This show just gets better and better. This is the first season I was able to keep up with as it aired and that's basically because I spend too much time on the Internet and didn't want anything spoiled for me.
That said, after watching the Season 4 finale this past Sunday, I can safely say that I haven't wanted been this excited for the next season in a long time—probably since the end of LOST season 3. (You know, the first flash forward episode.)
I spent the morning reading the show's creator, Vince Gilligan, break down this season episode by episode and the more I read, the more brilliant I think he is. Everything about this show is great, the writing, the casting, the direction, the music, and my God, the acting. Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul and especially Giancarlo Esposito are all fantastic.
I can't wait for it all to come crashing down next season. Too bad we have to wait until July 2012 for it to start again.
Two more things:
1) Don't click this link unless you're 100% caught up. But for the rest of you that are, this is "that shot." You know, the one (or at least one of them) that made us all go 'You've got to be fucking kidding me!' and then 'Holy shit!'
2) I haven't been able to stop listening to this song since Sunday night.
For the past few weeks I've been hitting a bunch of haunted houses around the city for an article I was writing for City Weekly. I actually enjoyed myself a lot more than I expected. Once the article goes into the archives I'll have the whole thing up on here. But until then, head over to their site and check it out or grab this week's issue.
City Weekly -- You might think that if you’ve seen one haunted house, you’ve seen them all—but that’s not entirely true. Though there are common themes, no two haunts are exactly the same. Each has its own distinct vision of providing a good, old-fashioned scare.
The trailer hit earlier this week and now I have no desire at all to see it. Ever. It just looks incredibly boring and not at all what I hoped, but exactly what I expected, if that makes any sense.
Halloween started off as something much different than what it's become, but it's still way too evil for some people.
And by some people, I mean Evangelical Christians.
The origins of the holiday aren't exact, with some people attributing it to Romans and others saying it evolved from an and old Celtic festival. Either way, it's become basically one day a year (that gets stretched out an entire month) for people to celebrate scary things, dress up in costumes and eat candy. No one uses it as an excuse to raise the dead or hold sacrifices.
But Christians are getting upset (like they always do) about the fact that it's a holiday that doesn't celebrate Jesus. So they're taking it back.
Not only that, they're giving it an awesome new name: Jesus' Ween.
Okay, I'll admit that I added the apostrophe at the end of Jesus, but that doesn't make it any less silly.
I think this means that Christians will be handing out bibles and facts about God on October 31, largely as a promotional stunt for the first two weeks in November which is some sort of festival called "Jesus Win!"
But still, JesusWeen? That's just ridiculous.
I have plenty of Christian friends and I like seeing them and talking to them. We just can't talk about Christianity or God. I can't listen to them talking about a man in the sky watching over us, or how God placed dinosaur bones on the earth to test our faith. I can't keep a straight face listening to that, so it's just better to avoid it.
And for what it's worth, I don't go out of my way to talk about NOT being Christian or anything like that. Fair is fair.
What are the chances of Jesus' Ween actually replacing Halloween? I bet the odds are pretty slim—mostly because of the name.
If you're a Jazz fan like I am, there are definitely a few players on the current roster you're just not sure about.
For every one fantastic game that Kirilenko played, he gave you five borderline terrible ones. Okur (prior to injury) was either 100% on or 100% off. Millsap, as much as I love him, completely disappears for like 20 minutes each game.
Then we have C.J. Miles. For years, (literally years) beat writers, bloggers, announcers, talk show hosts and everyone else keep reminding me of his potential, that he's still young and once it all clicks for him, the rest of the NBA better watch out.
The problem with that is that C.J. has been in the league for six years. If it hasn't clicked yet, I don't think it's going to. He's an effective player from time to time, but he's killed the Jazz far more times than he's saved them.
When we matched OKC's offer sheet to keep him around, I wasn't upset because it wasn't a lot of money. But it was a 4-year deal, which meant that I was going to have to suffer through his erratic play for another four seasons.
I don't really know how the lockout works, but I'm pretty sure the 11-12 season would be Miles' last under his current contract, but since it's becoming increasingly clear that there's not going to be an 11-12 NBA season, I kind of think we're through with him, which would be okay with me.
I'm sick of him. I don't trust him. I want to, but I don't. I want him to be the player that everyone has been telling me he'll be, but he's not and I don't want to keep waiting for him to become that player.
All of that was a super long-winded segue into the fact that thanks to my old boss Rachel Piper, I found out that C.J. Miles has some hip-hop tracks floating around.
I knew he rapped, because my friends in the band Reviver have been trying to get a guest spot from him on one of their new tracks for a year. They've exchanged Tweets, but I don't think anything ever came of it. But even if it did, Reviver/C.J. wouldn't have shit on Foekus and Cherem.
I don't know a lot about hip-hop, but I know that this isn't terrible. There are definitely far worse NBA star-turned rapper tracks out there (Kobe Bryant feat. Tyra Banks, anyone?) but at least he's spending the lockout doing something productive. God forbid he'd be working on his shooting.
Things have been good out here. Only rained a bit that second day and it's been nice ever since. Humid, but not raining. Humidity I can handle. Rain I can handle too, but it bugs me since walking is kind of important.
My birthday was last Thursday and I turned 31. You know what that means? It means my ID expired while I was out here. And since the TSA are a bunch of assholes, I can only imagine that trying to get through airport security with an expired ID isn't going to be the easiest thing in the world. So to be on the safe side, my dad went to my apartment, got my passport and over-nighted it out here. Hopefully it gets here before I have to leave for the airport.
On the plus side, I downloaded a Blogger app for my iPad and they finally released a decent one for the iPhone, so I can actually post more things now when I'm not home. Awesome for all of us, right?
It's been raining more than it hasn't since I've been here, which means a lot of museums and other inside things. It did let up for a few hours, long enough for Dan Fletcher and I to wander around Central Park without getting drenched.
Saw The Descendents, H2O and The Suicide Machines last night and it was the most fun I've had at a show in a long time. So much PMA it was ridiculous.
Also, I've eaten more delicious food than I can handle. Almost.
On Saturday, November 23, 1989 (I had to Wiki the actual release date, which was Friday, November 22) my parents, my brother and I went down to Trolley Corners, the second best theater in Salt Lake City (second only to the Villa) and got in line with hundreds of other people. It was the first time in my life that I’d anticipated a movie as much as this.
The line wrapped all the way through the halls, down one wall and back up the other side. My parents made sure we got there early enough for the afternoon screening that we weren’t stuck at the very end, but we weren’t the first ones there either. I was in awe. I didn’t know there were other people as excited as I was, but there they were. Early one Saturday afternoon, we all anxiously awaited to see what happened when Doc Brown took Marty and Jennifer BACK TO THE FUTURE.
I’d watched the original too many times to count—mostly by convincing my babysitter to figure out how to record it when it came on HBO so I could have my own copy. It was easier than renting it every weekend like I’d been trying and far cheaper than shelling out my allowance money to buy the official VHS copy. I’d been waiting four years to find out what happened next—and this was before the Internet ruined every possible movie well before it started filming. I didn’t even know Part II was coming out until I saw the preview that summer and my excitement began to build.
We piled in that theater and for an hour and a half, I was the happiest I’d ever been. BACK TO THE FUTURE was a bigger deal to me than STAR WARS—but only because I had to wait for the next chapter. I never had to do that with STAR WARS. RETURN OF THE JEDI was the first movie I ever saw in the theater (I was 4, and hid under the coats until the Rancor monster showed up, then I was hooked) and could watch those any time I wanted (also thanks to the VHS pirating babysitter—with the extended long play enabled, you could get six hours on one tape).
With BACK TO THE FUTURE, I had to wait on that cliffhanger, “To Be Continued…” for four years. And when it finally came around, every little bit paid off.
Well, until the camera pulled back with Doc Brown lying in the street and those three words, “To Be Concluded…” came up on screen. At that point I was crushed. I looked around the theater and everyone felt exactly the same. I looked at my mom and dad and even they didn’t know what to say. Luckily, they had filmed both movies back-to-back, the trailer came on immediately after Part II ended and I only had to wait six months for the (admittedly lackluster) third part.
But I digress…
The two things I took to the most from Part II were the Hover Boards (which I heard were real but the government wouldn’t allow their release) and the self-lacing Nike shoes. 2015 was a long ways away, but I always held out hope.
Now it’s 2011 and that commercial at the top there just came on. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t smiling the whole way through it. It brought me back to that morning when I was 9 years old, waiting in line at Trolley Corners for a movie I’d been waiting over half my life to see. And I want them just as bad now as I did then.
Unfortunately, I won’t be shelling out the $3,000 (minimum) for them, but at least I know they exist. That means Hover Boards and self-drying jackets can’t be far behind.
Do you know what that number represents? That is the number of times I posted this summer. Fourteen times.
5 Videos, a MySpace blog unearthed from 2006, 1 Half-Assed Review, a couple of pictures, a song and a handful of rants (including the Ryan Dunn one that got a lot of attention, apparently).
That's it. In three months time, I posted less than the entire month of May alone. I'd like to say it was because I was off doing amazing things all summer, but that's not true. I was busy with work and the Salt Lake City Film Festival most of the summer. That's what filled up most of my days. Exciting, right?
Meanwhile, my Tumblr is full of the laziest reblogs and bullshit photos while trevorhale.com sits here neglected and lonely. Every few weeks I'd tell myself that I'd get back on the horse and start writing again. I wanted to get back to where I was last year at this time, posting anywhere from 20 - 40 things a month. I liked doing it and when people would tell me they enjoyed coming here every day, it made me want to keep going.
Then I just never did. Instead, I'd find anything to keep me occupied and then curse myself later for wasting the night and not writing anything.
Even just now—while I was writing this—I got up to play with my cats for 10 minutes and change my shirt. It's 9:45 PM. I'm not going anywhere. I definitely did not need to leave the desk, but I did. And that's kind of been the problem. My attention span for writing is getting shorter and that's a very bad thing. I have a feeling it's because I don't have to write anymore. I'm not writing my comics article for City Weekly anymore. The music website that I pitched 10 story ideas to fell apart (luckily, it fell apart before I spent what little free time I had doing the work). And the HC scene in SLC is dead, so I don't even want to write anything for GCA anymore.
All I have left right now is this. And I need to make the most of it. Starting now.
