Trying To Keep Up

I was getting a bit worried for a little while there as I didn't get many readers after my "return" (I'm using finger quotes because I still don't feel like I've come back into the norm) but it seems that my blog's feature of automatically updating my Twitter (which in turn updates my Facebook and MySpace status) for my Monday entry didn't update until TODAY!  Yup, there's some technology for ya.  Anyway, this isn't going to be anything major, just a few things that I've been trying to keep up with.  It seems like I'm getting backlogged with movies AND video games AND books and instead of spending my time trying to get through them, I'm spending my time writing about trying to get through them.  My brain hurts.  Let's move on.


In a bit of a follow-up from Monday's entry, I actually decided to watch wrestling and I ended up watching it the entire night.  And oddly enough, 90% of that time was spent watching TNA Impact, the current red-headed stepchild of the professional wrestling/sports entertainment business.  Recently, TNA has been making repeated bone-headed booking decisions, of which their pay-per-view this past Sunday was no different, but Monday's episode of Impact actually made some sense and actually had some wrestling.  And compared to Raw, which was still pretty uneventful despite being the leadup to Wrestlemania this Sunday, it was much more entertaining and not in a trainwreck sort of way.  I won't really go into specifics but TNA did a lot of things right on Monday. 

For one thing, they made me give a crap about Jeff Jarrett for once.  To me, Jeff Jarrett is to TNA as Triple H is to the WWE and not just for their power issues (Jarrett created and helped run TNA while Triple H stands to inherit the WWE due to marrying Stephanie McMahon) but the fact that they're the lead faces of the company despite being completely and utterly boring both personality-wise and in the ring.  But when Eric Bischoff booked Jeff Jarrett vs Mick Foley in a Loser Gets Fired Match, I actually gave a damn about him.  Better yet, it helped redeem Mick Foley, who at one time was my favorite wrestler but I felt severely tarnished his legacy by doing stupid random crap in TNA.  And part of that redemption was when Foley's last action in TNA was by punching Bubba The Love Sponge directly in the nose.  For those that don't know who Bubba The Love Sponge is, long story short he's an annoying Howard Stern wannabe who got a spot as backstage interviewer in TNA by riding Hulk Hogan's nuts and has done nothing but cause trouble, including getting his ass kicked by Awesome Kong after saying "Fuck Haiti" (his words, not mine) on his radio show, which resulted in her asking for her release since she figured he wouldn't get fired due to his friendship with Hulk.  Plus, in addition to the Jarrett vs Foley match, we also got other matches that lasted more than 2 minutes at a time (another thing TNA has a big problem with).  We got an 8 women tag team match which was OK but the main event was Jeff Hardy and Rob Van Dam vs Beer Money, which was an exercise in tag team wrestling done right (something that WWE doesn't really care much about anymore).  Of course, my biggest pet peeve with TNA is their inability to time commercial breaks so the tag team match was broken up with useless breaks but what we did get to see was solid.  Unfortunately, a lot of other things didn't get television time (Kurt Angle and Mr. Anderson aka Mr. Kennedy didn't even show up despite being in a high-profile feud) but they always have next week.  Now if TNA can do solid shows like this on a regular basis, they might not be seen as an embarrassment.  And when you're seen as an embarrassment to a show which featured Kane attacking Pete Rose behind closed doors to the totally realistic sounds of a Cartoon Sound Effects CD, that's pretty bad. 

Ok, enough wrestling talk, time for other stuff.  Tuesday I went to Best Buy to pick up the new Dillinger Escape Plan album "Option Paralysis" and HOLY CRAP is it awesome!  I do have to say, as great as it is, it's still kinda hard to get into.  People who thought that DEP were selling out on "Ire Works" with catchy songs like "Milk Lizard" and "Black Bubblegum" will be glad to see that nothing like that is on this album.  In fact, DEP's trademark sound of constantly shifting time signatures has become even more erratic, but also peppered in with some spots of slow moody atmosphere complete with piano tinkling.  Since I've only listened to the album twice now, it's still kinda hard for me to get into the songs and pick some out from the rest of the lineup since they're that erratic but I hope that'll change the more I get acquainted with it.

Also at Best Buy I picked up The Foot Fist Way for $5.  I just watched it last night and while it was funny, I was kinda disappointed that it wasn't funnier.  After watching Hot Rod, Tropic Thunder and Eastbound & Down, I've become a big fan of Danny McBride and I wanted to check out what was his first major movie.  And taking that into consideration, I can forgive the movie for being kinda awkward.  There's a few quotable lines here and there (like "I'm so hungry I can eat a grown man's ass!" and "If you were in prison, you'd be raped because you exude feminine qualities") but really The Foot Fist Way acts mostly as a training ground for what would become Eastbound & Down.

After I went to Best Buy, I decided to drop by the video store that's closing down one last time to see if I could find anything worth buying.  And even though they dropped almost all the movies down to $1.99, I still couldn't find a whole lot.  But here's what I did get:

-Scarface for the PS2 (for like $3)
-Dragonball: Evolution (Yes, I actually own this now)
-The Girl Next Door (Not the Elisha Cuthbert-as-a-porn-star teen movie but a horror movie ranked by many as one of the most disturbing of all time.  I haven't been much into horror lately and I mostly got it to see if I could still stomach this kind of thing.  Many people said the same thing about Martyrs and I got through that movie fine but many people say The Girl Next Door is way worse.)
-Slammed! (A crappy straight-to-video movie about wrestling starring one of the kids from Home Improvement.  I'll let you know if it's better or worse than Backyard Dogz...which was REALLY bad.  At least this one looks like it's supposed to be a comedy.)
-City of Lost Souls (I almost didn't get this but saw it when I walked out of the porn section, disappointed that they didn't have anything that I couldn't get or didn't already have from the Internet.  When I saw it, I was like "That title sounds familiar".  And when I saw it was directed by Takashi Miike, I didn't even have to think.  Like I said last time, I'll give anything that man directs a chance.)

So I snagged all of that for $12, less than half of what I paid for a similar haul when I went there last week.  I'm not 100% sure if I should have picked up Scarface though.  I've been wanting to play it but as if I weren't backed up on my movies, I'm now backed up on the games I want to play.  I've been debating about moving my Wii into my room seeing as no one other than me plays it (especially if I want to sign up for Netflix and stream movies via the Wii) but decided that I won't do that until I beat Yakuza 2 on my PS2.  But I haven't touched that in months.  Then I bought Street Fighter Anniversary Collection (which I probably won't play beyond a few random fights to let off steam) and Smackdown vs Raw 2007, which was effectively negated when I bought Smackdown vs Raw 2010 for the PS2 a few weeks later, so I'll probably trade SvR2007 in.  On the Wii, I not only have New Super Mario Bros. Wii, MadWorld and House of the Dead Overkill to play but I also have a Limited Edition copy of The Conduit on the way now after trading in my copy of Guitar Hero 5.  And now I have Scarface on top of that.  Crazy.

Finally, I also watched Big Fan a few days ago.  I won't go too far in depth right now as I might do a full review of it down the line, but I seriously give it a recommendation.  However, if you're a fan of Patton Oswalt's comedy, don't expect this to be as funny as his standup.  Despite some funny moments, this is a very dark and depressing movie but Patton does very well in it.