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August 25, 2004

   Big day in new pop. Well, new Mountain Dew flavors. There's the "limited edition" Pitch Black, which describes itself as having a "blast of black grape." (I would link to the official Mountain Dew site for the flavor, but there's far too much annoying pop-punk music going in the background.) I finally tracked down a 20-ounce bottle at White Hen. It's not too bad. Similarly not bad is Baja Blast, available only at Taco Bell, which has a lime flavor.
    Both are like the orange-flavored Live Wire in a couple of ways. First of all, they do a pretty good job of not being too sweet. Most fruit-flavored sodas are very sweet - orange and grape varieties routinely have 50 grams of sugar in a 12-ounce can, compared to 39 for Coke. Pitch Black contains about 46 grams per 12 ounces, the same as regular Mountain Dew, but it has just enough less than a regular grape soda to have less of that syrupy sweetness. I don't necessarily mind that myself, but it's good that this wasn't the same as all the other grape soda varieties.
    Equally good is the fact that unlike the first Dew spinoff, Code Red, Baja Blast and Pitch Black follow in the footsteps of Live Wire by not tasting like flavored Mountain Dew (which is to say, flavored urine). I can recommend both of these pop varieties - they're nothing mind-blowing, but they're tasty enough.

In other news, I got a new phone, as the old one apparently died to some moisture build-up or what have you. I have no idea how that happened, as the woman at the Sprint Store asked me "Did you drop this in some water?" How could it have gotten that wet, even if it was in a moist-type climate? I don't know. But anyway, I'm back on the phone, so you can start calling me again if you need to.
Also, isn't anyone else going to weigh in on this review issue? I know more people read them than have posted in the forum. Okay, I hope more people read them than have posted in the forum. Please?

August 22, 2004

On the two-week anniversary of losing my car, my internet is at best what you might call sporadic (ten minutes and out) and my cell phone appears to have died. In other words, if you're trying to get a hold of me... good luck. Ugh.

August 20, 2004

Anyone who's not my dad want to kick in? If it'll help, here's a positive review that I like more than almost any I've written so far: Garden State.

August 17, 2004

   I'm once again thinking of submitting stuff to a movie review website in the hopes of getting work as a critic. I can't tell if it pays - the fact that the submission process involves "send us two reviews and you'll hear back in a week" makes me suspect that it might not. On the other hand, said site evidently sends reviewers to press screenings and junkets, and has enough oomph in the industry to get its reviewers credited in ads, which has to count for something. I figure the worst case scenario is that it doesn't pay, but I'm writing reviews for a site other than mine, and maybe I can parlay that exposure into a real review job.
    But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Step one would be actually getting "hired." And to do that I'm going to need to send two well-written reviews: one positive, one negative. That's where you come in.
    I'm going to start a thread on the message board about this. I'll list what I think were my best-written reviews, both good and bad. If you wouldn't mind, read them and tell me which you think are the best. If you have a lot of free time, you can read all my reviews and list ones I hadn't come up with (though I wouldn't waste your time beyond the last couple years - most of my older reviews really suck).
    Thanks in advance to anyone willing to participate. I know this site gets more traffic than I tend to think it does, and I'd really appreciate it if people who aren't close friends of mine would join the action, as I think that gives me a wider sample.

August 16, 2004

BigFlax.com has undergone a bit of a reorganization. Perhaps you noticed. If you didn't, frankly, I'm amazed that you were able to get to this page; please don't invade my mind with your powers.
At any rate, I doubt anyone will miss what's been removed and otherwise the site has been more or less streamlined; the front page is a lot less cluttered, for starters. But hey, give me your feedback. I can't promise I'll listen, but you can try.

August 14, 2004

Four movies left on the slate to see, and one down: Collateral. It's pretty good, and I hold that opinion despite the fact that in a 15-minute walk home, I was forced off the sidewalk three times by the presence of three different skunks. Those skunks really love Maple Avenue.

Olympic notes: I love watching the opening ceremonies for the Parade of Nations, which is pretty hilarious when you see nations whose athletes can be numbered on one hand. My favorite this year: British Virgin Islands, which not only had just one athlete, but he was also the only person in the delegation, period (not true of other one-athlete nations, like Liechtenstein). So it's just this one guy carrying the flag. I felt bad for him, because you know when he gets into the middle with all the other nations, he isn't going to know anyone and they're all going to be talking to each other already, like "Dude, British Virgin Islands is coming over here... don't make eye contact."
The other funny thing was Bob Costas' lack of geography knowledge, as when he referred to Belize as an "island nation." Here's a map of Belize. Now here's a map of a nation whose name begins with B that is an island nation. Noticing a difference?

August 9, 2004

   Long weekend, which started great and ended badly. Alma and I headed out to Michigan on Friday afternoon for the Monty Burns Trash singles tournament, which was held on Saturday. Results ahoy. That was fun. So was the "game show round," held that night. Not fun: getting into a car accident after leaving said round. My car, pictured here in happier times, was totaled. This necessitated Alma and I staying at Mike Burger's house on Saturday night, then at the Motel 6 on Sunday night before catching an Amtrak train home.
    Many, many thanks to: incredibly gracious host Mike Burger, who never once complained about getting a call from us at one in the morning on Saturday night, picking us up at the scene of the accident, taking us by the police station, and letting us crash on his couch bed and spend most of Sunday in his house while he wasn't even there; Dwight Kidder for driving Alma to the Kroger on Sunday morning to pick up a few necessities; and Mike Philpy for driving me to the salvage yard so I could remove the remainder of my things that were worth saving from the car I will never see again. Further thanks to Mike Burger for driving us back to the salvage yard later that day so I could remove the last couple of things from the glove compartment, and then on to the Motel 6. Honestly, if you asked for a nicer bunch of people than those who were at this tournament, I'd be hard-pressed to think of one.
    No thanks to: the wasps who were dive-bombing me as I attempted to fish the remaining things out of the car; the Amtrak conductor who spent the entirety of the trip giving unnecessary long lists of information, like how long it was between every single remaining station, as though we were going to do quick math in our heads to figure out how long the trip was, and spent the later half of the trip assuming that no one on the train knew how time zones worked.

One additional note tangentially related to this weekend: I added Craig Barker's blog to the Friends page. Yeah, so he's more "acquaintance" than "friend" by my standard definition of it, but let's play fast and loose with it. Craig (who won the Burns, btw, to the surprise of certainly not me) IMed me today to say that he had also chosen "The Seeker" as CSI: New York's theme song. Apparently they have gone with "Baba O'Riley" instead, he informed me. Don't get me wrong, I love "Baba O'Riley," but come on: how can you not go with "The Seeker" here? "I won't get to get what I'm after / Till the day I die"? That's perfect. And as much as I love the synth on "Baba O'Riley," that guitar riff on "The Seeker" blows me away. Boo, CBS. Boo.

August 5, 2004

   Alma and I rented Gigli tonight, in that same "Let's see if it's as bad as everyone says" adventurous spirit that caused us to actually sit down and watch The Master of Disguise when in Washington. It's... not as bad as the hype? I mean, yeah, it's goddamn awful, but really nothing could be as bad as the Gigli hype. Review.
    We also watched The Debut, which Alma had wanted to watch with me for a while, assumedly because it's maybe the only movie readily available at Blockbuster that's actually about what it's like living in a Filipino family. She was cracking up at most of the stuff early on, in that "it's funny 'cause it's true" way, and even I could say that I recognized some characteristics of her family members in those onscreen. Frankly, I'm not sure whether the movie was made more as a "Hey white people, here's what Filipinos are like!" film or a "Hey Filipinos, aren't you glad someone finally made a movie about us?" film. Whatever the intention, I think it serves as a combination of the two. Review.
    I'll be out of town until late Saturday night at the Monty Burns Trash singles tournament. I'll have my cell phone of course, if you're desperate.

August 3, 2004

Ouch. The Theories of Persuasion grades were posted today. I got only 86 on the final, but that wasn't so bad... but it turns out that - and after saying that I hoped I wasn't being too overconfident - I bombed the paper. Rough. I still get a B+ in the class, which is hardly a bad grade, but it's kinda disappointing.

In other grade news, I got the midterm from US History back: A-, baby. Most of the class seemed to have done not so well on it, with some people I heard saying it was their worst grade on a test ever. People did so badly on the term identification section that the professor announced that there would be no ID section on the final at all. What did I get on that section? 49 out of a possible 50 points. It figures.

Other grades posted but which I didn't see a full breakdown for: A- in Intro to Fiction (which, based on our analysis last time, means I got a B+ or B on the final, most likely), and A for Family Communication (which means that I got no worse than a B on the final paper). In other good news, the posted grade for Motion Graphics was an A-. I had thought based on the syllabus that such grades were not assigned in this class, but apparently I was wrong, and happily so.

This Saturday is the Monty Burns solo Trash tournament out in Ann Arbor, which Alma and I are going to. Fun times ahead.

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This page last updated: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 10:06:03 AM