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JasonRelva
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Birthday: 11/4/1983
Gender: Male
Interests: I like to play my gui-tar and ping pong.
Expertise: M*A*S*H, Star Wars, comic books, a lot of useless crap that doesn't get me chicks.
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Member Since:
5/23/2002
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| Karaoke ReviewI'm doing this as a service for anyone who sings karaoke. I wind up
singing karaoke about once a month and have been for the past couple of
years. I suppose you can call it a hobby. In any case, I've been
mentally compiling a list of karaoke rules for all to follow. Enough
exposition, on to the list.
-It's pronounced Ka-ra-o-ke, dammit.
-Sing into the mic. If you're going to sing, we want to hear you.
-When picking songs, there are a lot of things to consider. What's the
intro like? What's the outro like? Are there extended guitar solos in
the middle? For example, "Hotel California" by the Eagles does not lend
itself to karaoke easily. The first minutes and last two minutes are
instrumental. This doesn't mean "Hotel" is not a good song; it's just
not a good karaoke song. Same with "Hey Jude" and "All You Need is
Love" by the Beatles. It's always great to see someone singing
"Naaaaaaaaaaaaaa na na na-na-na-naaaaaaaaaaa, na-na-na-naaaaaaaaaaa,
hey Jude" for two minutes, knowing that the whole time he's wondering
"When is this song going to end?"
-You gotta know the songs you pick. By that, I mean you have to be
willing and able to sing the whole thing (though it's alright to
occasionally cut the outro of a song). If you can't rap, don't put in a
rap song. Don't put song that's out of your range. Note: knowing the
chorus is not the same as knowing the song. I don't want to hear
someone stumble through the two minutes of rap verses so they can sing
"2 Legit 2 Quit" for like 8 bars. Those verses seem like forever to
everyone else. " I didn't know these were the words" or "I didn't
realize it was this fast" are common comments made by those who break
this rule.
-No Creed, no Nickelback.
-On a related note, irony is appreciated in small doses. Sure, it's
funny to hear the opening bars of "Barbie Girl" come on over the
speakers, but that's a cheap laugh that lasts for five seconds. Better
to do a song well and make your friends smile in that way.
-A joke song is still a song. I perform all four and half minutes of
"Baby Got Back." It makes people laugh only because I'm so serious
about it.
-Pay attention to the mood of the room. If it's early in the night and
people are still coming in, you might be able to get away with singing
a song or two just for yourself. But once everyone is settled in and
focused on the task at hand (singing), it's time to become a little
more group oriented. It's a gathering of friends, a party, and the
songs you choose should be a reflection of that. Here's a true story to
illustrate this point:
I was once singing karaoke, and it was about the time I just described.
Everyone was having fun, good music, good beers, and laughter. Then all
of a sudden, "Hawai'i '78" comes on. Now I love Bruddah Iz as much as
the next guy, but come on, Hawaiian sovereignty? On a Saturday night at
Toma's? What a buzzkill.
-Something else...no one wants to hear you croon. We're all glad that
you took those choir classes in college, but the next time I hear
someone do a ballad earnestly (eyes closed and all), I'm going to spit
my beer on them. Pick an upbeat song, not one that let everyone else
how great a singer you are. I don't care if you're really feeling it;
it's the freakin' weekend, we want to have fun.
-Now if it's a ballad that every one can sing (like "Glory of Love" by
Peter Cetera), that's a different story. Pick a song everyone knows.
This way, everyone can sing and be involved even if they don't have the
mic. This means don't pick some b-side that you heard on the college
radio station; pick "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind or anything
by Sublime. Older songs work well (especially those from junior high or
before). If when your song comes on, someone else says "I love this
song" or "I haven't heard this in forever," you've done well; those are
positive reactions. If the reaction is, "Rage Against the Machine? Who
put this in?" you have now alienated some of your audience.
-Let's say you decide to forgo my warning and enter "Wake Up" by Rage
anyway. What do you do now? You own the frickin' mic, you own the song.
Make it yours. Get our of your seat, perform and have fun. Otherwise,
you're just wasting everyone's time and money. Do the song as if it
were yours, because you put it in right?
-You put in your songs, I'll put in mine. Don't put in songs for me,
don't put them in for other people. You don't know how aggravated I get
when I hear the following exchange:
"Who put this in?"
"It's for ___________ to sing."
"I don't want to sing that."
"Then who's going to sing it?"
What a waste of everyone's time.
-Don't put in more than three songs at once because you'll end up
singing three songs in a row. Don't hog the mic. Don't hog the song
book. Don't take the song away from the person who put it in because
you think you can do it better or you wanted to put it in. Don't scream
or yell.
-Also, couples...please avoid sappy duets. Not everyone has an "Endless
Love," so don't sing about it. It makes the rest of us sick.
-Show some creativity when choosing songs. Don't keeping singing the
same stuff. Granted some songs are church ("Bohemian Rhapsody") or a
signature ("Baby Got Back" is mine), but if find yourself singing the
same 8 songs every time you go karaoke, it's time to stretch that
musical taste.
-Please don't get too drunk. Someone is going to have to drive you home and clean you up.
-Don't sing the "15 second interlude" when it's up on the screen. It's
probably the lamest, most widespread karaoke joke there is.
-Finally, I encourage everyone to sing, but I'm not Japanese in the
sense that I expect everyone to sing. I understand that singing is not
everyone's cup of tea. Understand, however, I expect to split the bill
with all parties, whether they sang or not.
These are just rules for having a good time. I haven't even gotten started on the nuances of being a karaoke pro like me. | | |
| Spider-Man 3 reviewPreface (or the stupid, circumlocutions disclaimer that I attach to everything [if I were you, I would just skip to the review])
I haven't updated for a while. I've heard that people mostly blog when they are depressed; I'm not sure how much that's true because Iden doesn't seem depressed and he updates pretty consistently. Another thing that I've heard and I believe is closer to the truth is that people blog only when they have something to say. I read somewhere that there are millions of blogs scattered around the internet that aren't updated anyway. The overwhelming majority of former bloggers got over the trend, or no longer have anything to say, or both.
The way I see it, people are out there living life and no longer feel the need to rush home to write about it or their lives are dull to the point that they don't want to share it with anyone. I'm in the latter group, the ones spending their days (at the bank) doing things that they couldn't give a damn about. Recently though, I took part in the cultural phenomenon that is the Spider-Man movies. Being a comic fan, I actually have an invested opinion in that movie, one that I am compelled to share. Leading me to the review.
The Actual Review
In short, I think the movie kind of sucked. And I'll walk you through the movie and share some of my insights. If you haven't seen the movie, don't read on. I'll basically be reiterating the plot summary from good old Wikipedia.
At the beginning of the movie, Peter and MJ are making out in a web when a meteor hits the ground. Apparently, they are both fantastic kissers to the point that neither of them notice. Then the symbiote attaches steals away onto Peter's moped. Oh no!
Then we are introduced to the Sandman. He's supposed to be some kind of tragic character, a victim of circumstance but the truth is...who gives a crap? He's boring. Look at him, he actually picked that shirt. And then tucked it in. Even in a flashback, he's wearing that shirt. Seriously. That's like his "doing crime" shirt. Anyway, he has Mummy, I mean, sand powers.
Grabbin' sky, 360 indy-nosebone into a pop-shove it! Drink Mountain Dew!
It's the X-Games Goblin! He's a skyboard and paintball mask. Radical! This feels more like "the plot line that won't die" instead of a continuation of hostilities between Spider-Man and the Osborn family. Like they were thinking, "Oh, f***. We keep bring that Goblin crap back. Alright, we'll wrap it up this movie." Harry's back to avenge his father and when he ambushes Peter, his Spider Sense fails to tingle. Okay, whatever, I'll let it pass. I'm still trying to enjoy the movie at this point. The two fight in an urban area and, in probably one of the most erratic and hard to follow fights ever (in fact, almost all of the fights are like that), Harry hits his head and comes out with convenient amnesia. Oh, and Peter doesn't have his costume on at all. The director is reminding us that this movie called Spider-Man is really all about Peter Parker. Whew, thanks Sam Raimi, I almost forgot there.
Oh yeah...I remember...Peter Parker = Spider-Man.
He gets his best friend back and, after some pointless exposition, a crane's out of control! Spider-Man is on the case. This crane is a major disaster and I have to give the movie points here; I like the scale of destruction and I really wondered how Spider-Man was going to stop this thing. He saves Gwen Stacy (a character who is one of the most important in the comics and who has been reduced to a pretty face in the film) in a great sequence. Then, as my brother Keith pointed out, after saving her, Spidey just swings away without resolving the whole "what happened to the out of control crane." Just as Gwen, along with her father later in the film, becomes a stock character, the potential of the crane scene is never realized and is turned into a plot device for the characters to meet.
The black suit decides to come in to the mix as if there weren't enough story already. Remember the black goo from the sky? Turns out that it's just been slinking around Peter's apartment waiting for the right time to tell Peter that it loves him and wants to be with him forever, basically. It was to make banana pancakes and junk like that. Anyway, although it gives him great power, he does the responsible thing and takes it to Doc Conners. Smart move Peter; don't they have a biology department at Empire State University? It's easily unlike anything else on Earth, but he keeps it between he and Peter instead of showing a collegue. The highly underqualified Dr. Conners then determines that it's a symbiote using a mircoscope. Alright then. Using the the previously mentioned microscope, he also determines that the symbiote amplifies aggression. (For the preschoolers in the audience who haven't yet learned the word aggression, you can tell because the one cell is bullying the others.)
Uh oh. Aggression is bad. So Peter takes off the living alien symbiote that's trying to bond with him like a T-shirt, puts it in a trunk, and puts the trunk away. *pause* WHAT?!?!?! ARE YOU F***ING KIDDING ME? The same alien that survived the interstellar travel to our planet was simply shed like a dirty diaper and locked away? Why doesn't it fight? Or crawl out of the box and find another host? This is where the movie loses me, just in time for the crap to hit the fan.
X-Games regains his memory, blackmails and threatens MJ into breaking up with Peter, which turns Peter into emo-Peter. You mean that after MJ finds out Peter is Spider-Man, she did doesn't put together who the Green Goblin was? And that Harry has taken up the mantle from his father? She didn't even question his head injury. And though Peter was feeling to alone as Spider-Man for a while, never having someone to confide in, he doesn't tell his girlfriend anything about what it's like battling your best friend's dad and not being able to just talk to his friend? I mean, come on! And even after she breaks up when him, after being threatened in her own home, she just continues on with her life, going to work and crap? She doesn't even try to explain what happened nor does the subject of Peter's proposal come up again. Doesn't she even wonder what that ring was all about?
 
Emo-Peter was bitten by an irradiated emo-kid that died shortly after. Soon he gained the proportional powers of an emo-kid, such as writing crappy poetry, whining, and the Little Nicky hair part? You bet!
Emo-Peter runs back to the black suit, which hasn't slithered away, and embraces his new look. I won't go into it too much; the sheer ridiculousness of the scene is self-evident. Like a tourist trap, it takes forever to get there and it's totally not worth it. The writers have the black suit in their tool kit and they use it in a couple of musical numbers? I know they're trying to pay homage to Saturday Night Fever, but seriously, that humor isn't going to hold up upon repeated viewings. While we're paying homage to classic films, a tribute to The Mask follows soon after. This movie sucks harder than that time I had massive food poisoning in China. I don't want to talk about it.
Peter feels some remorse after hurting both MJ and his friend Harry (in a jazzy fight scene) and decideds that red and blue are more his colors. He manages to get the symbiote off this time (quite a feat because this time it refused to come off like chastity belt), inadvertantly creating Venom. Oh yeah, in all of this mess of plot lines and plot holes, Eddie Brock is in here somewhere. Also, somewhere there was some throw away line about how the symbiote absorbs it's hosts powers, explaining quickly and inadequately why Venom is spinning spider webs. (In fact, this movie had a number of lines that sounded pointless but turned out to be important. Some will say that it requires the audiences to be smarter and more attentive; I think that that's garbage.)
Alright, you could argue that we should already know about Venom, etc. etc. True, but at the same time, because so many changes have been made to the Spider-Man mythos at this point of time in the movie universe, the audience is utterly relient on the director and writers to tell us what is the same and different. Not just that, but also to initiate the uninitiated. For some, this was their first time meeting the Venom character and the filmmakers neglected to make some proper introductions. Awkward...jeez, it's freshman year all over again. Raimi might not like Venom, that's understandable as is his decision to not spend too much time on the symbiote, but doesn't the movie kind of hindge on the black suit?
The finale is a lot of stuff we've seen before, like the brawling while they're free falling thing. I don't want to get into the whole "I fogive you" scene with the Sandman blowing away like dust in the wind. That's a brown bag of flaming dog crap. I will however bring up the bulter scene. While it's not a deus ex machina in the strictest of definitions, the bulter really does come out of nowhere to solve the crime and explain everything to Harry. Earlier in the movie is the transparently obvious "(re)introducing the fact that Harry has a butler" scene so he doesn't come completely out of nowhere. But in the end, he does the best Michael Caine impression he can saying, "Oh, I checked your father's wound. And though I'm just a butler, I can tell that his wound came from his own blade." Firstly, why didn't the cops pick up on this and tell Harry? Secondly, why didn't he say anything sooner? He could have saved everyone a lot of trouble.
What's the movie about? I don't know; you can't even put it all in one sentence. What a load of crap. Too many characters, too many subplots, too many visually dull villans (aside from the excellent Sandman introduction scene)...why do these movies always feel like they have to out do the predesessor? Comparisions to the Matrix Reloaded are more than deserved. And like the Terminator series, the third just lacks the soul of the first two.
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that I saw the movie. In the theater, I had a good time. It's just that when I think about it more, I can't say that I liked it. That's all. I like good comic book stories; this wasn't one of them. I really liked Spider-Man 2 and thought it was a great comic book movie, maybe the epitome of them. It made a perfect translation and it was as if Spider-Man was made to be on the big screen. But if this is supposed to be a good comic book movie, then maybe film isn't the right medium for this character.
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| Car StolenFilm at eleven.
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| The McRib is back.True story
Steve and I went to Blockbuster to pick up a movie for Mike and us to watch. It was either Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift or Thank You for Smoking and after some indecision and coin flip, we went with Tokyo Drift. We took the movie and uncharacteristically went to McDonalds. While waiting in the drive-thru, we noticed a banner that read "The McRib is back".
"Holy crap, it's back! The McRib is back!" I say.
"I know, I just saw that! I'm going to get one."
"Get me one too, I'm ready to be McRibbed."
For those of you who don't know, the McRib is made with pork and has bbq sauce and onions. Trust me, it's a good sandwich. In fact, it's one of the best fast food sandwiches available; that is, when it's available. Dont believe me? Wiki it. I was introduced to it something like ten years ago when the first "Flintstones" movie came out and it disappears and reappears "for a limited time only" from time to time.
So we pull up to the ordering station, ready to get our McRib on, when the clouds gathered and poured rain on our birthday candles. "The McRib...sorry, but we start that tomorrow," the girl says through the speaker. Crushed and a little pissed, I decided to use this experience to get the word out so the rest of you don't have to experience disappointment. Instead, go and get yourself a McRib while you still can.
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