I ended up seeing Star Wars episode 2 twice this weekend, one more time than I told myself I would. The second viewing wasn’t brought on by a fit of fanboy giddiness, but more out of hope that I would like it more than the first time I saw it. As a disclaimer, I probably should mention that I fall into the camp that thinks that even if a Star Wars film is bad, hey its still Star Wars. Even so, my first viewing left me a little unconvinced. I wasn’t overwhelmed, I wasn’t underwhelmed, I would say I was just adequately whelmed. My biggest problem was the lack of memorable dialog. Bad dialog is forgivable, and a good thing too since there’s enough of that to go around but there weren’t really any of the moments that stood out like in the first movies. Of course, I’m willing to allow that those movies are so memorable because geeks everywhere have had over 20 years to memorize all the dialog. Aside from that, I enjoyed it much more the second time. No matter how critical and cynical I might have tried to be, I couldn’t deny that the action scenes and effects were really great. I’ve decided that I’m not going to ask for too much from Star Wars, and I think I got what I asked for and thats good enough for me.

*Ahem* Alright, now that I’ve had some time to calm myself down and to test out the Nomad 3 I think I’m a little better shape to write about it. Lets just say it lived up to its expectations and then some. I would highly recommend this little beauty to anyone who has a decently sized cd collection. The sheer joy of just knowing that I can listen to any of my albums anywhere is great enough, but then I’m kind of a dork that way so it may not apply for everyone. The device is even smaller than I was expecting, in fact its smaller than my old cd player. Sure, it may not be as sexy as the iPod but the extra space is worth it for me. The firewire connection is so amazingly fast, I was able to get all of my albums transferred over in minutes. I don’t even want to think about how long that would have taken over USB. The interface on the device is fairly smart and definitely easy to use, and it automatically organizes files in a very convenient way. All I’ve had to do is just copy my files over, I haven’t had to do any kind of arranging or cleaning up which is a very very good thing with about 3500 files.

Nomad 3 mp3 player… finally here… guh… buh…. *gurgle* must stop drooling on keyboard, or it’ll br.,aksdalidll….dia

I’ve realized that I just don’t take enough pictures. Case in point: the above pictures, just now developed, are from an incredibly rokken Havalina Rail Co. show… almost 2 years ago. Whoops. I’d completely forgotten about them until I finished off that roll of film at the AIDSwalk last week. I’d really like to take more pictures in general, and I’m leaning toward picking up one of these super compact digital cameras. Maybe not high end quality, but with something that easy to carry around I think I’d be more likely to have it on me when I want to take pictures. More Havalina shots (1, 2, 3, 4) and a few Joy Electric (1, 2) ones from the same show for those that are interested.

Ok, so it looks like I really should have given Sam Raimi a little credit. In spite of my low expectations from the trailers, Spiderman is now on my very very short list of good comic book to film translations. The computer generated Spiderman was much more believable than I thought it was going to be, save for a few brief moments here and there. Its a good thing the movie is doing well, because that practically guarantees a sequel which I’m really really hoping would have Venom in it. Oh man, that would be amazing.

I just got a prerecorded telemarketing call while working in a campus computer lab. That’s the most ridiculous thing ever, as if its not enough that there are 2 or 3 of them everyday at home. I’m imagining a dark near future in which the telephone is only allowed to be used as a marketing device, enforced by corporate law and upheld by a puppet federal government. Of course, if we know anything about dark near futures its that we’ll have Robocop out there sticking up for the little guy, so it won’t be all that bad. I don’t know what he’d do about the phone laws, but I have to think it would involve a lengthy grassroots campaign to raise support, followed by lobbying and introducing new legislation to be approved by the House. Then there would be shooting, lots of shooting and maybe some explosions which Robocop would walk through unscathed and then ricochet a single precisely aimed bullet off the wall to hit the Speaker of the House who was holding Robocop’s partner hostage. At that point Robocop would quip, “Veto this, scumbag” to reveal the humanity that still remained under his indestructible titanium exoskeleton. God bless you Robocop, I don’t know what we’d do without you.

Today I learned the valuable lesson that its ok to cheat, as long as its for a good cause, for example the Central Ohio AIDSwalk. It all started out innocently enough when I agreed to go on the AIDSwalk, but quickly degenerated into a web of deception, trickery, and flavored Gatorade “fitness water”. Jolayne and I planned to bike downtown to meet up with a group of other walkers from our church at the park where the walk began. And thats where things started to fall apart. We showed up barely on time at Goodale park, where someone (and I’m not going to say Jolayne here. Or even imply it.) thought the walk was to begin only to find it entirely empty. After some quick fact checking, we realized we needed to get even further downtown to Bicentennial Park which we managed to do about 20 minutes after the start of the walk. So there we were, bringing up the absolute rear of the AIDSwalk far behind the rest of the crowd. It seemed our only chance to catch up was to do some serious walking and sing “Eye of the Tiger” repeatedly. Or at least as much of it as we knew, which only ended up being “Dun! Dun Dun Dun! Dun Dun Daaaaah! Eye of the tiger!” It quickly became apparent that this approach was somewhat lacking. Our only other choice was to stealthily blend in with the crowd next to our friends as we passed them coming back the opposite way almost half way through the route. Our stealth technique was inadequate to say the least, but at least we finally caught up with our friends in the main group. It was a beautiful day though, and a really great time to be out and walking around with friends so I think that made it all worth it. Actually that’s not it. What made it worth it, and something we would have missed if we were on time, was an exchange between two men and two women that occurred on a crosswalk near the start of the walk. The two guys were standing on one side of the street and making catcalls to the women as they crossed the street. One of them yelled out: “One of y’all got some healthy ass calves!” That’s the most beautiful random thing I’ve overheard in a while. The women kept on walking, but I can’t help but think that deep down, one of them was secretly flattered. Whichever one had the healthy ass calves that is.

I feel all cultured like. I just got back from the gallery hop downtown in the Short North, which they have on the first Saturday of every month. We actually got there pretty late, and a lot of the galleries were closed but we still saw some pretty cool stuff. By far the most interesting work was an exhibition of some of the Obey Giant pieces done by Shepard Fairey. What started out as a campaign to cover cities with stickers of Andre the Giant bearing the cryptic message “Andre the Giant has a posse” has spawned a huge amount of baffling and very interesting Andre the Giant propaganda. Its a really interesting concept, and explained very well on the website. I really want some of the prints, but they’re pretty expensive. Maybe someday.

I went “extreme” bowling tonight, with all the lasers and black lights and annoying music, and land mines. Ok see, not the land mines. In fact I’d say the actual level of extremeness fell somewhere between extreme doritos and mountain dew. In my mind, it would be extreme bowling if the balls exploded every now and then, and then there were giant swinging blades that would randomly take people’s heads off. Monkeys should also be involved in some as yet unspecified capacity. The kids these days, they don’t know extreme. When I got back, I found that my roommate Scott had just built a custom mouse tray to slide out from under the keyboard tray of my desk. Its really great. Now that’s extreme. There are definitely advantages to living with a guy that just builds his own furniture for the fun of it.

Yeah, so I left my lights on today when I went to work at 7:30 this morning, and for some reason my car wouldn’t start when I got off at 5:00. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Most cars make some kind of warning noise when you leave the lights on, and I think mine did at one time or another but over the years its just decided that’s something I can do without. I think its been a while since I’ve drained the battery though, the last time I can remember doing it is when I worked for the Dayton Daily News about 4 years ago. Of course, I did it two times in one week then while working the night shift. The security staff sure remembered me after that one.