CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Monday, December 27, 2010

Zthis entry brought to you by bjork, "joga"


The Wii! For Christmas!! I should probably explain real quick: Michelle's favorite series in the world is The Legend of Zelda. She's played (and beaten) every console Zelda since Ocarina of Time, and with each version she waits with anticipation. They released the newest Zelda, Twilight Princess, on both the Gamecube (a system we had) and the Wii simultaneously. But I kept reading reviews saying buy it for the Wii, it's awesome for the Wii, so I told my wife to be patient. The system would sell out in those first few months during Christmas time, as all systems do, but around March or April, they'll be available, and I would get one. Of course, if you pay attention, you know that the Wii was completely sold out all year. There were never any on the shelf for that first year for longer than seconds. But even when sales slowed to the point where they could put the damn thing on the shelf, either I didn't have money, or, when I did have the money and I went to the store specifically to buy it, it was never there. Ever. And that Gamecube version of Zelda: Twilight Princess? They only printed something like 20,000 copies, so it hasn't been available anywhere, ever, not even used. So this Christmas, four years after the system has come out, and sales for the year have been the lowest ever, with money in pocket, I headed out to Target to buy it. And of course they didn't have it. Why the fuck would they? They didn't have it, they were sold out any of the games I was interested in, they didn't have any controllers, any memory cards, of course. Why they hell would they ever have a Wii when I was interested in buying it? Disappointed, I walked next door to Gamestop and, completely dismayed, asked "Got any Wiis?" To which the guy responded "A bunch. It's been our lowest seller this season." He not only had a bunch of Wiis, he had them in every color, he had a bunch of controllers, all the games I wanted, etc. When I told people at work that I was buying my family a Wii and that my wife was getting Zelda, everyone laughed and said that I bought the Wii for myself. Yeah, well, you should have seen her face when it got unwrapped. Mission Accomplished. Four years later.

Train, "Hey Soul Sister" Apparently this song is ubiquitous, but since I avoid all the places that music is in ubiquity, I hadn't heard of this song until Christmas, when I specifically looked it up because people I knew had been complaining about. And you know what? I like this song. A lot. I mean, yes, it's a pop song, and it's not like I'll be running out and buying the album any time soon, but I don't just think this song is catchy, I don't just think this song is fun, I think this song is good.

Mom visiting for the holidays My mom moved up to Illinois to be with her boyfriend back in May, I believe, and it's been since then since I've seen her; it was fantastic to spend a month with her, from the week before Thanksgiving all the way through Christmas. I'm sad that I couldn't keep the house clean the entire time despite making efforts-- seriously, I don't know how this house is never fucking clean-- and I definitely appreciated that I had someone to take care of the baby for a month so I could sleep normally, but mostly I just missed her, and I'll miss her until she visits again sometime next year.

Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young, "Whip My Hair" It's actually really easy to do a Neil Young impression, but Jimmy Fallon does a goddamn perfect Neil Young impression. Here he is singing "Whip My Hair", a novelty song by Will Smith's daughter. And then Bruce Springsteen comes out and does a pitch-perfect Bruce Springsteen impression (you'll see what I mean). Awesome.

Nintendo 64 kid And then there's this video, just for the fun of it. From the moment I bought the Wii and walked home with it, I kept thinking about this. NINTENDO SIXTY-FOUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!


THE BAD

No Ipod Back in September of 2009 the headphone jack in my Ipod went on the fritz, and only one headphone has been working for the past year and a half. I don't know if you're like me, but I will not listen to music with just one headphone, as it's incredibly distracting. I've been able to occupy myself with podcasts-- which I love, don't get me wrong! But it means basically for the last year I haven't been listening to music. This Christmas season with me finally having money to spare, I thought, this is it, I'm going to just get the damned thing fixed. I found a place that would do it for 30 bucks but it needed to be shipped out, and the ensuing three weeks has been torture. I bought a tiny 2 gig MP3 player to fix my needs, but about a week ago that got lost somewhere in the house. This might be a mild inconvenience to most people, but I work in a grocery store overnight, and grocery stores play the world's most awful music, and it's always the same goddamn music, and to top it off, it's been Christmas time. I don't know if you ever noticed, but there are only about 12 different Christmas songs and about 100 different versions of it, but different singer or not, it's the same damn song. Living without my Ipod has been horrendous, and I cannot wait for it to come back. But having two speakers will be totally worth it.

People Magazine names Sandra Bullock Woman of the Year Seriously? Not Elizabeth Edwards? Sandra Bullock didn't get cancer, she didn't die, all she did was get the most obvious break-up in the history of Hollywood and win an Oscar. I'm not saying that the Oscar isn't a big deal, but Elizabeth Edwards was a humanitarian who got cancer and died! What the hell does someone have to do to top one of the more boring Hollwood elite?

The Green Lantern Trailer Last week I complained about them casting a white guy as the Green Lantern, but this is specifically about the trailer. I'm not passing judgement on the movie yet, because as I've complained about before, they specifically go out of their way to make all trailers look exactly alike no matter what, but I wasn't that interested in what I saw in the Green Lantern trailer, and was surprised to find out that I found the Thor trailer to grab my attention more. What Green Lantern seems to offer that other super hero movies don't is a whole bunch of aliens, which seems fun, but origin stories, almost by necessity, have to take on a certain pace and hit these specific notes that, frankly, we've seen before. The idea that Thor doesn't have to ever be completely be astounded by his powers and have to figure out what he can and cannot do and can get straight to kicking ass seems much more interesting.

Adults singing about Santa Now, I know I'm biased. I was never raised to believe in Santa Claus, and when you didn't believe in Santa as a kid, the whole mythology is profoundly silly to you. But all month I heard Christmas music at work, and every time I heard a song sung by a grown adult about Santa Claus being real-- "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" is a fantastic example-- it was weird. Michael Jackson as an 8 year old singing about seeing mommy kissing Santa Claus? Adorable. Grown ass adult? I kept thinking, dude, you know Santa's not real, right?
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with love from CRS @ 2:36 PM 

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