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muteferdinand
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Name: Ryan
Country: United States
State: Texas
Birthday: 6/23/1983
Gender: Male
Interests: music
Expertise: leftist populist movements
Occupation: Student
Industry: Government
Message: message me
AIM:  ironchop8
Member Since:
2/3/2004
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| so, what started out as the search for one scene (the baseball game
with the rocky soundtrack) in freaks and geeks turned into a seven hour
unintentional marathon. that show is like crack, and even after
watching it countless times, there are episodes that i hurt after from
laughing so hard.
i really need to see superbad this weekend, and
buy knocked up when it comes out. and basically just give my soul to
judd apatow. also, after giving it some time, undeclared has ended up in the must buy list.
also, Wednesday night's daily show was the best 22 minutes of tv in a long, long time, and the following colbert report was pretty damn good, too.
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| Harry Potter Dies!
Sorry. Forgot the spoiler warning. Anyways, as I was saying before... Harry Potter Dies!
So I was headed to the bathroom while at work, and happened to notice
hundreds of boxes with the Harry Potter and Scholastic labels on them,
and one of them had busted open. Opening or tampering with packages is
a firing offense at UPS, but what kind of older brother would I be if I
didn't do everything in my power to ruin the ending of the only book
series my youngest sister has religiously read? So as quickly as I
could, I grabbed up one of the books and headed to the only quiet,
secure place in the entire hub. My initial plan was just to flip
through as quick as possible and learn as much as possible as fast as
possible. But an hour later, when one of the managers found me with the
pilfered goods, I'd flipped through or speed-read a good chunk of the
second half. It might have cost me my job, but that was a small price
to pay.
So without further ado, the second half of Deathly Hallows, abridged.
Early
in the book Ron gets Hermione pregnant, they keep it a secret until she
is showing, and their parents force them to marry. They publicly
announce a wedding date, knowing that it will be targeted by Death
Eaters and that it is likely that Voldemort himself will show up. The
Order of the Phoenix use this as a chance to ambush the D.E., and a
massive battle ensues. Apparently by this time 5 of the 6 horcruxes are
gone, and with the help of Wormtail, Voldemort is dispatched by Harry.
Harry realizes that he is the last horcrux, and decides it's time to
off himself while the battle is still raging. He can't bring himself to
do it, so he confronts Malfoy (the younger) who has just injured
Neville Longbottom. Harry verbally tears into Malfoy, driving him into
a rage. Until this point, Malfoy has been only using non-lethal spells,
and Harry continues to torment him until he breaks down and uses the
killing spell. Harry dies, and Neville confronts Malfoy. With their
leaders gone, both the O. of P. and the D.E.'s will to fight diminishes
and the D.E. start retreating.
Harry is buried as a hero, and
numerous familiar faces show up to pay respect. Neville becomes the new
face of the OotP and is singled out and praised by the papers for his
heroic actions, and he gets the girl (Luna Lovegood). When the Malfoy
the older finds out what the younger has done, he is initially angry,
but then sees the power vacuum created in the D.E. and decides to try
and fill it. His first task for the reformed D.E.'s is to track down
and kill as many of the good guys as possible without drawing too much
attention to themselves. Mr. Weasley gets run down in a traffic
accident, and Hagrid gets mauled by one of his strange beasts. The good
werewolves get attacked by a pack of evil werewolves and it is
undetermined if they make it out alive.
Ron and Hermione's
daughter is born, and then decide to name her Lily. They get attacked
by the Malfoys, and even through Ron managed to petrify the younger,
the older kills him and then moves in to finish off Hermione. She
sacrifices her life to save her kid, and blah blah blah, the whole
cycle starts over again. The book ends with an epilogue set 11 years
later as Lily Weasley sets off for her first year at Hogwarts. (Don't
be surprised if in a couple of years you see Lily Weasley books coming
out.) But then, after the acknowledgments, there is a sort of extra
scene where Mr. Weasley, thought dead but just in a coma, wakes up to
find the entire British Isle has been overrun with zombies. The End. | | |
| so my new phone died a terrible death. thankfully, we had just added the $5 a month phone insurance, so it's all taken care of, except for the fact that my entire library of numbers is gone. hooray!
this saturday is my birthday. and since fireworks go on sale right about this time every year, it has been customary for me to spend my birthdays launching explosives into the air, dodging roman candle shots, and otherwise tempting fate. and with as much rain as we've been getting, my good friend Adam has graciously ok'd the use of his house for fireworks, drinking, and other terrible combinations this saturday. festivities will start around 8. call for directions.
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| in the words of a great american philosopher, "I've made a huge mistake." | | |
| The film Death of a President is absolutely fascinating, but for
reasons completely different that what i was expecting. It's a
future-history about the assassination of President Bush, composed out
of what looks like stock footage, a few staged scenes, interviews, and
fake news reports. . . oh, and real speeches from members of the
administration that are cut up, slightly over-dubbed, or in some other
way modified. Some of the technical achievements were distracting
because of how unnoticeable they were. It's much more of a
political/conspiracy thriller in the veins of JFK than I initially
imagined it to be, but even so it's a compelling watch. It wasn't as
much of a polemic as I initially envisioned, but did pack a punch.
Whereas Fast Food Nation: The Movie: The Ride didn't work at all
(except for the scenes with Kris Kristofferson). Everything in it is
just so flat (except the Kristofferson, Bruce Willis, and Ethan Hawke),
and the biggest problem for me is that it fictionalizes shit that
actually goes on. Richard Linklater doesn't give anyone a Hollywood
ending, but the ideas this movie is trying to get across would be much
better served by a cheap video camera documenting a real person
involved (or, you know, you could read the book). I guess the problem
is that i'm not one for edutainment.
And that's what makes
this unintentional double feature interesting: Death of a President
uses real footage to create a believable fiction that has real impact,
and Fast Food Nation sugarcoats the truth and distracts us from reality
to the point it becomes irrelevant.
---
oh, and after the
third watching of 300 (promised i'd take my sister 3 weeks ago, and am
just now getting to it. i'm a terrible brother), i can't buy that the
Queen would put up with that shit. I can understand that 300 needed to
be pumped-up time wise, but adding the political thriller sub-plot is
just frustrating.
Now if we can only get the Grindhouse/Hot Fuzz at the drive-in. . . | | |
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