by A.J. Wood

Monster Madness

buffy the vampire slayerOK, so the only other person in the blogosphere stoked about Buffy The Vampire Slayer is Ryan. Last night’s episode was a rerun, but I wanted to point out a flaw that is quickly sucking the fun out of the action genre. Not everyone on the planet is a kung fu expert.

Last night’s episode (recapped by Ryan here) introduced a primordial vampire, “the vampire that other vampires fear”. Now without going on a tangent about vampire lore, what pissed me off about the introduction of this monster is that he had more moves than Jackie Chan. Not only did I see various Wushu styles in the fight choreography, but my god the monster used some tricky Capoera moves. I didn’t realize the “Uber-Vamp” got all funky in Brazil on his way to kill the slayer.

[Capoera references at Sambnovo & Dacascos]

I don’t understand why the writers & makeup artists would spend time to develop this new monster only to cheapen its realism with Matrix style fight scenes. Sure I love the Matrix, but Buffy is NOT the Matrix.

I do miss old action pictures. Sure the fight scenes didn’t look as slick, but at least they were somewhat authentic. What the hell was The Musketeer? (Not that anything could have made that a good movie) Blame it on the marketing people and their friggin’ demographics. “We can sell more merchandise if we overuse THIS cool technique”. I am so longing for the next big thing to get me out of this kung fu rut. Oh, and I do REALLY like martial arts, but that’s why I rent MARTIAL ART films.

Don’t even get me started about the crappy fight cinematography Hollywood is using. If you’re actor doesn’t know how to fight and you don’t have a decent stunt double, don’t jerk the camera around with extreme close-ups so I can pretend there’s a brawl happening. You might as well shake your camera every time you want to film an earthquake scene.

in Arts/Media 2 comments
 by A.J. Wood

Belated Easter Greetings…

blonde with pink topRecent conversation with an old friend.

“I love Easter”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean just the fun of it all.”

“Huh?”

“Dressing up, the baskets of goodies, celebrity Easter egg hunts, the joyous dancing in celebration…”

“Joyous dancing?”

“And the pink tops, I love it when the girls where pink tops for Easter.”

“Dude, you’re agnostic.”

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Michelle & I took off to Corpus Christi to see her sister’s family. It was a relaxing (even with the stress of the Spurs losing Saturday night), but unfortunately we had to leave early Sunday before the kids had their Easter egg hunt. Next year we’ll plan on taking time off work so we can stay longer (and I can take more pictures). Speaking of which, new photos are up in the gallery.

So a lot of things have been on the brain lately. Maybe it’s the constant blather on local morning radio or the entries I’ve been reading over at Ryan’s blog, but something struck a cord. What is it about people as a society that prevents us from communicating effectively? At first I was focused on relationships (which has been quite a topic for different folks recently), but after listening to 102.1FM The Edge I’m convinced there’s a bigger picture.

Why is it our emotions keep us from speaking our thoughts at the moment?

When did society as a whole become so sensitive that everybody is compelled to “be polite” and spew little white lies? “Gee that’s a nice tie Dan”, “Love the haircut Elise”, “No honey, that top doesn’t make you look fat”.

When it comes to relationships you can spout the whole Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus… yada yada yada, blah blah blah, but I’ve seen the same arguments from same sex couples.

It seems to me that if you have a question about something (your relationship, your job, a test question) you should be able to look the other person in the eye and just ask. Why is it hard to ask? What horrible consequences come from asking? Why speculate what the other person is thinking or what they REALLY meant when they said something?

I wonder if Dawn speaks as frankly offline as she does in her blog? I envy Raymi the Minx for her “shock & awe” style of posts because vulgarity rings truer than political correctness. I suppose I could have started an anonymous blog somewhere to be “free”, but isn’t that cheating? What’s the point of saying what you really feel, doing what you really want to do if you have to hide behind the mask of anonymity?

Baby, if you’re reading this, I love you. Even though “I hate that stupid computer” echoes my college years when other women would say “I hate your stupid rock band” I know it was late and we should have been to bed earlier. And Jagger take my advice, if you want to know where your new relationship is at, pick up the phone and just ask…

in Editorial 7 comments
 by A.J. Wood

Weekend News

OK, Moxie covered the Scott Peterson story and Dawn added her opinion and some news about the Chinese.

I thought I’d throw in this bit about CNN. I don’t know how anyone cannot be pissed after hearing how CNN sat on the knowledge of Hussein’s violent atrocities of human rights for 12 (that’s right people – TWELVE) years. It looks like Bagdad will not only be the city that shot CNN into Primetime, but also the city that broke its back.

If people are going to stomp on CDs and ban the Dixie Chicks from radio airplay for simply voicing their opinion, I hope those same people exact even more extreme forms of retaliation against this “news” network.

Shameful, absolutely shameful.

In other news, update your links as The Ward is moving to a slightly different URL: http://www.theward.net/blog.html

Not sure when Ryan & Co. will be back online, but visit the old link for the skinny (plus some twisted-cool photos).

in Editorial / News 4 comments
 by A.J. Wood

Azarok.com not just for adults anymore…

picture of my nephewKatie posted about her nephew yesterday and how she would be a super hero if she added his picture to the site. I learned last night that I have also influenced the younger generation except I lead the way to porn… well that’s certainly NOT something to add to the resume.

Did your parents ever tell you about “Your crazy Uncle Larry” when you were a kid? You know, the only single one left in the family, the guy that drank too much, partied all the time and had no sense of social responsibility at all. He’d show up to all the big family get-togethers and most of the family would be polite, but they would tell the kids ahead of time “Don’t talk to your Uncle Larry, he’s trouble”. And maybe your Uncle Larry wasn’t such a bad guy. Maybe he was simply an adult doing the things that adults do and now he suddenly had to be aware of his influence on the family.

Me, I’ve always loved kids. Been watching kids, interacting with kids since the time I was one myself. At some point Michelle & I will have our own rugrats, but in the meantime I enjoy the weekends we visit her sister as we can horse around with our niece and nephews. I’m pretty good about adjusting my behavior in the presence of the kids, but I hadn’t given any thought to them, specifically Michael, viewing this website.

I think it’s great that my nephew likes to read these entries. I’m glad that Michael enjoys the photo galleries (and he actually plays at my arcade), but I didn’t anticipate the consequences of him clicking the links to other people’s websites. When Michelle told me that her sister called because Michael found porn on my site I was a little confused.

“Porn, I don’t have any porn on this site.”

“What’s Michelle’s Wonderland then?”

“It’s a web cam site, Michelle’s a local racer, the one with the Trans Am.”

“Oh, well Michael thought you made a link specifically for me.”

Now I can understand the confusion, but I was still surprised about the porn part. Turns out like many other cam girls, Ms. Wonderland (the name I will now use so as not to have her confused with MY Michelle) has outbound links from HER site to porn. Not the Jenna Jameson kind of porn, but topless chicks nonetheless. Oops. While any adult might refrain from clicking all the “rate my cam pics” links, Michael certainly isn’t old enough to distinguish the good from the bad. I felt like I gave him one of my Maxim magazines only to have him call the 800-hot-sexx number listed in the back page ads.

That being said, I have rearranged the navigation this morning and posted some warnings before those links send you anywhere. If you’re reading this Michael, tell your parents Uncle A.J. isn’t crazy, he just didn’t know you were growing up so fast. Oh and everything YOU want is located at the top right menu, just have your parents look at those links of the left before you start reading them.

in Editorial 2 comments