24 Hour Movie Marathon

Posted August 23, 2009 ·

A few months back I was checking out a site called iwearyourshirt.com and after clicking a few links found that Jason from IWYS and his buddies had done a 24 hour movie marathon. The idea sounded cool, so I called up some buddies to see if they’d be interested. Sure enough, I know a bunch of movie fanatics. The plans were made and today’s the day!

The idea is this: invite a bunch of friends over, each person brings a movie to share, draw movie names out of a hat to determine the order, sit back and watch a ton of movies with your friends. Since our group is just 8 people, we’ve asked each person to bring 2 movies.

The following is a time log of our adventures!

11:30 am – The TV is set up, food in the crock pot, snacks on the table… we are ready to go!
12:00 pm – Movie #1: Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (Paxton)
12:10 pm – DVD player fail. New DVD player set up, restart Ace Ventura
1:55 pm – Movie #2: Fight Club (John)
4:25 pm – Movie #3: Bubba Ho-Tep (Rob)
6:00 pm – Movie #4: Big Fish (John)
- 15 minute break to go grab some food.
8:30 pm – Movie #5: The Simpsons Movie (Blake)
10:00 pm – Movie #6: The Princess Bride (Chris)
11:45 pm – Movie #7: Castaway (Myya)
2:10 am – Movie #8: Grandma’s Boy (Chris)
3:45 am – Movie #9: Clay Pigeons (Marcia)
5:35 am – Movie #10: The Sixth Sense (Myya)
7:30 am – Movie #11: Super Troopers (Myya)
9:10 am – Movie #12: Man From Earth (Rob)
10:40 am – Movie #13: The Matrix (Adam)

End time: 12:50 pm for a total of 25 hours of movies.

Nobody was able to hold out the entire time without catching a little bit of sleep. Rob held out the longest and napped a bit during The Matrix.

We had an awesome group of people and though everybody is pretty tired right now, we all agreed that we’d do it again. Just not next weekend.


Filed Under: Entertainment, Movies

Comedy, the hard way

Posted August 16, 2009 ·

A week or two back a good friend invited me out for an evening at a comedy club here in town. He had received complementary tickets, and I was glad to have the opportunity to hang out with my friend, so this seemed like the makings of a great evening!

We arrived to the casino an hour early. We made our way to will call where we picked up our tickets without incident. Having at least 30 minutes to kill before it was time to make our way inside the show room, we stopped off at the bar and had a beer. We were having a great time BSing when I looked down and realized it was 5 minutes until show time. We drained our beers and headed on over.

When we walked up to the door I could already see inside. The place was empty except for maybe one or two tables. The hostess walked us to a table right up front. Having been to MANY a comedy show in the past, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be sitting so close. All it takes is for one comic who thinks he’s the next Don Rickles and you are in for a long night. We took our seats and a within a few minutes the MC for the evening took the stage to a smattering of applause. I immediately flagged down the waitress and ordered another beer. This was going to be tough.

A -large- part of the fun of going to a comedy club is laughing along with the rest of the crowd. There have been many times when somebody in the crowd gets laughing so hard that they, in a way, become part of the show. This fuels the rest of the crowd to laugh and cheer and because of it the comedian settles in to a rhythm with the crowd and feeds of it.

But what if nobody’s laughing?

Here’s the thing, there wasn’t anything wrong with any of the comedians specifically. If you put any of them in front of a crowd of a couple hundred people, they all would have done just fine. Especially the ‘headliner’. He was really funny. But, with only 8-10 people in the audience, it’s hard to build up any sort of real laughter. Think about it. If somebody tells you a joke, even if you laugh, you are only going to laugh for a couple seconds. Now, consider that not EVERYTHING the guy says is funny to all 8-10 people. So now you have 3 or 4 people doing little more than chuckling at any one time. This is not a situation where it’s going to be fun for the crowd or the comedian.

Thankfully the show wasn’t very long. That’s probably due to the fact that none of the comedians had to pause waiting for laughter to die down before telling their next joke. We were able to salvage the night by heading across town to catch the second set of the Sin City Sinners. What’s not to love about a bunch of rockers playing ’80s cover tunes in a small club with Ron Jeremy hanging out at a table with no less than 3 hot blond chicks at any given time?

If you plan on going to a comedy club and you walk in and realize the place has less than a dozen people in the audience, save yourself and ask for a refund immediately. You’ll thank me for it.

Filed Under: Entertainment, General Tagged With: ,

Goodbye John Hughes

Posted August 8, 2009 ·

I was 15 when The Breakfast Club came out. I remember going to see it at the Del Amo mall with my grandma. About half way through the movie she fell asleep. Not me. I was riveted. I connected with these characters. They all seemed like people I was going to school with myself. I felt their pain, I knew their struggles. For the first time I could remember, it felt like this movie was speaking directly to me. Over 20 years later and I still consider it one of my favorite all-time movies.

I was sad to heard that John Hughes, the writer of so many classic movies from the ’80s had died of a heart attack. He was a man who is responsible for some so many classic movies. I’ll bet you’d have a difficult time finding somebody who doesn’t love at least one of his movies. Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Mr. Mom, Vacation, Home Alone, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and, of course Planes, Trains & Automobiles. And that’s only part of his list.

I found an excellent article written by a lady who, as a young girl, became pen pals with John Hughes. It was very touching and shows how not everybody in Hollywood is a jaded, money grubbing prick. Just most of ‘em. ;)

So next time you are sitting down to throw a movie in the DVD player, reach for a John Hughes classic and tip your hat to the man who has given us so many great films and even greater characters.

Filed Under: Movies Tagged With: ,

Reckless Kelly and Micky and the Motorcars in LA

Posted April 10, 2009 ·

Chris and I are big fans of the bands Reckless Kelly and Micky and the Motorcars. It has even been mentioned that we might be groupies. For your consideration, I present to you the charges:

  • We’ve seen Micky and the Motorcars in Vegas one time.
  • We’ve driven to Los Angeles to see both bands together twice.
  • We’ve driven to Idaho to see both bands together once.
  • We are planning to drive back to Idaho in August to see them play again.

Verdict: Guilty. We’re groupies.

We left the house in Vegas around 8 and made it to grandma’s house just after lunch. Dropped off the kids and grandma’s house, drove around the south bay for a bit and then headed up the 405 freeway in afternoon traffic. Ahh, how I don’t miss the 405 parking lot… We had dinner at a tiny place called Dan Tana’s, that seems to be a bit of a hidden treasure. After dinner we walked next door and got in line. Even though I grew up in So Cal, I had never before been to the Troubadour before.

It probably doesn’t help the groupie argument to tell you we were actually the first ones in line.

First up was Micky and the Motorcars. Of the four shows we’ve seen, this was the best set list by far. They played both mine and Chris’ favorite songs, plus a slew of other great tunes that we both really like. The sound down front wasn’t great, but it’s always a blast being right up front with all the drunken crazy chicks.

One of the great things about going to see these guys is that before and after their set, they typically hang around the bar area and are extremely accommodating. They’ll hang out and chat with fans right up until show time and then again after their off stage all the way through the end of the other bands playing.

After a quick set change, next up was Reckless Kelly. By the time they went on stage, the place had filled up pretty well. This means more drunk chicks to hang out with down front. This is really a good and bad thing. Good because it adds to the entertainment value of the show, bad because the likelihood of getting drinks spilled on you increases ten fold.

Reckless Kelly came on around 10:15. Just like with Micky, they played a ton of our favorite songs and we both agreed this was a better set list than either of the two times we had seen them previously. Part of that could be due to the fact that they played for 2 full hours. About 3/4 of the way through the show, Chris and I had had enough of the drunken chicks down front and decided to move a little further back. The place was small enough that even from the back, we were still only 20 feet from the stage. Plenty close to still enjoy the show and much less likely to end up wearing Bacardi and Coke.

When the band went off stage before their encore, Chris and I took the opportunity to go check out the merchandise and we each got a Micky and the Motorcars shirt and I got a Reckless Kelly sticker to add to my laptop. We made it back in time to hear them do a cover of the Beatles’ Revolution and then end the show with Crazy Eddie’s Last Hurrah.

Rather than sticking around after the show to meet the bands again, we high-tailed it out of the Troubadour and headed off to Pink’s Hot Dog stand to meet my sister and her boyfriend for a late night snack. Pink’s had an hour wait but they had already been in line for 55 of it so we snuck right in there.

We had a great time seeing two excellent live bands and you can be sure that this will not be the last time we see either band play live. If things go as planned we’ll be in Idaho for the Braun Brothers Reunion in August and HOPEFULLY we can get the bands to add Las Vegas to their list of places to play! Do yourself a favor and pick up Naive by Micky and the Motorcars, and, Reckless Kelly Was Here.

Filed Under: Entertainment Tagged With:

Cirque-and-Blog, Zumanity Style!

Posted March 29, 2009 ·

This past Thursday, Chris and I joined a dozen Las Vegas bloggers for the first ever Cirque-and-Blog event. It was our second time seeing the show, though our first time was more than 3 years ago, so I was very much looking forward to seeing it again. From what I had heard from several people, the show has gone through several changes since we saw it last.

Thanks to Jessica Berlin (on twitter @JessBerlin), we were treated with complimentary tickets for the show. As if that wasn’t enough, she also set up a meet and greet with several of the cast members from the show. How cool is that? We arrived about an hour before show time and were let in to the lobby of the theater 15 minutes before the rest of the crowd. We were encouraged to take as many photos as we wished while we mingled with the VERY gracious cast members. It was really cool getting to see the detail of the costumes up close.

Chris with the cast of Zumanity 

John @ ZumanityJohn with The Twins 

After we were done mingling, we headed to our seats. On our first trip to the show we sat 2 rows from the stage but way off to the side. While those seats weren’t terrible, our seats for this showing were awesome. We were center stage right behind the sound booth. If you have your choice when going to see this show, aim for the middle seats! As with most Cirque shows, what’s going on right in the middle of the stage is usually only part of the entire scene. There’s action stage left and right, overhead, etc. Sitting in the middle makes taking all this in way easier!

dance_on_tvhoops 

The shot above (left) was from one of the newer acts in the show. The moves this girl pulled off on a stripper’s pole were like nothing even the most seasoned strip club aficionado has seen. Definitely a welcome addition to the show! I was glad to see the school girl with the hoola-hoops was still in the show. How she’s able to keep half a dozen hoops going while twisting and turning hanging from a wire is beyond me.

midnight_bath 

The midnight bath was another hold over from the last time we saw the show. Before pouring milk all over each other, the two actors used the bath tub and some lubricant to pull off some intricate moves that landed them in some steamy positions. Definitely hot.

Big thanks to Jessica and the entire cast of Zumanity for inviting us to the show! We had a great time at the show and hopefully it won’t be another 3 years before we see it again. If you want to go see the show, now is the time. Jessica passed along a link to 35% discount tickets that are good through the end of May. Don’t pass it up! And, if you are interested in going to the next Cirque-and-Blog, follow @JessBerlin on twitter for details.

Filed Under: Entertainment Tagged With: ,

Good group + Good cause = Great Event!

Posted February 13, 2009 ·

Last night we went to the Revolution Lounge at the Mirage casino to take part in the first ever Twestival to raise awareness and money for Charity:Water. Las Vegas was one of roughly 175 cities around the world taking part in the Worldwide event that was organized around the Twitter community.

To give you a little background on Charity:Water, they are a non-profit organization that is bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Over the past few years they have raised over 7 million dollars and funded 1200+ water projects around the world. These projects range from hand-dug wells, deep wells, rainwater harvesting schemes and biosand filters.

The event last night was an absolute blast. The Revolution lounge has interactive tables that are touch sensitive. As you drag your hand across them, a built in screen will paint different objects across the table. Ours painted with flower petals while others used squares & circles and other random shapes. You can see a pic of the table here. Also on the tables they were scrolling all messages on Twitter that included the tag twestival. This of course meant that we would send tweets and then go back to staring at the table to watch our tweet scroll by. In this photo you can see my tweet being scrolled on the table. Of course I had to tweet about it, too. For a geek like me, the Revolution lounge was a very cool place to hang out!

The bar was serving a free drink called a Tweetini. It was basically a lemon drop with Blue Curacao added in. They were crazy-good. You could order other drinks as well, but they were not on the house so it’s no wonder I had 3 Tweetinies which made today at work a fair bit painful. After a few Tweetinies I took it upon myself to ask the DJ if we could “RickRoll this bitch.” He was kind enough to oblige and I made it back to the bar in time to hear the groaning of my friends as Rick Astley started belting out the hits.

If you weren’t able to make it to the Twestival with us last night, you can check out photos from Twestival events all over the world in the Flickr Twestival photo group. Or, if you’d like to get involved with the Charity:Water project, check out their site at charitywater.org/getinvolved/.

Big thanks to Manya for organizing the Las Vegas portion of the Twestival. She did a fantastic job and everybody in attendance had a great time.

Filed Under: Entertainment, General, Social Media

When you know you are right…

Posted February 11, 2009 ·

Last night my wife and I were watching an old episode of Cash Cab that we had recorded on Tivo. We’ve been fans of the show for a long time, so we’ve seen most of the episodes. But, we were happy to find an episode had been recorded that we hadn’t seen yet. Off we go for our virtual ride-along in the Cash Cab…

A group of 3 people get in to the cab. It appears to be a husband/wife team with a friend tagging along. The friend got in first and sat in the back. The wife got in next and sat behind the driver’s seat. The husband gets in last and takes the Hot Seat. This is the seat who must say the official answer to each question. The host, Ben Bailey, does the intro, asks if they want to play, they agree and away they go. First round, easy questions. Ben asks the first easy question. All 3 of the passengers agreed on the simple answer and as the player gave his answer, he nodded his head emphatically several times. Ben confirmed that the answer was correct and they were up $25 bucks. Question 2, another easy one. The team agreed again on the simple answer and as the player gave his answer, he again nodded his head. They, again, got the answer correct.

At this point, I started mimicking his head nodding as we played along from home. We laughed each time it happened.

Several questions went by with the same head nodding occurring as another correct answer was given. But then something interesting happened. A question was asked and instead of the 3 people in the cab immediately agreeing on the correct answer, this time they were unsure. Rather than use a shout-out for help, they decided on an answer. The player in the hot seat give the answer. STRIKE ONE! The answer was incorrect. We backed up Tivo to make sure we just saw what we thought we saw. Sure enough,instead of nodding his head in agreement as he answered, he was shaking his head from side to side. He knew the answer was wrong and gave it anyway.

A few more questions followed and they were all answered correctly with more emphatic nodding to go along. By this time I’m fascinated with how it was playing out. Then, something happened. A question was asked and the players were unsure of the answer. With time running out the player gave an answer that he thought might be correct, but he wasn’t sure. As he gave the answer, his head was still. No head nodding or shaking. This time he simply had no idea if he was right or wrong.

They got the question correct and answered a couple more with head-nodding accuracy until they reached their destination. They risked it all on the double-or-nothing video bonus question and they all nodded along as they gave the answer that they were 100% sure was correct. They exited the cab after winning $1,600.

It makes me wonder what sort of additional information we give off with our body language as we talk to people in our day-to-day lives. I’m sure there are deep-rooted psychological explanations for how this guy was answering the questions and nodding when correct, shaking when incorrect and sitting still when unsure. But, they are all way over my head. But, for me it lead to one of the most interesting rides in the Cash Cab that I’ve seen in quite some time.

Filed Under: Entertainment Tagged With: ,

Book Review: Crooked Little Vein

Posted January 27, 2009 ·

crooked_little_veinFor some books it takes a couple chapters to catch my interest. For some it’s only a few pages. But Crooked Little Vein had me hooked on the very first page.

Crooked Little Vein is the first novel written by Warren Ellis. But, this is hardly his first published work. He’s an award winning writer of comic books and graphic novels, including the popular Transmetropolitan series. I haven’t read these yet, but after enjoying his novel as much as I did, I don’t know how I could not go back and read his previous work.

The book is about a private eye who gets hired by a guy from the White House to retrieve the Constitution of the United States. No, not the Constitution that everybody knows about. This one is the “real” Constitution that has invisible amendments and even some sort of supernatural powers. The book has been missing for decades and keeps changing hands in the seedy underbelly of sex, crime and politics.

As you may already know, I’m a HUGE fan of Chuck Palahniuk’s books. Crooked Little Vein reads much the same way for me. I’m likely not the only person to think that as I was lent this book by a fellow Palahniuk fan who said to me, “The whole time I’m reading the book, I knew I had to loan it to you as soon as I was done.”

I’m not a fast reader. It normally takes me several weeks to finish a book this size. I finished Crooked Little Vein in less than 4 days. This means most people will finish the book in a day or two.

You can find out more about Warren Ellis at his website, warrenellis.com and for those of you on Twitter, you can find Warren at @warrenellis

Filed Under: Entertainment, General Tagged With: ,

Las Vegas Bowl

Posted December 21, 2008 ·

I still have never been to a pro football game, but yesterday I did go to my second ever college game. The first game I ever went to was Michigan Vs USC in the Rose Bowl. I think the year was 1979, but I’m not sure. Last night was the Las Vegas Bowl at Sam Boyd Stadium. Even though it was cold, we had a great time.

We were lucky enough to get free tickets to go with a group of friends. We all met up at a bar about a mile from the stadium. We had a quick beer and then decided it would be better to leave our cars at the bar and walk to the stadium rather than trying to fight the traffic. So we bundled up for the cold and got to walking. We made it to the stadium and were in route to our seats as David Hasselhoff was singing the National Anthem. We missed him singing, but stepped out of the tunnel just in time to see the fighter jets do a fly-over just at the end of the song. Wow, that was awesome to see!

We made it to our seats, which of course were on the exact opposite side of the stadium from where we entered, just in time for the kickoff. Our seats, as you can see from the photo below, are basically right on the 50 yard line.

The guy who gave us the tickets was rooting for Arizona. Since I couldn’t have cared less who won, we too cheered for Arizona. This was especially fun since we were sitting on the opposing team’s side of the field. Though, the groups right in front of us and behind us were also cheering for Arizona as well. At one point one of the receivers on Arizona’s side made a really nice catch and my buddy mentions to me, “That guy is from Las Vegas.” The kid in front of us, maybe 13 or 14 years old, turns and says, “Yeah, that’s my cousin.” He was pretty stoked and was having a great time. It was pretty cool to see.

We did get pretty lucky. It was quite cold and we had to stay bundled up for the entire game, but at least it didn’t get windy. Had the wind kicked up, the cold would have been unbearable for a sissy like me and I’d have been headed back to the bar. But instead, we stayed for the entire game and celebrated Arizona’s 31-21 victory over BYU with the crowd of 40,047 people.

And before I go, here’s our friend Jason at the game.

I remember my first beer, too.

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With:

Mid-week Concerts

Posted December 11, 2008 ·

It’s Thursday night in Las Vegas. Tomorrow I have to be to work at 7:00. Tonight, however, we have tickets to see Gary Allan in concert at the House of Blues. I’m predicting tomorrow morning is gonna suck.

When I got off work today, I knew we were going to the concert tonight, but the one thing I wasn’t sure of was what time the show started. My guess was that the doors would open at 6:00 and the show would start at 7:00. There’d be an opening band and then Gary Allan would be on stage around 8:30, play until about 10:00 and we’d be home by 10:20. I was wrong on all accounts. When I checked the tickets, it just says “Doors at 8:00.” This tells me several things;

  • There will be no opening act
  • The show won’t start until 9:00
  • The show is not going to end until 10:30 or so
  • I was right, tomorrow is gonna suck

I’ve been to the House of Blues many times. I know that for their mid-week concerts (and maybe their weekend concerts), they have a curfew. I thought I remembered hearing that it’s a city ordinance, but I could be wrong on this. I know one thing, though; I am not a fan of mid-week concerts that start so late. I don’t think I’m getting the value I deserve for my ticket price. If I’m going to pay $40 to see a show, I expect either an opening band or the headliner better play 2 and a half hours at least.

My wife and I both enjoyed the show tonight while we were there. But as I was heading home and thinking about the situation, it really irked me. I don’t know that I would skip a show just because of these circumstances, but it will definitely play a part in my decision making prior to purchasing tickets in the future.

Filed Under: Music, Ranting Tagged With: