Hello All!

So It's been almost a month since my last post, but I promise, there's a reason for that, several in fact. Since my last post I've been very busy, whether it's getting up at 4:15 (in the morning) to get in line to get my Wii on the first day (Yes, I got one!!!) or flying back to Texas for Thanksgiving, Seeing a couple of movies, one a Political Propaganda Film disguised as a Kids movie, the other the best action movie not only of the year, but possibly of the decade. or celebrating Jeri's Birthday, or studying for finals, as I've been doing, for what seems like every waking moment for the past 2 weeks.
But finally I'm back, (I'm taking a break from studying for a few minutes, since I've just finished my outline for tomorrow's test and need a few minutes before I start committing 12 pages of legal material to memory), and this one might be a bit long.

Well first off let me just say that the Wii is a blast, although I haven't been able to play it much recently with finals, I did get some great play time in the week before finals started and I love Wii Sports, Bowling and Tennis are my favorites, which is funny because I have Tennis in real life. Also I downloaded the original Sega Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog, Nintendo 64's Mario 64, and Super Bomberman for the Turbographix 16 and they are a blast, all of them are at least a decade old, and still fun to play, I'm looking forward to when Nintendo releases the original Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario 3 for NES, because those were two of my favorite games ever. Thursday after finals are over I'm going to rent a few games one's a racing game the other's the only fighting game out so far (Tony Hawk and Dragonball Z, respectively) and spend the weekend trying out some new genres on the Wii!

Just before Thanksgiving Jeri and I went to see Happy Feet and loved the first hour or so of the movie, and then we were completely pulled out of the movie, to talk about it I'm reposting a comment I made to a guy who was complaining about all the "conservative" media bashing the movie because it's really an environmentalist propaganda film disguised as a kids movie, he said that the environmentalist angle was only "An undercurrent" of the film and this was my response:

"Happy Feet only has "Undercurrent" of Environmentalism????
I must have seen a different cut of the film, because the instant that it cut to the "Humans arguing about commercial fishing montage" I was pulled, no, YANKED right out of the film. When a movie is supposed to be about finding yourself and being an individual about Penguins and then suddenly has a series of scenes one of which features a guy in a UN type forum saying "WE'RE STEALING THEIR FOOD SUPPLY!!!" it doesn't go with the rest of the film, it doesn't make since in the movie and it's there solely to shove a political agenda down the throats of everyone who went to see the movie.
I have no problems with movies that carry a political agenda as long as they say so upfront, or are aimed at adults. But when you make a Film for CHILDREN, aim the entire marketing campaign at CHILDREN, and make the movie appear to be a simple CHILDREN'S Movie, and then 3/4th of the way through the movie you suddenly switch gears and beat people over the head with your message it's disgusting.

This movie was made in one of two ways. Either someone said "How can we force our environmental message onto unsuspecting kids and parents?" and they built an entire movie around the idea that we need to save the food supply of the penguins in the arctic, OR the writers wrote a movie that was to short and they had to find something to fill it out, and they forced this "arc" that in no way fits into the movie to make it longer.

Either way this movie infuriated me and was a waste of my time and money, which is sad because I enjoyed the first hour or so so much. But to say that the message is an undertone to the film, is an out and out lie and anyone who saw this movie should recognize it as such.

The Next night I went to see Casino Royale, the newest Bond film, and was pleasantly surprised. Now I like the Bond films, I don't love them and normally I don't care if I see them opening weekend or not. I used to really love them, I can remember being very young and trying to stay up to watch Goldfinger one night when it started at like 11 and falling asleep, but I just wanted to see another Bond movie. But I think my love of Bond was stifled because of a serious of ridiculous movie starring Pierce Brosnan. Now don't get me wrong, I like Pierce, and I think he was a good Bond, but after Goldeneye, each movie got more and more ridiculous and the gadgets got more and more over the top, until an invisible car just angered me (I mean how dumb can you get)
But Casino Royale looked like a better movie, and it promised to reboot the franchise and get rid of the over the top gadgets and villains. And Boy did it ever. Not only was this the best Bond movie in Decades (I'd say it's as good as some of the Connery Films), but it's also the best Action Movie I've seen this year, if not in the last Decade. This movie has it all, action, suspense, drama, even a love story! And Daniel Craig is James Bond. Craig, who is known only for an independent movie and a small role in Munich, does a fantastic job capturing a young, rough Bond whose only just earned his License to Kill.
If you are looking for an action movie this is the one you have to go see, Casino Royale is one of the Best Movie I've seen all year, and since I've seen somewhere over the 60 range so far this year that saying something (to put that in perspective I read yesterday the average number of movies for a white male in 2005 was around the 7.5 mark)

When then flew to Texas and spent Thanksgiving with Jeri's family, which is our yearly tradition. T-Giving is THE BIG HOLIDAY in Jeri's family so we do that every year and spend X-Mas with my Fam. We had a good time, flew there on Monday and came back on Friday. It was a much needed break, and then when we got back we had another 2 days to relax before having to go back to school and work.

Then we celebrated Jeri's birthday. We had a dinner party and our friend Allison's house, which is a beautiful, amazing house with a view that overlooks the ocean. We had about 13 people come over and celebrate with a few Drinks, Strawberry Margaritas and Mai Tais (which were AMAZING!), made by a fabulous Bar Tender (me). When sat around a talked for a while and then had a Mexican Fiesta featuring Tacos, Burritos, and Fajitas. Then the ones of us that could stay went outside and sat around the Fire Pit. All in all it was a great time.

And other than that I've been studying my butt off trying to memorize 10 to 15 pages of material for every test. Tomorrow is test number 4 (of 5) and the last one is open note, so I can relax a bit tomorrow at about 4:30.
This weekend Jeri leaves to go on her family's annual Ladies Weekend, so I'm gonna try to make a time of it, seeing a few movies (with Apacalypto and Eragon at the top of my list), playing as much Wii as humanly possible, and matching some DVDs too (I'm going to try to finish the Back to the Future Trilogy and watch the Indiana Jones Trilogy, I have the scores to both of those trilogies and listen to them as I study so I've been really wanting to watch them, last week after my first test I watched BTTF and later in the week watched about half of part 2, so I've got about half of that one left to watch)

Hope everyone else has had a good month and hopefully during my month off from school I can keep you guys updated a bit more regularly. Have a Great Week!