News Archive - May 2003
|
5-24-2003
Net Enigma. Polar bears. I'm so happy.
Good news, my cousin is on his way home from the Middle East. I had a message on my answering machine today from my mother. Luke called his dad today to let him know he was headed home.
Retraction
I guess I need to make somewhat of a retraction on my earlier statements about FrontPage. I thought that the program was causing the problems I was having with the web site last week. Looks now like it was probably the FrontPage Extensions that I had installed on the server.
Thanks to the Control Center at Earthlink I was able to remove and then reinstall FP Extensions. After that I published the site again and it came up.
But I stick by the argument that FP definitely defies logic the way it works sometimes.
Expanding vocabulary
I haven't had an update like this in a while, but today I debut a new Twisted Dictionary term.
CAL - Crack Addict Logic. The use of any argument necessary to justify your need for something. "I can have a Krakel bar at 8a.m. It's just Rice Krispies surrounded by chocolate making it a breakfast food."
5-23-2003
Net Enigma. Need....just....one....more...crappy....saying...
Hot Broads...
You've never heard of. Today I present for your viewing pleasure Rhona Mitra. She had a recurring role on the old "Party of Five" television show but you Internet geeks may recognize her for her turn as the original Lara Croft model.
Her movie roles range from a throw-away part in a crappy Stallone movie, Get Carter, to the neighbor that Kevin Bacon rapes in Hollow Man. Since then she's shown up in Sweet Home Alabama and The Life of David Gale. Catch her on DVD, especially Hollow Man if you want to see her GTO.
Bring it on!
I'll never pick on the Mormons again. Okay, I will, but now that I've heard that Mormon belief is that bloodshed is required punishment for someone that kills I may give those polygamist bastards a break. Rock on.
These two chuckleheads in Utah are set to die by firing squad in June. I can't say enough for this type of death penalty. It's cheap, it's easy and sounds like cowboy justice. I love it.
The only thing in that article that I take issue with is anyone that thinks that this is cruel and unusual punishment should shut the fuck up. They obviously don't care that the one guy stabbed a man 40 times to get this punishment. If you ask me, four shots to the pumper is about as quick of a way to go as any.
5-22-2003
Net Enigma. It's alive!
The forums that is. Back on-line after some technical difficulty. Yeah, I still have FrontPage but I think I've got if figured out now...sort of.
Oh, and most of the picture links should be working from the Party Up! page again. So if you need your fix of Sabrina or want to relish in the drunken antics of Parrot, head on over.
It's over...
The 2002-2003 television season. Tuesday night saw the season finale of four of the shows I watch, "24," "Smallville," "JAG" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
"JAG" came in with the standard cliffhanger that it always has, a theme that's really big this year by the way. The show was pretty solid and it'll be back with a strong season next year, I'm sure.
I haven't watched "Smallville" yet, I taped the last couple of weeks and I'll be catching up on that this coming weekend...or sooner since there isn't much else on now.
As for "Buffy," this was actually the series finale. I haven't seen it yet since Time Warner Cable, the anti-Christ of the cable television world, has seen fit to NOT program a UPN network. It's funny that just 20 minutes up the road in Cortland, south in Binghamton and Elmira (and most everywhere else in NY I'm sure) they have a fine UPN station. Thieving bastards. Anyway, my buddies sister is taping it for me.
Now, "24." This show has been rock solid all season. Every week when it came to the end I was on the edge of my seat just waiting for the next installment to find out what was going to happen. The only downside was the damn daughter of Kiefer Sutherland's lead character, Jack Bauer. You know it's bad when you have to endanger a character with a mountain lion in the woods when there is a nuclear bomb in L.A. Whatever. The finale Tuesday night started off really well but I felt let down by the end. Some of it felt really obvious but at the same time they tried to pull a shocking ending like last year. I don't think it worked.
Don't get me wrong though, I still think that this show is one of the top 3, maybe 4 shows on television. It'll be back next season and I'll be on the edge of my seat watching it all again.
Signing my life away
So, I'm looking to buy a house. How about that? I find it funny and at the same time odd that I haven't done it before. I'm ready to sign my life to the bank for 30 years. But, it'll beat living in a 1 bedroom apartment (above the laundry room) for $630 a month.
But, I look at it like this, how better to facilitate the resurrection of Margarita Wednesday than to buy a house?
5-20-2003
Net Enigma. Stick with the one you know.
Been watching those season finales of your favorite television shows? I think I'm about in my last week. "CSI: Miami" wrapped up last night, "JAG", "Smallville," and "24" all wrap tonight. There might be one more show this week but I think that's about it.
But let's talk about "CSI" for a second. I was a big fan of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and, in turn, a fan of the spin-off. Last night I found something that I didn't like though and once again it ties into gun-play in Hollywood.
I like David Caruso's Horatio Caine because he's not really like William Petersen's Grissom as he started as a cop and now he's an intense CSI. It adds a cool dimension to the show. But in last nights episode, expanded to 75 minutes...oooh, Caine is at a prison to investigate a stabbing when a prison break occurs.
Now, as this happens a guard is standing on the wall with an M-16 spraying from the hip, not hitting shit, so Horatio grabs up a standard service issue 9mm and pumps about 10 for 10 shots into a moving helicopter the prisoners are using to escape. Now, come on. Give me a break. One guard was shooting and everyone else was standing around like they didn't know what the fuck was going on, can't hit shit with a high powered rifle but a 9mm Beretta is dead-on?
Please.
That's almost as bad as watching bullets bounce off of cars and windshields in movies. My .22 pistol will put a hole in the aluminum of your standard car.
Blah. It was still a good episode, I just hate stupid crap like that.
5-19-2003
Net Enigma. When you decapitate a loved one you don't expect them to come calling.
The unofficial birthday for NetEnigma.com is May 17th. I didn't really put anything up for that day, but keeping with tradition I updated the site with a new look this week. I try to do something new every year just to keep you all interested. And I guess it sort of works because I keep getting email about how much people love the naked broads I post.
And I thought it was for my insightful commentary on the world. Whatever. As long as the counter goes up I'm happy.
I am debuting a new feature today though, the Movie Reviews section. It's linked over on the left for your convenience in the future. If you read the site often then you'll see the reviews I post. Now when I do a review I'll also put it over on the reviews page in case I want to look back...or if you want to. Just in case you're thinking about watching some cheesball movie and want another opinion. I'm in the process of going back and pulling reviews out of old posts so it's not complete but it'll get there.
Speaking of...
Deathlands. This Sci-Fi original movie staring Vincent Spano, and based on novels by James Axler, debuted Saturday night. I haven't read the novels but my buddy Todd has and I know he really liked them. Hope he wasn't expecting a lot from the movie.
The idea is that someone starts a nuclear war in the near future. The Earth is left with small pockets of survivors and a new breed of humans called "muties" who are distinguished by their red eyes. America is a wasteland called, surprise, the deathlands. To eek out an existence and not get your ass shot off seems to be the order of the day.
Now, in all fairness, maybe this movie was close to the novels and I'll need to read them to get it, but on its own, eh. Jenya Lano, token hot broad, Cliff Saunders and Nathan Carter round out Spano's band of brothers. Saunders as J.B. Dix probably would be the most interesting character if they hadn't cut his part to the bones. Spano is just kind of blah in the film and being as this was TV we certainly didn't see enough skin from Lano.
Traci Lords, taking a spin as a psycho, sex-starved villain, was a breath of fresh air...if not a stretch of her acting ability. I hope you don't have to look that up for it to be funny. Matthew Holmes (No relation to John, Traci...sorry) steals the show as Spano's evil brother Nathan and you have to love it when a guy is done-in by a pen full of murderous pigs.
Well, okay, you don't. And probably most of you wont.
The entire movie felt like a set-up for a series but the acting and storytelling will have to get much better for this franchise to have any legs. The movie had some bright spots (Lano and Holmes), some okay spots and some downright turn-the-channel spots (explain to me again how Spano was shooting that M-16 without a clip) but I wouldn't cry if we got a sequel out of it. I'll give it 2 wheels of cheddar out of 4 with the stipulation they improve the script and Spano's personality in any sequel.
5-18-2003
Net Enigma. Missing a witty saying.
Today we're going to continue a feature that I like to call "Hot Broads You've Never Heard Of." I actually have two broads to highlight today.
The first is Keira Knightley. Pretty quick you'll all know her from her upcoming role in the Johnny Depp vehicle Pirates of the Caribbean but Star Wars fans may know her as Handmaiden Sabe from Episode 1. You'll all know her as a hot broad though.
Next up is Kristanna Loken. This Norwegian beauty will take a spin as a Terminator in this years Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Her filmography is even shorter than Kiera's but geeks and martial art fans may remember her from her turn as Taja on the TV series "Mortal Kombat: Conquest."
I figured I'd bring both of these chicks to Net Enigma before everyone jumps on the bandwagon to praise their beauty. Let's just hope they can act as good as they look.
Turn up the heat
Terrorists have been going nuts for the last week or so. Three bombs in Saudi Arabia and now something like five explosions in Morocco. Somebody better help us start arresting some people before we're forced to whoop another countries ass.
5-16-2003
Net Enigma. Important information for our valued customer.
Matrix: Reloaded. Well, it was reloaded alright but I think someone handed the directors and writers a handful of squibs.
Caught this movie Thursday, its opening day, at the 10:00am showing with some friends of mine. I was hoping for a solid movie after just seeing the spectacular X-Men 2. What I got was 2 1/2 hours of Keanu Reeves' Neo doing his "stick up the ass" impersonation.
After the first ass-kicking fight scene they got the point across that Neo can take all comers in the Matrix so it was too bad that they had to spend the rest of the movie hammering that home. Unlike the first movie, the sequel climbed inside your head and played mind games with you. There was definitely a lot more thinking involved with this movie. It would have worked better if the directors hadn't relied on the audience renting the original DVD last weekend or counting on everyone remembering what happened on screen 4 years ago.
Before I bash the film too much, let me say that it definitely had it's good points. Watching Neo kick the crap out of 100's of Agent Smith was really cool as were the Twins and the highway sequence towards the end of the movie. The concept of the Matrix is becoming more intriguing and Monica Bellucci is fucking hot!
For the bad, there is a really weird dance sequence mingled with a drawn out love scene which was all preceded by a "I'ma run for president" speech by Morpheus. A couple of the fight sequences got a little long and no matter how you cut it, the first hour was really kind of boring.
Like Finley put it, they could have cut about an hour out of this one, merged in the Revolutions movie and put us all out of our minds with glee in 3 1/2 hours like Peter Jackson is doing with the Rings movies.
I think I'll need to see this movie at least one more time to really appreciate all of the head games it plays and to catch all the crap going on in the background. But after my initial love of the movie passed and I thought about it, I was left a little cold. I'll give it 2.5 wheels of cheddar out of 4. Let's hope Revolutions brings along a revolution of good changes.
F Microsoft
I really am pissed off at FrontPage. This fucking piece of shit program works when it wants, doesn't do the same thing the same way twice and is seriously pissing me off. The forums are offline because I can't get FrontPage to publish them again and if links aren't working on other pages, just give it time. I'll probably have to rebuild shit by hand to make this work again.
5-15-2003
Net Enigma. You're logic is not like our Earth logic.
So, to make the updates on the site I switched to Microsoft FrontPage to make things a little easier to update. I've been using it at work and it's been not bad.
Till today. I'm sick and tired of this piece of shit! It won't upload correctly, it goes off and makes changes to my code for no apparent reason. The publishing function doesn't work right and the shared borders that make menus and headers easier? Bullshit!
And now I'm stuck. After all the work I did I can't easily just switch back to Hot Metal and I don't see this getting any easier. Fuck!
So, whatever. Shit doesn't work, the forums are down and pages are missing. Deal with it. I'll get it fixed after I finish bashing holes in walls, yelling, screaming and punching shit.
Goodbye
Wednesday night was the last episode of "Dawson's Creek" on The WB. After 6 years spending Wednesday night with this show I was pretty sad to see it go. Granted most of the key actors have promising careers in Hollywood and they'll be in movies or future TV projects but this was one of those shows that you look forward to seeing and now it's gone.
I guess it is for the best as some of the shows have been off and yes, some of the storylines were becoming redundant. But I'm still uncertain about the ending. Jennifer's dead of a heart defect, Joey and Pacey got together and Dawson's left alone (but in Hollywood getting a meeting with Spielberg). They never did do anything further with Jack's sister Andy, the missing sister Eve or Joey's dad. But thankfully Audrey wasn't on it! Jack finally finds a boyfriend (Pacey's finally out of the closet brother) and adopts Jen's daughter, Gail is remarried and everyone pretty much lives happily ever after.
Yeah for them. Still gonna miss the show.
5-14-2003
Net Enigma. HOLLLAAAA!!!
Welcome to the new layout for NetEnigma.com. Hope you like it. You'll see some pages changing over the next day or two as I get everything sorted out. So stop back.
Personality
I don't usually have a problem bashing things like movies or TV shows even when I haven't seen them. I mean, I'm usually right, so, what does it matter if I've actually seen it?
I was going to write an article about what a shitty idea this new reality TV show "Mr. Personality" is. It's based on a girl trying to meet a guy based on personality and not looks so each of the guys wears a mask and she doesn't get to see what they look like. Great.
I bashed "Joe Millionaire" when it was on and then actually watched it and found that it was funny because, you know, it was all based on a lie! So I figured I'd give this one a shot before bashing it just in case it was actually funny like "Joe" was. Well after seeing Monday nights episode I realize that I was completely wrong about the show. It's actually much worse that I had originally thought.
Of course there is a hot broad that is trying to pick a guy, but the guys, mask or no, are the same feeble losers that shows like "The Bachelorette" have. There are the players, the sensitive guys, the romantics, etc. Blah.
Last night she got rid of two of the guys who actually seemed pretty cool and kept the player and the sensitive guy who has become infatuated with her (read that as he's the future stalker in her life).
I just laughed for an hour, basically. It's not like I'm out scoring broads 5 nights a week or anything, but come on, even I'm not desperate enough to try and get on a TV show to meet a girl.
5-12-2003
Net Enigma. I've kept up my birthday tradition of gut-wrenching trauma and horror.
So, Saturday night I trekked down to Philly to surprise Finley. Showed up at Finnigan's Wake about 9:00 and met up with James, Mike-Dog, Seth, Aaron, Robin and Charlotte. A little before 10 Finley showed up with Leigh, Ralph and Stacey and it was on!
We raised a little hell from the basement to the balcony with shots, beer and liquor. Gawked at some hot broads and heard some good Irish music. But the fun was just getting started. Because we left Finnigan's about 11:30 or so and headed up the street to Delilah's. Now, let me just say that the dancers at Delilah's are HOT. I've seen hot girls, even strippers before, but all of the chicks at this place were hot. There wasn't that "one" that didn't meet the quality. Incredible.
Anyway, I guess I don't have to tell you that we closed that place down. There was a lot of gawking, drinking and maybe even a private dance or two...but I'm not mentioning names. Let's just say that a couple of the crew would love to go to Paris sometime!
All in all it was a fun way to spend a birthday.
5-8-2003
Net Enigma. There are no updates on Net Enigma, it is a figment of your imagination. Updates will not be tolerated, we will slaughter them all. Most of them.
Hey,
yesterday was Finley's birthday. The big 2-5. He's now
officially an old fucking man. Not as old as me, but almost.
Sequel Overload
It's the year of the sequel. We have X2: X-Men United in theaters now and next week we'll see the second Matrix movie. And you can't forget that we'll get the third movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy this fall as well as the third movie in the Matrix family. First time we've had two sequels to a movie in the same year that I know of (Did Back to the Future 2 & 3 go in the same year?)
Not to be outdone by big budget films, the sequel to The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, will pop about June 6th. However, without Vin, I don't know if I want to see this one. I mean, Paul Walker as the lead? Come on. He ranks right up there with Freddie Prinze Jr. on the "How the hell does he have a career in Hollywood?" list.
Anyway, the real topic of this rant is X2. That is a hell of a sequel. Since Brian Singer didn't have to explain the who's-who part of the X-Universe he jumped right into the storyline where the first X-Men movie left off. And he didn't slow down till the end.
The premise of the movie is that the X-Men are being hunted by the government. Professor X is kidnapped, Magneto escapes, Wolverine learns some of his history and Kelly Hu is fucking hot. I guess that last part doesn't have anything to do with the plot, but, hey, it's a chance to gawk at a hot broad.
Storm, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Mystique and Rogue are all back for this ride. Bobby Drake, aka Iceman, got mucho screen time as did Nightcrawler, played brilliantly by Alan Cumming. Coming off an Oscar win, Halle Berry's Storm had more than 2 lines and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos proves once again that John Stamos sold his soul to the Devil to even get this chick to speak to him, let alone marry him. Cyclops is sufficiently quiet and non-intrusive.
It was fun to see some of the cameos and hints at other X-characters that may see screen time in future movies of the franchise. Especially of note were Dr. Hank McCoy (Beast) and Remy Lebeau (Gambit). Kitty Pryde, Jubilee, Siryn and Colossus also had roles and it would be very cool to see them in future movies. Oh, and any time Peter Wingfield shows up you know ass is going to be kicked and names will be taken. Methos lives!
The style of the film, the F/X and the comedic tones were all well done. Singer took a good script and put a flashy, well paced movie on the screen. The guy has comic book movies down pat. I'm psyched to see the Matrix next week but I was looking forward to this movie more. I wasn't disappointed. Three and a half wheels of cheddar out of four.
New layout
New layout coming for the site within the next week or so. I have some new graphics cooking, it should be easier to maintain (I keep saying that) and I'll probably off-load some old news that I'm sure no one but me actually reads back through anyway.
Over the edge
Microsoft has gone over the edge, or, "round the bend" as some people like to say. It seems that they have developed what is called the iLoo. And, yes, that's "loo" as in toilet. So, now you can take a shit in a public, portable, toilet (think Port-A-Poty) and get your email at the same time.
Will you also be able to browse porn? I hope they make the keyboard waterproof and self cleaning, cause, eew!!
What's a "plug?"
A "plug" is an object used to obstruct a passage. Or, it's when you publicize something. In this case, we're publicizing something. Actually several something's.
Anyway, let's get on with it. First up I have to plug Ernies House of Whoopass because it's one of the funniest sites I've ever read.
I also have to plug I Want A New Girlfriend. Why? Cause I throw a link to the guy every now and then. He's a funny read and always has good porn.
And finally, this guy Maddox. The guy has more opinions than hairs on his ass and he's angrier than an Irishman at last call. But his site is a fun read.
Coming home
My cousin Luke should be on his way home from the Gulf by the end of the month. I'm sure being home will be more fun that riding around the desert in a Hummer, strapped and bullet proof.
