The Billionty-Oneth Geek: Older Than 8 Since 1991

I watched this movie 2 months ago, and didn't write a post about it only because I thought nothing much of it. It was scene after scene of action held together loosely by a thin plot. I thought to myself, "meh, thumbs in the middle, it kept my attention". Last night, I finished reading the graphic novel by Mark Millar of which the movie was based on. I've decided to re-evaluate my conclusion on the movie by cranking that thumb 45 degrees south for a thumbs down decision... the graphic novel was too great. The movie could have been so much more! In the original comic, there were so many colourful and wacky characters; aliens, robots, superheroes, supervillains, and all that stuff. Instead the movie opted out of that idea, and instead presented the mass public with a dumbed down generic-action piece that loosely resembled the comic. The story from the book follows Wesley Gibson as he trudges through his mundane life to join a fraternity of supervillains of which

The end of the summer guarantees two things in Toronto: the first being the CNE, the second, and more importantly to the geeks, the Fanexpo. The Fanexpo is a time each year where geeks can gather with other geeks, dress up in costumes, making the non-geeks look strange for once. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go to the Fanexpo this year (held at the Toronto Metroconvention Centre), so being the geek I am, I scavenged the internets for some awesomely good and awesomely bad cosplay pictures. Well, regardless of whether they were bad or good, credit must be given to these geeks for creating these costumes and just being themselves, they are all fun. (Note: this post is more graphic intensive) Spiderman and Black Cat Sora from Kingdom Hearts, and some other girl (possibly Kairi) Awesome-O Roboto! Mario and Yoshi Namor, the Submariner Cloud from Final Fantasy Yoko from Gurren Lagann The Green Arrow A generic black mage from Final Fantasy... this is epic. LOL Iron Man! Batman with a f

I recently finished Stephen Skelton's The Gospel According to the World’s Greatest Superhero . The afforementioned "Greatest Superhero" in which he refers to is none other than Detective Comic's own Man of Steel, Superman. Superman was never a favourite superhero of mine, but I did enjoy reading stories about his struggles and epic battles on Earth. What intrigued me about him was that on the outside, he was perceived as an invincible god-like being, but on the inside, he was as vulnerable as the humans he protected. In his book, Skelton attempts draw parallels found in the Superman story to the gospel. In the Superman story, the father sends his only son to earth, who then grows up and using his powers, saves mankind. Later on, he dies defending his beliefs, but rises from the grave again. Sound familiar? The book is filled with interesting facts, comparisons, and analogies. The one that stood out the most for me was the analogy with the father. Firstly, the

This is an idea that I'll try once a week or every two weeks. Each week I'll try to pick something that made the news and yet exercises in stupidity so much that it deserves an honorary 'fuck off!'. This week's Fuck Offs go to the Men's Spanish Olympic Basketball Team. The team posed for a picture holding their fingers by their eyes, mocking the Chinese because apparently we have slanted eyes. The photo was for an advertisement for a Spanish courier company called Seur. So fuck you Seur! Fuck you and your dumb ideas! But worst is the men's team who went through with it. Did you guys really think it was a good idea? Fuck you Men's Spanish Olympic Basketball Team, fuck you.

On Wednesday, August 20th 2008, it was announced that Gail Kim was leaving TNA and was signing back with WWE. This met fans with confusion as Kim was a prominent player in the TNA Knockout's division. The Knockout's division started not even a year ago and came to fruition with the crowning of Gail Kim as champion after a gauntlet match at Bound for Glory. Clearly the division was centered around Gail Kim as the ultimate babyface and her arch-rival, Awesome Kong as the ultimate heel. It was so classic and it was so simple. The Knockout's division basically grew from around these two, and it was clearly catching the attention of TNA fans. I've said it before, there are only two reasons to watch TNA: firstly is for the X-Division and secondly, but equally, is for the women's Knockouts Division. TNA claims that they do all those wacky and stip matches in order to distinguish their product from WWE's. But if they take a step back and look at what they have, t

I'm trying out a new layout. Some stuff have disappeared, but I'm in the middle of the coding trying to get that fixed. Let me know what you think. Later geeks.

I saw these on Kotaku the other day, and they seem too geektacular not to share. They're from Cubeecraft. They have print-out templates of various geek related characters that you can print, fold, and glue into these little figurines. Check it out here at Cubeecraft.com . Later geeks.

This is a bit of a late slip. I finished Final Fantasy III for the DS about 2 weeks ago. For those that know me and my gaming habits well, you'll know that I'm quite the Final Fantasy junkie. In fact, you wouldn't be wrong to assume that the FF series played an important part in forging the geek in me. This made it easy to decide what consoles to buy when the time came. It has always relied on the question, "which system will the next Final Fantasy game be released on?". FFIII was the only game in the 12 game series that had not made its debut on American soils. Instead of just a straight-up rehash and 8-bit (or 16-bit) graphics, Square-Enix took it to the next level and rendered the game fully in 3D, including a few FMVs, as well as enhancing the soundtrack. What we end up with is a beautifully looking game that pushes the DS to its limits. This game was the first one in the series to use the now renowned job system. They offered almost 2 dozen different

In what was forseen as a weak card for a Summerslam event, WWE managed to pull off quite an exciting show, all things considered. My predictions sat at 57% (4 of 7), lower than expected. In a surprise move, they decided to put the two non-championship matches on top as the main events. Highlighted in bold are the winners of the matches: MVP Vs. Jeff Hardy : Shelton Benjamin ran in for some interference. Jeff missed the swanton on MVP, and MVP capitalized with the yakuza kick. This was surprising, but I was happy as MVP is my favourite wrestler in the WWE brand. I hope they push him now into a main event program with Triple H. Santino & Beth Phoenix Vs. Kofi Kingston (c) & Mickie James (c) : Greatness! Santino and Beth as champions will have limitless comedic opportunities. I can't wait. Mark Henry (c) Vs. Matt Hardy through DQ: Match ended after 2 minutes after Tony Atlas interfered. DQ finishes suck on PPV, but at least they did it to the match that would have

Double-post Saturday! Tomorrow night is WWE's inaugural Summerslam event, I thought I'd just make a quick post of my predictions, with a follow-up post-show tomorrow night. My predictions are in the bold and the (c) denotes the current champions: Santino & Beth Phoenix Vs. Kofi Kingston (c) & Mickie James (c) : Santino is a great man. His wrestling capabilities may leave more to be desired, but the man is a freaking genius on the mic. Imagine all the comedic promos that could come if he and Beth were to win the belts. MVP Vs. Jeff Hardy : I see Hardy going over as revenge to all of MVP's attacks in recent weeks. Mark Henry (c) Vs. Matt Hardy : Who cares. John Cena Vs. Batista : Cena wins and Batista's eventual heel turn nears. This match could have been so epic if they built it up towards Wrestlemania or at least a different PPV. But with only a two week build, it doesn't seem as significant. What a waste. CM Punk (c) Vs. JBL : Tough call. I want P

The above photo is courtesy of my friend Beka. The darker figure in the back is me, and the closer one is my friend Keith. Yes my fellow geeks, two days ago I stepped onto the casino floors for the first time. It was both what I expected and in a way, not what I expected. We headed to Casino Rama late in the evening, after a full day of hanging out with some friends in Orillia. One of the things I first noticed after stepping in was that it seemed so much smaller than depicted in the commercials. The majority of the casino floor was devoted to slots, and I'd say 1/6th of the floor area were the tables (cards, roulette, craps, etc). Another thing we noticed (and expected) were all the lifeless people that sat in front of the slot machines and gambled all their money away. It was clearly an aging crowd dominating the slot areas as well. I was reminded of a line from the Simpsons, when Marge becomes a gambling addict: Homer Simpson: The only monster here is the gambling monste

I couldn't find a poster that I liked for this movie, so I assembled a picture of my own. Anyhow, this movie fuckin' ruled. It had an easy to follow plot, some kick-ass action, and a Jedi-Master on a rampage. The story goes like this: One day Qui-Gon Jinn and Jean Grey (probably the Phoenix actually, she was in major bitch mode) had a child named Shannon from Lost (who must have escaped the island and resurrected). Although Qui-Gon and Jean are separated, it shows that Qui-Gon living a happy life by himself, with the comfort of close friends, who work together doing high-level bodyguard stuff. In the past, Qui-Gon worked as a secret agent of some sort (most likely of the Jedi flavour). Everything is pretty happy until one day Shannon goes off to France and gets kidnapped. Queue in non-stop action. Qui-Gon heads off to France with just the shirt on his back and the Force in his hands to find his little girl. Heads are cracked, necks are broken as he tracks down his daug

If you're a DVD-enthusiast but still a cash-strapped post-secondary student, then you'll appreciate the world of used or previously viewed DVDs. I'd say about 75% of the time my DVD purchases are of the previously viewed version. Here are a few of my favourite places, highlighting some of their pros and cons. CD Cat (613 Yonge St.) CD Cat is primarily a used CD store, but it also carries an assortment of DVDs (as well as some VHS). Well on the plus side, they carry a lot of albums from scene bands. This place is good for when you're looking for any special editions of a movie or 2-disc versions. Their collection is quite eclectic compared to other stores. The drawbacks are that their collection is smaller than some and their prices can be quite high, nearing retail. Sometimes you can get a better deal at HMV with all their 2 for $20, $25, $30 deals (and they're brand new!), as compared to let's say picking up Death Proof here, which may cost you $17.

This is last in a series about my trip to New York, this time focusing on my family there. As noted in one of the previous posts, I have a lot of family living in New York, notably, all of my mom's side of the family. When we were younger, our family used to visit New York a lot. These days it doesn't happen as often, not because we don't want to, moreso that as we're getting older we're getting more busy with work and what not (our side and their side). And so more recently we all visit separately when it's not too busy; my brother's been down a few, and my mom goes there at least once a year. Regrettably, there's been a large gap of 11 years since my last visit. Many important things have happened since then; people graduating from schools, people getting married, people having 1st or even 2nd children, and so forth. I even have a few new second cousins that I couldn't tell you the names of because I don't know them myself (many apologies)

Part 2 in a series, this time highliting some of the things we did. New York is a big city, and in a big city there's lots to do. With so much to see and do, where do you start? One of the problems with going to such a large city is that there's so much you want to do, but it's nearly impossible to do it all in a weekend (or a week for myself). The thing we probably did together the most was shopping. Keep in mind that my travel party was 4 girls and 2 guys (effectively me, the oriental, and my friend Rajiv, the token brown guy... collectively, Harold and Kumar). We went to a lot of the more decently priced fashion stores, with a double trip to the world's largest department store, Macy's. We went to Chinatown on Friday in hopes of finding cheap goods. Chinatown was a lot different than I remembered in days past. For one thing, there were a lot more tourists. The girls were hoping to score some knock-off bags which was a challenge to find sellers. We noticed

Two weeks ago I went to New York City with a bunch of friends for some sightseeing, partying, shopping, and other touristy-type things. I have much to say about the six days I spent there, and I figure the best way is to split it up into 3 separate posts: observations and misconceptions, things we saw and did, and family. As mentioned above this post is about my observations and misconceptions. The first thing that you geeks should know is that half my family resides in New York (and its surrounding areas). Basically the whole side of my mom's family lives and works in the City. Our family went to New York a lot during summers to spend pseudo-vacations there when I was younger; the last time I was in the City was about 11 years ago (unfortunately it was for my grandpa's funeral). Because these trips were always family trips my vision of New York was reduced to a small window. Simply, New York = Chinatown + my cousin's house. Yes, most of our time was spent at Chinat