Holy Nerdgasm Batman!

If you are any sort of comic book fan/nerd (or even just a regular superman or batman fan) and haven't seen this cinematic from the DC Universe Online game yet, you are going to be in for a treat. This has got to be one of the best opening cinematic to a game I've seen in a long long time. Hell, you don't even need to be a comic book nerd to appreciate how cool it is. Just watch it already!

If only they could make a full length super hero film look this good. Hopefully someone in Hollywood takes note and commissions a full movie from this. Unfortunately, I've heard the game itself is only so so.

Oh, and here's the second cinematic from the game that was recently uploaded. Not as cool as the first one but still pretty damn good.

Cartoon Nostalgia Medley

Time for a little bit of nostalgia. See how many cartoons you remember watching as a kid (or even just remember) from this medley of cartoon theme tunes (there's 28 in all):

To my shame I remember watching every cartoon except for one which never made it to Irish shores, a Swedish cartoon called "Bamse". I think I may have had a misspent childhood.

Best Sci-Fi Action Flick Ever!

This little gem is from a recent Kollywood flick called "Endhiran". If you took The Terminator, The Matrix and Transformers, put them all into a blender, what you'd get would be the awesomeness that is Endhiran. The best sci-fi action flick ever! Be warned before you watch this Youtube clip. If you do, all other sci-fi action flicks you watch this year may be like watching a rerun of My Little Pony.

Fish and Chips

We have a canteen in work that usually does a fairly decent job at serving up some really good food during lunch. Today there was "fish and chips" on the menu. Now, bare in mind, I've never had the pleasure of having fish and chips in the States. In fact, I don't recall ever seeing it on any menu anywhere here, ever. So, half because I haven't had fish and chips in a while and half because I've never had the pleasure of trying "American style" fish and chips (which up till today I had always imagined would involve big fish and extra chunky chips) I was really looking forward to lunch.

Off I went to the canteen all bubbly, recanting to my work colleagues far fetched tales of big greasy bags of fish and chips got at the local "chipper" (note to my readers who are unfamiliar with my use of the colloquial term of "chipper", when I say "chipper" I refer to this or this and not this) in days of yore. Upon my arrival, I was presented with this:

Yes, technically speaking, that is a plate of fish and "chips". It's just the wrong type of "chips"!.  I was expecting these kind of chips and not "potato chips". 

I can only assume that when someone mentioned to the kitchen sttaff that it would be a great idea to throw fish and "chips" onto the lunch menu they should have clarified that they meant the non American term for "fries" and not "potato chips". Hells, a simple google image search would have even clarified that one right up.

Ah ,you wacky Americans and your literal interpretations of the American English language. You always find new ways to make me smile.

New Year, New Banner

First off, Happy New Year to my 3 or so readers :D Now aren't you all glad you came here?

I figured I should probably update my blog banner to something more appropriate to my current location considering I no longer live in Vancouver. Thus, I've swapped out the Vancouver harbour banner picture for  picture of LA at dusk.

I'll probably change the banner picture again once I get some wheels and can get out and about more. But until then, you have the sunset illuminating the lovely red glow of the LA smog (at least I'm pretty sure it's smog that's responsible for the incredible red glow, correct me if I'm wrong here) at dusk to greet you.

For those that missed it, here's what the old banner picture looked like....

Good times at Medieval Times

Last week I had the pleasure of being brought for dinner to "Medieval Times". For those not familiar with Medieval Times, it's sort of a theme restaurant where you can go for "Dinner and Tournament" (to quote the website) all set to the theme of being part of the crowd of a good old fashion jousting tournament back during the "medieval times". 

I was a little hesitant of the idea of pretending to be in "medieval times" watching a bunch of actors badly act out a jousting tournament while eating my dinner at the same time. But as it turned out it was a hellavalot of fun and the acting wasn't as bad or cheesy as I had expected. The actors playing the knights really went all out when striking each other with long swords, maces, battle axes etc. which added a lot to the choreographed fights.

To further add to the aunthenticity, the place is designed like a big jousting ring where everyone sits around the centre watching their knight duke it out for honour, victory and the affections of the king's daughter.

The menu itself was a set menu where your food is brought to you during the tournament by a "bar wench". No utensils are given so you eat off the plate with your hands which adds to the experience of being at an old fashion jousting tournament.

Everyone is given a knight to cheer on and is seated in the section corresponding to your knight. We got assigned the Blue knight to cheer on. And of course, there is one evil knight who is a dick. In this particular evening, this honour was given to the Green knight (seen below, gloating to the king after he had swiftly dispatched the Black and White knight after making fun of his girly arms or something to that effect).

There was a sort of story to the entire evening. I wasn't paying much attention to the story as I was more concerned about my chicken leg and the cheering for the death and carnage when the knights finally got down to the fighting. 

My knight, the Blue knight unfortunately did not win the tournament but he did get quite far before being questionably killed by the Red knight (whome he had previously, quite skillfully, slashed in the gut with a long sword).

Before getting to the Red knight, the Blue knight had to face the Yellow knight.

They jousted honourably....

...before the Blue knight knocked the Yellow knight off his horse. Whereby then the battle proceeded to combat to the death on foot...

After distpatching of the Yellow knight it was onto the Red knight who dubiously killed the Blue knight and who also went onto win the tournament. Of course, not without being slashed in the gut at least five times before hand.

However, the Red knight's road to victory was not a straight forward one. He first had to vanquish the dreaded evil Green knight before finally claiming victory. He was doing quite well until the Green knight being the dick he was, cheated and sent his henchman in to help. Thus capturing the Red knight and revealing that he also had captured the prince (whome I didn't even know existed up to this point as I wasn't really paying attention to the underlying storyline).

To cut a long story short, the Red knight and the prince manage to break free from their captors. A big battle ensues whereby it's the Red knight and prince versus the evil Green knight and his henchmen with the good guys ultimately winning and vanquishing the evil Green knight.

Alls well that ends well. Everyone's belly is full and there was much death and carnage and quoffing of beer/ale. Afterwards all the knights magically became undead and congregated in the bar allowing us lowly patrons to go and continuing our quoffing of beer with them and have our pictures taken with them if we so wished.

Rain Rain Go Away,...

Having grown up in Ireland and spent the last couple of years living in Vancouver, expecting rain during winter is pretty much the norm to me. Last week it started raining here after the whole month of November being dry, and sunny with temperatures averaging about 25 degree Celsius (approx. 77 degree Fahrenheit) every day.

So, when the rain starting coming down last week it was a welcome relief to me to finally get some sort of moisture in the air. In fact, its pretty much been raining non-stop for the last 5 days now. Well, to be honest, its been more a constant light drizzle rain with the odd spell of mild to heavy showers thrown in now and again.

To say that LA and its local inhabitants are unprepared for any sustained period of rain is a huge understatement. The drainage on the roads here are terrible and the general infrastructure here was just not built to take any sustained amount of rainfall. On top of that, the local LA drivers here have no idea of how to drive in the rain. Most people think its still perfectly OK to fly down the freeway at 100 miles per hour when its pissing rain and the roads are not draining the water properly.

As a result of a combination of all of the above, in the last few days the local news here has had a field day with stories of possible or impending flash floods in various areas and stories of big car accidents on freeways because of one car or other spinning off. There have been evacuations of neighbourhoods near hillsides because of possible mudslides and the local TV channels have periodically been flashing big scary red flash flood warning signs with matching scary siren noise in the middle of programs. The local news have dedicated about 80 percent if not more of its nightly news segment on freaking out about the non-stop rain and the chaos it's causing. The way the local news is going on about the rain, one would think the end of the world or another hurricane Katrina type situation was about to happen in LA.

Apparently according to the news, tonight we're meant to have a huge storm (I'm guessing that might equate about a really big down pour in LA standards) and then we should be back to sunny skies again on Thursday. 

To put things a little bit in perspective. Last year when I was living in Vancouver, around this time of year, it rained for almost 2 months without any let up. No one batted an eyelid and the only grumbling came from me and my wet socks.