Category: Geek


Bad Hollywood, just….

Filed Under: entertainment by topenga — Comments Off on Bad Hollywood, just….
March 4, 2009

Dear Hollywood,

Stop making movies out of Stephen King’s work. Just stop. You are simply no good at it.
Carrie was 15 kinds of awesome. Creepshow was perfect. Cujo made me fear any dog bigger
than a Pomeranian (and Superman Returns cemented my complete distrust of Pomeranians).
Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining was brilliant. But that’s it. Four good movies. No,
I mean really good. The Stand. What can I say about The Stand. For a made-for-tv
miniseries, it was decent. But…it was made for tv.

So, why the sudden, out of the blue rant against Hollywood? I caught an episode of The
Twilight Zone (late 80’s early 90’s?). The episode was “Gramma”. Ahhhh. “Gramma” is one
of my favorite shorts from The Skeleton Crew anthology. I eagerly watched as the kid
who played Bastian from Neverending Story played the hapless George stuck at home with
his sick grandmother. I watched with increasing giddyness as the climax of the story
came….only to be let down. I screamed “Goddammit! That’s not how it ends!” BLARGH! I
find myself screaming that a lot when I watch adapted Stephen King works.

I dug around, after this incidient, to see what other little shorts got adapted and ran across a rumor of a J. J. Abrams Dark Tower series of movies. Why you gotta fuck with things I like? The track record for King->Hollywood creations is not good. Not good at all. It seems to all fall apart around 1984, with few bright spots since.

I know! Let’s make a list of how many adaptations I’ve seen and why they are so horrible/awesome:

Feature Films:

Apt Pupil: I really can’t comment. It’s a kinda freaky story. I don’t recall liking or disliking it. The movie was so-so. Grade: C-.

Carrie: “They’re all gunna laugh at you!” A must-see for prom season. Grade: A+

Cat’s Eye: I’m not sure if this qualifies. I read the two shorts Quitters, Inc. and The Ledge. Both were good. But the third (well, the whole thing tying it together) was The General. It’s a cat. A cat that looks like ny first cat. That cat and The General kick ass. I would watch this every chance I could when I was younger. Grade: B-. It only had 3 stories.

Children of the Corn (1984): I now fear the midwest. Thanks! Grade: B.

Creepshow: Not Applicable. He wrote it as a screenplay. But it was good, Hollywood
could have still fucked it up, so Grade: A. would have been an A+, but points got
deducted because I hate roaches. Fuck roaches.

Creepshow 2: Creepshow had 5 stories. C2 had 3. The Raft was sufficiently creepy. This
might be the reason why I do not like to swim in natural bodies of water. The
Hitchhiker was all about bad thing jumping out at you. Old Chief Wood’nhead…no idea.
I’m sure it’s about a wooden indian statue that comes to life and fucks up some punks.
That’s not that scary. Grade: C.

The Dark Half: At the time, I thought it was a pretty good adaptation. They mucked with
the ending a bit, but not horrible. Grade: C.

Dolores Claiborne: I dunno. I just didn’t get the same feeling of desperation from
watching it as I did reading it. I guess, as adaptations go, it was okay. Grade: B-.

Dreamcatcher: As my friends called it “Adventures of Superturd.” Grade: F. Even with
Morgan Freeman.

Graveyard Shift: ehhh. Slow moving. Kinda sucked. Book was way creepier. Grade: C.

Green Mile: Awww. There was no scary in this. None. but it was a nice Tom Hanks movie
with a little King weirdness thrown in. Grade: B.

Hearts In Atlantis: How…What..I…I felt so betrayed. Grade: Fuck you very much, F.

Lawnmower Man: There is no Lawnmower Man movie.

Maximum Overdrive: Great! Possessed trucks, Emilio Estevez, shit blew up? Sure! Grade: B.

Misery: I got the same “she’s one crazy bitch!” feeling from the movie as I did the
book. Grade: A.

Needful Things: OH. DEAR. GOD. 2 hours from 731 pages. So much plot was left out, I
don’t even klnow why they made it. “Hey, I got shit you need and it’ll make you go
crazy!” “Thanks, Max von Sydow. Sorry you had to be in this abomination!” I rented this
long ago and far away when video tapes were the norm. It was late, I wanted a good
horror movie. I almost cried it was so bad. Grade: F. Such an “F” you’ve never seen. No
amount of extra credit can bring this up to a D-.

Pet Sematary: Killer toddler was sufficiently creepy. Grade: B-.

‘Salem’s Lot 1979 and 2004: Hated it. But I was not terribly fond of the book either. I much preferred the short story as opposed to the novel. Maybe I’m just not afraid of vampires anymore. Don’t invite them in, don’t go out at night, wear/eat garlic. Like keeping a mogwai; don’t be stupid. Grade: “Stayed close to the book” C.

Shawshank Redemption: YAY! I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Over and over and over (USA and TNT might was well have been called The Shawshank Channel). I think my only  complaint was “Red was supposed to be white.” Big deal. Grade: A.

Kubrick’s The Shining: Beautiful. I was more afraid of this than of the book. I still have a slight distrust of Jack Nicholson and an urge to smack Shelley Duval in the mouth because of this movie. Grade: “We don’t need no stinkin’ topiaries coming to life” A+.

Thinner: I saw this in the theater. I remember thinking it stayed pretty true. The makeup and effects to make the guy look like he was wasting away was creppy in it’s own right. Grade: C.

Made For TV:

Okay, all of these movies suffer from the same problem. They look and feel stale. I don’t know what it is about these productions, but they just don’t feel right. And that is really distracting.

Desperation: No. Not horrible, but..it’s just so much more intense in my head. Grade: D.

IT: Okay. After finally reading it long after the movie came out, I can see why it’s so different. Much turtle and beam talk, and a very disturbing ending. Clowns get added to my fear/hate list. Grade: C+, because of a) Tim Curry and b) you just can’t film the book ending and not end up like Roman Polanski.

The Langoliers: Suffers from “made for tv” syndrome and “Look, we have a budget for CGI! In the 90’s!”. Grade: C-

The Shining: Ehhhh. Faithful to the book. Steven Weber does a good crazy. Just…nothing can compare to Kubrick. Sorry. Grade: “I tried for a happy ending again” B.

The Stand: Already covered. Grade: B-. The casting bumps up the grade “My life for yooooouuuuuu…”

The Tommyknockers: Night and fucking day. Again, Suffers from “made for tv” syndrome. Grade: D. And it gets as high as a D because I like Jimmy Smits.

Watched but didn’t read:

Silver Bullet (Werewolves: again, not scary)

Read but did not watch:

1408
Secret Window
The Body (Stand By Me)
The Night Flier
Riding The Bullet
Trucks
Sometimes They Come Back

Must watch/read again because I really don’t remember:

Christine
Firestarter

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Sleep.

Filed Under: gaming by topenga — Comments Off on Sleep.
February 18, 2009

I have not had a good night’s sleep since last Thursday night. And it is taking it’s toll. I am slowly losing my mind. I must be. A guy on a forum I frequent asked a simple question about Animal Crossing: City Folk: “Hey, I’m looking for good turnip prices.” I said “Keep an eye out tomorrow and Thursday. That should be when the best prices hit. My Nook, however, is a complete dick and has never given me anything about 160.” Which is true. In both the DS and Wii version, he’s never had good prices and I’ve had to go to someone else’s town to sell. Another guy replied to that with “He won’t if your Wii clock is too far away from your AC clock. They have to be pretty much the same for any decent prices and/or Red Turnip Seeds to be there.”

Something in me snapped. I started to reply all nice and good, but when I woke from my trance, I found I had written this:

I’ve time traveled twice (using the system clock only) since Christmas so I can see my town in the damn daytime. Other than that, Nook is an ass. And he was an ass in the DS version where I never TT’ed. He’s a specie-ist. He hates humans. Puts us into indentured servitude. We have to buy from the “company store.” What kind of shit is that? Our success or failures depend solely on him and his prices. Does he even carry the things we need in his shop? Of course not! Just tools that drive his and our inherent greed and desire for a perfect town and ever increasing house. We have stoves yet nothing to cook. We must FEND for ourselves with whatever fruit we can shake from the trees! When, when are we gonna RISE UP and throw off the shackles of oppression!? DOWN WITH THE RACCOON! DOWN! NOOK’S WILL BURN! THERE WILL BE JUICE!

If you don’t know anything about the game, I’m not about to explain it here. Look it up. I’ll…I’ll be over here, somewhere under my desk. Taking a nap.

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Economic Stimulus

Filed Under: consumer by topenga — Comments Off on Economic Stimulus
December 1, 2008

So another Black Friday has come and gone and as usual I went out with my mom for some power shopping (sis stayed home to sleep or something. Although she did get up long enough to wake my mom up). Some of you might think I’m fucking nuts for going out on this day. Probably, but when we’re prepared (lists, target stores and items) we knock out items for at least 7 kids in one go. We do not stand in line waiting for stores to open, and we most certainly do not camp overnight. If what we wanted is gone by the time we get there, then it’s gone and we move on. For the past couple of years, we have had tremendous luck with Kohl’s. They commonly have Fisher Price and other name brands on sale for 40-60% off. This year was no different, but we didn’t like anything they had. It was “we got him/her that last year. He’s too old, she’s too young for that item.” And if we found something we liked, we would look at the checkout line. No, this/these items are not worth an hour in line. So, we moved on to Target. Oh Target how I love you. I got a girlie Video Journal for an 8 year old girl for $17 regular price. It was $25.99 at Kohl’s on sale. Their stocks were plentiful and the sections didn’t look like a hurricane had hit it. We even checked out in mere minutes rather than hours. It..it was glorious.

But IKEA…Oh IKEA. I saw this easel at IKEA. A kid’s easel. It has a blackboard on one side, a whiteboard on the other and can take a roll of drawing paper (that they also sell). It was a Saturday only special. A $25 easel for $10. I thought, great, I’ll get it for someone’s kid. IKEA opens at 10 for shopping, 9 for eating. I show up at 9:40 and follow the herd (????) back to the restaurant…where there was a group of people waiting for the rest of the store to open. Whut? I take my place and just…wait. Some of you saw my tweet. Hordes of people start appearing, most with rolls of paper and markers in their baskets. I think, all these people can’t possibly want a damn easel, right? Oh my my. The worker at the front made her announcements “Hey, we open in 5 minutes, we will lead you to where the easels are (what??). We will not tolerate any fighting, running, or shoving. We WILL escort you out!”. Okay, what the fuck. It’s a goddamn easel not a fucking TV!! It was surreal. I got two of the damn things (way bigger than I though) and two rolls of paper and got the hell out of there. It wasn’t crazy crowded or anything, I was just dumbfounded. It’s AN EASEL for christsakes! This is the ONLY THING I managed to “line up” for this shopping weekend.

And I didn’t even mean to.

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Netflix Wants Their $1

Filed Under: consumer by topenga — Comments Off on Netflix Wants Their $1
October 8, 2008

So, it’s official. Netflix has started notifying users that they want another $1 for the priviledge of renting BluRay disc. Because they’re more expensive than regular DVDs. For something like CLash of the Titans, perhaps. What’s that run, $5.99? What about Pirates of the Carribean 3: Johnny Depp Strikes Back (or whatever the fuck that movie was called)? Last time I checked, Fry’s wanted $25 for the standard disc, $26 for the Blu Ray. That’s not vastly more expensive. It’s a dollar extra. And I could own it. But an extra dollar for renting it? Retarded. The last 2 BD discs that graced our house in the familiar red envelope was Spiderwick Chronicles (very pretty) and Postal. Motherfucking Postal. That is NOT worth a goddamn dollar extra.

This makes me grumpy. Yes, it’s only a dollar, but it’s MY damn dollar. And TV tells me that a dollar is a Double Stack from Wendy’s and therefore, valued quite highly. I think it’s all a scheme to get their money back for trying to support both BD and HD-DVD. I’m already paying for backing a losing horse, I don’t need to pay for your mistakes, too.

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Dear HPQ Stock

Filed Under: consumer by topenga — 2 Comments
October 6, 2008

Hey.

Would you hurry the fuck up and recover? I’m fucking poor (in the republican party’s eyes) and like buying shit. So, you know, make with the stock price increase. I got options I need to exercise.

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Material Things

Filed Under: consumer by topenga — Comments Off on Material Things
September 19, 2008

I am a consumer whore. You all know that. You’ve been to my house, you’ve been with me on shopping trips. And at least one of you was around for my eBay obsession (electronic gadgety crap from Japan? Yes please!).

So why do I bring this up now? I have a little bit of cash I need to get off of a prepaid debit card thing. Now, I could do the sensible thing like withdraw it from an ATM and, like, save it. I should be in full blown hoarding mode now that I have a regular paycheck coming in (yes, I finally got paid. I fucking hate timesheets.), but it’s just a little bit of money. less than $200. So I decided to blow it on something really useless. Not a need, not a I’ve-always-wanted-one, but a truly “hey, that looks kinda neat and almost impractical” buy. I found it. The Polaroid PoGo.

“But, Topenga”, you cry “It’s a portable photo printer! How could that be impractical? You can print on the go!”. Oh my. It is a portable photo printer, yes. It has an internal battery! It weighs less than a pound! It usues special film! What? It’s a Polaroid. Of COURSE it uses special film! It’s a technology called ZINK: Zero Ink. Just like the old Polaroid we knew and loved, you buy film packs and it develops it on its own. Cool right? You can get packs of 30 prints ($9.99) and the charge on the printer lasts for 15. *doh*

But wait, there’s more! It can connect to your cell phone! But not your iPhone (I don’t have an iPhone, so, no biggie). And we all know about the stellar quality of cell phone pics. Not that great. The image size is another issue. It doesn’t print common 4″x6″ prints. It outputs 2″x3″ sticker photos. So know you’re thinking “why in the FUCK would you want that?” And I reply “I have bought stupider shit.” For instance:

1) The Polaroid i-Zone instant camera. It took tiny ass pictures. You might remember a commercial with a kid walking down the hall of a school, flashing the peace sign and later they reveal that he has a picture on each finger of…people. Yeah. I almost went so far as to buy the scanner that went with it. No shit. I, however, thought it was neat! Of course I did. It was an electronic gadget and I had to have it.

2) Next on the list: The Polaroid P-500 Photo Printer (seeing a trend?). It was a printer that took no batteries, no wall power, no nothing. Just the power of a Polaroid film pack. I could put my Smart Media (!!!!) card from my oh so hot 1.3mp camera in the slot on the side, select which print (no LCD screen, you had to do it by number or mark the image in the camera), and hit the button. It was like taking a Polaroid picture of a picture. It was weird. I played around with it, but, meh, it was not as exciting as the i-Zone.

3) A 35mm Pokemon camera. Really. It took regular 35mm film and when developed, a “cool” border appeared around your picture with all (at the time) 151 pokemon. Out of the one and only roll of film I used in that camera, one shot looked neat. It was of an ornament (maybe pokemon related) on the Christmas tree. It looked really cool. I might even have the picture still.

4) Sony Data Discman. It was one of the first eBook readers. Your books were on data cartridges, thicker than floppies. I actually bought TWO. One for the reader, the other because it came in a lot with like 8 discs. I used it, I swear to God, for all of 2 hours total. TOTAL. I can’t even remember why I got it. This was, again, during my “eBay is the BEST!” phase.

This is but a small sampling of useless crap I have aquired over the years. I might start a new page of obsolete, why in the fuck did I buy that, stuff. Because there’s more. Oh so much more.

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Tech

Filed Under: gaming by topenga — Comments Off on Tech
August 16, 2008

Here I am at a LAN party with my little gaming box. It’s lightweight, has one harddrive, one dvd drive, and uses onboard sound and video. Damn near everyone else here has tricked out systems with quad cores, multiple huge drives, $1300 paint jobs on their cases, water cooled, etc. Many times I hear “Oh, this isn’t working.” “Try this driver!” “Ah shit it’s crashing.” Finally someone asks me “What video card are you running?” “Onboard.” Cries of “What? No way? Are you shitting me” and laughter. Then it gets quiet when I say “Yeah, onboard. If you will notice, I haven’t had a single problem.” There is quiet agreement all around. Muhahahahaha.

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Football! Oh Goddammit!

Filed Under: gaming by topenga — Comments Off on Football! Oh Goddammit!
August 13, 2008

Madden ’09 is out. Came out yesterday. I suck at Madden. Madden is a game for people who have played Madden since 1988. It’s not a game for dumbasses like me. Until this version. They swear that anyone can play against anyone else no matter what skill level and still have fun. They show an NFL players 8 year old daughter playing (“What’s special teams?”). They swear. They promise. No blarney cross fingers here. So, who has two thumbs, is a big ass NFL football dork who knew this game was coming out ($60!), who finally has a console that will make it look nice, is unemployed and so has a bit of time on her hands, and neglected to download the fucking demo until 10 minutes ago? This girl!

Ugh.

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Downloads…

Filed Under: gaming by topenga — Comments Off on Downloads…
August 13, 2008

For my birthday, I got SingStar for the PS3. It has downloadable content and online connectivity so you can make a fool of yourself not only to the people in the house but to the entire internet community. As I type this, I am downloading “Unbreak My Heart” by Toni Braxton to feed my inner diva, “Tonight I Celebrate My Love” by Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack to get some of that old skool RnB, and “Step by Step” by New Kids on the Block because I am a big dork.

Thanks, Jodi! 🙂

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