News Archive
Bracket Results / Rules & FAQ
7-29-2004
Net Enigma. God gave rock and roll to everyone.
Holy
upset boys and girls! In a surprise 1 vote margin Ali Larter
defeated Britney Spears in the championship round of the "128 Hottest
Chicks we didn't think of...the first time!"
We only had 19 votes (which may have been due to the site being down last week) and the deciding vote was cast by none other than my boy Todd.
Overall the game didn't run as well as I'd hoped and it definitely lasted longer than we thought it would. I want to thank everyone that hung in there and voted and hung out with us. I don't see us running another game for a long time if ever, but we'll come up with something to keep you all interested, I'm sure!
7-27-2004
Net Enigma. Where were you the night Sara was killed?
I was at home updating the NetEnigma web site.
Long weekend, but I'm back. My cousin Chris got married Saturday night and it was a very nice ceremony and reception. Even though I had to drive all the way to Jersey to make it! But, Chris had a huge grin on his face and his wife, Kristin, looked great.
I got to see some family members and catch up with some old friends I hadn't seen in a long time. It was a really great night.
Now, it's back to the business at hand. You have 2 days left to get your vote in on the championship round of the 128 Hottest. The game will wrap up on Wednesday night. Hit that banner and getter done!
New Host
The new host, LunarPages.com, has been working like a champ since the site came up on it last week. I think the change will be for the better and I'm just sorry that I had a lapse in judgment and focus which led to the unfortunate choice of HostSave.
Eh, good things ahead. I think I still have a couple pages and links to get fixed but most everything should be working. If not, let me know!
Cycling Maniac
How about Lance Armstrong winning his sixth Tour De France? That's one tough son-of-a-bitch. And to the French and everyone else that yells "doping" when it comes to lance, you can all kiss my ass.
7-22-2004
Net Enigma. Hello, boys! I'm baaack!
Back up on a new server and so far everything is looking good. Most of the links should be up now and I'll be fixing the last few later tonight.
7-21-2004
Net Enigma. You have no idea how pissed I am!
Sometime late Monday or early Tuesday, NetEnigma.com went offline due to a DoS attack on our host, HostSave.com. That outage was still ongoing as of 2:27 p.m. on Wednesday, 7/21.
Due to the inability of HostSave.com to stabilize their servers and bring our site back on I initiated a migration to a new hosting company, LunarPages.com. The DNS move should, if all goes well, be complete sometime around 2:00pm on Thursday, 7/22.
Basically, if you are seeing this page, it worked.
I don't think I've lost any email during this outage, but haven't been able to retrieve much of it during the last couple of days.
The 128 Hottest game is on pause while this server moves. The Flash part of the game was actually hosted on our partner site, Qualler.com, also a HostSave customer. Buckle has already put in his movie to LunarPages as well and we should have everything back together pretty quickly. I'll extend the championship round until we get this emergency change completed and will also notify everyone by email.
Many of the links on this page do not work as of 7/21 because I haven't had time to move all the files over. As soon as the DNS change takes place I'll get that stuff uploaded.
In the meantime, if you need to get a hold of me, you can use the address netenigma4u@hotmail.com
7-19-2004
Net Enigma. On the next, special episode of Net Enigma, more of the same!
It's finally here! Goddamn I never thought it would come but finally we are ready to vote in the championship round of the 128 Hottest Chicks game.
The final two chicks, Britney Spears and Ali Larter, have defeated all comers to this point now it's up to you to make a decision on which one you think that just that little something more!
Banner link is active so click and enjoy. And while you have the game open, take a few minutes to browse through all the other chicks that you sent home early!
7-17-2004
Net Enigma. Taxes will be added in states where applicable.
Instead of the 128 Hottest I think we need to rename this game "Battle of the Blondes!"
Carly Pope, the Cinderella of this ball came up 6 votes short of an upset and the unstoppable Britney Spears advances to the Championship round. Something feels very Cuthbert about this...
The other match up, Ali Larter's girl-next-door vs Alyssa Milanos bad-girl-of-your-dreams, was much closer with just 2 votes sending the whip cream bikini into the final round.
The final round should start some time later today when Buckle gets it posted. Keep an eye on the banner link at the top and I'll get an email out as soon as it's ready for prime time!
7-16-2004
Net Enigma. Live for the thrill of the grill!
Are you ready for the championship round of the 128 Hottest! You bet your ass I am. So, tonight, Friday 7/16 at midnight, the Final Four round voting will be over and tomorrow we'll start the championship round!
That means you have just 24 hours left to get your vote in if you haven't done it yet! It's a close battle between Britney and Carly not to mention Ali and Alyssa. If you haven't voted yet, do it now or risk your favorite hottie getting knocked out!
Hit the banner link, you know you want to!
7-13-2004
Net Enigma. If you can pronounce Ioan Gruffudd without looking it up I'll give you a crisp $100 bill.
If Keira Knightley is on the big screen, my ass is firmly planted in a seat in the audience. And that's where I found myself last night, enjoying King Arthur. This latest telling of the legend of King Arthur has the expected supporting cast; Lancelot, Gawain, Galahad, Merlin and Guinevere. From there it differs slightly to other tellings.
Arthur is a leader of knights and is an officer in the Roman army which holds Britain as one of its lands. He and his knights are in service to the Roman army for 15 years and as the movie begins they are about to finally have their freedom from conscription. That is until a Bishop from Rome shows up and sends them on one final mission; rescue one of the Pope's godsons from northern Britain where a Saxon army is advancing.
With freedom from the military in sight, Arthur and his knights take on the task and succeed in rescuing the Roman family as well as a captive Guinevere. Enter Merlin, the leader of the British natives. He sees in Arthur, who is half Roman and half British, the future leader of the country. Brought together by Guinevere, Merlin tells Arthur that it is his love of his British mother, not his service to Rome that has helped him become the fair and decent man he is and that great things are ahead for him.
In the face of the advancing Saxon's, Arthur and his knights realize that as much as they want their freedom from fighting, from the military and from servitude, they love the country that they have spent their life fighting to defend, and they love each other and their leader, Arthur.
The movie has plenty of action through most of the film and maintains a good pace even during the down time where they fill in the plot and develop the characters. Of course, Arthur is the center character, but we also see into the thoughts of Lancelot, Guinevere and Cerdic, the Saxon leader.
Antoine Fuqua, who has also directed great movies in Training Day, The Replacement Killers and Tears of the Sun has proven himself again with this movie. The cinematography, pacing, look and feel of the movie all came together for me. Clive Owen as Arthur is great to watch on screen and I'd love to see him in some more films on this side of the Atlantic.
Backing him up are Ioan Gruffudd as Lancelot (Remember that name, you'll need it when he plays Reed Richards in the forthcoming Fantastic Four movie), Joel Edgerton as Gawain and Hugh Dancy as Galahad. A scene stealer, Ray Winstone as Bors was awesome and provided some great comic relief.
And, of course, my beautiful "It" girl, Keira Knightley. What can I say, she's talented, she's hot and she has that great accent. Like I told Todd, you could dress her in a paper bag and roll her in a mud puddle for an hour and she'd still look hot.
Back on topic. Plenty of action and character development is packed into this 2 hour movie. Fuqua has great talent and it shows with this film. The pacing is perfect and makes the film even more enjoyable. It's not as bloody as say, Braveheart, but the fight scenes are intense and keep you on the edge of your seat.
The film appears to have gotten buried by a still strong Spider-Man 2, but this film deserves a watch. The only issue I had with this movie is that in several places I had trouble understanding some of the actors accents but that's not enough to take a lot away from this film. I'll give it 3.5 wheels of cheddar out of 4.
7-12-2004
Net Enigma. Warning: Choking Hazard.
Want to see Cameron Diaz doing some fetish modeling? Yeah. Yeah you do. Well, it's not the best transfer I've ever seen but it's good enough for what it is. Big download but it's about a half hour long:
Also look for the permanent link at left in the Hot Topics section.
7-8-2004
Net Enigma. Sweat dreams are made of these, who am I to disagree?
That's it, bitches, The Elite 8 round of the 128 Hottest is now in the books!
No big surprise as Britney Spears went up by 8 votes to send Karen Cliché to the showers. She'll go up against Carly Pope who pulled out a two vote upset win over Gina Gershon!
Big surprise in that Carly Pope vote, I think. Not quite as big of a surprise is Ali Larter racking up 6 votes over Susan Ward. For some reason blonde power seems to advance in these games and Ali proves it once again.
The last match was another 2 vote difference with Alyssa Milano beating Joran to advance to the Final Four!
So, your matches in the Final Four are Britney Spears vs Carly Pope an Ali Larter vs Alyssa Milano. And that round is NOW LIVE!
Tap that link banner and have at it Boys and Girls. We're just two rounds away from crowing a winner in this game (finally) so a HUGE thanks to everyone that's hung in there for this game. With the delays and problems we had early on this thing has been strung out over a month longer than we originally planned.
But, two more rounds and we'll have our winner. And I know you'll want to be in on that!
Shenanigans
I haven't posted a Shenanigan in a while...as a matter of fact, most of the current readers probably don't even remember when that used to be a feature here. Anyway, funny, and thought provoking cartoon for you today.
Promotion
I'm going to go out on a limb and do some promotion for the forums. It can be a scary place in there with Joe and Magneticdozer, and it definitely isn't for the shy or sheltered, but it is a fun place to hang out. So, stop by the forum, sign up and join the fun.
Also, my buddy T.J. has gotten his new site up and running so stop by and check him out at Terpfen.com.
7-8-2004
Net Enigma. Don't you know what the night can do?
Alright boys and girls, you have just 24 hours (as of this writing) to get your votes in for the Elite 8 round of the 128 Hottest chicks. I'm cutting off this round Thursday night at about 10:00pm so that I can have the results posted on Friday.
The Finale Four will start on Friday so stop back.
Depths of Stupidity
This guy and his wife are in hot water for trying to market a filing cabinet that was supposed to protect people from chemical and biological attacks. It even had flashing lights and a siren.
The reason they are in trouble is because they lied about the device (no shit, really?) and then sold stock to their company. Overall I guess they raised $400,000 in their little venture. That's a lot of dumb-shit people out there investing their money.
If people will invest in that then maybe they'll invest in something more worthwhile and send me money.
But, what could I market? Hmm...I GOT IT! How about Random Porn?
Kay Sivilay / Kay Sivilay / Kay Sivilay
7-4-2004
Net Enigma. Happy 4th of July.
I hope that during your weekend celebrations that you all take a few minutes to think about our military personnel that are serving over seas.
Then, suck back a couple cold ones, grab a dog and head over to the 128 Hottest Chicks contest because nothing is more American than scantily clad women.
Well, maybe apple pie. But that's it!
7-1-2004
Net Enigma. Swinging into theaters.
I only worked a half day yesterday and part of that was so that I could get to the theater and see Spider-Man 2. I was not disappointed.
In a sequel of this type we've already been introduced the main characters, their origin story if you will, and we are able to see the characters develop more, see their relationships and their life and have a new adventure along the way. That is exactly what SP 2 was about; character development. And they did a hell of a job.
Returning as Spider-Man, Tobey Maguire, brilliantly plays Peter Parker as he struggles with his dual life of super hero and average college student. Two years have passed since the first film and in that time he's had to deal with Harry Osborn's hatred of Spider-Man over the death of his father, his relationship with Mary Jane and the burden of having never told his Aunt May that he was indirectly responsible for Uncle Ben's death.
This all weighs on him and his ability to be a crime fighter, helping others at the sacrifice of his own life.
Introduce Dr. Otto Octavius, the subject of Peter's college science paper and employee of Oscorp, now run by Harry. During a failed experiment in fusion, Dr. Octavius becomes Doc Ock, fused to four mechanical arms and driven insane by the experience. He crosses paths with Spider-Man and Aunt May forcing Spider-Man to rescue his aunt.
Already questioning his role as hero, that event, along with his inability to commit to Mary Jane, leads to Peter making the decision to stop being Spider-Man. With that weight lifted, he gets back to basics, school, work and family.
That doesn't last long before Doc Ock surfaces again and endangers Mary Jane. By this point in the movie his commitment to being a super hero has been shored up by advice from his aunt, the public and his memories of his Uncle Ben. The soul searching that he goes through while taking a break from Spider-Man helps him get a clear picture of his life, his calling and his duty to the world around him.
The scene that most cements this is, after tussling with Ock and stopping a speeding train, he's carried, worn out and battered, inside by the passengers. Unmasked and vulnerable, their support and willingness to keep his identity secret is the final piece of the puzzle that Peter needs to continue his fight. And the inevitable showdown with Doc Ock and the rescuing of Mary Jane is solid action at the close of the movie.
Successfully mixing the action, CGI and drama, Sam Raimi has directed a masterpiece super hero movie in Spider-Man 2. The plot, pacing, acting and cinematography were all top-notch. The cast assembled for this and the first movie is impeccable. I took some issue with James Franco in the first film but he's grown as an actor and this movie shows it.
Kirsten Dunst, always gorgeous, looks great in the film and can add another superb turn to her resume. Toby Maguire plays Peter Parker with the right mix of vulnerability, courage and geekiness and I can't imagine any other actor in Hollywood in this role. One of my favorite parts, however, is the character actor J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson. He's a scene stealer in this film and we see much more of him than in the first film. Brilliant! Alfred Molina was also a good choice as Doc Ock. Philosopher, scientist and eventual madman, Ock is a classic villain from Spider-Man's rogue gallery and an excellent choice for this film.
The final moments of the film definitely leave us wanting more and even give us hints at a potential villain for round 3 in the franchise. I don't want to give any plot points away so I won't go into it. Go see this movie for yourself, though, you won't be disappointed.
I'm going to go out on a limb and offer up Spider-Man 2 as the best super hero movie I've ever seen. And that's saying a lot. I loved the story from top to bottom. As I mentioned, the CGI and cinematography rules in this film and the advances even from the first installment make the movie beautiful to look at. The emotions that Maguire goes through as Peter are all written in his eyes and no amount of F/X can fake that. Plenty of action and romance to make this both an escape and a date movie, Spider-Man 2 leaves it all on the field. For this I give it 4 wheels of cheddar out of 4!!