The... Something... Of the Christ

I have no real idea of what I think of Mel's new movie. Not that I think that he cares. He made the movie that he wanted to make and it's going to make a pile of money and it might even change some people's lives. Not mine. Let's see if I can try to write down some of my impressions of the film.

While in New Zealand I overheard a couple of film snobs complaining of LOTR:FOTR and the fact the Peter Jackson made an uber-orc to lead the orcs in the final fight of the movie. "Stupid Hollywood movies NEED an easily identifiable enemy, so the audience knows to cheer when he dies." I thought they were annoying whinging prats back then, but now I kind of see their point. The devil didn't need to be in this film. S/he made for some neat visuals (especially with that freaky evil baby. That baby was freaky and evil, man) but didn't add a whole lot to the film. I typed film there. At first I was going to write movie, but then I thought film was more appropriate. Back to Satan There are scenes of horrific violence in this film. Scenes that made my eyes leak. Scenes that made me despair for the human race. But I only turned away from the screen once. A scene with no violence or anything like that. After Jesus dies/ gives up the (Holy) ghost the film cuts to Satan in hell screaming in rage. I couldn't watch, it was just so lame. Why not have Satan shake his fist and go, "Curse, you JEEZUUUUUUUSSS!!!!!" or "I'll get you next time Jesus, next time."

And the stuff with Judas was kinda crap too. The evil apparition under the bridge rubbed me the wrong way. And the evil children that chased him to his death were lame too. They weren't necessary. The dude sold out the Son of God/ the Son of Man. That would guilt a lot of people to their death. No demon kids necessary. Get rid of all the cliched representations of evil. You don't need to see the devil gliding through the crowds that are cheering Jesus' prolonged death to know that they are under the sway of not nice things. Groups of people are scary things, easily swayed to violence. No pale androgynous beelzebub is needed.

And the scene where Jesus carpents a tall table? Lame. Forced humour. Also not needed. The rest of the flashbacks are well done, shot in an entirely different way. And it nicely contrasts the beaten and bloody Jesus of the bulk of this film with the magnetic messiah that so frightened the high priests.

Good God does this guy get gorey. Jesus is beaten. And beaten. And flayed. And flayed. And FLAYED. Then beaten some more. And more. Then crucified. And the audience is treated to graphic close ups and details of all of the above. There is some cringe inducing stuff here. Like I said, it made me cry. But. BUT. That's the point of the film. That Jesus suffered and died for us. Was crucified, died, and was burred. Those were just words before this film. This film does a great job of showing what Jesus went through. That's what Mel's goal was, so yay him. But he added a whole bunch of stuff that I found silly.

And yay for this film inspiring actual debate and intelligent discussions about religion. Not everybody likes religion (hey Carla!), but I'd much rather hear about The Passion than a nipple.

I Want A New Drug

What the world needs now, in addition to love sweet love , is a pill that combats procrastination. I know I sure as hell needs some of that. Think about it, fat people would stop putting off going to the gym, addicts would stop putting off rehab. I would stop putting off the rest of my life. God damn I wants some anti procrastination pills. Someone should get on that.

I'm Gonna Miss This Place

I like where I work. I'm easily satisfied, but still. I like that it's in the middle of a big field. There's rabbits around and great sunrises and sunsets. The refinery across the way also looks nice at night, or in the morning. I often times just take a moment or two after finishing my shift in the morning just to soak it all in. I'm gonna miss that. I don't work with a bunch of fuckwits. Which is nice. There are a couple of dimwits, and one real moron, but the rest are some of the good ones. And you need at least one idiot in any work place, otherwise what would you have to talk about. Yeah, knowing that you only have a few more months left to work makes a lot of things seem more momentous. Or maybe this situation is just making me more pretentious.

More Gaming

Went to a Halo party tonight. Didn't do too badly either. I was in no danger at any time of coming in first, but I never came in last either. I stayed hovering in the middle, and that's okay by me. Bob and Jim are way better Halo players than me, and I am okay with that. Luckily I was on their team for most of the night. So the experience was much less frustrating than it could have been. Much better than the few times I've played with Seve and his friends. Those kids are animals. Shooting you as soon as you spawn. No honour amongst them. Little bastards.

Gaming

Yeah, so Carla's brother and sister are in town this week so there was some visiting. And some game playing. Mario Kart. I didn't do all that much winning. Laura's boyfriend Devon is a dick. I mean that in the nicest possible way. He plays games almost exactly like me. Except he is not nearly as good at losing on purpose without actually looking like he's losing on purpose. I got a couple of those 'gimme' wins and a part of me died inside. I am over the hill. My best gaming years are behind me. Hell, even Laura beat me on more than one occasion. To be fair, Devon always used the cheapest characters in the game. The two turtles. They get three red shells on a regular basis. Being on the receiving end of those is enough to knock you from first to fourth in a heart beat. So that bastard Devon had six shells at his disposal. Jerk. Which happened to me on more than one occasion. And Laura picked the other unlockable characters. Not that it would change my character choice all that much. I always go with Wario. Because he's a'gonna ween. And I always pick his purple pimp caddy. Of course Wario's special attack is not all that useful and the pimp caddy doesn't handle so good. But still... I don't know...

RE-DO

All this recapping of meaningless crap is kinda pointless, don't you think? I'm trying to think of witty stuff to write, but it's been so long since I've written anything even resembling good. Damnit. Also, I seem to be having trouble sleeping, more to the point, trouble waking up. It's getting to be very annoying.

Out of Order

I have all sorts of stuff to write about from Monday to now, but right now all I can think of is what the hell am I going to do with my life? I just found out my job, and many jobs at the place where I work is/are going away at the end of June. My brain be broke.

Longest Post Ever

And about wrestling of all things. Huh.

Inter the View

Free continental breakfast this morning, and another free paper. This Comfort Inn is all about the free. And free high speed internet, luckily Carla brought her laptop along. As she was surfing, I noticed something odd. CFQC, the Saskatoon Global station was one of the channels in our room. What up with that, dog?

We had to be out by 11, and Carla's interview wasn't until 3:20, so we had plenty of time to kill. We drove around for a bit, poked around in a couple of stores and then went for lunch.

We thought it would be fitting to have Japanese for lunch. Masa is a nice little Japanese restaurant about five minutes from campus. I really do enjoy the Japanese food. I always think I won't be full when the food is set down in front of me and then I am always full before I'm done. Deceptive, ninja-like food. I had a New Zealand roll, there was lamb in it. Interesting.

U of M has a nice campus, with a river running alongside it. Probably looks even nicer when the river isn't frozen and the trees have a leaf or two on them.

The parking experience was quite an... experience. Carla wasn't sure her van would fit in it, so I had to get out and reassure her. So I did, and I did. There was plenty of clearance. Yet, from inside the van, it looked like we were going to scrape the roof off the van. We both scrunched our necks down and tensed our shoulders up even though we knew that there was no problem. It was a freaky experience, man. My brain knew that there was nothing to worry about, yet it worried all the same.

One day at work a few weeks back, I heard a couple guys talking about how Winnipeg had the highest ratio of good looking girls of any place they had been to. They both swore they were serious. And they were. Most of the girls on the U of M campus were well put together. I would have liked to spend more time looking around.

Maybe Regina is just really ugly.

Eventually it was time for Carla to have her interview. I waited for her as she was grilled. I saw some of her competition, I think she was better than all of them. I also watched some JET promotional videos. Gotta love those promotional videos. Especially the synth scores. Actually, one of the girls in the videos looked strikingly similar to Kierra Knighley. That was nice.

Carla didn't seem to think that she did to well on her interview, but that's just the way she is. I had to be even more entertaining than usual to keep her mind off the interview. Luckily, the weather turned to crap, so that kept her mind occupied. Have I mentioned that I'm glad I ain't driving? Cuz I am. The roads looked pretty horrible to me, but Carla didn't seem to have any problems. Until we couldn't consistently see the road. That's about when we decided to call it a day. We stopped in a little town called Moosomin, and checked in to the Prarie Pride Motel. Carla called her parents to assure them we weren't dead, and I checked out the weather channel. The highways around Regina were all closed. The Ring road in Regina was closed. There had been a twenty car accident in the city and a fourty car accident just outside of it. Good thing we had decided to stop when we did.

We set up Carla's laptop and watched a movie. Comic Book: the Movie to be Precise. Let me consult my notes to see what I thought of it. Here's exactly what I wrote down after watching it: meh. That about sums it up. A lot of geeky cool people in this movie, a lot of cool cameos but the stuff that holds it together doesn't really do a good job of holding it together.

Then we slept.

Road Oning

Drove up to Winnipeg today with the lovely and talented Carla. She has an interview with JET. I do not. I am tagging along to provide moral support and such. For I am the most awesomest of fiances. Not so awesome that I did any driving. I hate driving, especially in the winter.

I have never been to Winnipeg before. I'm so very excited.

We don't actually plan on doing anything other than go to Carla's interview during our stay in Winnipeg. I'm so very excited.

The national highway becomes non-devided for a good long stretch between Regina and Winnipeg. Sure glad I ain't driving.

We stayed at a Comfort Inn in Winnipeg. Nicer than I was expecting. We got complimentary soup when we checked in. Cream of Mushroom soup. And a copy of the National Post.

Being tired and lazy, we just ordered in some pizza. From Big Time Pizza. We don't have a Big Time Pizza in Regina. Oh, the many splendoured delights of this Winnipeg. The pizza was good, I especially enjoyed the spicy sauce.

That's about it.

John Cena did not come to my arena.

Which is about the only bad thing I can say about last night's wrestling event. All of the radio ads promoting the Smackdown show last night had John Cena rapping about how he would be at our arena. Generic, to be sure, but still. Also, some other ads referred to it as Paul Heyman's Smackdown, but Heyman was also a no show. Cena I can understand, he screwed up his knee at the Royal Rumble, but why no Paul?

We pulled into the fairly full parking lot, found a spot nowhere near the entrance and made our way to the Cena-less arena. Nothing makes you feel more attractive and smart than a live wrestling crowd. Boy there are some fat, ugly, stupid looking people in this city. There were a few normal looking people scattered about but they were in the vast minority. Where were all the skanky wrestling groupies? I didn't see any. At least, I hope I didn't see any. If some of the girls I did see were groupies, I feel sorry for the wrestlers' penises. We, my brother Seve and I looked around for a bit at all the stuff we wouldn't buy. I am not that picky when it comes to clothing. I wear t-shirts with comic book characters on them (lesser known characters, so most people have no idea that I'm wearing a comic book shirt), I wear a Man Whore shirt, I wear an offensive shirt that has a crude drawing of a flying me throwing eggs at a terrified pope who runs from me and swears. What I'm trying to say is that while I aint that picky when it comes to what I wear, I don't think I'll ever wear a wrestling shirt. In addition to the shirts, there were thongs and belts to buy as well. And a big poster of Torrie Wilson in a wet t-shirt. I was tempted by that poster. I know that Torrie's boobs are fake, and I usually don't like fake boobs (actively dislike them to be more accurate), but I like Torrie Wilson's fake boobs. Any wrestling girls fake boobs to be completely honest. I guess it's all about context. If I'm going to choose to invest myself in fake fighting, I have no real reason to object to the fake boobs. Our tickets were for row 27 down in the floor section. It turns out our seats were in section two row seven, so we were WAY closer than we had first thought. Seated next to us was a very old lady with a thick accent (Greek, maybe?). She talked to us about wrestling for a while. This was her first live event although she never misses it when it's on the TV. Seated in front of us were a bunch of young kids. With signs. Worrisome. Behind us was a perfect example ugly. Group ugly. An ugly guy and three ugly girls.

The show started with the announcer making all kinds of announcements about how to behave, and what behavior would get you escorted off the premises and what behavior would have you facing criminal charges. Then we all rose for the national anthem. The entire crowd, (the Agridome was more than half full, but less than three quarters full) stood silently as the music to Oh Canada played. When the music was over, we all cheered.

The first match of the night was Nunzio, of the FBI(Full Blooded Italians) versus Billie Kidman. Billie Kidman is a little lightweight wrestler (and I believe the lucky bastard is married to Torrie Wilson), whilst Nunzio is much bigger. One of the ugly girls behind me lusted after Nunzio quite vociferously. If she could, she would have ripped off and thrown her vagina at Nunzio's crotch. I was mildly disturbed by her comments. The match was pretty decent. Lots of power moves and a few high flying moves. And the good guy (Kidman) won.

A word now on cheering: I had planned on cheering for the heels (bad guys) through all the matches. But the old lady liked all the good guys and seemed to not like it when I booed them. But at the same time, the kids in front of me also didn't like me booing the good guys. I felt bad for bothering the old lady but pretty good for bothering the little kids. I gave up and cheered for the good guys pretty early on.

The next match was... damnit I forget. That sucks. It was another singles match between some undercard guys. Ah screw going through the card match by match, I'll just recap the pertinent points. Rey Mysterio is very short. The Big Show is Very big. Bradshaw took a beer from a girl in the audience and drank it. It was like spinach to Popeye and he was able to push the Big Show around for a bit. But then Big Show chokeslammed him. Wrestling seems much more violent and painful in person. Watching it on TV you sometimes take for granted the risks that they take. And somewhere near the beginning Dawn Marie, the WWE's resident crack-whore announced that by order of Paul Heyman, John Cena is suspended. Then she showed off her ass and left. I don't like Dawn Marie's boobs. They frighten me.

During Chavo's match the crowd chanted "EDDY! EDDY! EDDY!", it seemed to bother Chavo. That was fun. Chanting along with a stadium full of people is fun, even if most of the people are ugly and stupid. I love Tajiri, even though he didn't get to do much during his match. No Tarantula, no Green Mist, no Buzzsaw Kick. Tajiri didn't get to do much, but he was still fantastic. Kurt Angle wrestled Hardcore Holly and Kurt mostly dominated and gave Holly the finger fairly often. The crowd cheered whenever he did. Either Shelton Benjamin or Charlie Haas screwed up a spot. We, being the polite crowd that we are did no start chanting "You fucked up!" The Airline lost Rikishi's luggage co we were spared the sight of his ginormous be-dimpled ass as he instead wore a much more reserved track suit. That said Big Daddy on it. Rhyno wrestled, but didn't gore anyone. Thus, the crowd booed him.

The last fight of the night was Eddie Guererro versus Brock Lesnar for the title. LOTS of chanting at the beginning of this one. The wrestlers didn't DO anything for around ten minutes, they just let the crowd work themselves up. Instead the crowd got all confused. Some sections chanted "EDDIE!" some "YOU TAPPED OUT!" still others "GOLD-BERG". Sometimes the crowd would settle on one and chant their little hearts out but then it would degenerate into the unintelligible mess again. Eddie just reclined on the top rope, seemingly loving every minute of this while Lesnar stalked around the ring, telling everyone to shut up. The wrestlers stretched for a bit and then got down to it. That Brock Lesnar is a big boy, boy howdy. But Eddie is crafty, and not above the occasional thumb to the eye. Brock dominated the bulk of the match but Eddie managed to reverse an F-5 into a DDT and land the frog splash, but that wasn't enough and Brock came back, hit his finisher and that was that. I wonder if that's how they're going to finish the match at the PPV? Probably not, Goldberg needs to be in there somewhere. Anyways, great match. Most of the matches were fun to watch. Live wrestling is a good time.

For the audience at least. I wonder what it must be like to go from working sold out massive arenas on a regular basis to a definitely not full Agridome in Regina/Middle of Nowhere. That must do things to a man's mind. Some of these guys are millionaires and still they're busting their asses in Saskatchewan. I don't know, man, I don't know.

In other news

I had a wonderful lunch with Carla today at the new Japanese restaurant in town. Best Tempura ever. The rest was pretty good too. I want to get back there soon to try out their evening menu.

Please Just Fucking Stop

I work at a TeeVee station and I have had more than enough of this breast related scandal. What's so scandalous? It was a boob. The nipple was covered. It wasn't an accident. It was carefully calculated to generate publicity for Janet (she's got a new album coming out this month doncha know), the Grammies (this week on CBS) and every network operated by Paramount. Will Janet go to the Grammies? Do actual real people care about this trivial shit? I mean, I get paid to watch Entertainment Tonight and I don't watch it. The older I get, the more Hate Filled I get.

Training Is Fun

I don't like being trained at new stuff, that isn't always fun, but training someone to do your job is great. You teach them the basics and then let them do your job for you. Occasionally, you give them disapproving looks or cluck your tongue and watch as they try to figure out what they're doing wrong. Man I love being an ass.

Damnit

I had something I wanted to talk about, but I totally forget what it was. Hmm... In other news, shooting things in slow motion is a fantastic basis for games. I played a fair bit of Max Payne 2 over the course of the weekend and loved most of that time. The gameplay is tight, and there are a lot of weird little touches that I very much liked. All the stuff that played on the televisions in the background was gold, Jerry, gold. And now I'm all talked out.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Whooo! Superbowl!!! I could really give a crap. I worked during the game, at a television station that aired the game, and I don't think I could name both teams that played. Maybe the Colts and Patriots. I'm not 100% sure who won, either. And I sometimes edit the sports. Crazy, man, crazy. And how about that tit? Man, wow, man. I feel like a tool for even mentioning it, because that's what they want for me to do. So never mind about Latoya's tit or Marky Mark's grabbing of it. Let's talk about something else, like doggies. I like doggies.