Random thoughts

So there's this mall where I live and it has an outside marketplace.  I've been shopping at this mall for the last 10 or so years and they've always had street performers.  10 years ago there was this 18 year old kid juggling and he called himself "Juggle Boy".  When I went back recently I saw Juggle Boy again and it got me wondering, why hasn't he turned in to Juggle Man?  I guess juggling doesn't get you laid.

Tonight I'm going to a lebanese restaurant and they have a lot of really good food there, but they also have some weirder dishes  One of the dishes includes pickled cucumbers.  Aren't those just called pickles?

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Double feature movie review! How to train your dragon and Remember Me.

I decided that today I would write up a double feature movie review as that's how I watched these two movies.  First I want to say that I went to a drive in movie theater for the first time this past weekend in Henderson, NC.  I would recommed this experience to anyone.  The double feature was 6.50 and the concessions were very cheap.  Also, you got to watch the movie in the open air, which was nice considering it was in the 70's most of the night. 

First I want to review the movie "How to Train your Dragon".  This is an animated movie about a Viking boy who is terrible at being a Viking.  He's small, weak and not very good at doing anything that Vikings do.  However, he is smarter than the average Viking.  While his family and peers are off trying to smash and kill a bunch of dragons during a raid, Hiccup (the hero) shoots a net at the fiercest dragon of all...the "Night Fury".  He finds that he has wounded the dragon and while he wants to kill it to show his peers that he is a real Viking, he can't bring himself to do it.  Instead he winds up befriending the dragon and training it.  By learning a lot about the dragon Hiccup manages to become a local town hero.  This movie is fun for people of all ages and while it doesn't have a whole lot of depth, it is a very fun movie.  I would recommend it to anyone looking for a light hearted movie that will entertain you.  4.5/5 stars.

I spent only a short time reviewing the last movie so I could spend a while dissecting the Robert Pattinson movie "Remember Me".  About the ONLY upside to this movie is that it has the chick that plays Claire in TV's "Lost" as a main character.  The movie starts out with a mother and her daughter in a train station, being mugged.  After the muggers steal the mom's purse they brutally murder her in front of her daughter.  At this point I figured the movie was going to take a "Batmanesque" turn...it didn't (funny story though, I told my roommate that the movie was kind of like batman with a girl, 45 minutes into the movie he was all like "which girl is batgirl?"  When I told him that there wasn't really a batgirl he left).  In fact this scene has NO bearing on the rest of the movie. 

Fast forward to 15 or so years to the future.  The setting seems like it is maybe the late 1990's early 2000's.  Again this has no real bearing on the movie.  Robert Pattinson is introduced as the brooding outsider who doesn't get along too well with his father.  However, he gets along just great with his tween sister who is really good at art (this also has no bearing on anything).  Pattinson also had an older brother who comitted suicide (no bearing on anything). 

Pattinson and his college roommate go out and get in a fight with some houligans that were harrassing some other guys and the cops are called.  Pattinson gets arrested for mouthing off to the cop after the cop tells him to leave.  There's no real reason for the fight or for Pattinson to mouth of to the cop.  It just kind of happened.

Pattinson's rich father bails him out of jail and in his normal brooding ways, Pattinson is resentful of being bailed out.  Back at school, his roommate sees the cop that arrested them and he has a daughter who is really hot (Claire from "Lost").  So the roommate tells pattinson "You should try to date her because she's the daughter of the cop".  Pattinson says "no, I don't want to do that."  Then he sees the daughter (she was the daughter at the beginning who's mom is murdered), they hang out and really hit it off and then fall in love.  Because the movie is meant to teach teenagers a healthy way to enter relationships, the girl moves in with Pattinson after 3 dates. 

Then there's some random part about Pattinson's own father not going to his sisters art show and everyone is sad.  Pattinson hates his father even more.

At some point the girls father finds out she is dating the kid that he had arrested and says "I'm going to tell my daughter or you can".  So Pattinson comes clean and says "I dated you and your dad arrested me".  Thing is it wasn't like this huge big deal, you never got the feeling he was playing her or trying to get revenge.  The whole relationship is based on the fact that he feels like she "gets" him.

If this review seems a little disjointed it's because the movie was disjointed.  But here's how it ends (spoiler alert...I mean save 8 dollar alert):  Pattinson gets back together with the girl and makes peace with his father, I'm not exactly sure how.  Then he decides he's going to work for his dad and goes to his dad's office to meet him.  Shoot to the classroom with his sister and the teacher is writing on the chalkboard "Today is Sept.11th, 2001".  Shoot back to Pattinson in his fathers office near the top of the World Trade Centers.  Then you see the running and screaming all around New York City and everyone is crying.

WHAT THE FUCK!?%?!#$)   I mean really?  You went there?  9/11?  I will give the movie this, no one watching the movie could have predicted that this would come next.  The reason is because this SHOULDN'T have come next.  There was NO reason for it.  It didn't play into the story, which was lacking any semblance of a plot.  It didn't add to the movie at all, it didn't help move the story along (unless you count ending it as moving it along).  I have seen bad movies before, but this is easily in the top 10 of the worst movies ever made.  The only thing I can think about is that while writing the movie, the writer was all like "man this is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life, well you know except 9/11"  Then he was like, hey maybe if I remind people of 9/11 they wont think this is the worst thing they've ever seen.

This movie is good for one thing.  Sitting around with your friends and making fun of it.  If I had to choose one positive thing from the movie I would say that it makes you think something is going to happen.  You feel like the movie is going to be all tied together and make sense at some point.  That helped make the movie bearable, but then when it doesn't tie together you wind up feeling more gipped.  I give this movie a paultry .75/5   I would have given it a .5  but it might have looked like I wrote 5/5.

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Site updates!

Well guys, it's been 3 months and I have to say the site isn't exactly where I wanted it to be, though your continued support has made it all worthwhile.  In ad's I've made over 200 dollars to this point and have been paid out by google in the amount of 147 ish.  There's another 80 sitting in my ad account, but I can't get a payout until it's up over the 100 dollar mark.

As far as donations, well they've reached about 100 or so dollars, which when you think about it isn't terrible for three months.  I've done a lot of different sections on the site that have worked and some that have failed, but one thing I haven't been getting is feedback.  I'd really like you all to start sending me ideas, funny stories of your own, or just a way to go every now and again.  The 12konblack email box isn't doing so hot!  The old emails are lonely and want new ones.

Finally...the state of my debt.  When I started this in January I was at just above 23,500 in debt.  Since the start of this website I've made my own attempts to bring my debt down and I'm proud to say that as of April 15th I will be UNDER 20,000 dollars in debt.  WIth any luck I'll be down to 17,000 by the end of the year.  What does that mean?  Well it means that I really only need to raise 8,500 dollars, which is only about 8,250 more!  Please keep those donations coming and once again thank you for your support.

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My first movie review for the site: Precious

So this weekend I watched a whole bunch of movies and I think I'm going to start doing a regular movie review section.  It's easy, topical and I feel I can make it pretty fun.

Before you go any further I am going to have spoilers in this review, but I'll also tell you for this movie, these spoilers are going to save you the 8.50 that you would have shelled out to watch this movie.  You can thank me later.

All that I had heard about this movie was that it was heartwarming and based on a true story.  Sometimes I feel it's good to get in touch with my roots (your name is Toby boy), so I decided to let me inner oppressed black teenager out.

The movie started out like I expected, a fat young black (African-American? I can't keep up with political correctness) girl struggling to survive in the 'hood with an abusive mother gets kicked out of school because she's pregnant.  The goody two shoes white principal detects something is wrong and, as all educators in movies do, she pays a visit to her home to let her know about an alternative school that might be a better fit for her. That's when we find out that the baby is her second and both of them have been fathered by her dad.

At this point in the movie I can already tell you that the story is going to be her triumphing over her adversities because her alternative school teacher is going to give her hope.  I mean, here's a disgustingly ugly girl with a huge eating problem, abusive mom and two kids...how could life get any worse?  I really started to feel her pain, to empathize and sympathize with someone who's life is just terrible.  This movie started evoking emotions that I hadn't felt since watching "Dangerous Minds" way back in the 1990's.

Precious started to excel at school, had her second baby,  and eventually moved away from the abusive situation with her mother.  Her life was really beginning to get on track...enter M. Night Shyamalan for the twist.  She finds out her dad died of AIDS and that she is HIV positive.  Could life get any worse?

The movie sort of ends with her accepting that life sucks, but that she can make a difference for her child and is relatively heart warming.  The movie ended with me feeling terrible for this poor girl and wanting to find out what I could do to help her out.

This is when I got pissed off.  I did some research online and found out that this wasn't really based on a true story at all, it was basically a whole bunch of stories rolled into one (from the size of the actress it could have been a whole bunch of girls rolled into one as well).  It reminded me of this cartoon I watched once, where one of the characters was going to write a movie that was sure to win an Oscar.  It was about a mentally disabled Jewish boy set during the holocaust...oh and yeah the kid was also an alcoholic.  It was to be the saddest story ever made.  The only difference was that in the cartoon they were making fun of movies that are ridiculously over the top and in Precious they actually made the movie happen.

I think the reason I'm the most mad is that I feel lied to.  The girl in the movie never had a shot at a real life...never got to know what love was, never got to know how great life could be.  Each of her hardships were hard to overcome on their own, but all of them together would have been impossible for even the strongest of people.  That's why the movie was inspiring, so to find out that it was kind of fake was a slap in the face.  In fact, didn't Oprah sue someone for writing a book, saying it was a true story and then coming clean and saying it wasn't really her story?

I guess the reason that is relevant is that Oprah and Tyler Perry produced this movie.  The only question I have left is why didn't Tyler Perry dress up in a fat suit and play Precious?  The movie may have been more entertaining.

I give this movie a 3/5.  Worth watching on netflix if you have an account, but not worth renting or watching in the theater.

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