Free Candy For Everyone

I don’t know if I have been missing the emails telling me about upcoming Flecks or if there just hasn’t een one in a while, but tonight was my first Flecks in quite some time. Flecks, if you’re just tuning in, is a tradition at ILM where they watch horrible, terrible movies and heckle the screen. Tonight’s gem was Transmorphers, a direct-to-DVD movie to jump on the Transformers hype.

Transmorphers is brought to us by The Asylum, the same company (and director!) who brought us the glory of Snakes on a Train. This movie was actually markedly better than Snakes was! I know, it’s hard to believe. Instead of being the worst movie ever, it was perhaps the 27th worst movie ever.

Picture every sci-fi movie cliche you can imagine. Picture tidbits culled from Battlestar Galactica and the Matrix. Picture visual effects about as the first animation homework at art school. You picturing all that? Are you smiling? Then you must be a masochist and Flecks is for you!

There was something about it being the future and an invasion by robots that wiped out 90% of the human population. I think they were living underground? And apparently gay marriage is legal in the future because there was the required lesbian bit with a married female couple. Other than that, it’s a blur of terrible dialog, horrible acting and poor combat scenes. Then we watched the VFX special feature on the DVD. That was a hoot. Sitting there with folks from ILM watching some yahoo talk in remedial language about his effects work was just too much. Oh, it was good.

Whoa! Parappa the Rapper on the PSP? Yes, and it’s out now! This is classic. I might have to bust my PSP out of the dark recesses of my closet for this. Which makes no sense since I have a Playstation along with the original Parappa. But the PSP version has multiplayer! And it’s travel sized! “Kick Punch, it’s all in the Mind!” I can take it everywhere!

I should be sleeping right now, obviously.

I’ll admit it, I’ve never really been a fan of Coldplay. I didn’t really understand what everyone was so excited about when their first single (”Yellow”) hit. It just sort of annoyed me. But they’ve been around for a bit of a while now and they’ve put out several successful albums. People seem to like them.

Well, I might have to finally change my opinion. I left out one of my time wasters on my list yesterday. While playing games or working on my blog, I pretty much always have the tv on. I watch shows off my DVR, movies I get through Blockbuster online, and when I have nothing else to watch I turn on the MHD channel. It’s a high def channel that airs MTV, VH1, and CMT shows in HD, as well as videos. There are frequent episodes of Unplugged, Storytellers and Crossroads. I’ve watched episodes on Green Day, Alicia Keyes, and Bon Jovi. It’s pretty great - looks good and sounds good.

Tonight here was a Storytellers on Coldplay. They played mostly songs I’d already heard but for the first time I actually liked them. I don’t know what it is, but for me, seeing the musicians talk about their music and get passionate about it makes me like it more. It doesn’t make much sense, does it? But somehow, seeing the artists as people makes me appreciate their sound more. Strange, huh. Well, I now have something new to add to my shopping list for the next time I go to Amoeba.

What do you do when you should be doing something else (like scrubbing your apartment clean)? Besides the big ones like playing Civilization or World of Warcraft there are lots of other things I do to while away my copious spare time. I thought I’d share what I’m doing now.

• Desktop Tower Defense - My brother introduced me to this one a few weeks ago and this little flash game has eaten away several hours of my time since then. It’s pretty simple but I just keep going back for more.
• Reading other people’s blogs! - I can’t quite keep up with all the blogs in my reader. Try Google Reader if you’re not yet using an aggregator. Then you don’t have to stop by all the sites to see who’s updated! Some of my top reads are in the sidebar. Which I should update
• Reading and more reading - Most recently I’ve been reading different comic series. Runaways is the current read - and Joss Whedon is writing a few issues! Yay! I’m not caught up to the current issues yet, but they’re really quick reading, I’m sure I will be soon.
• Daydreaming about an iPhone - Ok, just kidding on this one. But I wouldn’t mind getting one, that’s for sure!
• Shopping! Ok, this one is true. All too often I go over to Amazon and buy more books. Being a member of Amazon Prime is DANGEROUS! Check out my wishlist below to see things I might buy someday. Though I really don’t know why you’d care. In fact, don’t check it out. It’s not there, avert your eyes!
• Reading web comics - If you’re not reading Order of the Stick or xkcd then you’re no kind of geek at all

I’m sure I waste time in other awesome ways (like writing this blog!) but that’s all I can think of right now. Here’s my wishlist. Like I said, don’t look.

Today was the San Francisco AIDS Walk. Thanks to generous contributions from friends and family I raised over $600 (and I think with matching it’ll top $700)! Thanks to everyone who helped out.

There was a great crowd out there, I think they said 25,000. All told everyone has already raised $4.2 million. Which is pretty amazing. I walked in a “team” with my friends Jeff and Laurel. Together the three of us raised close to $2000, maybe more than that once the matches come in!

I took some pictures as we were registering and getting ready.

At the starting line:

Gavin Newsom, SF City Mayor, was in attendance. I snapped some pics of him. He creeped me out for some reason. Not that I talked to him or anything.

Oh, and sure, here’s me.

I tragically didn’t stretch before the walk. Started the day with a dash to the supermarket to buy snacks and some water. Then a walk over to Golden Gate Park (a bit more than a mile), then 6.2 miles! We were walking at a good clip. At around mile 5, my hip spasmed and did something kooky. I limped the rest of the way in pain. Not so fun. But we finished in under 2 hours, which is pretty good. Then a painful limp home to lie on my couch and think about the benefits of stretching and how I’m getting older.

But the AIDs Walk was a big success and I’m proud to have been a part of it!

Full photo album here.