ok, i can't let this one pass without comment.

Hollywood's Bachelorettes

first off, i love how these online celebrity sites always use the worst possible photos of people when they're talking about how attractive they are. some of these pics are just utterly horrid. i know these people look better than this.

but my biggest beef with this list is… Cameron Diaz at number #25? come on. you're kidding, right? Cameron may not come in as number one among this "elite" group, but there's no way she's behind Jennifer Love Hewitt and Kirsten Dunst. hell, Cameron should be in the top 5, at least in my opinion.

and, Natalie Portman at number 11? somebody at e! or msn has gotten hold of some seriously good crack. Natalie comes dangerously close to knocking Cameron off the top of my wish list.

i really need to stop letting myself get sucked into things like this.

i don't know if i've mentioned this before, but–aside from all the hot girls in skimpy clothes–i really fucking hate summer. especially summer in the Ohio Valley where the humidty reaches claustrophobic levels. and especially when the AC in your house has decided to be lazy. factor in the fact that my AC in my car is also not working (and that i'm too broke & lazy & anti-spending-more-money-on-my-car to fix it), and you can understand why i feel this way.

there's something about waking up sweating, taking a shower and sweating when you get out, then sweating in the car on the way to work–where it takes about 45 minutes before your body cools down enough to stop sweating. then, at the end of the day–after your car's been sitting out in the hot sun all day under it's direct harsh radiation–you leave the comfortably cool confines of your workplace for your iron-smelting factory of a car, drive home sweating your ass off, then walk inside the house only to realize it's about 1 degree cooler than outside and just as fucking humid.

the something that i was talking about is this:
it sucks. i hate sweating when i'm not doing anything to deserve it. i don't mind a good healthy exercise sweat, i don't mind a good sexual escapade sweat. but i do mind a walking down the stairs, or sitting in front of the TV sweat. blah.

so, anyway, it's hot and i hate it.

our good friend Nate came down this weekend for the cookout that wasn't. so we decided to just hangout and drink friday, and we did a good job of it. as brian mentioned, i got quite quite drunk (as did most everyone else) having consumed a total of (i think) 5 moonbeams most of which were at least 50% whiskey. i'd have to guess that i probably drank about 15 shots worth of whiskey. not too shabby.

and yes, despite the fact that i actually went to bed drunk (which is extremely difficult for me to do), and that i only got in one cup of coffee before doing that, i still woke up with no hangover. i wasn't completely unaffected, but i didn't have a hangover. i had maybe a love-letter from a hangover, or a picture of a hang-over, but not the actual hangover itself. a hint of a hangover.

saturday saw us recovering, and Nathan and I played a *lot* of GTAIII. We went to ZA's about 11ish, and saw Green Formica Table play. I'd heard Paul playing some of their stuff the past week or so, so i had an inkling of what to expect, but they were so so much better than my expectations. They were really good. right up my alley. Take a heavy smattering of experimental Sonic Youth (loud, raucous sound-scapes) tossed with a mixture of esoteric japanese girl-group pop, and you're in the same Zip-code as these guys. The guitar playing was at turns phenomenal and "dreamy." and the drummer was amazing as she sang half the songs while keeping a solid inventive beat. needless to say, i was impressed, and if you're in the Louisville area, you need *need* to check these guys out.

after the show was mostly over (all of our other friends had left when the 2nd band was playing, and we left later on in their set when it became obvious that they weren't going to be able to break out of the formulaic punk music theme) Nate, Brax, and i walked down to the Backdoor so they could split a pitcher. Having drank too much on Friday, i'd declined alcoholic beverages all night, and continued this trend at the bar.

I ran into Geoff there, not having seen him since the day a couple weeks ago when he was laid off from work. It was good to see him again and see that he was doing well. We chatted and joked for a while about various things and generally just took some time to catch up and have a mutual support & reassurance party.

Since Brax & Nate are the only sports fans in our little cloister, they were busily yapping away about sports stuff, so it was just as well that i'd found someone else to hang out and talk to for a while. The rest of the evening, i just kind of hung out and did some people watching. Sipping on my plain coke.

After the bar–more GTAIII. After the GTAIII–the sleep. After the sleep–the call from my sis in France. After the call–you're caught up.

It's been a fun weekend. I've had to set aside my projects, but i'll be back into them hard-core this week.

Ok. It's time for lunch. Gotta go get my Kefc on.

ok. i've really gotta get out of this place and get home. but before i do, i just had to post this little image that a co-worker whipped up for me (and several other co-workers). i tell ya, i just about died when i saw it.

he told me that there was a little flash app somewhere out there that was like the storTroopers thing, in that you can take all these South Parkish components and build your own characters. of course, he forgot what the link was. i'll try to find it a little later tonight and update this post, but if any of you industrious fucks decide that you wanna help daddy matt, feel free to include the link in a comment to this post (or in an email to me, whatever floats your boat.)

** update ** steve kurp was gracious enough to provide the link to the south park character builder for us. check his comment for a link to a powerpuff girls character builder.

well, the puff and I took a little trip up to bloomington this weekend to visit (frequent commentator, and long-time best friend) nate, and had a grand ole time. friday night consisted of a lot of PlayStation playing and beam/beer drinking, and just general hanging out. on saturday, after lunch, we met up with a gaggle of nate's friends to go see the new Star Wars flick, at an almost-nice theater (much better than the should-be-condemned Showcase Cinema on Bardstown Road, which is where paul & I–regretfully–saw it the first time).

whether it was the better theater, or some other factor, i liked the movie much better the second time around. i was a bit dissapointed at first viewing… i didn't feel like it fulfilled my expectations from all of the great trailers they had for it. it was quite slow in places, and Lucas' writing has been getting more & more juvenile with each successive film. well, at the second viewing (much like my third viewing of Spider-Man), i was able to forgive some of those faults and just "enjoy" the movie. needless to say, it was, as brian said, 100% better than the crap-fest known as Episode I: The Phantom Pants-Mess. but, unfortunately, it also didn't entirely redeem that movie (in my mind) as i was hoping it would.

it was a bit funny though, coming out of the movie… pretty much all of nate's friends had largely negative reactions to the movie. it seemed a bit absurd, really.

(btw. Spider-Man is still the top dog. Star Wars only garnered $116.2 million in it's four-day weekend compared to $114.8 for Spidey's three-day total. boo-ya.)

anyway, despite the brush with negativity, we had a great day. went back to the house, watched some Batman: The Animated Series that nate had on DVD, hung out, played more playstation. We had an almost surreal experience later that evening at the local Waffle House (a not-Waffle-House Waffle House), with very strange conversation. I told nate & paul both that i'd mention the rather horrid puns being bandied about (courtesy of Paul). We were, of course, talking about the exquisitely gorgeous Natalie Portman, and paul, in response to our discussions about specific portions of her anatomy, decided to call them her "Naboobies." be mindful of the fact that i would never have written that down or repeated it, had it come from my own mouth.

after dinner, more PlayStation, more drinks, more discussion. woke up Sunday about noon-ish, grabbed some lunch, hung out some more, packed up all our crap, said goodbye to the dog, the cat, and the nate, and hit the road for home. we got back in plenty of time for paul to relax before the X-Files series finale came on, and before i had to go to band practice.

All-in-all, it was a great weekend, very relaxing except for sleeping on the floor (which wasn't as bad as it could've been since i went ahead and bought this huge fluffy comforter and a "vellux" blanket) and dreaming about sex with Denise Crosby (A.K.A. Tasha Yar from Trek: TNG). it was nice to get to hang out with nate, who we don't see often enough.

the final piece of wisdom from the weekend, was also from Paul (who may've been attempting to pre-redeem himself for the "Naboobies" comment he'd eventually make the next evening) who provided the title of this post.

damn. looks like ol' Spidey's going gangbusters. I had hoped it would be good, and i figured there would be a good big reaction, but i have to admit that i never saw this happening. $114.8M in three days (final numbers). craziness. that's what it is.

well anyway, so, now i've seen it three times. hehe.

i've hesitated to make a new post because the comments on the last post have been fairly active (compared to the normal comment volume anyway), but i've used that as an excuse long enough.

since the Lucifigous Prick show is now listed on the Louisville Music Index, i took a couple hours to throw together a quick site. and i finally registered the domain name. so now, i don't have to post links to our MP3s here, and instead can do this: http://www.lucifigousprick.com/.

and aside from Spidey, band stuff, work, and hanging out with Nate (who's out of school and in town for a few days), not much has been going on.

exciting (& geeky, as usual) things happening today:
1. will be picking up the Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Two DVD box set
2. i get to pick up the comics (hopefully) that didn't get delivered to the store last week, plus this weeks comics
3. back-to-back new episodes of Enterprise

am i happy? do you have to ask?

i didn't think so.

spider-man.

well, really, i guess that's one word with the hyphen thing there, but technically, it's two, so… nyah.

about the Spider-Man movie let me just say this:

I was the first mother-fucker in line for spider-man in this entire city!

ok, sure, perhaps i wasn't the first person in line in the nation… i certainly wasn't the first person to get to see it since the big premiere was Tuesday night (and certainly a select few others had gotten to see it before that), but i claim bragging rights to being the first person in line for the first showing in my city. i think that says something about me.

what that is… i'm not exactly sure.

could be:
A. I'm an extraordinarily huge geek
B. I've got so much time on my hands that i can throw it away waiting in line for an hour & a half
C. I give too much importance to insignificant facts

people, the Spider-Man movie rocks. go see it.

to compare it to the reigning champion superhero movie, X-Men, i'd have to say that there are certainly some things spidey did better. and as i've explained to others, i think the reason the X-Men movie still ranks #1 with me is probably because it was a much darker movie. spidey's plot was much more subtle than the X-Men's Magneto plot. basically, it's a different type of movie.
which is not to say that spider-man wasn't action packed, in fact, i'd say spidey had more action than the X-Men movie as well as really well-done fight sequences (though it's hard to compete with Wolvie & Mystique mano y mano).
one really positive thing was that of all of those things that i was terribly afraid they'd mangle or mishandle, they really didn't do any of it. they handled everything really well, even the many changes they made to the "classic" spider-man origin, powers, and history.

in fact, here's a list:

things i didn't like:
  dialogue was a bit too melodramatic at points
    (GG's dialogue doesn't count, as paul pointed out)
  kirsten dunst as mary jane watson
    she did really well in the role… gave an excellent performance, but she's just not mary jane

things i didn't like but grew to accept before the movie was over:
  Green Goblin's outfit (mainly the mask)

things i liked:
  every other aspect of the movie

gad. it's not showing tonight, is it? no? … damn.

so, brian caught me at the Rud on friday and mentioned that he was going to Michigan on saturday. somehow, i'm not sure how, he managed to convince me that i should tag along with him, to go up there and meet Hey Mercedes and some of the various other indie-rock icons that would be in attendance.

so, after the Rud & the Backdoor on friday–a night of debauchery to be sure–we both managed to drag ourselves out of our respective houses and get out of town about three hours later than we'd originally intended. but no matter, suffice it to say, brian drives fast. but aside from the momentary shock of blowing past a cop somewhere around Toledo, the drive was pleasantly uneventful.

the show was good. I enjoyed most of the music, but let me tell you, you put 4 or 500 sweating indie-rock kids in a huge room with limited ventilation, and the atmosphere gets oppressive at best. by the end of Hey Mercedes set (the first we were able to see), i was entirely ready to head back out into the cold Michigan night for a smoke and some elbow room.
the second band i saw was called "!!!" (which i think means "pretentious jam-band" in japanese). honestly, i enjoyed their music, and they seem to be very talented musicians, but basically all their songs just sounded like extended jams. perhaps there was structure there and i was just not in the mood for "party music", or perhaps the fact that the lead singer was pretty much a complete dick factors into my distaste. needless to say, i didn't stick around for the whole set.

let's see… then we saw a band whose name i can't remember, but it was two or three fat guys (one of whom unfortunately removed his shirt halfway through the performance) and a normal guy. They played some hard-rocking punk music and were really pretty good.

final band we watched was coalesce (see brian's pics, linked in his post.) who put on a good show. my tastes generally don't lean that far towards hardcore punk, or vocalists who scream more than sing, but they really tore it up onstage and i enjoyed it.

after the show we made the rounds again and hooked up with the Mercedes and Coalesce boys, headed out to the hotel, grabbed ourselves a room, and hung out with a bunch of people i'd never met before in my life. i pretty much felt like an outsider the whole night, but Sean helped make us feel welcome when we went out to grab some late night dinner at a place called Coney Island.

After that we were pretty much beat from our long day on the road and at a show (after a night of too-much drinking), and called it a night.
The next day's drive was again, thankfully uneventful and we made it home only about 45 minutes later than we'd intended (after stopping for an hour lunch at Denny's).

exciting stuff, eh?

yeah, i know.

anyway, in other news, there's not much other news.

the prick's demo is almost ready for public consumption, so hopefully, if i can remember to take some damned CD-Rs with me to practice tomorrow, i'll be able to upload at least one track for you to enjoy and comment on.

that's it. i'm out.

to finally conclude the bloomington story series here on bipolar, i invite you to join me on a trip back in time… imagine it's a mere four days ago, a saturday, and you've been having a great time so far all weekend. you're at a party, and since it is halloween there are many strange things happening. stay with me as we imagine that throughout this night, many beers have been consumed by these freakish apparitions who have in fact grown ever more freakish as the night progressed. now, imagine that one of these strange creatures is dressed as Space Ghost, while his companion is dressed as blossom the power puff girl… strange strange. late in the night, as you unsuspectingly enter a room, you are forced to witness this horrible scene…

for those of you who didn't scream at the sight of that, you have more resolve than i.

(sorry nate, couldn't resist throwing that little gem in there for the world to see!)

and please, forgive the strange, probably half-assed "b" horror movie/twilight zone feel of that first bit… it is halloween, after all.

in other news, i had to rush to the bookstore straight from work tonight in order to catch the inimitable Bruce Campbell at a speaking/signing event for his new book "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a "B" Movie Actor." it was a pretty good event, though horribly crowded since they held it in the bardstown road Hawley-Cooke–a tiny little store unsuitable for such a well-known (well, well known for a self-proclaimed "b-list" actor) personality. Bruce started out with a brief chat, and threw out some one-liners and current-events jokes to liven up the crowd ( i have to assume). one thing's for certain, Bruce Campbell is a ham. 90% of his responses to questions were sarcastic half-answers, and he tended to interrupt the questioners often enough for me to take notice. he did stay up there for a good amount of time answering the questions, and was fairly witty the whole time.

after the Q&A session the line up for the autograph table was organized. being in the third group called (i think there were around 11 groups, total), it took us probably about an hour to an hour and a half to get up to the table. the autograph table was set up in a little cordoned off section of the store, and the fans were let into the section one at a time. there were actually chairs sitting to Bruce's right where you could (were expected to) sit as he signed your book(s). the lady who would walk you to the table asked you your name before you went up so she could tell Bruce so he could greet you by name. "very… fancy." (read that in a Sean Connery voice to get the intended effect.)

of course, since i used to work at Hawley-Cooke as their webmaster (their current site is NOT MY FAULT. i swear. i haven't had anything to do with it in over a year!!!), and i knew the name lady from my tenure there, she introduced me as "matthew the webmaster." boy did that spark some interesting conversation from old brucie, neh. "the webmaster, eh? master of the web?" … it's nice to see that even he in that high-pressure situation where you're talking to a few hundred different people in the space of a couple hours and are expected to be witty… was not. to bruce's credit though, he did know enough about the internet development world to infer the word "design," and to work it into the comment he wrote with his signature.

all in all, it was an enjoyable time. luckily, a friend we met there had a camera, and allowed us to use it to take pictures. perhaps when i get a copy i'll link it in (as i seem fond of doing lately… oh, if only i had my own digital camera…). and, joy of joys, the one night when it counted, our local UPN station decided to air the first UofL basketball exhibition game, and in so doing, to delay Enterprise by the length of the game. of course, if they ever do it again, i'll be pissed.

(or, how i lost my ass)

let me start out with this: Kevin Smith is a funny motherfucker–smart, witty, insightful–but then, we knew this already.

paul & i got off work on friday and hauled ass up to Bloomington, IN for a weekend visit with our close friends. we made good time, surprisingly, considering we left during rush hour and the interstate was packed all the way to the bloomington exit, as was the two-lane highway you have to take to actually reach bloomington. we basically got out long enough to stretch our legs, visit the facilities, and greet the pets (and their owners, of course), and then we were off to see the king of the dick & fart jokes.

the plan, according to the show "program," was for Kevin to talk for about an hour, maybe two, then to go to the lobby to sign autographs. well, apparently Kevin has something of a problem with authority.

once he got on stage, he almost immediately opened the floor up for the Q&A session, explaining that he wasn't really much of a public speaker, and felt more comfortable answering questions.

as soon as the first person spoke, he started busting the poor guy's balls, as he would continue to do for the rest of the evening. one thing Kevin Smith can handle is hecklers and morons. that was almost the most fun part of the evening, listening to him berate those who just got up for attention and not because they had a decent question. it was all in good fun though–he was never really hostile, just having a good time.

frequently, when people would hit on a good subject (or even sometimes when they didn't) he'd go off on a funny story for 15 or 20 minutes. at one point, he talked for almost 45 minutes about his experiences working with Prince at some week-long Paisley Park event.

we got to hear about how he met Jason Mewes (jason originally was an acquaintance of some of kevin's friends, and when they got tired of jason, he ended up bugging kevin until he gave up and decided to hang out with him.) he related the story about the time he and his friends were working in some recreational center, and jason just walked in the room and gave blow jobs to all the even slightly phallic objects in the room (for 15 minutes, without so much as a word to those in the room) until he reached a centipede (i think) arcade game. since there wasn't anything phallic on the arcade machine, he just went down on the rollerball. (the story was much funnier when kevin told it…)

at one point, kevin's cell-phone rang, and he answered it. after a brief conversation he told the audience that the caller wanted to say hello, and held the phone speaker up to the mic. we heard the unmistakable voice of jason mewes yelling "whazzup!" after a couple seconds kevin put the phone back up and jason asked "where's all the indiana ass?!" it was a funny little interruption that again loses a little in the translation. probably the funniest part was just hearing kevin's one-sided conversation with mewes. "yeah, there's about 3200 people here." … "dude i gotta go, i'll call you when i get done."

the prince story was about the week he went to minneapolis at Prince's request, and was asked to film a documentary about the religion themed event (partly a pre-release event for Prince's new album). kevin discovered through the course of the week that Prince was now a Jehova's Witness and had become rather a freak about the whole religion thing. he did say though, that for the first time, Prince joined the visitors to the park and presided over many of the religious discussions kevin was filming for the documentary. it was an interesting story about life in the park, and about being under the direct influence of one of the most eccentric people alive today. as an aside, i love prince's music, but i'm afraid this album may be too much of a stretch for even me, mr. eclectic.

after about two hours, the people running the show were telling the people in the question lines to sit back down, that the time was up. when one of the questioners told kevin this, he mentioned how he didn't like to sign autographs, but would rather just answer questions until everyone was ready to call it a night. the union board (i think is who was "in charge") trying unsuccessfully to shut down the mics and ask kevin to please leave the stage, but kevin didn't leave, and the people who'd gotten back into the question lines wouldn't sit down. people were booing the poor ushers out of the hall (at least, until they just gave up and let kevin and the audience do what they wanted). kevin proceeded to talk for two more hours.

i'd like to relate more funny stories, but really, the funniest parts of the evening were him riffing off of the audience, and ripping into the occasional idiot with little enough self-respect to get up and ask a stupid question or make a stupid comment.

seeing kevin smith speak for four hours was more than worth the two hour drive up to bloomington, even if i hadn't been up there primarily to visit friends, and if you're in the area where he's going to be speaking, do yourself a favor and grab a ticket any way you can. you'll be glad you did. (this is all, of course, assuming you even like Kevin Smith. if you don't like him, you probably shouldn't go.)

i've just found a post by Kevin himself about some of the night's events.

paul's just informed me that his post about the weekend is now up as well. — go read it after you finish reading mine! (that's if you can stand to read anymore, anyway)

so, there ya go. tomorrow i'll post a little more about the weekend, probably about a little less specific stuff–more about the weekend in general and some of the highlights.

tomorrow: "where's paul?"

today: "hey, is moves there?"

well, it's time for my bi-weekly post to what was once my daily obsession…

i've been so disconnected for a while… between a few months of hell at work (which are now thankfully starting to slow down and normalize) and the "free time" that seems to be slowly dwindling away from me through some unknown time vortex, i've barely been on my computer in a communicative, productive capacity at all in the last several weeks anyway.

of course, i spend 8 hours a day on the computer, and perhaps that's part of it… perhaps i'm finally starting to burn out on the whole computer thing. i really don't think that's the case, but i have to entertain it as at least a possibility.

really, though, after the events of Sept. 11th, the aftermath of that, and between buying DVDs, PS2 games, and not one, but two games for my PC, i've basically been doing the late 90's teenager thing of vegging in front of the boob tube or drooling in front of a 3D computer gamespace.

maybe i'm due… i never got into this stuff all that much in the past… was never much of a computer game player. of course, occasionally a couple days of my life would get sucked out by the PS1 at a time, but that was usually a rare every three or four months thing. it's just been happening a bit more often lately.

but yeah, so, we saw the series premier of Enterprise last wednesday, and it was pretty damn good. except that opening theme music which was utter crap. in fact, it was worse than that. the opening theme to Enterprise is so bad that i can't even conceive of the words to adequately describe level of disgust i feel for it.

and i bought the V mini-series DVD a weekend or so ago. it was just as good though even more cheesy than i remembered. the scene where the alien 2nd in command swallows the gerbil, or whatever it was, was just laughable.

and i've been having weird dreams lately. the first i remember was one i think i had the night i watched the first half of the V DVD, which apparently was my mind combining the World Trade Center attacks with the V story. we were up in a tall building some 200 stories up, and all of a sudden the building just leans over and falls to the ground. we're alive but scrambling to get out and to find people with our high-tech devices. we eventually make it to a house, but it's quickly taken over by what is apparently a human militia group and we're kicked out on our ass.

not sure what that all means, i guess it was just my subconscious trying to come to grips.

other dreams have come and gone, but this morning it was dreams about my ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend (previously dubbed "idiot-jerk") who were being nice if not overtly friendly towards me. i'm guessing that this dream was trying to tell me to forgive "idiot-jerk" and get over it and on with my life or whatever, but i don't think i can do that. forgive him, i mean. i think i'd like to hold onto that for a little while longer.

otherwise, i've been happy and healthy (a little too healthy if my expanding waist-line is any indication…) and apparently never without something to do.

and now, it's time for me to get out of here a little early so the systems guys can rape my machine and infect it with the Visual Studio .NET virus. apparently, i'm going to have to learn to deal with even more Microsoft crap. bah. bill gates, i spit on thee.