty good selection.


• anything i can't tivo, watch it on the computer. i need to watch the entire hellsing series, as well as various episodes of other things that i can't record or forget about. when i'm not tivo'ing, i'll be watching shit on my sweet flat panel here.


• hit up the bars and such. college station isn't exactly known for really great places to hang out on the weekends, but i at least need to hit up a few of the more well-known places before i move out of here, mainly just to say that i had. i'm not exactly dying to go anywhere around here and drink (honestly i kinda prefer doing that at my own place) but somehow i'll hafta work on being more up for the idea of getting the hell out of the house on the weekends and such.


• keep gettin my money's worth out of the little GC. we figured out mario kart with 4 people can be pretty goddamn fun, so we've got the party games thing covered pretty easy there. i'm not sure if i'll buy several more games this semester. i'm still trying to maybe hook up eternal darkness and sega soccer slam used over ebay.


• and the only serious type issue on this bullshit list is to really kinda give up on the whole idea of going out with more people around cs. it just caused a bit too much heartbreak last semester (which of course you know if you ever read this back then) and i've run out of reasons why i actually need a huge array of friends here. i've got a handful of people that i hang out with here and i'm prolly just gonna hafta accept that that's enough.

cheers,
justin