Can someone please tell me if this is lame or cool?
So apparently Snooki from the Jersey Shore is knowledgeable enough about comic books to actually contribute to a debate about who would in in a Jean Grey/Wolverine fight. The answer, baring anything weird happening, is obviously Jean Grey. Wolverine is cool, but all Jean has to do is fly out of range of his claws and then telekineticely launch him into the sun. Finally a true test of how indestructible adamantium really is.
So on the one hand it’s cool that any girl can actually participate in a comic book discussion in any way. On the other hand, it’s freaking Snooki and it’s freaking the Jersey Shore! I so want anything I am interested in to stay off that radar screen. So what is the answer? Cool or not? That Wolverine face comes from a very cool Wolverine t-shirt that I have, by the way.
Dave just yelled across the room that he is going to see Haywire tonight and probably George Lucas’s last gasp Red Tails tomorrow, so you can look forward to a couple more of his long winded movie reviews this weekend.
Jason
Nerd Dating: Online Dating Part 2-More Pros and Cons
OK, I know I haven’t posted a lot recently, but the fact is I have spent the last five days fixing mistakes made by other people. I don’t want to get into it except to say that it really sucked. Anyway, let’s have more fun discussing the pros and cons of online dating.
Pro: given time to consider your words you can avoid blurting out something really stupid or inappropriate. Most of us have said dumb things without thinking in our lifetime. I have found I tend to sound better and smarter if I have even a couple seconds to consider my words before pressing send. Even IM seems smoother that way.
Con: if you are illiterate or like to wRiTE liKE ThiS you will look like a moron. Yes, spell check is great but if you lack basic spelling and grammar skills you can really look stupid. Also, that wanna be gangster mixed upper/lower case writing is the online equivalent of tying to impress a girl by covering yourself with paste and rancid meat (and being a moron). I don’t care if you have seen girls do it. Trust me, you will never get anywhere with those girls, and you don’t have to be a guy to be brain-damagingly stupid.
Pro: you can meet people who share your interests. Yes, if there is a girl out there who shares your love of 14th century bardisches, Snorky from the Banana Splits, or debating the eternal Captain Kirk/Captain Pecard argument (Kirk, IMO) this is the place to find her. Unfortunately, any girl who lists anything remotely nerdish or cool will have her email box filled by other nerds so fast her laptop may melt down.
Con: your specific interests may well repulse the majority of women out there. I play Warhammer and love it. However, as much as my dream would be to date a girl who plays it this is the last thing I would list on my profile as I know the vast majority of the girls out there would take one look at it and say “What is this guy into? He must be some kind of dork, playing with toy soldiers.” There is the cool, sexy nerd (you know, the hipster teck geek. Die hipster scum) and then there is the just plain old nerd. You need to seem to be in the first camp to intrigue a girl online. Try to find a girl who is willing to to help you and tell her what you are considering listing as interests. If she at any point wrinkles her nose and says “really?” dump that item.
Pro: you can claim to be into things that you have done once or twice in your life. Ever been on a pony ride at a carnival? Then you could claim to be into horseback riding. Completed a paint-by-numbers painting of a kitten? Then you are both artistic and into animals. Again, I don’t recommend out-and-out lying, but as long as you are ready to reap the whirlwind when she finds out your passion for ballroom dancing is derived from dancing with your mom at your sisters wedding, then go nuts.
Con: she can (and probably will) do the same thing. Trust me, this plays both ways and if something seems to good to be true, it probably is. If she claims to match your passion for Star Trek that most likely means she watched a couple episodes with her brother years ago. Girl Trek fans exist, but unless she lists it on her profile unsolicited she is probably trying hard to match up to your level of geek.
Pro: you can do it from your home. If the burden of bathing, dressing, and grooming weighs very heavily on you, you could theoretically pull it off from the comfort of your desk chair and never have to put any effort into it at all. This is a horrible idea and I highly UNRECOMMENDED this. However, it remains a pro.
Con: if you are prone to being anti social, this will only make it worse. If you feel intimidated talking to women trying to meet them online will only aggravate your condition. The only way to really get over being shy is to force yourself to get out of the house and talk to women.
I think that’s it. Next dating post I will either get into understanding other posts or writing your own. Not sure which is better. I think understanding posts would be funnier, though, so I am inclined to head that way.
As for the whole Wolverine vrs Freddy Kruegar question, it is interesting and boils down to actual powers. If Freddy can attack adults and just chooses kids than he would be highly competitive with Logan. On the other hand, if Wolverines healing powers can fix damage done in dreams than Freddy could never actually kill him. I think I am going to call this one a draw (Blood and Steel image courtesy of the Wolverine t shirts).
I am kind of into horror movie, so for today I post the question of who would win, telekinetic introverted high school hero (in my opinion) Carrie versus champion of the popular good looking kids Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
Movie Review: Season of the Witch
Ah, the sacrifices I make for you, my beloved reader. I was all set to go see the Green Hornet and review it Friday night, but the fact is the girl I am seeing kind of likes sci fi and I am hoping to bring her to see it next week. My next plan was to stay at home and play WOW all night (somehow my WOW character has a more fulfilling social life than I do IRL) and paint miniatures, but it occurred to me that there is another movie out there firmly ensconced in the nerd genre for good or ill, Season of the Witch. Since I have plans this Tuesday (my normal bad movie night with cheap tickets) I figured what the hell.
By they way, I am one of those creepy guys who goes to the movies by himself and sits there looking disheveled and gives people the stink eye for having friends in the place. My demeanor and appearance is completely different when I have people with me, but if not you probably wouldn’t want to sit near me, which actually suits me fine.
I was kind of hoping it would really suck in the Ed Wood style so that I could have really panned it in a very humorous way, but it was disappointingly mediocre. Nothing really bad, with nothing really good. Definitely not worth the $10.50 I paid at full price, but probably worth the $5 I would have spent on Tuesday.
Nicholas Cage runs either liquid nitrogen or superheated plasma when he acts, and this one is of the nitrogen movies. I don’t even think it a case of good or bad acting so much as he can really only play two roles, comedic Three Stooges-ish moron like Raising Arizona or sort-of decent action hero with the noblest intentions a la the Rock. The only roll I can think of that diverges from these two was muscle bound criminal leader in Kiss of Death. I think I like that movie just because it was different. The question becomes whether the particular role is suited to one of his characters and, alas, this one is not.
He plays a disenchanted knight who bails out of the Crusades after an argument with a priest about killing a bunch of women and children. This movie script bent steel bars in order to be as politically correct as possible, but I would give it a D+ for cultural sensitivity with regards to Muslims as the first 15 minutes seems to be nothing but slaughtering the Moors who fight back with the effectiveness of a minor breaking of wind. Also, for some reason the fight scenes in the Middle East had absolutely no horses, in spite of horses all over the European scenes. I suspect that this movie suffered for somewhat limited budget, and when they were on location in the desert couldn’t afford the animals. There were other examples of limited budget later on. Anyway, he and his buddy Felson (Ron Perlman, whom I actually like), after a montage of repetitive battle scenes and whore packed parties, bail out and sneak back to Europe.
Once there, they get arrested by the church for desertion but are offered a chance at redemption if they agree to transport a girl accused of being a witch who caused a horrible plague 400 leagues (1200 miles, which he claims to be able to do in four days pulling a wagon. 30 seconds of research is what it took me to find out how long a league actually is. Lazy screenplay writers annoy me) to a monastery where she can be cured, hung, and drowned in that order. Cage doesn’t want to work for the church anymore so they throw him into prison where he meet the witch who might be cute if she had a shower but spent most of the movie looking like a wet terrier. He gets a noble hair up his ass and agrees to transport her if she were to be given a fair trial. In my mind this is less noble than it sounds as most medieval witch trials involved throwing a girl in water and seeing if she drowned, but he seemed to have the idea that there would be a judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney.
Anyway, they stick her in a cage on wheels and are joined by a priest, an older knight, and a squire (sounds like a bad joke starting) whom I will refer to as Father Abusive, Captain Deadmeat, and Lieutenant Teenie Bopper Sex Appeal. They also recruit a swindler as a guide, but as he doesn’t really conform to any bad movie stereotype I will not award him a name. I will point out that he is the sensible one as he comes up with the only plan that really makes sense. He starts out feeling like he could be the movie comedy relief but manages to avoid doing anything funny or cool.
Medieval road trip hijinx ensue. Captain Deadmeat, after an abortive attempt to add a much needed backstory about his dead daughter and family, meets his end. Throughout the trip the script wavers back and forth between the girl being an actual witch or an innocent girl wrongfully accused. I say the script wavers back and forth, but really it’s Cage’s character. The evidence that she actually is a witch is so overwhelming that even to OJ jury would have convicted her, yet somehow he is gung ho for a fair trial up until the moment she manages to summon up a possessed wolf pack. How many teenage girls can catch a girly man and lift him back on a bridge with one hand? More characters die, and they end up confronting the movie budget limitations again in the form of some really bad CGI. Seriously, Jar Jar Binks looked more real. I guess the last couple years of amazing special effects have spoiled me, but i think if they had just dropped a few of the seemingly hundreds of pus-ridden plague corpses they probably could have spent a few more bucks and brought the CGI up a couple notches into the decent zone. They might have been able to rent horses for the first part of the movie as well.
Anyway, the stars. Nichols Cage. one star. Ron Perlman. One star. Very linear story that did not require me to think much. One star. Costumes and sets were decent, with no tire track in evidence. One star. They didn’t make the girl super hot, which is to it’s credit. One star. Physical makeup, in the form of horrific plague victims, was actually really good. One star. Zombie-like villains show up towards the end. One star. Some of the sword fight action was decent (although I swear at one point I saw Lieutenant Teenie Bopper Sex Appeal swing his sword by the blade. No joke). One star. Total: eight stars.
Now the black holes. One black hole for each horribly predictable stereotypical character death. Three black holes. No character development or backstory of any kind. One black hole. No attempt to maintain the language of the time (the language was, for the most part, so modern and American that it might as well have been the Rock, except that Sean Connery had an accent). One black hole. Very mediocre CGI. One black hole. Bad bridge collapsing scene that defied the the laws of physics as well as failing to fulfill any need in the movie. One black hole. At one point Cage is literally deflecting crossbow bolts with a broadsword. One black hole. Net total: eight black holes.
So we get a straight zero. Not horrible, not good. This one should definitely not even to on your NetFlix list but rather wait until it hits NetFlix streaming. Something tells me you won’t have to wait long.
I just realized I totally screwed up last post and, while I answered the OCP versus Umbrella Corporation question, did not post a new one. I’m pretty sure I was in a hurry for something. If you are one of the few who like them I apologize. If you are one of the majority who think they are lame, then you are welcome. For today I offer the Battle of the Clawed Hands. Who would win, Wolverine Vrs Freddy Kruegar?
(Wolverine image courtesy of the Wolverine t shirts)
Nerd Dating: Spotting crazy girls early pt 6
I think I could write about this for the next six months, but I think I have given you some decent guidelines. Remember that this list is both not comprehensive and not absolute. Each girl is different, and finding just one of these items is usually not a complete red flag (the three or more cats rule is one of the few absolutes I can think of). However, one sign of crazy is usually the herald of an avalanche craziness, so it is rare that you will see one of these running solo. I’d say after you run into three it’s time to pull the rip cord.
Anyway, I think I will give this topic a rest after this post. If something comes up later on I might revisit, but I think the time is upon me to move on to the next dating subject.
19. Does she seem to pick fights with random people all the time? Does she seem to get into a dispute with the server at dinner, cab driver, 
valet, movie theater usher, or random homeless (fellow) crazy people on the way home? This is a real bad sign for the crazy meter. It’s also a bad sign if she seems to shift from “reasonable debate” to “full throttle screaming she-devil” with practiced ease in a shockingly short amount of time. Imagine Wolverine on the debate team. (image courtesy of the Wolverine t shirts)
Also, if a girl seems to have a lot of stories about actual violence she has been involved in, stay away. Sane girls do not get into fights with other girls in her gym locker room. This goes double if she carries a weapon or weapons other than the typical pepper spray. I spent some time with a girl who carried a push dagger in her purse. At first I thought she was cool, but then I realized she was nuts. Avoid at all costs.
20. She revels in telling you about the freaky sex acts she has been involved in. This is something that is fun to discuss after you have actually slept with her a couple times, but if she insists on telling you the gruesome details on the first date she is either completely nuts or is testing to see what kind of weird sex acts you are into. Either way, trouble. So if she likes to talk about her lesbian experiences, three-or-more-ways, her penchant for handcuffs, or other acts that would be found in one of the “specialty” sections at the adult book store, odds are you will be happier in the long run going some where else.
However, in the short run, this girl could be a lot of fun. Just walk carefully.
Incidentally, the whole multiple partner thing is a huge intimacy killer. If you are just going to have fun with her than go for it, but if you are trying to build a real relationship stay away from this subject.
21. Does she drink or do drugs to excess? Getting hammered on a date as a thin excuse for “losing” control is a vaunted American tradition. Getting hammered 4 or more nights a week is a bad sign. Furthermore, while most of the signs of crazy I have listed at least indicated that the girl can be fun and amusing (in the same way being attacked by several hundred Dachshunds can be fun to watch while they chew your nuts off), alcoholics tend to be nothing but depressing. Also, don’t get sucked into the idea that maybe you can save her and then have the perfect girl. You can’t, and even if you did she wouldn’t be the same person you met.
While there is nothing wrong in my mind with the occasional imbibing of pot (heck, I live a couple miles from Oaksterdam University) or trying coke once or twice, regular use of anything harder is not only going to make you miserable but could also get you killed. This goes for prescription meds too. There was a crazy girl I used to like a lot (before coming up with these guidelines) who was on Xanax the whole time I hung out with her. She also had a lot of these other issues too, and in the long run proved to be completely loony.
22. She seems to talk about marriage a lot early on. This may just be my personal Peter Pan “I don’t want to grow up” issues, but I find women who discuss marriage on the first or second date to be trouble. I don’t mean saying “I’d like to get married some day.” Rather I mean the one who has her whole wedding planned out and discusses the flowers, venue, and wedding cake with you on the first date. This is something I have had to increase my tolerance for as I get older and all women are subject to this to a certain extent, so don’t make this the stray that breaks your camel’s back.
I think I am going to wrap it up here. I could probably add another 20 or so, but honestly all women are subject to at least a few of the minor issues, so unless you plan to swear off women you should probably allow for a few of these in your life. I’d say pick which ones are really going to drive you nuts and avoid those. Good luck, my friends.
New dating topic next time I get into it. Leading up to something big!
