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Category Archives: Entertainment

Upgrade & Update

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I’ve just upgraded the site to v2.5 of WordPress. Nothing really has changed on the front end of things. Well…not much – right now there isn’t a random picture displaying because I need to upgrade the Gallery software as well – but other than that nothing has changed but it’s a lot nicer on the backend.

In other news, Brent, Craig & I went to play in a poker tourney last night to support a local baseball team. It was a $40 buyin and  you started with $40.00 in chips. Blinds started at $0.25/$0.50 and were VERY aggressive. By VERY aggressive I mean they DOUBLED every level. It was sick. There were eight tables and they played in a double-shootout format. For those not in the know, that means that the winner from each table advanced to the final table (second place got their buyin back). Because of the format and the blind structure you couldn’t really wait around for the monster hands. Unfortuately I didn’t make it to the final table. I was still around $40 in chips with blinds $2/$4 and looked down at AsQs. I pop it to $15 and folds around to a guy who goes all-in. I immediately call and he turns over KsJs. I called out for spades. No spades came. The flop was x-T-K – all red. I call out for a jack. No jack came. No ace came. I go. Mooney also didn’t advance beyond his first table. His pocket tens was all-in against two other hands and were cracked by a river spike. Brent, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be afflicted by the bad luck that Mooney & I held. Instead he seemed to be the one dishing out the bad luck. Not only did he win his table to advance, I believe he was solely responsible for sending every other player to the rail. Not much changed at the final table either. The ones he didn’t send to the rail he was responsible for severely crippling. When it got down to the final three one other player suggests a chop to which Brent replies, “If you two want to chop second and third and leave me with first I’m good with that.” The other two hashed it over for all of about 30 seconds and shook hands and said “Good game.” Just like that the game was over with Brent walking away with 1st place. There probably wasn’t any question that he was going to win anyway. His stack was easily 3 or 4 times BOTH their stacks combined. So now he’s trying to decide if he wants to buy a PS3 with his winnings.

Since things wrapped up early at the tourney we headed over to a local dive called Sam & Bill’s. Unsound, my friend Steve’s band, was playing there. They haven’t played too many gigs lately and was glad that I was able to go. Had a great time there too. Saw a couple of friends that I haven’t seen in a while and found out that Carrie is going to be moving out West in the summer to be with her boyfriend. Very awesome for her! Also got to catch up with Teresa about all the goings on with her & Steve and Domino’s life. I was hoping to be able to make it there last night and thought about taking the camera but I didn’t want to have to carry around through the poker tourney and I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave it in the car whilst I get my cards on – so no pics from the gig last night.

Santa Claus Parade

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On Saturday night it was the Santa Claus Parade here in London. Rob, Alex and Grandma (Andrea) all went. My parents had also wanted to go, but my mom ended up getting sick that day so they couldn’t make it. They had really wanted to go seeing as this was Alex’s first Parade.

We got there early in order to be able to sit right at the front. But then we had to deal with waiting. This was no fun for Alex. I was able to keep him happy for a while by just letting him walk back and forth along the sidewalk. Then it started to get a little crowded as it got closer to Parade time. When I got back to our spot, Alex did not want to sit and he started fussing. Andrea bought him a windmill toy which helped keep his attention for a while. He’s even playing with it a lot here at home. And shortly after that, the Parade started.

We are all pretty sure Alex loved it. He would just stare at the lights of the passing floats. He would sometimes dance to the beat of the marching bands. He even started waving back by the end of the parade. It was very cute when he started doing it, especially since he’s never been one for waving. He was also given lots of treats by the members of the parade. We know Alex loved it because for pretty much the last half hour you could see how tired Alex was getting. He hadn’t napped during the afternoon and it was getting close to bedtime. You could see that he was forcing his eyes open to watch every minute of it.

I’m definitely glad we went. And this will definitely be a great family tradition to have every year. Hopefully, my parents will be able to make it to the next one.

I-C-E-B-E-R-G – what’s that spell?

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That’s right people. The Iceberg, Ice-muthafuckin’-T is back with a new album, Gangsta Rap, hittin’ the street next Tuesday. My initial take on this album is that flow is very similar to Return of the Real. This isn’t a bad thing. I was somewhat disappointed with 7th Deadly Sin and VI still reigns as one of my favourites. I look forward to listening to this a few more times before I’m ready to lay down a definitive opinion on the long awaited return of The O.G.

Bon Cop Bad Cop – Just wait and buy the damn movie!

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Okay, so for whatever reason, the number one search that’s bringing people to this site is “bon cop bad cop torrent”. I find that rather amusing. This is arguably the best Canadian made movie ever and has just overtaken Porky’s as the number one box office draw in Canada for Canadian movies. Porky’s had a 25 year run with $11.2M and BCBC just broke that with $11.3M. (I don’t know if the $11.2 for Porky’s is adjusted dollars or not, I’m going to presume that it is since otherwise BCBC would probably have to earn about $40M to equal $11.2M of 1981 dollars)

So, to all you wanna-be thieves that are trying to download this movie – and I’m going to presume that most of you are Canadian – just wait for it to come out on DVD and buy it! If you haven’t seen it yet, I promise you, you won’t be disappointed. If you’ve seen it already and are trying to download it – why? The Canadian film market is too small and too fragile to be able to support making more quality movies like this if the DVD sales aren’t there to increase the revenue from the movie. Smarten up!

The Drive-In.

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soap.jpg So, last week we had this absolutely, stunningly brilliant idea to go to the drive-in. We’d take Alex with us and he could sleep in the back. The only problem with this plan was the movies last week were two movies that Nikki really had absolutely no interest in watching (You, Me, & Dupree and Miami Vice). Oh wait, THIS week is Snakes on a Plane and Bon Cap, Bad Cop. Cool. The plan is set.

We strike out for the drive-in at about 6:50pm with a scheduled stop at Apollo’s Pizza (Quite possibly the ONLY Italian-based food joint with a Greek name, run by an Oriental couple, but DAMN good pizza!) to pick up a couple pies to take with us. I was thinking that the box office would open at 8:00pm and we’d want to get there around 7:30 so we wouldn’t be too far back in the line. So we get there around 7:20 and there are about 6 vans/SUVs ahead of us in line. Unfortunately the clock in the window that said what time the box office opened was entirely inaccurate so we had no idea how long of a wait we were in for. As it turns out, on Tuesday nights, the box office opens at 8:30pm. So, during that hour plus that we sat and waited, Alex had his bottle and played a fun game with Nikki called “you give me the bottle mommy and I’ll promptly throw it down to the floor”. We’d dressed Alex in a sleeper so that he’d stay warm when the car cooled off in the summer air. Unfortunately, at some point during the sitting and waiting in the car seat, he leaked. Silly us, the ONLY thing we forgot to bring was a spare change of clothes for him. It’s been so long since he leaked that we didn’t even think about it. So we get in, find a decent spot to see the screen from and Nikki sets about changing the little guy.

The first movie, Snakes on a Plane, around 9:00 and Alex is a little fussy. It’s understandable. It’s his bed time, he didn’t have an afternoon nap and he’s in a minivan. But he was showing no signs of slowing down. He finally fell asleep in Nikki’s arms and stayed that way until the end of the first movie. We carefully moved him into the back seat but he woke up anyway and started fussing again. It didn’t help that the lights from the concession stand were shining right in his eyes. We had brought a blanket so we stretched that between the two front seats to block the light. That calmed him down and he had just drifted back off to sleep when the jackass or his stupid twat of a girlfriend/slut-of-the-night (I think it was her) started honking their horn to start the second film. Of course, this started off all the other jackasses in the drive-in and they started on their horns. Naturally, this woke up Alex and he started screaming his little head off. I seriously wanted to walk over to van, scream a bunch of nasty obscenities at them, maybe clock the slut in the face a couple times AND slash a few of their tires. Alas, the desire to remain criminal-record free won out and I just cursed them within the confines of our vehicle. Alex ended up spending most of both movies up with us, either asleep in Nikki’s arms, or in mine. When we got home, we put him to bed but he wasn’t really having ANY part of that. He would not go back to sleep, and instead decided to scream some more. I ended up laying on the floor in his room with my hand stuck in the crib until he fell asleep. I made it to bed about 2:20am. Poor little guy.

So, for those of you thinking of taking a baby to the drive-in: be wary. If we were going to repeat the process again we would do things a little bit different: for starters, we would remember a change of clothes for him, just in case. Also, if we were taking the minivan again, I’d probably pull out the rear seat and setup his playpen back there so he could laydown and sleep properly. And finally, I would arm myself with, at the very least, a small calibre semi-auto to take care of those jackasses with their horns. I mean, seriously, how fucking old are you? Grow the fuck up.

Okay, now, onto the movies. SoaP was absolutely, positively, the second greatest movie this year! (Clerks II was better IMO) I accidentally woke Alex up by laughing too loud when one of the snakes latched onto this chick’s nipple as she and her man joined the mile-high club. I am definitely buying this movie when it comes out on DVD.

boncop.jpgBon Cop, Bad Cop is an entirely Canadian production focusing on an OPP officer and a QPP (??) officer forced to work together on a murder where the body was found on the border between Ontario & Quebec. The casting was absolutely perfect and the movie had a TON of great scenes. Most of these moments were driven by the sharp dialog, which would alternate between English and French with subtitles at the bottom. As an aside, the film company released two versions of the movie – one with English subtitles and the other with French subtitles. Which version you would watch would depend on the primary language in your market. Pretty cool. A lot of cars cleared out of the drive-in during the movie. I think the concept of having to READ a movie is too much for most people. Especially slutty chicks and jackasses. Hell, they might not have even been able to read. For a Canadian made movie, I highly enjoyed this movie. I don’t know that I’d buy it on DVD when it came out or not but if you like watching buddy cop movies (think Lethal Weapon here) then you would be doing yourself a huge disservice by not watching this. Get out there and support our film industry people! This one is worth it!

Wow, I can’t believe I wrote more about Bon Cop, Bad Cop then SoaP. Don’t get me wrong, SoaP was awesome, but I think that just about EVERYONE is raving (rightly so) about SoaP. I don’t really have anything else to add to what’s already been written about it. Actually, I do: I had read that it is better to watch the movie in a full theater as the group experience just adds to the enjoyment of the movie. I can’t really say that’s true as I’ve only seen it once and that was while sitting in the minivan, but I still really enjoyed it. Go see it! And DEFINITELY go see Bon Cop, Bad Cop!

New feature

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If you look over there to the right. No, the other right. You’ll see a new feature I’ve added – mini movie reviews! I’ll do my best to update it after each movie that I watch.

Nelly Furtado

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Nelly Furtado-Loose [Front].jpgSo I just got the latest Nelly Furtado album. Included with it was the video for “Promiscuous”. Wow. She is smokin’ hot in that video. Quite possibly one of the most beautiful women in music today. And not weird either. I haven’t listened to the rest of the disc yet but I’m suspecting that there’ll be a couple more worthwhile tracks at the very least. Plus, it’s an added bonus that she happens to be Canadian!

Weekly questions

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One of the online comics that I read has started posting a weekly range of questions every Friday. On the weeks that I remember, I’ll post them up here and people can reply in the comments section.

1) If you could have any superpower what it would it be and why?

2) Know the movie Groundhog Day? Let’s say you could live one day over and over again, and never age or die, what day would it be?

3) What is the biggest secret you ever kept (without naming names)?

4) What is your favorite smell?

5) If you could jump into one person’s body for one day and do anything, who would it be? What would you do?

6) Which would you rather have?
A life of constant sameness, never experiencing extreme happiness nor extreme pain, but overall, being okay; or living a life of extreme moments of pleasure spiked with horrendous moments of misery?

Here are my answers:

1) Telepathy – full blown being able to read AND influence people’s thoughts. Without a doubt. Sure, telekenesis would be cool, but with full blown telepathy I can just MAKE people move things for me 🙂

2)  Oooh. Tough one. I don’t think that there’s any one day I would want to live over and over again. I mean, parts of some days were kickass but then the rest of the day kinda sucked. The best day that comes to mind would be the day that Nikki first told me she loved me (ya, sappy, I know) but then I had to leave for work. That sucked.

3) If I told, it wouldn’t be a secret would it???

4) Pizza

5) Here’s where my evil side comes out. I’d jump into some mega-celebrity’s body like Britney or Paris or Lindsay and then go out and do the most depraved things and make sure it’s all caught on video tape. I’m evil like that 🙂

6) A life of extreme moments, without a doubt. If you never experience pain and misery than you really never learn to appreciate the moments of happiness and pleasure.

So, what are your’s? Post ’em in the comments!

The WORST movie ever.

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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.

E3, Blizzard, and Me.

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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.

New pics are up!

Posted on by Posted in Alex, Entertainment

I just uploaded a bunch of new pics. Look for about a dozen or so new shots of Alex, a few new ones in The Furries section as well as a photo-journal of part of our day-trip to Toronto last month.

EDIT: Pics are currently unavailable. Upgrading Gallery program. We know what happened last time I tried that. Fingers crossed. Will post again when pics are available.

EDIT #2: Pics are back online. As well – the sidebar over to the right on this page will now display arandom pic from the gallery. Some of those pics could be quite old…

Crazy Santa Guy

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OMG! I can’t believe I forget to write about the Crazy Shirtless Santa Guy we saw whilst in Toronto. We were eating dinner and this guy starts pounding on the window of the sports bar and waving his hands around. He was probably yelling something too but being inside, we couldn’t hear anything. This guy had his shirt undone and partially off and was wearing red pants and a Santa hat. Apparently Mark had seen him a couple nights ago as well. Toronto sure is odd.

Toronto Report

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So as most of you know, Nikki & I went to Toronto for the day yesterday. Before I go into letting you all know how our day was, I want to say that I’m EXTREMELY proud of Nikki being able to leave Alex overnight for the very first time. I know it was tough for her, and I tease her about mercilessly, but she did it and I couldn’t be more proud!

Now, on to the report. We left London about 11:00am and got downtown about 1:20pm or so. Traffic was light the entire way. The purpose of our going to The Big City was to meet up with the operator of Talking Poker, the forum that we live in frequent. The plan was to meet up with Mark around 5:30 or 6 for dinner, then afterward play some poker with a couple other people from the forum. Since we were headed down anyway, we figured we’d make a day of it and play Joe & Josephine Tourist.

After we got parked (corner of Yonge & Dundas), we decided that we’d go up the CN Tower. Nikki couldn’t remember if she’d ever been up to the top or not and I hadn’t been up there in ages. So off we go, headed toward the CN Tower. For those not familiar with the downtown Toronto area, the CN tower is on Front St. at John St. That’s a pretty good hike. We went down Yonge to King, then along King to Bay, then down Bay to Front and over to the tower. The view was really good yesterday, not too hazy and not very cloudy. I took quite a few pics of the view and will post those up later today or tomorrow. After the trip up, we browsed through the gift shop and bought Alex a sippy cup that was cute. On our trip back downtown we decided to walk up John to Queen and across Queen to Yonge. This path took us past the CHUM-CITY building, home of CITY-TV, MUCHmusic, Bravo, and many other CHUM media properties. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to be happening and there were no big star sightings.

When we got back downtown we decided we would walk through the Eaton Centre (which is REALLY weird to call it that when there’s no Eaton’s in there anymore). Our feet were a little sore at this point so we chilled in the food court and split an order of New York Fries while we rested. After all, we didn’t want to spoil our supper. We checked out a few stores in the mall but didn’t actually buy anything. I tell you though, if I ever won a lottery, THAT would be the place I would head to shop for clothes…man…the bundle of dough I would drop there.

After going through the mall we headed out to Yonge to wander up it. We’d been in touch with Mark via text message and we were on track for a 5:30-5:45 meetup for supper. We headed up Yonge and stopped at the World’s Biggest Book Store. We browsed the science fiction section before deciding to head out. Our next (and last) stop was the HMV superstore on Yonge. I used to LOVE going to this place when I was younger. They had a section in the basement called, appropriately enough, The Bassment. It was where they sold all the 12″ vinyl and CDs for the dance club crowd. Sadly, The Bassment no longer exists. We browsed through their DVD selection. They were having a big 2 for $30 sale so we ended up picking up The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: The Bueller Bueller Edition. At this point is was about ten after 5 so we headed back to the car to drop off the DVDs and pick up our laptops and poker chips to head for the meeting.

We walked up Yonge to Mark’s hotel at College & Yonge, the Courtyard Marriott. After figuring out how to get into the joint, we sat down in the lobby and I sent Mark a text letting him know we were there. Lemme tell you, carrying two laptops is pretty heavy. The poker chips weren’t very light either. A few minutes later, Mark comes down and introduces himself, as well as his friends that were joining us for dinner. Mark took us back up to his room so we could drop off the laptops and chips. Up in the room, he gave us some goodies that he brought up for us. Each of us were given 3 TalkingPoker.com poker chips, a TP.com pen, and a TP.com mousepad. VERY cool swag. We then headed across the street to Hoops, a sports bar and grill, for dinner. I ordered a burger, Nikki ordered a chicken sandwich, while the others split a pizza and some nachos. A couple of pitchers of beer were also polished off over dinner. Thanks again to Mark for picking up the tab for dinner. Whenever we make it to Florida next, it’s our turn to treat! Print it.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and chilled in the hotel’s lounge. We’d planned on sitting in the lounge and playing poker so we cleared that with them. They were cool about it. We were waiting for Kirsten (hope I spelled that right MB!) and Mike, her newlywed hubby, to join us for some poker. They showed up just after 8 and we said our hellos, chatted for a bit, then got down to playing some poker. The conditions weren’t exactly ideal: chairs were REALLY comfy, table was a little on the low side (it was a coffee table after all) and a little small, but we made do. We had decided on a $20 buyin with the top two places paying out $75 and $25 for first and second. We had the chips all ready to go and got down to some poker. Oh yeah, I should mention here that the drinks were flowing at the table too. I had a rum & coke then switched to 7-up as I had to drive back to London in a few hours.

The game started off fairly tight. Some chips moved back and forth until I looked down at my hole cards to see AA. I raised the pot pre-flop and Nikki calls. The flop was rags, all low cards, 4-x-x. Nikki bets out and I decided to raise her all-in. I had put her on something along the lines of a high pocket pair (KK, QQ, maybe AA as well) or AK. She quickly calls and turns over 44. Ugh. That gave her a set of fours over my pair o’ aces. Unfortunately the luckbox was empty and I didn’t catch an ace. She had me covered and I was now on the rail. Actually, I was now the dealer…

Mark was suprisingly the next to out to Kirsten in what had to be the bravest, or dumbest, move of the evening when she called Mark’s all-in with ten high and caught her flush, beating Mark’s nine-high flush. That put us down to three and Nikki still had a sizeable chip lead over the other two. Chips moved back and forth for a bit until Mike’s all-in or fold tactic finally succumbed to a better hand and he joined the men on the rail. Kirsten and Nikki then started battling it out for the win. Nikki finally took down Kirsten and walked away with the $75 prize.

By this time, the lounge had closed and they were essentially cleaning around us. We said our goodbyes and headed home. The drive home was uneventful. It was a long day though and I was VERY glad to get home. From the time I walked in the door to the time I was in bed was approx. one minute.

All in all, it was an AWESOME day and a big thank-you goes out to Mark for being a very generous host yesterday!

South Park & Scientology

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You guys may have heard of the furor that Parker & Stone caused with one of their more recent episodes of South Park. It centred around Stan discovering Scientology and being told that he is the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard. Thinking back, I don’t think I’ve taken a shot at Scientologists. Maybe this will get me sued by Tom Cruise. And then I’ll get to go to court and he’ll call Katie as a witness (or she’ll just be there to support him) and I’ll be able to seduce her away from him and de-brainwash her.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen the episode, you can watch it for free here (will open in new window/tab). It’s rather funny and does a terrific job at poking fun of Tom Cruise and his questionable sexuality. I’ll give him this though – if he is gay, he’s probably got one of the most beautiful beards in the world.

As for the “religion” itself. Puh-leeease. ANY so-called religion that refuses to accept scrutiny of others and results to suing people that question it deserves anything they get. For all you scientologists out there: if your pissed because people think you guys are rubes, suckers, morons, scam-artists (high ranking members), scam-victims (the rest of you rubes), or whatever – do what every other good religion does – start a war in the name of your church! Maybe if enough of you asshats start fighting the real religions, they’ll become too busy kicking your pansy asses that they won’t be fighting and killing each other. Just think scientologists, YOU could be responsible for bringing peace to the Middle East and ending the religious conflict in Ireland! All it will take is having a contigent (read: all) of your members arm themselves and start blowing things up. You probably don’t need to worry about the U.S. military stepping in; unless of course you happen to have oil sands as part of your assets.

So many sad days…

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2005 seemed to bring about a lot of sad days. Today is one of those days. CNN has a report that Pat Morita has died. I’m sure that pretty much everyone knows who he is, but for those that don’t, Morita is probably best known for the role of ‘Mr. Miyagi’ in the Karate Kid franchise. Seriously – how many of us growing up in the 80s wished for a role model like Miyagi???

No more waxing on and waxing off for him…so sad.