Surfergeeks

Hey all! Our next poker night is scheduled for Canada Day, July 1st, 2006. It’s on the usual Saturday night but we’re going to kick things off with a BBQ! We’ll be serving up burgers, hot dogs, probably some corn on the cob and maybe some salads. Here’s the thing: I *NEED* to know how many of you are going to coming out for this one before hand as I need to buy the right amount of food. This isn’t just like picking up a few bags of chips and some veggies where if there’s leftovers Nikki & I can finish them off. Also, since we’re having the BBQ, we’ll just be having chips during poker. Also, we’re asking for $4 to cover the cost of food instead of the usual $2. So, here’s what I need from all y’all – if you’re interested in coming please send me an email (rob (at) surfergeeks (dot) net) letting me know if you’re coming out and how many of each thing you would like.

If you’re interested in just coming out for the poker, please send me an email letting me know as well. Poker will be the usual $10 buyin.
We’ll be kicking of the BBQ at about 6:30. Also, I’ll have the pool up and running by then so feel free to come earlier and hang in the pool. Keep in mind, this is just one of the 10′ diamater 29″ deep jobbies. This isn’t a pool like Tim has. Sorry. Of course, if it’s raining the pool might not be so attractive.

Anyway, PLEASE let me know if you’re interested in coming out! The more the merrier!

I went to see X-Men: The Last Stand last night. No, I didn’t make a typo above; however, I will concede that it’s not the WORST movie ever – it’s the SECOND WORST. The worst movie ever title goes to, and shall forever be held by the Donald Sutherland/Adam Horovitz joint Lost Angels.

***WARNING!!! DANGER!!! WARNING!!! BELOW *WILL* BE SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE YET BUT FOR SOME REASON FEEL THE NECESSITY TO TORTURE YOURSELF DO NOT READ FURTHER UNLESS YOU WANT THIS HORRIBLE PIECE OF SHIT, WASTE OF FILM, RUINED EVEN FURTHER FOR YOU! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED ***

Back when the first X-Men movie came out, I was a little bit pissed on how they managed to completely massacre the timeline of the comics. By the time the second movie came out, I had accepted that Marvel likes to fuck with things. Afterall, how many times have they relaunched the Fantastic Four comic book, updating it each time? (at least twice) With that acceptance, I thought that the first two movies combined, give a good “relaunch” to the X-Men mythology and the casting for these movies is nothing less than superb. I was truly excited to see the 3rd movie. Then things happened.

The first thing that happened was that Brett Ratner removed himself from the Superman Returns project. The reason? Apparently Warner Bros. was balking at the proposed $250m budget. This started a chain of events that will hopefully culminate in the homicide of the aforementioned Ratner. Bryan Singer, the director of the first two movies then decided he wanted to direct the Superman project and left X-Men. Then, in some strange spousal-swapping scene right out of a porn movie, Ratner decides to join the X-Men project. This immediately pissed off a LOT of fans of the comics and first two movies. You see, the biggest problem is: Ratner is a FUCKING IDIOT! I’m not sure what confuses me more: Brett Ratner thinks he has the skills to direct a movie this big or the movie studio agrees with Ratner’s ego that he is talented enough to direct a movie this big. Whichever it is, they’re both wrong. Then I saw the trailer for the movie. I thought, “Hey, maybe everyone was wrong. Maybe Ratner didn’t fuck up the franchise worse than Clooney’s Batman. This actually looks pretty decent.” To quote the character of John Locke from ABC’s Lost, “I was wrong.”
In recent interviews, both Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman have stated that the third movie was supposed to be the final one, but that there are tons of stories out there to be told (and, indeed, they are spinning off Wolverine into his own movie, along with one focusing on Magneto) and if the fans demand it, who knows? Very cryptic. There’s only one problem with that little theory:

They’ve killed off basically EVERY SINGLE FUCKING MUTANT THAT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE X-MEN!!!!!

I was pissed off right from the start when “Dark Pheonix” killed the love of her life, Scott Summers. We didn’t actually see the murder but it was implied, then later confirmed. Then the stupid bitch went and killed Xavier. Yes, you read that write, she killed Chuck. If I hadn’t been with people, I would have walked out of the movie right there. But wait, the death toll doesn’t stop there…

In addition to the above deaths, and the ones to be recanted soon, they also “cured” Mystique by force, turning her into a human and resulting in Magneto turning his back on her. The movie also introduced Juggernaut and Callisto into the fold. Since they join Magneto’s Brotherhood, we’ll talk about them now. Juggernaut – great casting with Vinnie Jones. Problem: HE’S NOT A MUTANT! Make note of this, it comes into play later. Callisto. Ah, sweet Callisto. When I saw the trailer for the movie that showed Callisto, I thought to myself that they did a fuckin’ A-One job of casting her. The look was almost bang-on (except for the eye-patch, mysteriously absent from the movie). Oh wait? What the fuck??? I was wrong. The character I *thought* was Callisto was actually the character of Arclight. Instead, Callisto is played a rather attractive latino woman!!!! Oh, and her powers? I thought you’d never ask. She has super-speed (makes The Flash seem down-right pokey) and can detect other mutants. Now, for comparison’s sake, let’s take a look at what www.marveldirectory.com (as well as two other sources) say about Callisto’s powers: “Superhumanly keen senses of sight (including night vision), hearing, smell, taste, and touch.” So, let’s run down the list: Horribly ugly – nope. Eye patch – nope. Leader of the Morlocks – nope. Correct powers – nope. Fights Storm – check. Well, hey! The dumbass (Ratner) finally got something right. Somebody needs to stick a knife in his eye.

Oooh. I know we were right in the middle of racking up the body count but I can’t forget about The Love Triangle consisting of Rogue, Kitty Pryde, and Iceman. What. The. Fuck? I don’t even know where to begin with this. Wait, yes I do. Ratner needs to be shot. Kitty Pryde was NEVER involved with Bobby Drake. She was in love with Piotr Rasputin. There isn’t a triangle, circle, square or any other shape. It just never existed.

Okay, on with the Body Count. Who’s dead so far? Oh yeah, Cyclops and the Prof. Well, Dark Pheonix offs a bunch of other muties including, but not limited to, Arclight, Callisto, and some porcupine dude. Basically at this point, she’s pretty much offing anything that moves. She’s trying to off Wolvie but his healing powers are healing him fast enough to stop him from disintegrating. Yeah. Right. Dumbass. Anyway, he gets up to her and, in her final moment of Jean-Grey-ness asks him to kill her. So he does. Just before this happens, Wolvie and Beast manage to jab Magneto with four of those cure darts and rid him of his mutant powers.

So, let’s see here. Who’s left alive? Wolvie, Storm, Colussus, Iceman, Kitty, Beast, Eric Lensherr (no longer Magneto. Oh wait, what’s that? He’s playing chess in a park. Wait! He’s trying to move the chess piece by pointing his hand at it. *GASP* It wiggles. That means either he’s a Jedi, there was a strong wind, or Ratner’s a fucking idiot. Raven Darkholme is still supposedly alive. Umm…who else…probably a few lesser mutants at the Academy. The status of Pyro and Juggernaut is somewhat unclear. Pyro was frozen solid by Iceman and Juggernaut knocked himself out running into a wall. How’d that happen you ask? Well you see, the “cure” was devleoped from this mutant boy who supressed any other powers within a few feet of him. Juggernaut got close to him. Of course, since Juggernaut ISN’T A MUTANT it shouldn’t matter – his strength is mystical in nature, not a genetic mutation. Also, while I’m ranting on about Juggernaut, let’s talk about his relationship with Xavier. You see, they’re step-brothers. EXCEPT Xavier doesn’t even recognize him in the movie!!! One of the characters asks him about his helmet and he replies it protects his pretty face. Well, maybe it does, but it’s real purpose is as a mystical protection against psionic attacks. (thank you once again marveldirectory.com) Hmm…oh yeah! Xavier! If you stuck around past the credits you were treated to a “big surprise”. The scene shows Moira in a hospital room and the person in the bed says “Moira” to which she replies “Charles?”. It would appear that, prior to Jean disintegrating him into billions of tiny atoms, he transferred his “essence” (???) into this person in the hospital. Of course, the genius of this little stunt is that now they can cast a different person as Xavier if they do come back for a fourth time AND he can walk! Moron.
So, to breifly recap: This pompous dumbass of a director comes on board and fucks everything up. Okay, maybe that was too brief but it pretty much sums everything up. The real kicker of that whole director swapping shit is that the reported budget of Superman under Singer is supposedly going to top out at about $300m. That’s $50m MORE than what WB balked at under Ratner. Of course, Bryan Singer is an infinitely more talented director. Maybe WB realized that the more money you give the asshat, the worse he’ll make the movie.

If, for whatever reason, they decide to make a fourth movie it will inevitably be better provided that Ratner is no longer breathing the same air as the rest of the planet. Actually, ANYONE could have done a better job. They really should have considered someone else before hiring Ratner. Maybe someone like one of the homeless guys living under one of the bridges in L.A. At least if he wastes the studio’s money, it’s going to be on grain alcohol.

So, here’s what I would like to happen from all this shit:

1. Every actor and crew member involved with this movie publicly apologizes for following Ratner’s lead.
2. Some crazy fan who is seriously unbalanced ends up killing Ratner so we never have to be subjected to his movies again.
3. Superman Returns fails miserably and Singer never works in Hollywood again. He’s a great director, but this really is all his fault.
4. Ten or fifteen years down the road, they do another movie and start over, as if these three movies never existed (a la Batman Begins) and actually do it right.
5. Marvel Entertainment Group also apologizes for letting things get so far out of hand

Obviously, the most important thing that has to happen is number two. There’s enough crazy people in California to do the job. I really feel that the movie company, or, more specifically, Brett Ratner, owes me my money back. There’s more I wanted to say, but it’s early in the morning and my brain isn’t quite up to full speed yet. I may come back and edit this.

Actually, before I go, I do actually have TWO positive things to say about this movie: As I mentioned before, the casting in all of these movies is absolutely superb. Kelsey Grammar as Beast was perfect, as was Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut. I think the weakest casting was probably Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde. She just didn’t fully project the confidence that Pryde always showed, even at the very beginning of her career as an X-Man. The other plus was the CGI. Top notch. A good portion of this movie takes place in San Francisco, yet the cast didn’t set foot in The City by the Bay once during filming. It was all done using CGI. An amazing job was also done “de-aging” Xavier and Lensherr during a flashback. Again, this was done exclusively using CGI. No makeup or prosthetics were involved.

So, to all those involved with the creation of this movie, please feel free to send me your apologies along with your contact information. Mr. Ratner, if you would contact me, I’ll be more than happy to pass along my address to you so you can send me reimbursement for my wasted money and time. Please email me x3sucks (at) surfergeeks (dot) net.

Today’s London Free Press has an article on the expansion that’s going on at White Oaks Mall. The main anchor of the expansion is a fashion store called H&M. I saw this place at Eaton Centre in Toronto when we were there a couple months back. Decent clothes for men, women and children. Looking forward to that. BUT THE BIG NEWS….

Applebee’s is coming to London. FINALLY!!!!! First the announcement last year that we’re getting a Hooter’s (for the wings pervert. Get your mind out of the gutter) and now an Applebee’s! The London restaurant scene is now complete. If they wanted to open a Chili’s or a TGIFriday’s I’d probably eat there, but I’m not gonna lose sleep over it.

Grrr. Stupid season finales.

Happy Mommy’s Day Mom!

Alex also asked me to pass along a BIG Happy Mommy’s Day (though he’s still stuggling with the word Mommy) to his Mommy and has Grandmas!

Okay, so anyone that has been following this blog for the past few years knows that whenever E3 comes around, I’m always anxiously awaiting the Blizzard announcements. For those not in the know, E3 is the video game industry’s annual convention in L.A. Blizzard is a software company that makes, among other things, Starcraft and World of Warcraft. Each year, I await Blizzard’s announcement of Starcraft 2. Each year, I am disappointed. This year, I have given up. They win. They beat me. As the past couple years have come and gone, Blizzard has become more and more of a one-trick pony. They’ve got EVERYTHING riding on World of Warcraft. Which is great for them because there’s literally a gazillion geeks living in their basements playing WoW 24/7. Forget socializing, forget getting laid, hell, forget bathing. It’s all about WoW baby! This year’s announcements thus far? Well, let’s see. A new race for the WoW alliance side and a live-action WoW movie. wow (note the lack of capitalization on that one).

They’ve been developing Starcraft: Ghost for the past decade and have pretty much shelved it. Hmmm…didn’t see that one coming. They’ve dumped millions into the development of a game for XBox and PS2 systems. Gee, that’s great. Too bad all the new, great games are coming out for the XBox360 and PS3. Idiots.

So, if they announce Starcraft 2, I’ll probably be quietly happy. Aw hell, who am I kidding, I’ll jump up and down for joy! Then reality will set in and I’ll expect to play it in 2010 at the earliest.

I wrote the following for my poker blog but I figured I’d post it here as well – just in case anyone in our poker world visits here that doesn’t visit my poker blog.

I know, I should have posted this yesterday but I was too tired/lazy. After the league tourney ended I started railing fellow forum member, eejit, in a $3.30R on Stars. Around midnight I called it quits and went to bed. Well, eejit hung in there (and you gotta realize, he’s in the UK – it’s LATE there!) and took the fucker down! A nice, just-shy-of $6K payday for the kid! WTG eejit!

So, on to my play. I only played two games, a $6.50 turbo and the league event.

I finished 6th in the turbo. Just wasn’t really catching the cards. I think I had one good hand prior to that and then continued to get blinded down. Ah well. Can’t win ‘em all.

The league event was kinda disappointing. Only five of us turned out. There was myself, Nikki, Ash, RoC, and Bunny. RoC went first, then Bunny. W00t! Made the money! Then I went next to Ash. Then he finished off Nikki as well. GG Ash! The most amusing part of the whole thing was that it appears that one of the players doesn’t seem to think it’s right that Nikki & I play in the same tourney. Well, they didn’t come right out and say it but when I said “sure, we can talk, but you and I could also be talking over MSN – it’s the same thing” the reply was “it’s not the same”. Alright, it’s not quite the same so I replied “okay, but it’s no different than if I were talking with someone on the phone” to which the reply came “it’s not the same thing but I’m not going to get into it”. WTF??? How the hell is it not the same thing?

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Nikki & I have decided to cheat to win this league thing. You know, because winning an extra $100 or so is sooooo critical to our bankroll/life that we’re willing to risk our good reputation to do it. So anyway, we’ve decided to cheat. So, we sit in the same room and tell each other our pocket cards. Obviously, this gives us a slight edge over the other players as we know 4 of the 52 available cards vs. 2 of the 52 that other players know.

Now, let’s examine an alternate scenario: another player and I decide to cheat. So we’re on the phone with each other. We tell each other our pocket cards. Again, this gives us the same edge over the other players as the above scenario. How is it not the same? Because I can’t see the person? Do I really need to? Even if Nikki & I were sitting BESIDE each other so we could see the other’s screen, it makes no different (other than the person couldn’t lie to us, but, since, in these scenario’s, we’re supposed to be colluding so lying doesn’t make sense). The same scenario holds up for MSN as well.

If we’ve decided to cheat, it simply makes NO DIFFERENCE whether we’re in the same room, on the phone with each other, or using an IM program. Hell, smoke signals if we were feeling really energetic.

Anyone that knows Nikki & I know that we are far too competitive with each other to cheat. We both love winning too much. For those that don’t, you’ll simply have to trust us. If you’re not able to do that, then you have two options: a) don’t play with us and/or b) bitch about it. Either way, the more you bitch, the more respect for you I lose.

So, to recap: Nikki & I play in SOME (not all) games together. This includes the forum league event and the occasional small buyin MTTs (which we’ve already cleared with Stars). Our living room has an ‘L’ shaped sectional in it. I sit at one end, Nikki sits at the other. It is simply not possible for us to see each other’s screen since neither of us ever sent in the required 53 boxtops + $2.99 for shipping & handling for our X-Ray Specs. We do not, have never, and will never collude when playing at the same game. Period. It’s simply not worth it. We’ve made a few friends playing online and would not risk those friendships over this. I said above that it’s not worth it to win an extra $100 or so. Let me amend that: it’s not worth it to win ANY amount of money. Integrity and trust are two things that are too important to fuck with.

Okay, I’m done ranting now. It’s unlikely that anyone that doubts our honesty and integrity actually reads this but hey, I don’t have a livejournal so I need to whine here. On the off chance they do, I have this to say to them: If you’re life has evolved to such a place where you cannot offer the basist amount of trust required to believe us, I feel bad for you, I really do, but I’m not going to continually defend myself against allegations of cheating and colluding. I’m simply going to block chat from you. That way you can rant to all the other people at the table and see if you can sway their opinion of us and I don’t have to read any of it.

There are going to be hands that Nikki & I end up heavily involved in. It would be so easy to cry “chip dumping” (in fact it happened in the first league event. I don’t know if the people being serious were joking or not, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming they were joking. This has been discussed on the forum so if you want to read more about it, go there.) if one of us lays down a hand after some heavy betting. All I can tell you is that it is not because we’re talking about the hand. Once in a while, we’ll talk about a hand AFTER the hand is over. Even then, we don’t always tell the other what we had. Too competitive.

Okay, now I’m really done.

That should cover it.

Okay, I know that many of you have been able to view the website now for a while. Unfortunately, we Rogers customers we’re fucked. It had to do with DNS caching. It seems to have resolved itself now. Hooray!

EDIT: We’re SORTA back. I think that the proper DNS resolution is SLOWLY floating through Rogers myriad of DNS servers. I can hit the site sometimes and other times I can’t. I’ve found a sort of workaround for those that run into the problem but it’s not a guaranteed fix. Damn Rogers. It all started going downhill after they dropped USENET support. Asses.

Well, Spring has sprung. I went out today and cut the grass for the first time this year. I was even energetic enough to use the trimmer as well along the house and fences. Next up is switching the door on the back fridge so it opens the other way.

So Rob and I decided to take a drive up to Port Stanley yesterday. I was off and it was a great day out, we figured it would nice and plus, we got to take Alex to the beach for the first time.

Alex sang (everytime we are in the car now, he talks to himself, but Rob and I get the feeling he’s trying to sing along with the music) for a while, but eventually fell asleep. Once there we get him out and promptly take him to the sandy part. I don’t think he liked the feel of it on his feet, but once he was sitting, he didn’t really notice anymore.
He did start trying to play with the sand. I’m not sure what he thought it was, but he would try to pick it up with just his thumb and finger. Of course, that doesn’t work too well. He definitely wanted to keep doing it. When we decided to go to Mackie’s, I picked up Alex and he immediately tried to bend down and keep working at picking up the sand. He was looking down and reaching the entire time we walked to Mackie’s.

So Rob and I had some fries and orangeade there. We gave Alex a couple plain fries. He seems to like them, but since he’s a baby, he makes quite the mess.

And that was it. We didn’t stay long, but it was nice to just drive around for a bit. Rob did take some pictures, but they didn’t turn out too well. He will probably post a couple of the better ones, eventually.