GTA V Afterthoughts

So I finally finished Grand Theft Auto V. And when I say finished, I mean FINISHED. I'm sitting at 100% game completion and have a level 67 GTA Online character. Actually, I take that back. I'm not quite done, still need to pick some more trophies here and there. BUT, I feel that I can give a comprehensive overview of what I thought about it. So what did I think about it?

I finally understand the hype.

A little background on the relation between me and GTA Vee. I initially picked it up for 360 about a month after it released. I played with it with a some friends online enduring through the many, many faults of GTAO. I played through a handful of the story, but once I got to Trevor, I just lost interest. I wasn't connecting with any of the characters, and the game was strangely frustrating in some points. I eventually just dropped it, only picking it up for recording sessions of GTA Online Aftermath.

A month ago, I picked it up again on the Playstation 4. The addition of persistent first person camera option made the game instantly fresh, and in some rights, way easier to control. Rockstar games have always felt pretty floaty, with the exception of Max Payne 3, but playing in first person alleviates a good chunk of the annoying. At least for shooting. It's not perfect. But, I started playing it again, and really started enjoying it. All of it.

Maybe I should actually talk about the game, for the 4 of you who don't know what it is. Grand Theft Auto V is the latest entry in the open world, sandbox series Grand Theft Auto. This latest iteration features three main protagonists, Franklin, Michael, and Trevor that can be switched between at almost any point, unless the plot dictates otherwise.

The gameplay consists of driving places, flying places, shooting people, and... Well, that's about it. But it's the quality of it all. Driving feels pretty solid. Being a person who's not big into driving games, the driving is entertaining. Especially in first person, which is about as difficult as driving from the backseat. But fun!

The story follows the three protagonists through their plights of crime. The plot is actually pretty complex, but in short, there was a heist that went tits up in 2004 with Michael, Trevor, and another one. Ten years later, Michael and Franklin become acquaintances, and Trevor joins along after thinking Michael's been dead for ten years. As they try to figure everything out and clean off their records for good, the three commit all sorts of crimes together encountering a plethora of interesting characters and conflict.

And I comment that the main characters are unlikable, terrible people. And they are. Franklin is always getting into things he doesn't want to, then just gives up on it. There doesn't really seem to be an arc of development. He just keeps getting into bigger and bigger shit, saying he always wants to get outta the hood, and he does so by committing more illegal crimes. And he's just kinda boring. Michael and his family are all assholes with short fuses and awful tempers. Trevor is arguably the most likable because his moral compass weirdly particular. He's okay with stomping people's faces in, but being called a "motherfucker" is over the line. What separates him from the rest is you get the sense that he's enjoying himself, rather than doing everything out of obligation. And, well, throughout the game, each character certainly gets their moments, and by the end, I found myself enjoying them all.

So what changed? Why did I enjoy it so much this time as opposed to last time? I'm honestly not too sure. Maybe I just wasn't in the mindset to enjoy it before, maybe I had other games I wanted to get to, but this time? This past week, playing GTA V is all I wanted to do. It was strangely compelling. The story had me hooked, but I wasn't necessarily blazing through that either. Doing some side missions were fun, even the collectibles, though annoying, were satisfying to get. Why?

I'd have to pin it to the world being so fun. There's no other way I could see it. I really enjoyed just driving around and doing whatever. When I wasn't compelled by plot, I was compelled by something else, a tangible goal, or just having fun. And the constant first person adds another layer of entertainment. Fun fact, there's a trophy for spending 15 hours in first person that I got without knowing that it was a thing. First person is fun and challenging!

As for GTA Online... I don't really have much to say about it. I feel like that could be its own video. And, well, hopefully it will be. I'll describe it shortly here: it's structured poorly to incentivize lower leveled players to purchase things with real money, as higher leveled players stomp them into the dirt. Missions are boring, tired, formulaic, and frustrating. There's no story, which shouldn't come as a  surprise, but there is progression. The world is annoyingly limited, in the terms of "private match" selections, but after all of that, there is fun to be had. It's certainly easier when you're higher leveled and/or don't have to worry about money, but you kinda gotta work for it and push through the annoying slog. This is all if you have friends. I don't really see prolonged enjoyment by oneself.

So that's all I had to say about GTA V. Or at least that's what I think I have, no doubt I'm forgetting stuff, but hey, what can I do. Do I recommend the game? Well, yeah. But understand two things. 1. I did have troubles really getting into the story at first and becoming attached to these unlikeable characters. 2. GTA Online is incredibly restricted and is not what you want it to be. But for all its flaws, there was plenty of enjoyment had with it.

Internet Elitism

i'm sick and fucking tired of people on the internet. mostly people i don't know, mostly in areas i shouldn't be looking for any sense of a discussion, anything with structure, purpose. youtube comments, social media reposts, large internet forums... the internet has created this culture where people like to appear better than other people. i don't know if it's self-esteem, or cause it looks cool, or because they're immature, or what, but god damn it's annoying.

and yeah, okay. let's all listen to the guy talking down to people on the internet by talking on the internet and trying to look better than other people. yeah. i see the paradox here. but the difference is, i'm willing to talk about it sensibly. i'd argue about this, about the nature of this. this isn't a knee-jerk reaction about how people like things i don't. i like to think i'm better than that, which isn't saying much.

but that really is the root of it, right? people like things that others don't, and that makes people upset. example, bioshock infinite. no, you don't have to love it, or even like it. but to say that it's the WORST game ever with a terrible story that makes no sense and boring mechanics(which i've seen been done) ? like, sure it's fine to have your own opinion and everything but you have to know that using absolutes as hyperboles makes you come off as a small angry person about things that are not important. but really, this is not really anything new, humans have been doing shit like this forever. the thing about being online is that people are anonymous, people don't have to take any flack for being a shitty person who says shitty things on the internet. you share the popular opinion or you get shit on. or, you share the "i hate the popular opinion" opinion, in which flocks of people who didn't think that x was as good as people say it is agree that logically it is the worst thing since different x.

go right now to any popular music song on youtube and look at the comments. how many root comments can you see that aren't just terrible, terrible things? go to popular rap or pop music. how many times do you see people comment about how "it's not real music" and/or how "music from y years ago was so much better?" how many people are in the age range targeted by this music? how many people say music from before their date of birth was better?

kids are getting on the internet, there's no stopping that. kids are gonna wanna look cool to impress other people, people they don't know, people older than them. really no getting around that either. but jesus fucking christ, somebody needs to tell them that the people they're trying to impress don't care. kids are validating their opinions in internet points: how many ups they're getting from random people.

and i'll admit. i tend to do it too. video of mine gets a larger amount of views? i feel great. comment somewhere gets upvoted/favorited/liked? it's a bit of an ego boost. but at least i can come to terms with at the end of the day, i still have integrity. i'm aware of some of the things that i do. i don't stoop to posting cliche things that people will agree with. i don't pander to people. i try to do what i want, what i like.

so what can we do about all of this? where's the solution? how do we fix it? i don't really know. maybe try to see things how i do. maybe make it known that it's all stupid and people shouldn't try so hard to look cool to anonymous people on the internet. avoid knee-jerk statements, doing things to incite anger, and instead, do things that you actually feel are necessary, things that are meaningful. or express your own opinion on it if it's different than mine in a way that's more than just shouting. get people talking, get people thinking.

will this happen? of course not, this is the internet.

No Sleep

Nothing media about this, but felt the need to put this all somewhere and didn't want to make something new for this one reason.

It's 2 AM. I can't sleep. This isn't a new issue. This issue happens three or four out of the seven nights in a week. I can't blame it on anything else but myself though. I couldn't stay awake during the day, and now I'm suffering for it. I could have done something to keep myself occupied, but instead I collapsed on my bed and passed out of consciousness for some time. And now I'm here.

Could I indulge in the nightlife I so often find myself in? Yeah, I guess, but I haven't figured out not to climb in bed an hour or two before I'm ready to sleep. But more so it's a lack of things to occupy my time. I feel that the day has reached a close, that I should just climb into bed and sleep the night away. Sleep feels like the next logical progression.

But it's not. Often it's not.

I'll sit in bed checking things on my phone hoping that I can stay occupied until my eyes stop reading. When that doesn't happen, I'll convince myself that it's time, put my phone down and close my eyes. They'll stay closed for minutes until I open them with ease, seemingly unaware of the goal I'm trying to achieve. My body does not function in ways I'd like it to.

And so why is it such a big deal? Why does this make me miserable? Is it anxiety of a lack of sleep for the morning? Is it fear that this horrendous "sleep schedule" is actually harmful to me in some way?

No, it's not. It's nothing like that. I think of the song Car Radio by Twenty-One Pilots. In silence, we have to confront our thoughts, there's nothing to distract us from the things we don't know about, the things we're anxious about. Lying in bed, not only am I saddened by the lack of anything worthwhile coming out of my lazy ass during the time, it's an appropriate reflection of what I do during the day. During the day, I don't do anything particularly productive and then eventually the next day happens. I don't like that. Just as I don't like that I sleep during the day and it prevents me from sleeping at night, I don't like that my avoidance of work and obligations lead me to such an empty life.

At 2 o'clock in the morning, there's nobody to talk to, nobody to share your time with, or rather, nobody to occupy me until I can sleep. Loneliness is ever apparent and it makes me question loneliness during the day as well. Not that I'd tell anybody.

So what's there to take away from all this?

It's 2 o'clock in the morning. This sucks.

Gone Home

Gone Home is a game that's hard to describe. As a genre, it's a story driven point and click adventure game, but without really having the puzzles from a point and click game. Or an adventure game. It has puzzles, like 3, but they're all fairly straightforward and instead of needing thought to be solved, they need exploration, in which you find the right thing and it tells you how to solve the puzzle.

And it's mostly just one puzzle: what happened here? You return home to a mystery, a dark and spooky house and you try to figure out what's going on. In exploring the house, you find notes and scraps of paper explaining current events of your family, though mostly from your younger sister. Occasionally, an audio diary is played from your sister to you. And, well, that's about it. Seriously.

It's hard to explain, but I will say here that I really enjoyed this game. Though I played it for 90 minutes and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, it's not only hard to explain why, given a game so functionally bare-bones as this, but I also must do so without spoiling anything, which is pretty damn hard. This is pretty close to feeling like a movie, but could never ever be adequately done as such, as it'd make a pretty boring movie. In film, it's always said to show, not say, and there's not a lot of showing. Likewise, because you are controlling a person wandering this house, there is a sense of discovery, as you start to know the people who lived here, and you feel this story unraveling, because you're the one unraveling it. And because the player is the one unraveling the story, I feel that I'd be cheating you in revealing anything to you about the story.

I guess part of the reason I find the game difficult to describe is because I haven't played anything quite like it. If I had to equate it to anything, it's most similar to To The Moon, another short indie game with little gameplay but a magical story to tell. And in that regard, it's fantastic. It has a story, a brilliant story in my opinion, told in a unique manner, one that I can't imagine being experienced in another way. It would be like if a haunted house made you care for characters and question your perceptions of people.

I honestly can't say too much more about this game. It entertained me for 90 minutes at 3:30 in the morning. I highly suggest picking it up cheap on a steam sale, as I don't think I could recommend it for it's full price or even half of its full price, but for what I got it for, as part of the Humble Indie Bundle 12, I'm pretty damn glad I got to sit down and play through it.

If you think you could be entertained by a story driven fun house, by all means, find the game cheap and pick it up. This is a game I'd recommend to people looking to enjoy a story in a unique way. This is a game I'd offer to the "games are art" argument, as this is something that I can't imagine being enjoyed through any other media than a game, and this one nails it on the head. This game is different. It's short, it's satisfying. And it works.

Trans4mers

I don't believe it.

It's difficult to believe.

I am a person who not only watches internet reviews of terrible, terrible productions, I seek out some of these movies as well. I have friends who scrounge retail stores in search of VHS tapes that look bad. They watch shitty movies. For fun. I watch shitty movies and people watching shitty movies.

With all of that, without a single doubt in my mind, Transformers 4: Age of Extinction is the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life.

It's 5:03 AM right now. I left the movie theater some 8 hours and 40 minutes ago. Somewhere between the and now I got 6 hours of sleep. This movie still remains in my head, infecting my thoughts about anything else. Questions are still there to be answered. I attempt to answer the questions I propose to myself, though it's mostly just one question repeated ad nauseam.

Why?

Why, oh God, why?

Enough bullshitting around. Let's get to the movie. We arrived at the movie at 6:30 ready for something. I haven't seen any transformers anything ever, nor do I intend to, current or older. Cause I don't care. Transformers never got me as a kid except for that one that was on Toonami or some shit some 12 years ago. I knew these movies were bad. I wasn't prepared for this.

I was reluctant to even join my friends in this experience and probably wouldn't have had it not been for my wanting of the Mass Effect Trilogy. Had it not been for Mass Effect, I would not have gone to the movies. Fuck you, Mass Effect.

Ah, I didn't mean it. But whatever. Movie starts, I'm sitting in the theater next to my fairly intoxicated friend. Scene begins, some sort of disgusting looking dinosaurs doing dinosaur things until space aliens come and drop bombs turning everything nearby into metal matter. It implies that these probably caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, but not only do we see a small dinosaur OUTRUN the blast of the explosion, the entirety of their bombings were enough to cover the square footage of my small, 3 stoplight village. Unless they spent YEEAARS repeating this explosion technique, it's baffling how we're expected to believe they took out everything. EVERYTHING.

Cut to sometime in the future, we're in the arctic where we see a woman clearly not properly dressed to be in such cold conditions looking at a giant metal piece of something. What is it? What is she doing? I dunno, it must be important though because a person threatened to shoot her because I don't know, he's insecure?

Forgive me if I am unable to recall these scenes properly, as they're convoluted in their order, and some are just unnecessary. But whatever. At some point, Wahlberg and another guy, Lucas, enter an old movie theater. At some point we get Wahlberg's name, but it's awkward to spell, awkward to say, as it rhymes with his last name, and it's honestly just easier to call him Wahlberg because you aren't for a second going to see him as anything else. Not his fault. Anyways, in this theater, he finds a semi truck that looks like shit and takes it home with him because he's an inventer and likes fiddling with things or whatever.

Cut to his hot daughter getting out of the car with her hot friends, talks with Wahlly and Lucas- which by the way who the fuck is this guy? I don't ever remember it being stated who he is. He says to Wahl that he has a hot daughter, then says to her that he's like her uncle. He's an asshole and comic relief. Whatever. She complains that he's strict, and doesn't really make that much money, blah blah blah, whatever. A lot of nothing important happens until he hooks up the semi to a battery and jumps him alive. At some point a missile goes off, everyone calls it a missile, but it just flies around and doesn't ever explode. Optimus is jumpstarted and threatens the humans, then sees they're not bad, calms down.

Asshole Lucas called CIA or somebody to try and... why am I trying to recap this movie scene by scene? In text format, that's not necessary. The plot of the movie is stupid, people are trying to harness the metal both in transformers and from that early scene where they find a big metal something. This is where I got confused, the entire time, the villians, the big corporate baddies, one working for that company, KSI, one working for the CIA, they're talking about taking Earth back from the transformers by... creating their own? And I didn't see the previous trilogy, but didn't the transformers just fight on Earth because whatever? Were the autobots defending Earth? That's what I thought, and so the plot is after Man of Steel, everyone hates Superman because he's an alien and he caused widespread chaos because these people are masters at missing the forest for the trees. But then I don't know how much of what they say is just rhetoric, just to sound good, as the first use of their transformer prototype, it goes berserk and kills some people probably. Seeing this, the head of the company justifies it saying that innocent people die all the time. SO THEN WHY ARE YOU SO MAD AT THE TRANSFORME-nevermind.

Even with this, I guess some CIA people made a deal where they provide an alien transformer with Optimus and he gives them a seed. What is this seed? What's its practical value? It's only use is a bomb- yeah, big surprise, the bomb looking thing you got from the big evil looking alien robot is a bomb and he wants to destroy a big city. Why did they want this?

They get it, Optimus is taken, the transformers go and get him. Again, I haven't seen the previous ones, but were the same transformers in this one in that one? Cause they all suck. We were excited for Bumblebee's appearance but it's like being excited to play Brink. It's most likely going to be bad, but with the level we've overblown it, his presence alone was enough for forced enjoyment. But the other 3? There was an irish stereotype that sounded like if somebody autotuned somebody's stomach rumblings, there was an asian stereotype that stupid and offensive, and there was a transformers version of a guy halfway between Gragas from League of Legends and the Heavy from TF2. Yeah, they all suck. I hate them all. And how do they have earth stereotypes if they're aliens ah fuck it.

They go to save and they save Optimus and the entire time Wahlburg, his daughter, and her boyfriend are along for the ride and hey look, his daughter and that guy are all in love and Wahlberg doesn't approve do you see it audience do you see how Mark doesn't want this relationship to happen but they do things anyways and he gets angry at them do you see it DO YOU SEE IT YET? And her boyfriend has a terrible accent that he occasionally loses. I thought it was just generic southern, honest, but Wahlberg keeps calling him Lucky Charms, hahahaha, it wasn't funny the first time, but maybe it'll be funny the next thousand times he calls him that. He may be an inventor, but he's not creative. Everything they do sucks. Why are they in this movie? Why can't it just be about robots doing punch ups? Why does it have to involve these assholes?

Either way, Optimus is pulled off and they... all go to China? Yeah, KSI moves their R&D to china because... people in America might get suspicious? Whatever. The villain in the ship goes back to get them, there's a villain in the prototype made by KSI named Galvatron, and all the vehicles they made as prototype transformers join him by transforming in a manner similar to Chris Brown in his video "Transform Ya." In a convoluted and contrived manner, the three humans and also the baddie from KSI who is now not a bad guy and also a comic relief character so insufferable you just want to shove the bomb so deep down his throat his farts explode.

Gragasbot and Bumblebee are protecting the 4 humans, which involves KSI asshole to complain about how his protection isn’t good enough. OH LAH DEE DAH the huge robots saving me from the other robots that I MANUFACTURED BY THE WAY aren’t doing their job up to my standards. I’m not satisfied well FUCK YOU. The two bots are somehow holding their own against the swarm of protobots and a lot of the focus is still spent on the humans, which involves Wahlberg shooting an alien gun at them. The things are like a thousand times his size and he’s shooting peas at them. What the fuck.

They do that and the other three go get the robo dinosaurs, what? How did they get there? Why are they there? Why do they transform into dinosaurs? Why does the robo t-rex still have tiny stubby arms, why, why, why? Whatever, they commandeer them into the city, robots are riding robots, shooting robots, it looks ugly, we’re never completely sure what exactly is going on where, we have NO idea where these bots are spatially to the other two and the humans. Gragasbot says he’s out of ammo and ideas. Asshole, you just threw a goddamn car into a robot and you’re out of ideas? What, are you getting tired? Because you’re a ROBOT. You don’t hear Bumblebee complaining. You don’t hear him saying, well, anything.

But whatever, the autobots save them, then the humans get IN A VEHICLE TO DRIVE THE BOMB. Yes, even though we’ve seen hundreds of cars bring crushed like in foil, even though we’ve seen cars flung in the air without second’s notice, even though the transformers TURN INTO CARS THAT NEVER APPEAR TO BE HURT, no, go drive the thing that’s hinting at the destruction of a major city in a goddamn hotwheel.

They don’t even go anywhere! They end up at a factory thing. Optimus fights the big bad guy whose name I don’t even know, no, it’s not the prototype bad guy, it’s the alien bad guy. Optimus has a sword because I guess swords are better than guns, the villain gets it and stabs Prime in the chest and sticks him to the wall. Bumblebee comes in and saves him, the humans are there and they help distract the guy, pull the sword out of Prime, and Prime stabs the bad guy through his robo heart and tears him apart. Over his dead body, Optimus grumbles something about wing honorable. OH YES, having 5 people jump on this guy instead of having a clean one on one fight, yeah, that’s honorable. Fuck you. By the way, what were the other autobots doing in this time? Why was Bumblebee the only one to help? Where were the dinobots? What’s going on? Am I dead yet?

Something happens, some explosion goes off NOT the bomb, mind you, just some other one, Optimus protects the humans because fuck you, and all the protobots are destroyed. They all convene somewhere and talk about… something. Galvatron, yeah, remember him? He’s in the background and walks away. Why did nobody pursue him? They just forget about him? Whatever, it’s over. The movie is over. It’s over.

Sitting in this movie theater, this mostly empty theater of maybe 15 people, my friend and I unapolagetically talked throughout the entire movie. Everything had something that could be commented on. There wasn’t a single thing in this movie that I could point to and say, “Yeah, they did that right.” There’s not a single thing in this movie that didn’t deserve to be nitpicked and pulled apart. There are all sorts of things in this movie that I haven’t talked about.

—-

All robots have green blood.

There is a robot that has a parachute.

Fire and metal swords are more powerful against robots than bullets, or any projectile.

KSI man questions R&D about why he didn’t have control of his prototype. Next scene. KSI on a phonecall, says he has complete control over his robot. Next scene. KSI wonders why he doesn’t have control over his robot.

In the final fight scene, the bad guy punches Optimus essentially straight into his elbow and it makes a bone-snapping sound.

KSI asshole gets a text about how the seed he has is a tactical nuke, followed with an LOL. He sees this upon getting into an elevator in China with a Chinese man. Upon seeing the text, he starts laughing uncontrollably. This unfunny “joke,” though I can’t possibly categorize it as a joke, is him reading a text on his phone. He then goes to EXPLAIN this “joke” to the man in the elevator who not only looks completely uninterested in this dickhead, he also probably doesn’t understand him. Which is a good metaphor for the audience’s relation to the people who made this garbage.

They never explain what happened to the mother/wife. The establish that she’s not there, but we never once see her in a picture or a flashback, never hear anything about her. The only direct mention is when they say the daughter is just like the mother. The FUCK is that supposed to mean?! How are we supposed to understand this?

There’s a clip where we view a car in a topdown view where it just looks like garbage. It looks like it was rendered for the goddamn Nintendo 64. 

There are a few instances of deep slow motion, where something is happening in slow motion and we’re either supposed to feel suspense or worry for a character, rather than just plain slow motion for cool action. Two times, the framerate is just absolute shit, it wasn’t filmed in slow motion so it’s slowed down and you can count the number of frames. It looks horrible.

When they’re driving the bomb, there’s a section where a propeller falls and almost hits the car. They jam on the brakes and stop. We see the propeller bounce over it, and as it lifts, it reveals the car with the people having the stupidest goddamn expression on his face. It’s like the director told Wahlberg to look like a cartoon character who just saw somebody ejaculate on his grandmother.

—-

There’s probably more I could say. Hell, I know there is. My friend and talked throughout the entirety of this movie and I couldn’t care less. No, I didn’t give this movie respect because it didn’t respect me. This movie didn’t care, but not only that, it was an impressive level of not caring. It feels like it was written by a 13 year old that saw the original trilogy when they were new. Nothing in this movie makes sense and it seems like the instant something came into his head, they tossed it in the movie wherever he said without question, without paying any attention to anything else in this movie.

He left the movie theater screaming.

I feel dirty that my friends and I gave money for this movie. I feel upset that people enjoy this movie. I’m not one to criticize people for their interests, but if they can justify their approval of this movie to me, I will give them everything I have.

This movie has a 6.4 on IMDB. I give this movie a 0/10.

Amazing Spider-Man 2

It's rare that I see a movie in the theaters. In the past year, not including this film, I've seen two films in theaters, Captain America 2 and The World's End (which I actually saw twice because of how kickass it was). What better way to capitalize on this opportunity than to share my thoughts about it with the internet? So, what did I feel about it? Well, I didn't like it.

This reviewish thing is kinda be kinda spoiler-iffic. I won't spoil the ending, but suffice to say I didn't like it.

I'll start off explaining that I really liked the original Toby MacGuire Spider-Man movies. Well, you know, except for the third one because nobody really liked that one. Granted, I haven't seen them in quite some time, but I remember enjoying them quite fondly. And along with that, I didn't see the first Amazing Spider-Man movie. Now, I don't know how much that would affect how I feel about AS2, because I don't really think it would be that big an impact. Yeah, I'd probably care about Gwen Stacy more, but I'll be honest, I actually quite liked the relationship between the two, even if some stupid things happened with it. Now, putting in perspective of the rest of the movie might shed some light on as well, but more on that later.

I'll start out with talking about Peter Parker himself. Don't know how many people are sayin this, but I miss MacQuire. I really didn't like Andrew Garfield in this movie, but I feel that it was mostly the script rather than him as an actor. He just did things that make me roll my eyes. Like, Spider-Man's thing is that he's kind of an awkward teen guy that makes snappy retorts at villains, right? At least that's what I got out of it. Peter doesn't at all seem like an awkward teen, I bet he was really popular in high school (haven't seen the first one). And Spider-Man's always kinda sounded like a dick, but rather than being endearing or likable, he's just annoying. There's the kind a dick that would be fun to hang out with, then there's the kinda dick whose mouth you want stapled shut. Garfield Spidey is in the second category.

The villains suck too. The main villain is Electro, played by Jamie Foxx. The last Foxx movie I saw was Django, where he plays a badass shootin' people and being awesome. Here, he plays Max Dillon, a nerd stereotype. Check it out, he wears loser glasses, he has a comical gap between his front two teeth, he's got
no friends, he gets bullied, and he carries a lot of things in his hands and then they all fall out of his hands and its funny lets laugh at him! This is grown man working at Oscorp. This shit's happening to an adult cause everybody's still in high school. He gets saved by Spider-Man once and turns into stalker levels of creepy because "he remembered [his] name." Man, that's some Nickelodeon shit right there. pbs kids or whatever. He turns into Electro as a direct result of people picking on him. Everybody leaves, and he's sent to fix something. Instead of somebody following this extreme safety protocol to fix something, something like TURNING OFF POWER IN AN AREA, the guy doesn't do it for Dillon because he's a lazy fuck. Thus, Dillon's shocked, then falls into a tank of electric eels. Then becomes Electro because comic books.

The other villain is Harry Osborn, the character that's so incredibly annoying with almost everything he does. He never feels like a human, more like an alien doing his best human impression. I guess they're trying to build him as being this unfortunate kid who has a shit relationship with his dad and therefor underdeveloped as a person or something, but he's just this unlikable asshole. I can't even say I feel bad about the tension between his dad, they both sucked and I don't even know why he went to his death bed. Obligations or something. I felt more for the guy in Inception who had a shit relationship with his dad. Eventually he turns into Green Goblin, an ugly one at that. It's never really a tragic or difficult thing for the viewer, I don't care about this kid and I knew he was gonna end up killing himself, which, spoiler alert, the villain dies.

There are a couple other baddies, the generic evil corporation guy in Oscorp who wants to cover up shit because that ALWAYS fucking works. There's a doctor doing experiments on Electro who's German because of course he is. They video tape conversations with Electro, and in whatever year this takes place in with all their super advanced technology, they still can't manage to get a video feed and recording that's more than, like, 5 frames per second.

The other main character is Gwen Stacy who, surprisingly enough, was pretty much the best thing in the film. I don't know, yeah, some things were pretty shoehorned into the movie for convenience, like when she knows how to solve a problem because high school science lawl. I guess it was the fact that she had more to do than nothing. She had to decide between this high school love relationship or attending school in another country. And, ironically, the one thing I feel would have really been amplified from seeing the first movie was still the best part of the movie, it was the one thing that didn't fall terribly flat. I guess his aunt was also pretty well acted, but she's not too prominent in the movie.

What else is there to really say about the movie? The plot was, well, kinda silly, as is expected from a movie like this. Some other issues I had were that the movie liked to make a point of something, then drop it. There's a part in the beginning where Spider-Man's overworking himself and gets sick. Then it gets dropped. Then they raise the idea that public starts to see Spider-Man as a menace for damage to the city. This is a plot point I hate in superhero movies. Unless it's a game like InFamous, it's a terrible idea to have the people hating the hero. You're upset at the damages he's causing to the city? Spider-Man is the least damaging of the superheroes! What's he doing, leaving web residue? Do people honestly believe that's worse than having it controlled by a man made of electricity?

So, overall, I guess the effects were pretty cool, the main female leads were cool, but aside from that, everything fell flat and/or annoyed me. 4/10.

Oh yeah, and the ending was stupid.

Fine - Alkaline Trio

This is a song rapidly accelerating to becoming one of my favorite songs of all time. I probably first heard it at sometime this year, most likely this current semester. Throughout, I've heard it easily more than 50 times. Musically, I love it. I've taken to learning this song on guitar, and I'm eager for the opportunity to replicate it on drums, as asymmetric and syncopated as it is. The acoustic version of it is excellent as well.

But really, it's more the lyrical content that brings me back over and over. Simply put, it's about a guy that's, well, fine. Shit's happening around him, things he can't control. There's another person giving him bad news, and he knows it. (It's gonna hurt like hell when you pull back the hammer and fire). And you know, with all the pain this guy's going through, all the uncertainty, he's still fine. Let him know when you've got some good news to tell him. He can wait.

Sure, the guy lives with all these problems, all these issues out of control, and he himself is directionless about where to go with his life from here (All the stars in the world couldn't help me steer my way out of this kiddie pool). In the scope of the world, this relationship isn't really a big problem, even though he's struggling with it now. But, even still, he's fine. He'll survive. Yeah, he drinks to get past the issues, but he wouldn't trade in his hand for all the aces in the deck. He's fine.

Alternatively...

It's about a person who's deeply depressed, the other person, the rejection absolutely ruins this him. A guy who only wants to be happy. He recognizes how silly this issue is, but yet he can't ignore just how much it pains him. Every time he proclaims that he's fine, he's lying. It could be to other people, his friends, his family, or it could be to himself. No matter how many people try to help him with his problem, this is really a problem he has to tackle himself, a problem he can't overcome. It would be foolish to follow him, he clearly can't accomplish the thing bringing him down so. He's tried many times with whatever it is, and it's fallen through every time. Maybe he just wants to convince himself that he's happy, and he's doing whatever he can to do so, with lies, with alcohol.

It should be fairly simple to realize why I relate to this song so easily, why I listen to it as frequently as I do. It's because I'm fine.