Final Numbers [updated]

Update
BA wins the 1st Qtr.
King wins the 2nd Qtr.
Brooke wins the 3rd Qtr.
Jack wins the 4th Qtr.

0 Days Left [final update]

Prizes Offerings:

Me: How to Build a Robot Army: Tips on Defending Planet Earth Against Alien Invaders, Ninjas, and Zombies

Ubie: Cupcakes

Dilf: Choice of Mark Twain Autobiography, The Studs Terkel Reader or The Last Gentleman Adventurer

Dizz: Handmade Pasties

Tits: "Something cunt related", her words.

Sysm: Crazy From The Heat, by David Lee Roth

Hip: How To Live At The Beach, by Sandy Gingras

BA: An oil painting of a cat

Dr. Mike: How To Shit In The Woods, An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art, by Kathleen Meyer

Gin: Foul Cross stitch

Sonny: A broken pachinko machine

Jeannie Martini: a martini glass

Monkey: A DVD of Monkey's Greatest Hits

Amy: Top Secret Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

Reverend Jack: John O' Hurley book

Grant: Idle Hands on DVD

Aaron: 2 CD 'History Teacher', early works of Matthew Good and friends dubbed to CD from original hi-fi audio magnetic tape cassette.

Joe: Something

Al: A Potentially Different Something

Idaho: "Darth Tater" t-shirt

Be Square

Hey everybody! It's Superbowl Squares time again. You all knew this moment was coming, I hope you're prepared.

The Rules:

1. Pick five squares. In the comments, using the letter/number combination to indicate the square. Yes. Just like "Battleship".
2. Offer up your own prize contribution. No TBDs. Here's Mine.
3. Once the grid is full, I'll randomly assign actual numbers, using the deck of cards method.
4. Should you win a quarter, you can pick one of the prizes offered by any other participant. First come, first served.

Good luck.


Click to Enlarge

New Year Roundup

Well, happy new year everyone. I hope you all had a fun and safe holiday. I spent mine with Grant and his wife much to their dismay. We ate deer sausage and played poker. It was just like Time's Square but with less horse poop.

--

I bought Nerf guns for everyone in my cubicle cluster at work, so that should get us all fired.

(live update: we just got into a 4 man battle that left 2 dead)

--

I saw two movies in movie theaters while I was home for two weeks. That's a pretty huge thing for me since I hate movie theaters and the people in them. (including myself) One of them was Avatar and here's what I have to about it. If you look at it strictly in terms of James Cameron proving that one can make an incredible looking movie using currently available 3D technology then it was outstanding. Of course when you spend 300 mil on a movie it has to be incredibly accessible so the story is about as mundane as you would expect. It wasn't especially intricate and there were some holes, but when you combine that with the stunning visuals it's pretty worthwhile. It's not the best movie I've ever seen by a long-shot. Don't believe the hype, but DO see it on the big screen if you are into visually stunning flicks.

I also saw Sherlock Holmes which was awesome.

--

So, it's NFL playoff time which means that in a month it'll be Super Bowl Squares time and I want to get the entrants and the prizes lined up early this year, so we don't have a bunch of Prize-TBDs like we did last year.

There are 100 squares available and each entrant gets 5. If you used the rudimentary math that you learned in primary school you will have realized that gives us space for 20 entries. I am one of them so 19 remain (more rudimentary math). If you are interested in playing leave me a comment or email letting me know. I will be updating the number of slots remaining constantly. This is your notice, I am giving you a month to come up with a prize, so no TBD, alright?

--

We are looking at Chihuahua/Jack Russel Terrier puppies on the internet because they are fucking adorable.

Interlude: Scrimps!

A man needs a filling and nutritious meal the night before the biggest eating day of the year; gotta stretch out the stomach and keep your jaw loose. It also doesn't hurt that I've been on a diet going on a month now (with results - my pants damn near fell off my ass today, ask Al.) So I am ready to grub down tomorrow. For realz.

For my pre-game meal (as it were) I selected Spicy Orange Garlic Shrimp. The recipe appeared simple enough even to an unskilled hand such as mine. I journeyed to the local general store and bartered for the items I would need. Now I was almost ready to cook!

Before anybody cooks anything they must first gather everything they will need.


Then, a little courage for the night's endeavor.


On with it!

Thaw, peel and dry two dozen 26/30 scrimps.


Measure out 3/4 cup good-quality OJ.


Slice 2-4 (I used 3) cloves of garlic very thinly and add them to your OJ.


Add 1/2 tsp. Cayenne Pepper and 1 tsp. Old Bay (no substitutes, please.)




Give it a healthy stir.


Now it's time for the scrimps. Melt two tbsp. SALTED butter over high heat. Have the scrimps on standby for as soon as the butter melts.


As soon as the butter is melted start adding you shrimp to the pan working your way to the middle.


After 30-60 seconds begin turning your scrimps over starting with the first one you put in the pan. (CAUTION: Short-term memory required.)


After 30-60 additional seconds they are done, remove them from the pan, but leave your fire burning. When the pan just starts to smoke add your Spicy Orange Garlic goodness and give it a stir to get all the flavor bits stuck to the pan. And the final tbsp. of butter.



Cook over high, stirring occasionally until the mixture thickens and leaves pan trails.


Add your scrimps back in toss to coat and you're all but done.


Enjoy a couple while waiting on your potato to bake.


Yeah boy! (that's a potato back there)


Now eat until you lapse into a food coma.

--

Please note: I know absolutely nothing about cooking, but I do know how to read and follow directions so I would like to big up Pastor Ryan for his simple, yet dope recipe. I stole his recipe and his picture idea without remorse. I hope he understands that I did so out of love for shrimps. He is a better man and cook than I am, please check out his other recipes. They are good. The Chicken Tikka Masala I made a couple weeks ago was his too.

Ingredients

* 24 pieces (26-30 Per Pound) Deveined Shrimp
* 2 cloves (to 4 Cloves) Garlic
* ¾ cups Orange Juice
* ½ teaspoons Ground Cayenne Pepper
* 1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning
* 3 Tablespoons Salted Butter

(click any picture to enlargen it)

The Fall

The Fall

Starring:
Lee Pace
and others

Special Features:
Making-of featurettes
Commentary
Deleted Scenes

Another film I had never heard of until researching which Blu-rays to watch. By all accounts this film was visually and audibly stirring so I added it to my queue. I was pleased to see Lee Pace as the star. You may know him better as Ned The Piemaker from Pushing Daisies. (Maybe the best show on TV for the better part of two years)

The Fall is much like The Never-ending Story or The Princess Bride in that the movie itself is a story being told by a character "in real life". In this case it's also very much like The Wizard of Oz in that the characters in the visualization of the story are characters that exist outside the story. For instance, the freed-slave turned warrior Otta Benga is the ice delivery guy "in real life". I'm sure there's a proper name for this kind of film-making but I don't know what it is.

The film takes place in the 1920s and Lee Pace plays Roy, a stuntman for silent picture. He's been paralyzed doing a stunt and is convalescing in a Florida hospital. He befriends a 5 year old immigrant girl named Alexandria, who fell working in the orange groves and broke her arm and she too is healing in the hospital.

He begins to tell her an epic tale revolving around the life of six heroes; The Blue Bandit (a masked gunfighter), Luigi (an Italian explosives expert), Otta Bega (a freed slave and now warrior), A Dr. Doolittle/McGyver version of Charles Darwin and his monkey Wallace, The Indian (A Captain Nemo-like swordsman) and The Mystic (a dirty hippie birthed from a flaming tree). Though they come from different backgrounds and have different reasons for fighting they all have a common goal; to see evil tyrant Governor Odious die. He has wronged each hero and they have united to engage him in a world-spanning battle.

Alexandria becomes riveted by the tale and though Roy develops a real affection for the girl he reveals an ulterior motive behind befriending her. He tasks her with bringing him a bottle of morphine pills so that he can kill himself. It's only at this point in the movie where we learn the full history of Roy, how he became paralyzed, what it cost him and the fact that he can't live as "half a man".

Alexandria wants to help her new friend so she does as he asks. She gets him pills that end up being sugar pills so when he fails to even kill himself successfully he loses his shit and Alexandria thinks that if she can just get him some more pills he'll be alright, so she sneaks back to the dispensary and attempts to steal more, but in the process she missteps and falls again, this time off a ladder and ends up with much worse than a broken arm.

She wakes from surgery to find Roy at her side clearly distraught at what he has done to the poor girl.

There's more, but I don't want to ruin it.

This was easily the saddest movie I have seen in a long time. If I cried, and I'm not saying I did, it would have been at least three times. It lived up to the hype on the Blu-ray boards. It was a beautiful movie, lavish costumes and sets, it was shot in over 20 countries capturing some of the most visually interesting places the world has to offer. It took filmmaker Tarsem Singh over four years to finish it, and it really shows. The film was clearly a labor of love.

Like with The Fountain nothing really stood out from an audio standpoint but that's not to say the audio was disappointing, the film was like 80% dialog. It was well scored and generally pleasant to listen to, but nothing that really taxed the surround sound. Recurring use of Beethoven's 7th is always welcome.

Despite being depressing this was a very enjoyable film that I would recommend to fans of fantasy films. The "larger than life" aspects of the movie were pretty amazing. It was an all-around beautiful movie.

Audio: 7
Video: 10
Story: 7

I give this movie 3.5 out of 5 depressed stuntmen.

Special Note: While not pertaining directly to the audio/video aspect of the movie, I wanted to take a moment to talk about Catinca Untaru the young girl who played Alexandria. I mentioned this to Al the other day when I told him about the movie, her performance was really unbelievable. She was only 6 years old when they made this and I was blown away by her performance. She behaved exactly like a small child would in the situation and it didn't seem forced at all. In my experience child actors under a certain age are usually limited and seem very mechanical. And she wasn't like that at all, she was just a kid, they let her just act like a kid.

After doing a little research, I figured out how they were able to pull this off. Actor Lee Pace stayed in his bed or in a wheelchair pretty much the entire time she was on set to make Roy's physical limitations as real as possible. They kept the cameras as hidden as possible and her role was largely unscripted, to make her interactions with Pace as real as possible. It was a really effective technique that allowed the child to, for the most part, act like a child. There's probably some moral discussion in there about the effects of lying to a little girl, but the result was pretty impressive.

Here's the wiki entry about this.

Next Up: 3:10 To Yuma (2007)