underactive.net

Just a little rant… let’s pretend my opinions are relevant.

I agree with some other people’s thoughts that this song is a bit poppy for Pearl Jam. I didn’t know what to make of it.

“Definitely catchy, but what does it mean?”

I tried reading too much into it and thought maybe, maybe it was about the new U.S. administration. Go back to 2002 GWB was just beginning to destroy the world, and PJ’s newer songs included “Bu$hleaguer” and “Green Disease”. If you want to read more into it, those tracks were from an album called “Riot Act”, reflecting the post-9/11 political climate at the time. Compare this to the name of the upcoming album, “Backspacer”, which expresses a desire to go back, FIX and undo GWB’s mistakes.

But then again, this is all probably wrong, and I think the real reason “The Fixer” exists is that… THIS SONG IS GOING TO SOUND SOOOO KICK ASS LIVE. Imagine this anthem being played in huge arenas, with everyone singing along, and I mean EVERYONE. I mean c’mon — it’s not too hard to remember “yeah yeah yeah”.

This song is for the flannel and Doc wearing fans that have been around since the early days. We’ve grown up with the band, experienced hardships along the way, with PJ being around as a constant that we could rely on when the waves got choppy. We’ve all graduated, ditched the flannel for more professional attire, but this song is a reminder that we’re all still here, and that it’s okay to have a little fun. Things will get better.

I, for one, welcome our new pop overlords and can’t wait to see them in LA and SD.

i saw Return of the King today — another SOE event, so i pretty much got paid to see it. =) excellent movie. don’t want to give anything away, but i think i can safely say the following:

- it’s good to see that Sloth from The Goonies finally found another acting gig
- wow, that crazy king guy has quite the shaky lip
- i was really hoping they’d go with the CHiPs-style ending credits during this one scene at the end (you’ll know what i’m talking about when you see it)
- eating a bag of Jalepeno Heat potato chips is a bad idea before seeing a long movie. my mouth was on fire so i had to down a big thing of pepsi to cool it
- drinking a big thing of pepsi is a bad idea before seeing a long movie… for obvious reasons
- is it over yet?
- be ready for numb-butt after the show

so i saw the Matrix: Revolutions today (company field trip — they bought out the 10:20 screening at the local theater). don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, but my feeling is that if you saw the first two, you might as well watch the last one. it didn’t suck as much as Reloaded, the action scenes were just that, but i didn’t give a rat’s ass about most of the characters. to me, they all turned into caricatures of themselves — a far cry from who we saw in the original movie. and the plastic acting from most of the actors didn’t help much either. the fight scenes were a bit better, although i still wasn’t on the edge of my seat for any of them. if anything, i was on the edge during a particular scene involving “the kid” (knowing his background from “The Animatrix” had me pulling for him more than anyone else in the movie). so all in all, i give it a partially enthusiastic “meh”. just give me the original movie and The Animatrix, and i’ll be happy. i’ll pretend that the last 2 movies were just a glitch in the matrix.

i saw Kill Bill last night. by far the best movie i have seen all year. Uma kicked all kinds of ass, and looked muy caliente to boot. the main fight sequence blew away anything that i saw in either of the Matrix movies, and proved you don’t need a bunch of wire work or CG to make a good fight (consider that this movie also has the same fight choreographer as The Matrix and Crouching Tiger), although Tarantino did kinda go crazy with the blood fountains. heh. it’s this lack of special effects that makes this a more convincing tribute to the old 70s kung fu flicks. Uma’s yellow/black outfit, a la Bruce Lee in Game of Death, was a very cool nod to those old movies. the music in this movie was so integral in what made this movie cool. mostly quirky and cheesy tunes, but not to the point of being annoying or lame. whatever it is, it works. i already bought the soundtrack. nothing about this movie sucked. not one part dragged, and i was totally surprised when the end credits appeared — it all went by very quickly. i’ve got nothing bad to say about this movie. i’m definitely going to see this again. i probably won’t have too much of a hard time trying to convince my work buds to see it a 2nd time around.

go watch Bowling for Columbine. now.

okay, i gotta say it — SNL’s Tina Fey is one of the sexiest women out there. raaawr…

matrix reloaded… i shouldn’t have had set my hopes up so high when i came in to see it. it’s not a total suckfest, but i’d be lying if i said i wasn’t disappointed. i thought the Zion rave scene was unnecessary, or at the very least, could have been shortened considerably. Morpheus might as well have just ended his speech with “we will defeat the machines… with the power of techno!!!” [boom*tz*boom*tz*boom]. methinks it was left in to help sell the soundtrack. if that’s the case, nothing really stood out. song winner: Propellerheads’ Spybreak from Matrix 1. some of the dialog was downright laughable. i’m paraphasing here but one line was “some things change. some things don’t.” wtf was that? cheesy dialog winner: Neo’s “i know kung fu” from M1. even the fight scenes were a letdown. the wire work was kinda cool, but doesn’t hold a candle to what i saw in Iron Monkey (or the M1 for that matter), which is probably why i didn’t think much of the fight scenes. fight scene winner: neo vs. agent smith subway fight from M1. pwn3d. even Morpheus was a let down. in M2 he came off as the crazy guy who never mows his lawn (if he had a lawn to mow in Zion). yeah, yeah, Neo is The One. we get it. winner: uber-cool Morpheus from M1. despite my complaints, i did think M2 as a whole was a decent movie. i loved the fact that they did some research and used a real exploit during Trinity’s hacking scene — she used Nmap to to find a vulnerable SSH server. this made headlines on most of the geek sites, so i made sure to look for it when the scene came. one of my movie peeves is when they show “hackers” using a fancy cool 3D interface with rotating whiz-bangs to break into systems. glad they kept it real with M2. kudos.

have i already said that Tina Fey is damn sexy? oh i guess i already have. yum…

i saw Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within this past weekend with Tracy. very cool movie. the quality of the computer animation is incredible. it’s so detailed that for the first 10 minutes i was in awe of how much detailed the work is, and it was all so realistic, i found myself forgetting that it was all CG imaging, thinking i was watching a live-action flick. as far as the story goes, it’s very FF-ish, so if you haven’t played the game, you might not like it. even so, i think the visuals will blow you away.

Final Fantasy: TSW opens today. just read this press release that *nix boxes were used to create the film — including Linux. can’t wait to see it with Tracy, who’s an even bigger FF geek than i am. =) she seriously got into and finished FF7, whereas i just got barely into disc 2 of the game. and i think she finished FF8 too. gotta love a girl who plays video games! =)