Welcome, fellow man, to my part of this blog

Hello, fellow man. Today I will be addressing our relationship in depth. I've never been much for keeping a journal and my memory isn't the best. Therefore, the best remedy I have been able to come up with is blogging. I won't have to bother buying any pens or expensively blank books with pointless gold leaf along the edges anymore, not that it was ever my greatest temptation. Perhaps better yet, I have something more to do when online than looking at the weekend's sport scores a second time. Yes, my beloved Arizona Cardinals and Utah State Aggies are both still struggling. Both games' scores have remained the same due to a severe lack of uncovered conspiracies within the sports world. I'll continue having faith in both teams and it will eventually pay off. This I know with more certainty than 99% of everything else I pretendingly claim to know, even though I really know that there are fewer than five things in this world of which I'm truly sure. The eventual payoff of Aggie/Cardinal football fanhood is without doubt one of those five.
Is it time to muse upon my current state of mind? All one of my current readers (including myself) vote "yes"! It's unanimous, then. Several years ago I lost a certain trust in my fellow man. Am I willing to trust this devious "fellow man" with my real thoughts and opinions? The answer, since at least age 15, has been no. Do I trust fellow man to a certain point? Of course I do. I am, contrary to the belief of many, not a hermit. Thus, trusting my fellow man is required to a low degree. I trust that when I go to the store, fellow man will have stocked the shelves with food for me to purchase. I trust fellow man to walk past me on the street and acknowledge my existence if I accost her (I envision "fellow man" to be a female, despite her mannish name and that fact that half of all fellow men are, in fact, men).

Your face goes here.

I expect fellow man to be everywhere when I walk into my living room, into class, or drive down the freeway. I trust fellow man not to physically harm me, even though she has failed even at this simple task several times. I trust fellow man to do whatever she must to get by in the world. For I am nothing but another fellow man in her eyes. Occasionally, I let a fellow man into my life. Perhaps she and I are neighbors, classmates, roommates, grade school friends, or mutual Cardinal hopefuls. Any of these or nearly anyone else. In either case, sometimes a fellow man is welcomed into my life. I tell these few, unlucky fellow men who have stumbled into my life many of what they consider to be my strangest thoughts. I don't know what I want. Nor does my fellow man. Fellow man claims to want to know why I won't let her further into my life. Recently I have allowed fellow man to catch a glimpse of my true thoughts. She was frightened, petrified, and immediatey recoiled. Fellow man has failed me again. What do I do? I treat fellow man like who she is. A stranger. Fellow man is not to be trusted, along with the French. Here's to you, fellow man. Welcome to this blog.

Risky Business

Are you cool? If you don't take risks then you aren't. And Spencer and Nathan will make that painfully obvious to you. This is about having courage to reject the norm. It's about taking life into your own hands and not relying on fate, chance or gravity to ruin your day. Be bold. Be dangerous. Be loud. As you listen to the Masters of self help, you will realize that being cool is cool again. And nobody does cool better than Poddery Barn.

It may be old, but it isn't hidden. And you should hear it ring.

Zac Strips a Movie: Resident Evil: Retribution

Well this was the reunion episode of the series. They were kinda tired from all the "writing" and they decided they would just reintroduce some of the old characters and creatures to make it easy, because writing new things is just too hard. I should have known what I was in for since the director clearly has a type of movie he loves to make. That type just happens to be crappy ones with lots of violence and nonexistent plots. I will give you a few examples here: Death Race, DOA Dead or Alive, The Three Musketeers (the crappy new one), Alien VS Predator, Mortal Combat (not terrible) and five Resident Evil films. I am sure there is a special place in Hell reserved for this man; Ricky claims it is right next to the man responsible for Skyline and I hope that for all eternity they are forced to watch each other's movies. Each moment of agony they suffer as they attempt to kill each other, without results since you can't murder corpses, is well deserved for the pain and suffering they have caused to me and my friends.

This is the intro to my nightmares.

As you already know there wasn't much of a plot so I will give you what I was thinking as the movie progressed.

Movie starts: "Hey that intro was kinda cool."
8 minutes in: "Oh look they are going to rescue Alice so they can get on with the rest of the story."
15 minutes in: "This rescue will be ending shortly."
35 minutes in: "Wow this rescue is taking longer than I thought."
40 minutes in: "Are those zombie Nazis?'
80 minutes in: "Hey look they are on the surface and Alice is fully rescued! Oh wait no she isn't. Stupid submarines."
90 minutes in: "This looks awesome they finally have gathered together as the last remnants of humanity to fight the infected! The evil army outside is huge and awesome looking! This is going to be fantastic!"
93 minutes in: "Wait those had better not be the credits. That cannot be the end of this! I got Skylined* again!"

*Skylined- To be Skylined is to be suckered into a movie with the promise of something decent. As the movie goes along you hate so many things about it, but at the end something happens that makes you think the movie might have found redemption. As you get your hopes up again and begin to believe anew the credits begin. It is the Rick roll of the movie world, but without the catchy song.

You never should give them up Rick, never.

I was so blown away that this had happened to me again that as the credits began to roll I began to laugh. Not a quiet gentle laugh, but one of those guffaws that come from deep in the belly. It was the only reaction that made sense to me at the time. I felt that if I didn't laugh I would be forced to rip up the row of seats we were on and use them to batter the screen until I collapsed in the shredded remains of the fabric, weeping for an end of terrible movies that I know will never come.  The movie was a constant barrage of poor acting, poor writing and stupid one liners. The only redeeming quality of the movie was the fact that Milla Jovovich is an attractive lady and things got shot.

Don't see this movie. I don't care if you have nothing better to do. It is not worth dying a little more on the inside just to kill some time.

Rating: 1 Star

Verbal Vomit Episode 1

The Premiere of Landon and Rebecca's podcast, Verbal Vomit. This is a first, uncut and unscripted, so be prepared for a little awkwardness.

Discussed is The Electric Slide, proved is the fact that BYU's crime is more easily guessed, and a big shout out to author Aaron Starmer as well as birthday boy Adrian Miner.

BYU's Quest for Redemption

BYU looks to erase the memories of last year and beyond. 

Zac Strips a Movie: Lawless

Any movie based on a true story is subject to artistic license. In this case the movie is based on a book called "The Wettest County in the World". This book just happens to be written by one of the descendants of the Bondurant brothers and who in the world would try and paint a better picture of their ancestors? Now I am not going to say that he purposefully put them in a better light to look more like the Han Solo version of rebels (I totally am), but it seems like a bit of a stretch to say that "when the law became corrupt, outlaws became heroes." like it does on the movie poster. What are they the modern day version of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men? They clearly were in it for their own profit and not to improve life of the community.

I was quite pleased with the casting of this movie for the most part. The only one I was worried about was Shia LaBeouf. He has always just come across as super whiny and just about the worst thing ever. In Transformers he seemed to feel entitled to everything because he had done something noble once. I helped an old lady across the street the other day and I don't think I deserve some huge reward or howdy do about it. Same thing goes for his characters in Wall Street (awful movie) and Indiana Jones (awfuler movie). In all honesty I miss the young LaBeouf from Holes. Why can't he be more like that?

What do you know? Age IS related to douchiness in his case.

I hold the rest of the cast in a much higher regard. I am a huge Tom Hardy fan and that made me super excited for this movie. The best news for me is that the filming for this took place at the same time as filming for The Dark Knight Rises so he was still all huge and bulky. We also were going to see Guy Pearce as a crazed lawman in from Chicago and Jessica Chastain as a former dancer looking for some quiet. Gary Oldman is a part of the cast as well, but he appears in the movie so briefly I think they just had an agreement that if they could use his name in the marketing they would throw fistfuls of money at him.

Ah the joys of being a name prostitute

With all the cast in place I was hoping for a good story. As the movie starts we see the three Bondurant brothers working together as moonshine makers and small time bootleggers during the Prohibition Era. Shia is the youngest and whiniest brother (big surprise there). Tom is the middle brother, but he is in charge of the operation due to his levelheadedness and supposed invincibility. The oldest brother is a drunken brawler who at times is not dependable.

Things are going along just fine until a new deputy, who also happens to be an OCD sociopath, comes into town and demands that he and the other officials need a cut of the bootlegging profits or they will be shut down. That is a quite shady, but is it really surprising that someone would try to take advantage of people doing something illegal? Well that whole thing didn't make the non-murderable Bondurant very happy, and he made his feeling known.

Kinda like this but outside and more old timey

So the movie goes on and the two sides to battle and one comes out the victor. I enjoyed the movie overall, but there were a few places where I felt the story dragged a little. There were some very good action scenes and also some moments that made me laugh. There was even a scene that I swear took place near Hogwarts. If you were to guess what scene and you said the one where Harry has to face the dementors on a frozen lake you would be correct.

Still not 100% sure which movie this came from

Rating 4 Stars

Back to School

There are many things to like about Fall. Falling leaves. Cooler weather. Corn mazes. Football. Those things are all great but Fall just isn't Fall if you don't go back to school. 

I attended Utah State University for four years. That was my biggest mistake. I finished college way too quickly. I have many friends from school that are still there. And yea, I'm extremely jealous of them. 

Were the cookies that good?

School was more than just fun, it was downright shocking. Some of the more shocking school memories I have were of a streaker during a screening of Star Trek (Old Spock wasn't the only one who couldn't keep his pants on), packing 70 people into my apartment for a cookie party without anyone notifying Old Farm management, and witnessing Jaycee Carroll break the all-time scoring record in the Spectrum (how that building kept from collapsing in the excitement is a huge mystery). But none of that shocked me more than the countless times I heard people say that they couldn't wait to be done with college. 

Excuse me?! I don't get it. What exactly are you looking forward to? School is as good as it gets. And that's nothing to get disappointed about. 

Seriously? Why am I smiling?!

I've heard a lot of excuses for this insanity defense. Usually people are sick of finals, homework, roommates, or going to class. The last one is my personal favorite. Going to class. Most full time students take about 15 credits. (If you're smart you'll take less, but not so you can focus more on the classes you'll have.) That means they spend about fifteen hours a week in class. That's less than most part time jobs require you to work. And it's fifteen hours spent learning about something that (hopefully) is interesting to you. After you graduate you then start (hopefully?) working. That's 40+ hours a week. So unless you don't like class because it's too short then you've got it all wrong thinking that after graduation it will be better for you. 

What about homework, studying, and finals? Yea, these three can get pretty annoying, but it's only because you're doing them at the wrong time. Friday and Saturday nights are not good times for school work. If your study group can only get together on a Saturday, you've got to quit. You're better off doing it alone. They're masochists! There are only three reasons a study group leader would want to study during prime social hours:

1. She wants you to become so disillusioned with school that you drop out thus opening up career opportunities for herself in the future.  
2. He's trying to help his roommate date your girlfriend.
3. He's trying to date you. He obviously doesn't have a clue how.

Unless your assignment is due in three hours or your project is due the next day you can always push it back to do later. You won't always have chances to participate in a city-wide snowball fight, to watch that new movie with the girls next door, or take a last minute trip to Los Angeles. 

Meet Brandon. We met him at church. He let us sleep in his house.

You will, however, always have another chance to study. Try studying during the day when you don't have class. You'll be glad you did.

College is the one time in your life when you will live within walking distance of dozens of friends. There is always somebody nearby who wants to do something and that something is usually pretty cool. If you're roommates are lame, it's a good thing you have hundreds of cool neighbors.

After school you will grow up and move out of your college neighborhood into a "normal" neighborhood. Everyone locks their door in a "normal" neighborhood. And yea, it will be pretty weird for you to just go up to some random house, knock, and ask to play. It worked when you were five. It worked when you were at college. And it won't work again until you are in a nursing home. 

Where else can you comfortably eat cereal out of a sombrero?

If having less free time, working more, and having less social opportunity is your idea of fun then by all means, keep looking forward to that blissful day of graduation. If it were possible for me to have spent even less time worrying about my classes, I wish I would have. Then maybe I would have failed them. And then I'd be happily going back to school. 

Jogger. Teacher. Podder.

Season 2 Episode 1: Eight months. Eight long, desolate, Tony's Pizza-esque months. We suffered too, dear listener. You were not alone during those horrible work days, searching iTunes hopelessly for just one thing worth downloading. We missed listening to our voices as well.

Today we make up for it. Today we make our come back, our season two debut. We do so stronger. More suburban. Eloquenter. And we bring with us our best guest yet. The jogger. The teacher. The podder. A man who requires but one title and one name: Doctor Gene.

One day Gene will have his own statue.