Basketball talk

 
As witnessed in the prior video, Greg Oden had a heck of a game Monday night. In combination with a few other Blazers nice nights lead to an easy win over Chicago's once great Bulls. Greg had 24 points, 12 rebounds and 2 blocks if I remember right. Likewise, LaMarcus Aldrige put on an All-Star performance with 24 points, and 13 rebounds. These two in combination really took control of the boards and held Noah (the NBA's leading rebounder) to a rebounding total well short of his average. Of course 2-time all-star Brandon Roy had a run of the mill night with 18 points and a game high 7 assists. But the win was made easy by Rudy Fernandez and Andre Miller (both in double figures) hitting shots to space the floor. This is how you win games in the NBA.
 
However I do realize that the schedule the Blazers have faced has been less than ferocious thus far. None the less, we have been winning games that we should be winning and right now we have one of the best records in the league at 12-5. John Hollinger of ESPN also has the Blazers at the #3 overall spot on his tried-and-true power rankings. Things are looking pretty good this season for my dear dear Blazers. Despite two seemingly impactful injuries early in the season, we are still playing basketball with the best of them. That really shows how much depth this team has. On any other team, if two of their key players go down for long periods of time they can almost start looking to next season. Not the Blazers though, we have enough talent to fill two teams! OK, that might be going slightly overboard but that's what it feels like at this point. 
 
 

Video Game Talk

 
Anyways, this is a video game website so how could I go without mentioning what games I have BEATEN recently? That's right, I beat a game. It's a rare occurrence. Almost like drawing a royal flush in poker, or Brad NOT dying in a quick look. Anyways I finally put the finishing touches on Condemned 2: Bloodshot. That game started out so promising but by the end I found myself frustrated a lot. The screen in constantly getting blurred and disorienting in the final stages and it was really getting on my nerves. I powered through it though and I'm glad to cross that one off the list. 
 
I haven't visited the land of Torchlight in quite a while and I just may do that now. I have been under a lot of stress due to my class schedule this term. That means I didn't play a lot of games recently which is the main reason for my desertion of Torchlight. But yeah, I really want to get back into that as well as Castlevania: OoE on my DS. I have played most if not all of the Castlevania games that have been released on the GBA and DS but I have yet to get very far at all in OoE. So there you have it, my plans. Play Torchlight and Castlevania. I'm gonna be getting some new 360 games come holiday season so I'm looking forward to playing some of this years real games a little later on. 
 
 

Movie corner with "The Weatherman"

 
Oh yeah, I have been watching a lot of movies recently and I just want to quickly rate which ones I have watched on a 1-5 scale. Lets see if I can remember them. Also keep in mind I am winging these ratings, haven't put any deep thought into these ratings until right now. 
 
Bowling For Columbine: 5/5 - This movie is a must-see. Really opens up your eyes to how crazy America can be. (Especially Charlton Heston)
 
Inglorious Bastards: 3/5 - I think this rating could easily change but my first impression immediately after the movie was over was kinda meh. So got to stick with the 3 for now at least. Worth watching though for sure.
 
Gamer: 2/5 - This movie really was pretty bad as far as characters and story go. But it's really not a bad strait up action flick, which happens to be what I wanted at the time so I somewhat enjoyed this movie. Not completely terrible. 
 
American History X: 5/5 - Awesome movie that does a good job of showing the horrible reality of racism these days. The only beef I had was that the main character's beliefs were changed seemingly too easily. This was probably done for the sake of entertainment but it came off as a little unrealistic. Not gonna knock a point off though, the rest is too good. 
 
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: 4/5 - This is one of the strangest movies I have seen, but it's good. That's all I know for sure right now. To be honest I strongly feel like I would have to watch this a second time to fully grasp the film. There is a lot going on and knowing what I know now, I feel like I could easily piece things together that I completely missed the first time through. Great movie though. 
 
(500) Days of Summer: 5/5 - Even with the sappy nature of this movie, I absolutely loved it. The style this movie had really surprised me and the story is really well thought out. A few good funny moments are scattered throughout too. I have actually seen this twice in about a week or twos time. I may watch it a third. 
 
Fahrenheit 9/11: 3/5 - Good Michael Moore movie but it lacks something. It just didn't draw me into the topic for the full two hours in the way that "Bowling for Columbine" or even "Sicko" did. Good movie, but not Michael Moore's best in my eyes. 
 
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: 1/5 - Well, a 1/5 may be a little harsh but I really was disappointed by this movie. Honestly I didn't expect a whole lot beyond the visual effects department. It was when (most of) the visual effects sucked as well, that I just shook my head in disappointment. 
 
Well that's what I have watched in the past couple weeks. Usually I don't watch that many movies but I kept justifying it by saying that if I was playing video games I would be wasting more time than watching a movie. Probably turned out untrue but it's OK. I enjoyed my movie time. Oh and I still plan on writing a review of the Backspacer DLC album for Rock Band but I haven't had enough time playing it on each instrument to feel confident in writing a review yet. Probably sometime soon though. Maybe mid December when I'm on holiday break. 
 
Now that I'm finally finished, I want to leave this unsettlingly long blog with a random ass picture: 


You know what? One more for good measure!


Peace!
--JJWeatherman

It's been a while since I have posted a blog so... ta-da!
 
Of course I have been keeping up with my non-stop Rock Band-age lately. I like to call it Rock Bandito, but that's neither here nor there. I recently bought Pearl Jam's Backspacer DLC album and it's pretty awesome. Some of those songs are a lot harder on drums than I would have expected. Also, "Just Breathe" on guitar is really tough for me. I'll get a review up on that soon I suppose. 
 
The other game I have been spending time with recently is Torchlight. The forums have been ablaze lately (ablaze I say!) with topics about this game. Bottom line is I think the game is awesome. It really surprised me how much it feels like Diablo. I know the old Diablo guys worked on it and all but dude... it is SOO Diablo. I think anything I could say about it has already been said many times before so I'll just leave it at that. If you like dungeon crawlers, play this game. It's not without a couple faults but overall it's very worthwhile.
 
Here's a video I made of my first hour or so of playing. It already has over 7,000 views on Youtube in just a few days, which is awesome! Most views on one of my videos to date.
   
 
  
Until next time... Wakka wakka?

Over 2,000 forum posts!

 I got home from my trip to Vegas a while ago but have been being lazy in blog writing as usual. Well I have wanted to blog about other things so I thought I better get this one out of the way.
 
The road was long... with many winding turns (stupid song reference). But yeah, the road was long and very boring for the majority of the ride. At times there were some nice mountains and things but the majority was just open desert terrain. Total drive time was about 17 hours one way. 
 
But after arriving, the trip was pretty awesome. The reason I went was to see my cousin get married which was pretty awesome. The actual wedding took place in Caesars Palace and then the reception was in a huge rented house a few miles off of the strip. There was an enormous pool in the backyard of this house that included a pool-side bar type thing that was pretty awesome. You could just swim right over to the bar area and get a drink if you wanted. It also had a basketball court and a batting cage in the back yard, so everyone had a lot of fun. 
 
Besides the wedding though, I was able to walk down most of the strip which was pretty cool. I got to see all the big hotel/casinos. I gotta say, Caesars Palace and The Bellagio are side by side, and together they are probably the most impressive section of the strip as far as hotels go. They are both massive and very nice. If you go into the forum shops in Caesars Palace, there is nothing but the most high-end shops. It's kinda crazy. The thing that struck me as I took all this in was the fact that I was essentially in the middle of a desert. It must be a hassle getting all the water and supplies needed to keep this town going. Really, Vegas has to be one of the most environmentally unfriendly cities on earth. They have billboard trucks driving around at all times of the day. Basically their only function is to advertise. They must waste a ton of gas doing that. There is also a never ending supply of people trying to hand out flyers for strippers all of the way down the strip. It's pretty ridiculous when you come up on a pack of like ten of them on each side of you all in your face trying to give you stripper flyers. But all in all it was a great trip. If anyone hasn't been to Vegas, I recommend going at least once. It's definitely an amazing experience. On the way out of town I stopped at an In-N-Out Burger to try it for the first time. Gotta say, it was pretty good. I don't eat a lot of burgers so I don't have a lot to compare to but I would eat there again for sure.
 
So now I'm back and getting ready to go back to college. It starts this Monday and I'm actually fairly excited about it. I'm not dreading it at least. Well, here's a few more pictures of my trip in case anyone wants to see:
Oh and just FYI, I took that "Welcome To Vegas" sign picture as the car was driving by, through the rear windshield. Yeah, I got camera skills.    :P

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. At least that's what I'm told.
 
This will be my first trip to Vegas so I'm pretty excited. I'm going down for a wedding so time to mess around will be fairly slim, but I'll make some time. There's a lot to do there though so I doubt i will see everything I want to. I'm driving down from Oregon, so that kinda sucks. The drive will be long and it will just get hotter and hotter the further south I go. Expected high temperature in Vegas is suppose to be over 100 every day I'll be there. This may be brutal. Anyways I guess I'll take some pictures so they may or may not be posted here on my blog sometime in the future. I've yet to decide whether or not I want to keep what happens in Vegas... in Vegas. I'm guessing the hotel I'm staying at will have wi-fi but I may not have time to log on. I'll be back hitting up the forums on Tuesday for sure though.
 
Anyways, enough about that because I just 5-starred "The Perfect Drug" on Rock Band 2 drums like a half hour ago. For anyone that doesn't play Rock Band, that song on drums is one of the toughest in the game. A lot of super hard songs have been released as DLC since "The Perfect Drug" came out but it's still a hell of a drum song and very hard to keep a multiplier on. It is probably the only song that I have been consistently going for 5 stars on and never quite getting it. Here's a screen shot I snapped for... some purpose I have yet to discover. It's for this blog! There now it has a purpose. Now, said picture:


That 5 star is a pretty big Rock Band accomplishment for me. Now I can finally shake those nightmares where I get sooo close but can never get the 5 stars. Just to be clear I don't really have dreams about Rock Band. That would be a little creepy. But if I did, Alex Navarro would totally be playing drums in my virtual dream band. I should start a real band and name it "Virtual Dream Band". Or maybe just "Virtual Dream". OK, I'm getting wildly off topic and since this isn't the Bombcast, I'm gonna wrap this up. 
 
I'll miss you while in Vegas, Giant Bomb. If anyone actually wasted a chunk of their ever so precious life by reading this, you are now stupider for it. But you're also now my best buddy for it. Oh and please find the time to leave me the most random PM you can think of for absolutely no reason while I'm gone. I want that inbox full when I get back!    :P
 
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By the way, I have the first post attached to the Las Vegas "location" on the site. That rocks.
 
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