Short version: uneventful.

Long Version: Went to work this morning. This, in and of itself, is an unexpected success.

After I posted yesterday I went off to play card games with some friends. By “card games” I don’t mean Hearts or Spades. I mean, Yetisburg. A fighting card game based on the civil war. With Yetis. There was a steep learning curve and we just barely finished one game when more people showed up and we decided to eat and watch MST3K. Then I went home.

Once home I straightened up the house a little more and sat to watch The Strangers. I got about 15 minutes in, and decided watching scary movies late at night was not a good idea. Not that I’d get too scared, but more that I’d fall asleep, and no one wants to wake up to people in creepy hoods murdering people. That’s no fun at all.

And now back around to this morning. I tried something new today. I shaved using my face soap, rather than shave cream, and found it to be surprisingly nice. When you only shave once a week, it takes almost 7 times longer to perfect the art. Imagine if you will that I am a 17 year old boy just getting the hang of not bleeding out by the end of each shaving session. Also, the bald spot I accidentally shaved into my goatee has finally filled back in. That was an embarrassing three and a half months.

Anyway, work was work. I’ll appreciate the lack of privacy on the internet and leave it at that.

Got off work late and went back to Juan’s to once again battle the North with my powerful yetis. Finally getting the swing of things we played through a couple games with an even win/loss record. It’s always good to end that way, lest there be slap fights.

I retired early to head home and spray paint air vents, so I can finally cover the two gaping holes in the living room wall. My plan to use the rest of the can to coat a 4′ x 4′ piece of plywood was shortsighted to say the least.

And that leads us right back to hear. I sign off right as Lily Allen’s “Smile (Mark Ronson Version)” which makes me want to get up and clean like a montage in a girly 80′s movie. Slightly sped up goofy scrubbing/dance sequence to follow.

Good night and good luck.

Filed under: entertainment, movies, rambling by tonybullard
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Last weekend I watched one of my favorites movie, The Princess Bride. If you haven’t seen it, you should. The cover makes it looks like a film for 8 year old girls, but I assure you, it’s fun for all ages. And you’re missing out on some big pop culture references (My name is Inigo Montoya…)

For those of you who have seen it, you’ll know it has awesomely cheesy music, which fits the film perfectly. But with it, it has a great love theme that reappears throughout the film. but there’s a downside to this love theme.

A big downside.

Last weekend I decided to watch through the credits, to hear more of this love them, only to be greeted by these horrendous lyrics.
Come my love Ill tell you a tale
Of a boy and girl and their love story
And how he loved her oh so much
And all the charms she did possess
Now this did happen once upon a time
When things were not so complex
How he worshipped the ground she walked
And when he looked in her eyes he became obsessed
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel
Its as real as the feelings I feel
This love was stronger than the powers so dark
A prince could have within his keeping
His spells to weave and steal a heart
Within her breast but only sleeping
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel
Its as real as the feelings I feel
Now he said, dont you know I love you oh so much
And lay my heart at the foot of your dress?
She said, dont you know that these storybook loves
Always have a happy ending?
Then he swooped her up just like in the books
And on his stallion they rode away
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel

These are some terrible lyrics. Worse is when you hear them to the music, where, in some cases, he has to rush the phrasing to fit all the syllables into place. Nothing ruins a good melody like trying to crush 9 words into a place that only fits 4. And while I’m not totally stuck on rhyme scheme…you should at least make the lyrics appear to be in song form.

Oh well. No movie can be perfect, and I imagine there are worse things than having the lyrics in the end credits be terrible. Say for instance, aliens that are allergic to water.

Filed under: entertainment, movies, music by tonybullard
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I came home last night to a quiet house. There were obvious signs of a struggle. I found our video camera laying on the floor, spatters of blood around it. I picked it up, and viewed the last thing ever recorded on it:

Filed under: family, movies, video by tonybullard
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So let’s see what’s happening on the Noah progress meter:

He’s started training to roll over. There’s no better word for it than training. He’s not playing around, and it’s not by accident. You lay him on his rain forest play mat, and he gets this determined look on his face, shifts his weight to his left and then rolls hard to his right, getting all the way up onto his side. Then he rolls back onto his back, and does it again. He will conquer this challenge. You can see it in his eyes.

Or maybe he already has. Teresa tells me on Tuesday morning he did just that. Now, I’m of the “if it’s not on film, it didn’t happen” school, so we’ll see.

He’s begun to play with toys. We have this ring/rattle thing that he use to just hold onto, but now he will actually bring it up to his face and look at it. He stills refuses to chew on anything but his fist. Here’s hoping he doesn’t end up with lobster hands or something.

So today is the first day of our second weekend on our own together. With Teresa back at work, he’s all mine from 6:30am ’til 8pm. All I can say is, thank God we switched back to Netflix, with it’s streaming online movies. Last weekend I watched three movies a day. Thus far today we have one down. Once he feeds again I’ll throw him in the car to run some errands, and then we’ll go to the park. I’m trying to not just sit on the futon all day watching movies. But it’s tough to do much of anything with a 15 pound needy man beckoning you every few minutes. I’m very much looking forward to the days when we can actually go out and do something more than me sitting him in the stroller and imagining he’s enjoying himself.

Which reminds me of the lesson I learned: while the park that’s fifteen minutes away is super awesome, the kid sleeping in the stroller doesn’t care, and so it’s probably better to just go to the one that’s 2 minutes away.

Filed under: entertainment, family, movies, rambling by tonybullard
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So yesterday the wife and I are sitting at the dinner table, eating dinner, while Noah sat in his swing making horrid faces, letting us know that he was going to need a diaper change fairly soon. I noted how his faces were so sudden: He’d be fine, then he’d look off into the distance and squench out a face of utter horror. I commented to Teresa how it looks like he’s one of those kids in a Japanese horror movie that can see dead people.

I should note that Teresa spent the two weeks following her first time watching “The Ring,” sleeping in her sister’s room, in her sister’s bed, with her sister. She did better after “The Grudge,” but I’ll attribute that to her ability to go home with me at that point. She once told me a story about how, after seeing previews for “White Noise” she almost misplaced a baby at work because she was dead set on turning off a radio in the Nursery that happened to be picking up a good bit of static. She’s a jumpy one, that wife of mine.

So needless to say, she doesn’t appreciate my comment about our son and his paranormal abilities.

Tonight as we went grocery shopping, he sat in the back seat, staring into his giant fish eye mirror, and Teresa commented at how she really thinks he’s looking at himself in the mirror. I told her he was probably just staring at the underwear clad Japanese boy sitting next to him.

Assailing glares ensued.

Marriage is awesome. Being responsible for a completely defenseless human being is awesomer.

Filed under: family, general, movies, rambling by tonybullard
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So a couple weekend ago, just before the wife popped, I participated in the 48 Hour Film Project. Something I have done a couple times before.

This time I volunteered to do music with my buddy Juan. This is the first time I think I’ve ever tried to score anything. I was quite excited. I’ve never tried to write music to instill a particular mood, I just write what comes to me. So this was an interesting challenge to test my abilities. (more…)

Filed under: movies, music by tonybullard
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The only thing that’s funnier than that is the video

Filed under: family, general, movies, photography, video by tonybullard
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But sort of similar: ZOMBIES!

The guys from Shaun of the Dead (and more recently Hot Fuzz) made this little Zombie Survival Guide for a show on the BBC. It’s almost half an hour, but it’s hysterical.

Filed under: entertainment, movies, video, zombies by tonybullard
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You know how when you were a kid, you’d have a friend or someone who had broken a leg, or sprained an ankle, and they had to walk around with crutches? You’d ask them if you could try them out, and you wished a little to yourself that you could have cool crutches. Well, one day that will come back to haunt you.

Today it got me in the form of a strained tendon in my left foot. I was doing something like this, only it turned out something more like this. Well, my mistake was a little more graceful, but a lot less kind to my foot. So now I’m on crutches for “5 to 7 days” according to the doctor. This’ll be fun. Can’t wait till they start picking on me at work.

On a completely other note, I had posted before about switching from Netflix to the Blockbuster Total Access Plan. So now that we’ve had it for a while, I have to say, I like it. I have a Blockbuster near by, so it’s really great. I pay for the two movies in the mail, and I get two free when I return them through the store, yeah yeah, everybody knows that. But as far as I can tell, you can get away with almost anything on this plan. Last week Strangers on a Train was like, 4 days late, so I reported it missing. Today I got two copies of it in the mail. I already had one free rental from the Blockbuster store out, but when I took the two, same movie, into the store, I got two more movies for free, and didn’t even have to bring back the other one that I had out. So today in Total, I had five movies from Blockbuster. Call me crazy, but I like this thing.

Filed under: entertainment, movies, parkour by tonybullard
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So today I spent the day unpacking all my stuff into my new house. Well, spent some of the day doing that. Other parts were spent sitting around being tired.

The wife and I decided to switch over to blockbuster online, from Netflix. The whole “free in store rentals” thing just seems a little to good to pass up. So I spent the last hour trying to get the 117 movies from my Netflix queue into my blockbuster queue.

Here’s the problem. The blockbuster site just plain sucks. (more…)

Filed under: entertainment, general, internet culture, movies by tonybullard
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