It snowed in Waco, TX last Friday.  I was woken up to go see it, as if I hadn't lived in Ohio for 3 years and have never seen snow before.  It lasted for about two hours, and thanks to all the rain that we get every December, none of it stuck around for very long.  It was cool to see that it had snowed (not sleet, but snow)...but I could do without it. 
 
I point this out because it was a strange occurrence...and that basically set up the rest of the week for me.  My typical days off are Monday and Tuesday, so my weekend is completely different from the rest of humanity.  With some time before the Friday snow, I finally got all the feathers in Assassin's Creed II and achieved my 10th S rank.  That game is an incredibly satisfying experience, especially when you've got a Droid sitting in your lap with the Achievement Hunter maps for all the feathers at your fingertips.  Again, if you haven't played Assassin's Creed II, I would highly suggest you get off your ass and go find a copy. 
 
During my playtime with Assassin's Creed II, which was something around 25 hours total (including feather-snatching), I started thinking about how many of the top tier games we've seen this holiday season ship with a relatively easy-yet-satisfying set of achievements attached to them.  Yeah, I know...you folks don't care about achievements as much as me.  However, I look at my 700+ points on Modern Warfare 2, 700+ on Left 4 Dead 2, and S-ranks on Borderlands and Assassin's Creed II...and I think "man, Crackdown is a BEAST in comparison to these games".  Now, I'm not saying that all of the stuff on MW2 is throw-away material - you still have to beat the game on Veteran.  However, Veteran is quite easier to accomplish than the last four games under the CoD umbrella.  Meanwhile, Left 4 Dead 2 still has the need to beat the campaigns on Expert, and even a relatively nasty achievement to defeat an expert campaign with realism on.  However, it would seem to me that these developers cared more about the fun factor FINALLY than grinding out achievements, as evidenced by the 100 feathers in Assassin's Creed II as compared to the 500+ flags of its predecessor. 
 
You're probably asking "well, what fucking importance is that"?  It means that I'm busting my achievement points while having fun, not banging my head because I can't seem to nail them.  For me, achievements are very much part of the game, and I want to complete as much of a game as I can if I really like it.  I really like those four games, and I want to get all the achievements.  It's just a thought that I had in my head lately, as I've slowed my role a slight bit right now in achievement whoring and instead focused on playing the games that I really want to play this holiday season.  I also commend the developers for taking the time to make the achievements still a bit challenging but not impossible, and it creates a rewarding experience in the end. 
 
This week also marked the first time in a while that I've really watched any movies.  As some of you may recall, I sold almost my entire DVD collection a while back.  Since then, I haven't bought any movies besides Watchmen.  This past week, I was lucky enough to have a customer at work come in with a Christmas gift for me:  a copy of Park Chan-Wook's Thirst, which I've been dying to see and didn't even know was on DVD already!!!  When I got home, I plugged that in, and stayed glued to the TV until it was finished.  It makes me quickly realize one strong point:  people who are getting sucked into Twilight and ignoring this movie are fucking idiots.  Thirst is an amazingly bat-shit movie that offers an interestingly Asian look at the vampire mythos while also offering an incredibly deep and twisted love story.  Kang-ho Song (star of The Host) and Ok-vin Kim really nail their performances in this film, offering a little bit of perfectly placed comic relief alongside the mostly dramatic and tragic web that they weave.  If you are looking for something like Twilight that doesn't cut back on the gore, mature content, and isn't a tween's dream, then I would suggest that you check out Thirst when you get a chance.  For fans of Old Boy, this is definitely Park Chan-Wook working at his best yet again. 
 
I also happened to stop by Blockbuster for the first time in months and picked up a copy of Frost/Nixon for $6.00.  This was one of those Oscar movies I had wanted to see, but was afraid to watch.  I didn't like A Beautiful Mind at all, and it made me lose confidence in Ron Howard as a director.  However, I have only a few obsessions with historical events:  the Salem witch trials, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Bodhidharma, Irish gods and goddesses, and Richard Nixon.  I remember watching the Frost/Nixon interviews back in high school in some spare time while working on a paper for my American Government class.  It was so fascinating to me to see this man go from being made of power to little more than a face of defeat.  Many people will bash on Nixon as much as they can, and there are so many that fail to realize the GOOD that the man actually did.  Instead, everyone looks at him as the monster who wrecked Cambodia and the reason that any controversy has "-gate" added to the end of it.  This movie does a great job of showing Nixon as a human being, flaws and all.  The main reason I liked it, however, was because it shows that EVERYONE involved with this historic event was flawed.  David Frost is painted not as a man who wants to hear the truth, but instead as a man who merely wants success and fame from the interviews.  Near the end, he grabs hold of the reins to getting Nixon to confess, and the general accuracy to which the interviews play out in the movie is astounding.  Mind you, there was a lot of condensing that had to be done, so many of the throw-away pieces of "you know" and "well...um" were taken out and only the meaningful portions are there.  Frank Langhella and Michael Sheen both shine in their performances, and particularly how Langhella didn't do an impression of Nixon...but rather took on the skin of Nixon and tried to get deep into the man's soul.  Fantastic film overall, and I highly recommend it to everyone as well. 
 
The one last thing from the week that shocked me was finding out that The Cumshots have a new album out.  I know, such a dirty name.  I didn't pick it, but I'll tell you what - it's really hard to spread the word about them because of "polite society".  Regardless, A Life Less Necessary is probably one of the best aggro-metal pieces to come out in a long while, and I'm glad to have found out about it.  Unfortunately, it ended up raising questions with people that wanted to use my computer to surf.  As my brother ended up telling me when he looked at the...*urm*...downloading progress, his comment was "man, my brother must really like watching chicks get spunk all over their face!".  Like I said...it's difficult. 
 
Anyways, that's what I've got for this week.  There was actually important stuff that happened, but who the fuck wants to hear about any of that?  LOL  I'll have more to talk about after the New Year, as some of the news is exciting as Hell to me.  = D 
 
Until next time...piece.