Summer movie season is here

It's that time of the year - the start of the summer movie season!

Working at the theater for several years while in college and a bit after we pretty much counted down to the first weekend in May at the beginning of each year. January through April were usually some of the slowest months, with the occasional surprise hit movie, while summer was hands down the busiest time of year - having blockbuster after blockbuster opening every weekend, being open from noon-10pm (or midnight on the weekends), there was rarely a dull moment at the theater during May through August!

Since Iron Man 2 was released this weekend, it officially marks the beginning of the summer movie season. With that in mind, here are the movies I'm looking forward to seeing this summer.

Iron Man 2
For the obvious reasons, the first one was really good (and I went into it not expecting much as I wasn't too familiar with the Iron Man comics) and while critics are mixed on this one, I hear it's still really good. Critics are rarely right anyway. And Robert Downey, Jr. was great in the first one too as Tony Stark - he's a comic book hero that's a bit more realistic.

MacGruber

Okay so I know it's a movie based on an SNL skit and half the time those are usually hit or miss (ex: Blues Brothers = classic, Wayne's World = meh, Night at the Roxbury/Superstar/anything from the 2000 era = terribad). But we saw the trailer for this one when we saw Hot Tub Time Machine a few weeks ago and were honestly laughing pretty hard. If you've never seen the SNL skit, MacGruber is a parody of MacGuyver although he's a bit stupid and not quite on the ball with everything. It looks funny though!

Shrek Forever After

I like certain animated movies and the Shrek series are one of them. While the 3rd installment was kinda dumb, I've seen them all up to this point so might as well see the supposed last one.

Sex and the City 2

I'm allowed to be girly sometimes and thanks to TBS airing 2 back to back episodes of the series each night for the last 3 years or so I've seen the entire series about 5 times now and will admit, I enjoy it. The first movie was definitely a feel girl girly movie so I would like to see the 2nd one... I just need someone to go with me, as hubby refuses and only way I saw the first one was because I screened at the theater with one of the other female managers.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

So I've never played any of the games in this series, but it looks like it could be cool and I know hubby wants to see it as well, so why not?

Get Him to the Greek

This is kind of spin-off to 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, as Russell Brand reprises his role as Aldus Snow of the hilarious rock band Infant Sorrow. Jonah Hill is back also, but instead of a hotel worker who's an obsessed fan of Snow's, he's an intern trying to keep the rockstar on track. I loved Brand's character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall - he was so hilarious - so I'm looking forward to this one.

Toy Story 3

Taking place 10 years after the last installment, Woody, Buzz and the gang are back. Who isn't looking forward to this one? Disney and Pixar are known for awesome, fun family movies.

Dinner for Schmucks

Paul Rudd and Steve Carrell - this looks like it could be pretty funny!

Salt

The latest Angelina Jolie action flick - I'm not really that thrilled about this one, but I'm sure hubby will insist we go see as he's hooked on this leading lady.

Inception

A sci-fi action film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy and directed by Batman's Christopher Nolan - sounds like it could be pretty good!

The Expendables

Aka, the movie with every awesome action actor in it - Stallone, Statham, Jet Li, Rouke, Randy Couture and Steven Austin with cameos by Bruce Willis and Arnold. Who could pass this one up? I mean hello - it had me at Statham!

Scott Pilgram vs The World

I'm still not sure how I feel about Michael Cera in the title role, but I enjoyed the first 2 graphic novels (the others weren't out when I read them) so it's kinda worth checking out, right?

Machete
Originally a mini-trailer sandwiched between the 2 feature films that made up Rodriguez's and Tarantino's Grindhouse, Machete was green-lit to actually be made and it looks freakin AWESOME! Danny Trejo playing a role that was made for him in an action movie directed by Robert Rodriguez, I mean really - can't go wrong with that!

13

So this one's in release limbo, as it was supposed to come out in February but got pushed back til this summer as Rouke's in it and they wanted to be able to use his name and Iron Man 2 fame to bring in the audience for this one. It's a remake of a french film, with the original director and stars an all-star cast with Jason Statham, Alexander Skarsgard, Mickey Rouke, Ray Winstone, Gabby Hoffman, Natasha Lyonne, and 50 Cent. Yes, Statham and Skarsgard together, on the big screen - is there any question as to why I want to see this so bad??


What movies are you looking forward to seeing this summer?

Some awesome, unusual art

From time to time, Stacy at Stacy Says posts some really awesome art she finds online from time to time. Here are some of my favorites that she's posted the past few months.

Flat Surface Art
What these artists do is create awesome optical illusions on city streets and, as you can see in some of the photos, people can interact with them.

 

 The 3 above are by Edgar Mueller

 

The 3 above are by Julian Beever

 

Hand art by Guido Daniele

 

And here's a few "Living Paintings" by Alexa Meade, where she paints real people to look like people in paintings!

John Pugh paints 3D murals on the side of buildings too - these are pretty neat!

  

 

Speaking of Stacy Says, Stacy is having a Giveaway this week, where the winner will receive a $40 giftcard to any CSN store (from what I gather, viewing the site, it's like a bunch of different online stores rolled into one). They have some pretty neat stuff I wouldn't mind getting, and one of the ways to enter in the drawing is to blog about it, so hence my post. Feel free to visit her blog and enter as well!

Adventures in Chatroulette

So I finished my new book and now find myself bored as I wait for hubby to get home from work. Once again, I apologize for no Warcraft Wednesday this week - don't worry, it'll be back next week!

By now, most have heard of the internet phenomenon known as Chatroulette. It sounds like an interesting idea - go onto the server and you can chat with random strangers all over the world. Get bored with them, and NEXT! You're paired up with someone else, and so on.

However, it's not exactly safe for work or for anyone under 18, as some people tend to abuse the simple, fun idea and instead focus their webcam on certain parts of their body while they do certain things for the world to see.

Hubby and I first heard about this site on the internet web clip show Tosh.0 on Comedy Central a few months ago, and then a friend of mine posted on Facebook her experiences of the site.

Curious, hubby and I decided to check it out for ourselves, however, we don't have a webcam. But that's okay, as you can still chat with people, however most people will "next" you since they don't get to see your pretty face.

Here's a couple fun Chatroulette Improv videos too:

• The original - Alex Roda, who's also a fellow 20SB-er, although people started ripping on him since Merlon copied and did it better
• Merton, who people thought was Ben Folds
• Ben Folds copying Merton
• A guy in drag dancing and lip-syncing to Lady Gaga's "Telephone"

Since I'm bored and have at least 45 minutes to kill, I thought I'd go on the site and document it for your amusement.

So here goes!
At approximately 8:30pm CST on a Friday night - let's see who's stuck at home and bored like myself!

Scholastic and Book It!

Remember the days when kids actually read books AND enjoyed them? Looking at kids today, it's kind of surprising at how little many of them read!

I remember in First Grade, for every 20 or so books that we read, our teacher would take us on a lunch date to the nearby McDonalds. Often times it would be a 1-on-1 with our awesome teacher, but occasionally there would be multiple kids who hit their book quota all in the same week. It was a pretty neat incentive to get us to read! And to verify, we had to have a part sign off on a sheet stating we read whatever book we took home.

Also, my school participated in the Pizza Hut "Book-It!" program. There would be a set number of books for every student read each quarter and the teacher would keep track, again using a form that your parents would sign off on stating you read the book, and for every quarter you reached the goal you would get a pass to Pizza Hut where you'd get a free personal pan pizza PLUS a gold star sticker for your "Book-It!" button. If an entire classroom reached their goal for the quarter, Pizza Hut would come and have a pizza party for just that class, so it encouraged us to encourage each other to read so we could all meet the common goal.

Currently my former school does the Accelerated Reader (AR) program, where you read books off the AR list that are in your reading range and then take a quiz on the books. You need to get so many points per book and then have a certain total of points by the end of the quarter. I remember my sis doing this and my little cousin does it now, but it doesn't seem like there's much of an incentive to do it other than it affects their grade if they don't do it. Yes, it's sad that there needs to be an incentive nowadays to get kids to read, but at least it gives them a fun reason to read.

Another thing I enjoyed was getting the regular Scholastic Book Club fliers every few months that would go out with our papers to take home. I remember flipping through these fliers, marking them up and circling all the books I was interested in and wanted. The majority of the time my parents would say no, because they cost so much, but occasionally they would give in and let me get a few.

I guess they still do hand these out to the kids, although my aunt's been a bit disappointed, as my cousin's teacher tends to always forget to pass them out so her class never gets them. 

I also LOVED the Scholastic Book Fairs we'd have once a year at school.

I remember one of the representatives would come and spend allllllll day lining our main hallways with tables of books! And during the end of the school day, the day of the fair, our teachers would let us go out and browse the book selections, writing down which ones were on our wish lists so it would make things easier for our parents that night when they came. I remember what an ordeal it was when Book Fair night came - the hallways were crowded with my fellow students and their parents, kids grabbing for books, hoping they weren't getting the ones I wanted as I didn't want them to sell out! I never got all the books that were on my wish lists, but mom and dad would let me get an arm full to keep me stocked up on my reading for awhile.

Do they still have book fairs in schools? I haven't been actively kept up to date on elementary schools in years.

It's here!!

It's here!!!

The next book in the Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire Mysteries series that the hit show True Blood is based on is finally here!!

With that being said, I'm going to be AFK (away from keyboard) the next few days and most likely taking a brief break from the computer (minus when I'm at work) while I read through the latest installment of the series, which on average, only takes me about 2-3 days as the books in this series are such page-turners that I have to force myself to put them down and go to bed at night!

I apologize now if I don't get Warcraft Wednesday up this week.

Be back in a few days!

And for those not familar with the books or the show, feel free to read my summary and thoughts in a post I wrote last month (it's about 1/3 of the way down on the post)

My first computer and the good ol' Prodigy days

I remember when we got our first computer in the late 80s - it was an IBM PS/1 that ran via DOS (see the image).

To create banners and greeting cards and the like, it came with a program called "Print Shop" and used very basic graphics - nothing like the Adobe products I use today!

It also came with MS Works, which is still similar to the current MS Works, as you could make basic word documents as well as spreadsheets and other similar typing documents. I remember in 4th grade, in '94, I would type up an entire newspaper for my class at school (with stories written by my friends) in the document program and print it off on our continuous feed paper-using printer.

This machine also took floppy disks and we had quite a few! There was the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade game (which I couldn't past the Venice crypts level), Classic Concentration and of course Wheel of Fortune. There was also a game with a little man that you had to navigate through a maze-like room on the screen, but not get attacked by certain objects like passing boulders or snakes or guards (I can't remember the name of this game, but I LOVED it, as it included strategy puzzle-like thinking and timing).

And also included on this wonderful old school computer was the online pioneer, Prodigy (or Prodigy Classic, as it's referred to nowadays).
 

Prodigy was a whole new experience and my first ever with the World Wide Web.

Originally, I remember it had various subject pages where you could read stories and play games - I spent time playing around on the Baby Sitters Club and Sesame Street pages. There was also the classic (and probably the most popular and remembered game on Prodigy) Mad Maze. Screen by screen, choosing to go left, right, forward or backward, you navigated your way through various mazes to progress in the storyline (you were like a knight traveling around the kingdom and fighting off monsters). At the end of each maze there was often a quest or monster to defeat and whether or not you moved forward was determined by what decision you made (there were often like 5 different options that lead to various outcomes), if you made the wrong decisions too many times in a row you'd eventually die and return to the last maze you saved at. I eventually got to the monster near the end of the game that I honestly couldn't figure out how to beat, as it seemed every option I tried was wrong.

You can actually still play Mad Maze via an Internet Explorer emulator here, however make sure your pop-blocker is turned off, otherwise the game won't work.

By the mid-90s Prodigy had progressed a little bit, keeping up with rival AOL, and implemented an e-mail function and a variety of message boards (or bulletin boards - BBs - as they were called).

I was active on a few of these BBs - first the X-Files one, as at the time (5th grade) I was pretty much obsessed with the X-Files. I remember reading various fanfics that people would post, and I think I even wrote a few. I remember some of us Roleplayed, creating characters and then building a story off each other's posts - someone would make a post to start the story, then someone else would submit their portion, etc. I remember my character was JJ Walker - Scully's niece who was partnered with the very HOT Alex Krycek, who was also JJ's boyfriend. Being that Krycek was a renegade, my character was his mole inside the FBI, working with both Mulder and Scully on the X-Files, however, since she was related to Scully, she and Krycek often had immunity, despite Mulder's hatred for Krycek, Scully wouldn't let him go after them once JJ's cover was blown and she became full renegade.

Yeah, I had quite the imagination for being in 5th/6th grade.

The summer between 8th and 9th grade I became very active on one of the Music BB's and clicked with a group of people on there (some names that come to mind were Jammer, Hydra, Erin, and Christien who was a chick). Yeah okay, so we kinda picked on people who were waaaay too into whatever MTV played back then (thing Spice Girls, Britney, Christina, Nsync, etc) and there was always some drama. Don't ask - I don't know what I was thinking, as most of these people weren't exactly the nicest and royally freaked my mom out when they somehow got our phone number and party-called the house one night, after I had told them I didn't want in on their little party chat (they got the number by looking up the A-name on our accounts, as Prodigy assigned a letter for each member on the account - mine was the C-name - and putting dad's last name into the online directory).

That summer Prodigy also finally implemented the one thing AOL had on them - Instant Messaging. While AOL's was a bit better in the sense that you could lock in a screenname and create a buddylist, Prodigy's worked (despite the fact someone could easily take your regular screenname - mine was Peaches0182 by the way!). I remembering making full use of this function, chatting with online boyfriend.

By the time 1999 came around, Prodigy had launched Prodigy Internet, which allowed for use of viewing full webpages. Remember the days of Geocities and Expages where anyone could make a free page for themselves? I did - online boyfriend had a Geocities page with a friend of his (The Beefy Kingdom - again, don't ask! lol..), and I had an Expage (Land of the Peach!) which hubby figured out my password to and would constantly "hack" into it and delete everything I had on it (this little "war" of ours lasted a good week or so). I used to get so mad at him over it, lol...

Looking back, while it was still a distraction, it wasn't nearly to the degree that it is today!

Haven't computers and the internet come a long way from those days???