Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Paypal is a great service, but man, it can be retarded sometimes.

Take for instance what I've been trying to do this week. Add my bank account info to my paypal account, so I can put in more funds from the bank account. Seems beneficial for paypal, and simple enough.

However, it is required that your paypal account name perfectly match your bank account name. When I signed up for paypal (back in 2001) I used "Mike". The bank account is under "Michael." So paypal says nuh-uh, gotta change the name...but doesn't tell me how.

So after emailing customer service, they tell me what hidden, buried link I have to click to change my name. So I go and do that, and it asks "Is this a minor typographical change, ie Smiith to Smith?" I figure Mike to Michael is pretty simple, so I hit yes.

Turns out "minor" changes are limited to 2 characters changed. Anything more than that, and you have to fax in bank records, address forms, driver's license...all sorts of garbage. So for the next 4-5 days (the amount of time it takes paypal to process a name change) my name on paypal is "Miche." Next week I'll add the next two letters to complete "Michael" - finishing an overly annoying and aggravating adventure with paypal.

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Woman tries to smuggle three crocodiles across border by taping them to her chest

Meat-loving cow eats chickens

High school students suspended for saying "Vagina"...during a reading of The Vagina Monologues.

And just because Cane Toads are the unofficial mascot of this site...

Monster male cane toad caught


[posted by Rades at 11:09 AM] LINK ||
Monday, March 19, 2007


As the latest comic-to-movie to hit the big screens, 300 will probably stand as one of the strongest such adaptations simply because it doesn't seem like a comic movie. Hell, I bet a good chunk of the people who've seen the movie don't even know it's based off a graphic novel by Frank Miller (same guy that wrote Sin City). That being said, it's a great primal movie - there's tons of stabbings, slashings, leaping and yelling. And for the ladies, there's a ton of buff, half-naked men flexing and grunting. The testosterone pretty much oozes from the screen.

Shaun, Jamie and myself saw it yesterday, and afterwards I had only a few minor nitpicks. Which for me, means that I quite enjoyed it. It's a pretty intense movie, one that makes your blood all hot and pulsing once you leave the theatre. In fact, on the way home we purposefully ran out of gas just so we could push the car and grunt and roar for a while. Then we stabbed some Persians.

The music, fight scenes, camera work...all great. You only really get to know about half a dozen of the Spartans, but given that they're all dressed the same and there's only so much time, that's reasonable. A nice surprise is that King Leonidas isn't just a shouting musclehead - during the film he ranges from "I will rip your spine out" THIS IS SPARTA!!!! guy, to sincere and understanding King, to clever and witty spokesman. The guys they fight are mostly forgettable, but they die in spectacularly bloody and gruesome ways, which is really all they're there for.

My one complaint is the big grotesque slob of a man/ogre that you see in the trailer, with freaking blades jammed into his arms where his hands should be. (spoilers! though minor ones) First of all...what? I thought this was a historical story, more or less? So what was with this completely unreal and mutated behemoth? This guy could have given LOTR's Cave Troll a run for its money. So that was kind of strange. Even stranger is how this big fat brute guy gets like 20 seconds of screen time and does nothing at all of importance. Why even bother!? Not bad per se, but a little confusing and pointless.

Overall though, excellent movie. It's not perfect, as there are a few "Well why didn't they do this?" or "What was with that?" questions that immediately spring to mind. But if you don't think about it too much, it's ideal.

9 out of 10

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St. Patrick's Day has to be quite possibly the most retarded "holiday" ever. I'm all for pointless reasons to drink/fight/puke/die, but why do we celebrate it with a stupid leprechaun and pot of gold and shamrocks? An ad on the radio was all "You've just gotta raise one to the Irish!" Screw that, what have the Irish ever done for me? I assume that at some point in history the Irish did SOMETHING significant on this day, but do I care about it? Not unless they founded Canada or invented the hacksaw or something. But the absolute worst part of this holiday is the awful, terrible accents people adopt. Every time someone thinks they're being cute and spouts off a "Begorrah!" or "Aye Laddie!" they should be immediately and violentlydefenestrated.

I propose a new holiday. Butchery Tuesday. On this day, March 20, everyone wears red, drinks red beer, and carries around chunks of raw, bloody meat. Oh and when you speak, you have to do it in a DEEP SCARY VOICE and make it sound like you've been smoking cigarettes for fifty years. Our mascot will be a terrible crimson serpent eating a fat leprechaun. Oh, and if someone protests, act offended and accuse them of not respecting your heritage. Then while they're confused, smack them with the meat and laugh.


[posted by Rades at 10:47 AM] LINK ||
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The Ten Best Trailers I've Seen - #5

The Prestige


This is a phenomenal trailer, and would probably rank at least in the top 3 if not for one small detail...it's nearly all complete lies. Infuriating, rage-evoking lies.

Money Shot: This one isn't a single scene, but instead I would say the Big Moment of the trailer starts when Michael Caine says the bit about "And you see something shocking you've never seen before." The line spoken immediately afterward just amps up the suspense and dramatic anticipation (the "Real magic!" line), and when the girl says "I know what you really are!" it just confirms that feeling that's been slowly throughout the trailer so far...that Christian Bale isn't just doing stage magic...he's got some dark, evil secret. Awesome, shiver-inducing moment. It doesn't hurt that every single clip of Bale has him looking sinister, mysterious, or both.

Musically: Simple but effective. It's not really music as it is just background...sounds. Very ominous, dark and creepy, just like the premise of the movie. It's very tense. Rapid notes (like in a horror movie), then moments of silence that are broken by sudden startling bursts of sound. My favorite part is at the "Now you're looking for the secret" scene, where it's just silence, then quick bursts of suspenseful music (paralleling with the flashing light in the video).

Visually: I never realized until I was examining it closely, but this trailer has like a million clips. The scene switches about every half second! I guess this lets them cram in more intriguing scenes, but just seemed weird. Anyways, visually the trailer is once again, dark and ominous. So it's very suitable. Caine's speech allows the background video clips to really shine, but that's more of a combination of the two (or "Extra" feature) so more on that later. The scene where Bale touches the light on the ground and suddenly all the lights in the field light up looks very cool. Probably my favorite visual moment, partially because I think it looks great, and partially because it's tough to pick out any other individual scenes, since they're all clipped at like half a second long.

The Ending: "Abracadabra"...Hugh Jackman panicking and drowning...and Bale's "Secrets are my life" make this ending chillingly superb. It's suspenseful, it adds to Bale's mysterious character, and it shows that it's a deadly serious plot. In short, it takes everything that's been established thus far and slams it home. Great ending.

Extras: The stage magician theme of the trailer hooks you right away and keeps you intrigued. Michael Caine's voiceover has the perfect level of mystique, and it matches up perfectly with the ominous visuals. It's only the combination of the two together that makes them this effective; if Caine was just saying his spiel to some kids or something, or if the visuals were just set to a fast-paced musical montage, it would be very blah and routine. But overlaying them makes it way more effective, since Caine's harmless speech serves as a cruelly ironic parallel to the two magicians' lives. How it ends, with the "And you seen something shocking you've never seen before" completely made me think, when I first saw it, that it signified Jackman finally learning of Bale's secret, and then turning in dread as Bale, disguise discarded, confronts him. Sadly, I was completely wrong. Because this trailer LIES!

Here's where my opinion goes from top-notch to ass-downwards. Quite often trailers will cut some corners to make it flow better. You know what I mean...clipping one person's sentence to follow another to create a phony conversation, or maybe cutting out some parts of a sentence to get a shorter, more oomph-packed line. That kind of thing. One example of this I can think of is for Spider-Man 2. There's a scene in the trailer where Peter and Aunt May are in the hospital. Aunt May says "You do too much, you're not Superman you know!" and it's a funny, cute scene. In the actual movie, she says "You do too much", then some other junk, and then "You're not Superman, you know." So they cheated a little, but it's minor and doesn't change anything, so that's fine. Plus, it's done for a clear reason - to play off the obvious irony. This kind of cheating is fine.

This is NOT the case with the Prestige. I was grossly disappointed when I learned that essentially the whole thing is clipped and edited to present drastically fake impressions. Keep in mind that spoilers will follow.

Probably my biggest complaint is that I completely, 100% believed that Bale had some dark, horrible secret that was allowing him to do this magic. His "big trick" that they're going to remember him for. "It was the greatest magic trick I've ever seen." "Real magic!" "I know what you really are!" All lies. Oh, he has a secret, but it's not dark, or supernatural, or even believable for that matter. It's just stupid.

So that's misleading, which is bad already. But they also edit clips to create non-existent conversations and situations. Here's two glaringly offending examples:

Jackman: I need to know how he does it.
Caine: He has no trick, it's real!

Clearly Jackman is talking about Bale's mysterious trick. So of course, we assume that Caine is saying that Bale has some big secret, right? WRONG! Caine is actually talking about...get ready for it...that old guy wearing the pink and green robes! Yeah! That guy! Who is onscreen for about a minute in the movie, and does nothing at all of importance! And to make matters even worse, the line is totally out of context. In the movie, Caine is actually not being ominous at all, he's just joking around with Bale/Jackman. That line is utterly meaningless.

Next, we have the Magical Lights scene in the snowy field. Bale and Jackman have been flashing back and forth for a bit now, and we know that Jackman is intensely curious as to how Bale does his crazy, trick-less magic. When Caine says "The magician makes this ordinary something do something extraordinary," we see two men. One of them touches the light, and all the other lights "magically" light up. It then shows Jackman, looking shocked, so naturally we assume that the other one is Bale...right? I mean, Caine's words were obviously referring to Bale's strange and mysterious abilities, right? Nope! It's just some other dude. Oh, and it wasn't magic. It was just an electrical circuit. Yes, that's right, what seemed like the only real magic shown in the trailer is just a minor, inconsequential scene in the movie. It makes me want to stab the movie company in the face with a pitchfork.

Now, I hated the movie. I'm not even saying the movie is bad in itself...it might be decent. But the trailer absolutely RUINED the movie for me, because it was completely different than what I expected. I have a feeling I would have disliked the movie anyways (there are some pretty ridiculous moments in it), but what it REALLY is about is the terrible rivalry and loathing Bale and Jackman develop for each other...and Jackman doesn't want to know how Bale does it just for knowledge's sake, he wants to know because he's jealous and is trying to one-up Bale.

If I had known it was about two rival magicians, fine. Nothing wrong with that. But when I'm expecting actual magic, scary hidden secrets, lives at risk, electricity shooting around, and some guy who's seemingly made a deal with the devil...well, then those two guys performing tricks on stage kinda come off as a bit flat.


[posted by Rades at 8:19 PM] LINK ||
Friday, March 09, 2007


So yesterday, ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF TODD BERTUZZI'S INFAMOUS SUCKER PUNCH, New York Islander Chris Simon swung his stick like a baseball bat and smashed Ryan Hollweg in the face. Video is above, if you watch at around 1:38 it shows the slash at lot better than the initial shot.

Let me tell you a story about Chris Simon. Back when the Flames went on their big run to the Stanley Cup finals, I was still living in Alberta. I was rooting for the Flames, with one exception...I HATED Chris Simon. It was for a stupid reason too. During Flames games, it seemed like the commentators would always, ALWAYS mention him. Invariably, without fail. Sample commentary went like this "The puck goes into the Calgary zone, Chris Simon hops on the ice, it's played behind the Calgary net, up to center ice to Chris Simon, who passes it across and it's dumped in, two Dallas players change up, Chris Simon skates across the blue line..." Anyways, that was the main reason I hated him. I also thought he was stupid and a bad player but the commentary was the primary source of hate.

When I was browsing garage sales in Calgary, as I was oft to do, I needed a juice pitcher and found one. This was during spring, about April-ish, so playoffs were going on. This guy's garage sale was Flames-themed...ie, a lamp "apparently" once belonged to Jarome Iginla...this lawnmower? Miika Kiprusoff's. And etc. So I was all set to get this pitcher when I turned it over: "Once belonged to Chris Simon." My cousins laughed and laughed, while I was forced to put down the pitcher and walk away.

So anyways. Chris Simon is an idiot, and the video above proves it. I hope he's kicked out forever.


[posted by Rades at 5:47 PM] LINK ||