It's a Mad Mad Mad Max

09.07.2005

Taking advantage of the extended holiday weekend, I took the opportunity to plop down on the couch and indulge in some movie watching. With the everpresent news coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the affected rising gas prices, I was in the mood to watch some old fashioned Mad Max movies. I had enjoyed them back in the day (circa '85), and thought 20 years was a good anniversary to celebrate by watching them again. In retrospect, it may not have been the best idea.

The 80's gave birth on celluloid to the Post-Apocolyptic era. In the near future something bad happens, all the cool parts of civilization crumble, man pulls a cockroach method of survival and muddles on with whatever's been salvaged. There aren't a lot of Post-Apocolyptic movies made anymore. I think there's a reason. Here's what I learned in my 20 year review of the MAd Max trilogy.

* Mad Max (1979): This isn't really Post-Apocolyptic, it's just lawless motorcycle gangs that can get away with pretty much anything against the Australian Police Force of 7 officers. Max get's "the last of the V-8s", but other than that it's your generic low-budget movie that went on to earn $100 million since its original 1979 release.

* Road Warrior/Mad Max 2 (1981): In the opening montage they show scenes from Mad Max interspersed with WW2 footage and a story about how tribes went to war and bad mojo came from it. Max, along with the bad guys, are in an ever present search for gas. I'm amazed at how in Post-Apocolyptic Australia, the good guys defending a petroleum refinery all have white football shoulder pads and the women have gone a little crazy with a hair-crimper. In the end, Max takes a tanker full of dirt to distract the bad guy in a hockey mask from the escaping good guys as they blow up the refinery. I've always wondered if Max was supposed to know that he was the decoy with the dirt?

* Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome/Mad Max 3 (1985): This is realy 2 movies in 1. In the first part, Max goes to a Tina Turner video shoot and tussles with a misunderstood bad guy in the cage match Thunder Dome. This leads to the 2nd movie, where Max enters a remake of Lord of the Flies and is mistaken for Peter Pan. Max ends up returning to the Tina Turner video shoot to save an Umpa Loompa. Being the true hero, Max stays behind so our rag tag fugitive fleet of Fly Lords and Umpa Loompas can fly to Neverland, or maybe Post-Apocolyptic Sydney. Meanwhile, Tina keeps calling Max "Raggedy Man" while driving off and leaving him in the desert.

See, those were nothing like the movies I remembered. They lacked the cutting edge coolness that I remembered. Or maybe I've gotten old enough to look at a picture and think "I wouldn't want to be trying to survive in the desert in black leather".

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Gametime Again

08.30.2005

I've once again reached a point where I seem to be stocking up on video games. After my last plunge into gaming overload, I've been mainly playing Forza Motorsport. After spending countless hours going through races trying to earn points and money to unlock everything, I finally came across a code to do the same thing (with none of the pain). So, now it's time to turn to some different games!

Nascar 06 comes out tomorrow. I've skipped the last couple years worht of Nascar games, but I still like virtually driving around in circles. I think it's time to catch back up and see how many circles I can drive in.

Madden 06 came out a couple of weeks ago. Last year I really enjoyed the ESPN 2K5 Football, but thanks to EA's exculsive licensing deal with the NFL, Madden is the only true flavor of football out there. I've been avoiding the Madden legacy of games since it started around 200 BC, but now I'm taking the plunge. Since I consider myself a part-time gamer, I've always thought the controls and play-making concepts would be too much for me. Now I'll find out.

WWE Day of Reckoning 2 comes out for the Game Cube today. The only reason I have a Game Cube is for the handful of wrestling games that were released for it. I even picked up a newer, bigger controller for the system that will hopefully better fit my meaty hand, thus allowing me to play the game without cursing the stupid controller that's sized for a 7-year-old. I have no idea what this new wrestling game is supposed to offer, but it is a new wrestling game so I must possess it.

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Should I Spell That?

08.25.2005

Yesterday Mom and Terry were in town for a doctor visit, and afterward I went out and had dinner with them, followed by a round of playing Scrabble with Mom.

Sometime in the past couple of years, mom and I have taken to playing Scrabble. I vaguely remember playing with her eons ago, but it's just been something we've picked back up while visiting each other lately. I think it may have been that Mom and I hit our crosswords phase around the same time, so we were learning new words - why else would I remember that another name for elevator is "Otis" (named after the inventor, although nobody ever calls a cotton gin a "Whitney") or that the Thin Man's dog is named "Asta". But Mom and I have moved on to the Scrabble board, and on average we're pretty evenly matched.

About 2 months ago I came across the PC version of Scrabble on one of the bargain shelves at CompUSA. I went ahead and picked it up, partly for practice, partly just because I like to play Scrabble, and the actual boardgame doesn't really lend itself to solitaire play. I loaded the game and found that I was not only getting better in my playing strategy, but learning some new words that would come in handy along the way. Now when I pulled a "Z" tile, I wasn't limited to HAZE, ZOO, or ZONE, I could now try for ADZ!

Last night was the first time Mom and I have played since my extra curricular computer training. I was a little leery of playing some of the smaller words, because I'm so used to the computer correcting me when I'm wrong. I was focusing more on playing on the premium tiles to get letter and word bonuses. It was here that a high scoring tile in combination with a triple letter and double word score made me hesitate. I had a valid word, but it's not a word you want to play when going against your Mom. But I did it anyway:

"VAGINAL". 30 points at the time.

It made me feel so dirty. But I ended up winning.

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Weekend At Large

08.22.2005

I had a busy weekend.

Friday
After a fun day at work trying to wrap up code to be released to the live public (well, two people at least), I headed out to meet my new chiropractor Trevor. Now, Trevor is not Trevor's real name, but a name bestowed upon him about a year ago by me when Gina started to see him for her chiropractic care. His name is actually Trent, but I like Trevor better. I told Trevor as much when I met him. But I digress. My first visit to Trevor the chiropractor went well. He was able to man handle me in such a way as to make me pop well. This was followed by joining mom on a trip to Florence to visit grandparents. I've been die a grandparent visiting trip for a while now, so it was nice to go see them and have a nice little visit.

Saturday
I went on a spending spree Saturday, gathering things for the house that I've been putting off since this past Christmas. For example, my microwave has been need of replacement since the Memorial Day Lightning Strike of 2000 as teh digital readout has been losing more and more digitals. Now I have a new replacement microwave, and as a bonus it matches the stainless steelness of the refrigerator and garbage can! I'm so grown up. I also replaced my cookware. When I moved into the house, I got a lot of hand me down cookware that I pretty much never use. I think the only thing I've used in the past 5 years has been the cast iron skillet that had been passed down to mom - and I only use it for hamburger helper lasagna. So, my favorite part of getting new cookware was emptying out the cupboard of the old stuff. Pots, pans, Corningware, tea maker, Tupperware tops with no matching bottoms. No wonder people were giving me this stuff. It all sucked! But now I've pared everything down to a pile that's managable that I may actually use. I won't be making any casseroles, I have no casserole dish. I never knew I had one before, so I've yet to make a casserole anyway. But now, can't make one if I wanted.

Sunday
By Sunday I was worn out, so I watched Mission Impossible 2 and Sin City before settling in to a marathon of Ultimate Fighting on SpikeTV.

I've got a pretty full schedule of things I need to do while not at work this week. It makes me look forward to another day like Sunday.

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Difficult & Defeated

08.17.2005

In my trip to Tennessee this past weekend, while stopping off to see mom, a ferocious thunderboomer came into the area. As is our way in these here parts, we immediately turned the tv to the one of the local stations for some intense weather coverage.

I've lived in the greater Huntsville area pretty much all my life. Even during some important formative years in Florence, the local television stations were all Huntsville stations. I think I've just grown accustomed to the way each station present the weather. Being in the greater Nashville area, I found that the weather is presented in much the same way. The only problem was that when they went to the radar to show the status of the storm, I didn't know where anything was.

I'm spoiled at home. The channel 48 radar is about a mile form my house, so I have really good radar coverage. By the time I'm told the storm has reached Madison, Harvest, or Huntsville, I'm pretty much in the clear. Once the storms reach Hytop, I can safely go about my everyday activities. At Mom's I have no sense of how feared for my life I should be based on the radar and the names of places about to be devastated. I looked at her radar and it told me nothing!

Except we were evidently within range of Difficult, TN and Defeated, TN.

Suddenly lightning thundering down death was far from my mind. These people have towns named "Difficult" and "Defeated"? It's gotta suck to live there. "I graduated from Defeated High." just does not have a good ring to it. The storm passed on, but I continued to wonder what it was like for the fair citizens of these poorly named towns once they ventured beyond their city lines. Well, assuming they've got electricity and horseless carriages to take them that far.

There are lots of places with weird names, but after having Difficult and Defeated pop up on the radar, I bet they're going to stay in my mind longer than some of the others.

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