Movie Review with Apes!

Lately the film industry has produced numerous remakes and sequels. Good movie ideas are at a premium because so much has already been done. Sometimes it is too hard to come up with a brand new, unique idea and it is much easier to take a movie that has already been made and put a new spin to it, thus we have movies such as this summer's "Rise of the Planet of the Apes." Let's show how apes took over, what a great idea! I could take the Roger Ebert approach and say the movie sucks ass for many reasons, even though he didn't actually shit on Rise of the Planet of the Apes that much, but here's what I think.

I kind of like this attitude

I wasn't really sure what to expect from "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" when it hit theaters. I am not a fan of the Planet of the Apes, I never saw the original with Carlton Heston and I don't remember much of anything of the newer installment that came out some years ago. However, I am aware of the famous "Get your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!" line, and yes, it was placed in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," uttered by the guy who played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films (hooray for fun facts!). Anyways, I found myself captivated by the opening sequences in the film. James Franco's character, Will Rodman, works for a company trying to find a cure for Alzheimers' disease. The drug, ALZ 112 is being tested on apes and there's a problem where one of the apes goes ape shit (haha!) and then the company orders to have all the apes put down and start working again on the formula. Will (Franco) takes a baby ape home with him, the only ape escaping termination at the hands of the Man. Will raises the ape and names it Caeser. Caeser is a very clever ape because the smarts gained by his mother from the ALZ 112 were passed down to him at birth.

Caeser is NOT home

I found the aforementioned part of the movie very intriguing and attention grabbing. I enjoyed the conflict of the imperfect formula, the struggle with the Man, and the growth of a unique ape in Caeser. In my estimation the movie went downhill when Caeser was admitted into some home for apes. I think Will put him there in an attempt to give Caeser more space to live and grow rather than be confined to his attic. So Caeser gets admitted to this ape home and he, along with the other apes, are treated extremely poorly by the staff, including Draco Malfoy. I guess Draco only plays dicks in movies, that's one way to make a living. Caeser wants to go home, he isn't allowed to, he gets pissed off, finds a way to escape from the ape home, goes back to Will's and steals some of the prototype Alzheimer's formula from the refrigerator (I don't know what it's doing there either), and exposes his fellow maltreated apes to the formula, and they devise a plan to break out. In the process of breaking out they beat the turd out of one of the employees!

I thought I was going to find nothing but milk!

What happens next is what I have the largest issue with in the movie. Caeser and his cronies escape and proceed to break out the apes in the zoo and Will's place of employment, which apparently has tons of apes. I think the amount of apes that are broken out is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy tooooooooooooo large. They would definitely have THAT many apes in San Francisco! I also don't understand how all those apes would have the mental capacity to comprehend what is going on and be able to help Caeser and his fight for ape freedom. The movie was ruined with a big bang Hollywood ending. Mass ape exodus! The apes take down a helicopter and kill a black dude! At least I'm rather certain they killed him, he fell with the helicopter into the ocean and we all know he can't swim, right?

The little bastard looks so innocent

The movie is without a doubt set up for a sequel. I must say that I am curious to see where they go with this. I wonder if they'll have the apes take over planet earth or hijack a spaceship or something and go start their world on a different planet! The movie ends with Caeser and his cronies climbing to the top of the trees in forest nearest the Golden Gate bridge. I don't know why they climbed up there, I think it would have been funny if Caeser got to the top only to be shot and killed by a sniper! Game over, Caeser! I really think technology poses a greater threat to mankind (like Skynet in "The Terminator") than apes.

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is an entertaining film and is worth a watch. As I said before, the beginning is very good, I very much enjoyed the development of the situation, but the climax and finale were nothing special. Although, I do believe that many people will enjoy the way the movie ends because it is a Hollywood finish and that's what people like to see: large numbers of apes running rampant through San Francisco proving unstoppable by authority with firepower and helicopters. I give "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" a solid 7.2936 out of 10.001.

Great Success!

Retentive Gibberish has taken a great step forward this last day in the blogging world.  Today we became more respectable than the famed Boston Barstool Sports on the grounds that we have never had to use child pornography for a joke, and know that it would be wrong to do so.  My brother, who was once featured on BBS for a video in which he failed a backflip, when asked how he feels about being featured on the same website as Tom Brady's naked 3 year old son responded "I'm fucking disgusted."  Indeed we should all be fucking disgusted at the blogging world before us, so please continue to read Retentive Gibberish, we don't feature any porn (adult or child) because we are trying to be your diversion from it.

Notice how the children on our site are clothed.

The Bat Out of Hell

I rather enjoyed reminiscing about past experiences, so I'm going to do it again! This particular experience occurred when I was a freshman in high school and I was at tryouts for the baseball team. For some reason I was practicing with the JV team, probably because I could field somewhat well. My fielding was one of my best areas in the game, if not my strongest. I think that I owe this to a drill which I thought of more as just having fun! My dad would stand at the edge of our driveway facing the garage. I would position myself in front of the garage armed only with my glove. My dad would then toss up tennis balls and hit them with a tennis racket toward the opening of the garage and I would field them! It was so much fun and probably the reason I could field somewhat smoothly.

I did a little bit of this, too

The weather around here sucks ass so we were having batting practice in our shitty gym where the batting cage was set up. We had a designated on deck circle where the person who was up next could get some practice swings in. I had just finished batting and I had gone back to my bag to put my bat away and take off my batting gloves. I would also like to add that my bag was nowhere near the designated on deck circle, who would have guessed. I had just finished putting my batting gloves in my bag when I stood up and turned around. What did I see when I turned around, not much but a blur and something hitting me in the face hard. I just stood there and touched the top of my right eye with my hand. When I looked at my hand it was covered in blood and I saw blood dripping to the floor. My teammates rushed me to the locker room where they did their best to clean me up and my mom was called to take me to the hospital. I'm sure the janitor loved me because now he had to clean up the long trail of blood!

This guy got off way too easy

Apparently I had been struck in the face with the bat wielded by my teammate who was on deck. I'm still certain that I was not in the on deck area, but who cares now, that was about six or seven years ago now. This was not just an ordinary bat either, it had a weight taped onto it, a practice bat. So I took a weighted bat to the face, more specifically, to my right eyebrow. My mom came to pick me up and brought me to the local hospital's emergency room. I still remember telling the emergency room people why I was there. The women on at that time looked at me horrified and asked me if I had been in a gang fight. Absolutely classic! Yeah, I got in a gang fight then got my mom to drive me to the hospital and calmly strolled into the emergency room, no big deal. I just hope for everyone's sake that the people who did this to me don't find us here, then shit's going down!

I had to wait forever in that emergency room. I remember seeing people walk out with the most miniscule issues, too. There was this one guy who came out with a band-aid on his thumb. Then there were those other people there complaining about the common cold, in the emergency room. I ended up getting three or four stitches and now there is a thin line on my eyebrow where hair no longer grows. I still remember going to school the next day, too. I had this patch over my eye and a couple of times I heard people say "hey, that must be the kid who got hit in the face with the bat."

Telling stories from my past is fun! Stay tuned for more coming soon! At least I hope coming soon.

Some of my Favorite Music Videos ...

Village People - Sex Over the Phone
Okay, now that I've got your attention I can move on to some other videos where I have to actually explain why I love them so.  Oh and somebody really needs to petition Lady Gaga to cover this song.

The Darkness - I Believe In a Thing Called Love


This video is so wonderful (as is the song) that I will have to walk you through all the things I love about this video so strap yourselves in!
0:23 - Sweet Headband in the bathtub dude!
0:32 - MAN ASS!
0:37 - I need a drying/rape monster in my house immediately!
0:40-0:51 - This little period taught me more about sex than anything else I have ever seen or heard.
1:03 - Does the bassist really need to walk out like a robot?
1:10 - Somebody just pressed the instant solo button!  (By the way this song has some awesome guitar work)
1:26 - Who can say they haven't been tormented by giant space crabs at some point in their life?
1:30 - Best thumbs up shot ever, everything is indeed "A-Okay".
1:39 - With the help of my spirit band and their harmony, I shall vanquish this monster with his own rock!
1:59 - Pause it and contemplate if you would rather be able to get away with having such terrible teeth as this guy, or being able to get away with wearing that headband.  I'd personally go with the headband.
2:04 - Is that some new age dildo?
2:08 - Commence amazing solo #2, and stay tuned for the greatest room ever created.
2:20 - Don't you want a Marshall amp?  I bet he got those wholesale.
2:31 - Blue fire room with amplifying archs!  And it cuts into the obligatory minutely shot of the other band members.
2:45 - Red unicorn lady?  I bet the singer took her to pound town.
2:49 - This is the best moment in any music video ever, I hope they did this at all their concerts ever.
3:06 - Ah, it is coming to an end, but not before we battle a GIANT SQUID!
3:27 - Yes, the drummer is utilizing the squid's appendages as part of his set, no biggie.
3:33 - This jump beats anything from any basketball game or Olympic event ever.
3:44 - Another great thumbs up shot for showing the true power of rock and roll!  Excellent song over.

Electric Six - Danger! High Voltage
Could and probably should have gone with this video, but I like this one just as much and it is a little more obscure than the other.


Not as action packed as the Darkness but I'll point out my favorite parts.
0:21 - Pencil Moustache = 100 points.
0:28 - Man? Woman? Natural? Intentional? Gloves?
0:46 - HIGH VOLTAGE!
1:00 - Now it is getting good!  Dramatic standing grasp..
1:08 - Have you ever seen anybody keep their mouth open larger and longer?
1:16 - 1:43 - Didn't expect it to go on that long did you?  But there were also some good moments in between.
1:23 - Going two hands there buddy?  It's gonna be a good day for him!
1:34 - That is what I call a handful of ass!
1:36 - Awkward eyebrows as if it wasn't strange enough.
2:11 - WET WILLY!  Part always kinda creeps me out.
2:17 - From the people who brought you dramatic standing grasp comes, explorer suits and a stuffed moose!
2:20 - Oh yeah, its so hot even the dead moose is feeling it.
2:32 - 2:40 - They are back for more and this time there was no cutscenes to take you away from this madness.
2:40 - 2:47 - I dare you not to be scared shitless by any one of these pieces of "art."
2:48 - Fire in the disco!
2:50 - What a cute family portrait!
2:56, 2:58, 3:00 - I'm pretty sure all three of these are the same shot.
3:04 - So that's where the saxophone was coming from!
3:17 - And you probably thought the wet willy was creepy earlier...
3:27 - Return of the wet willy!
3:38 - Fire in the Taco Bell?

These turned out to be a little longer than I intended, so leave a comment if you like this (suggestions?) and I'll try to do some more in the future.

Trees. Trees. Oh look! Trees!

It's been a little while since I've written here, probably would have written over the weekend but I was nowhere near technology for a couple days.  Yes my friends this means exactly what you think it means, the man who's interpretation of fun is crunching baseball stats on Microsoft Excel went on a weekend camping trip!

Nature!

The trip came out of nowhere for me, as I was minding my own business at home one day when I received a call from one of my housemates at school and while I was confused by why he was calling at the time, I had wanted to go visit that weekend so it was nice.  The next words he said were more or less "camping and canoeing, tomorrow, be there or be square" in which case my response was more or less "fuck yeah!"  In order to arrive at our school house at a decent hour I had to take the day off of work and leave early as I have a two and a half hour drive just to get there, so that too was kind of a nice consequence.  Things were going swimmingly on the drive up and I even got to play some X-men Arcade with one of my friends who wasn't going on our adventure.  But then things became more interesting.  We didn't leave for the camp until around 7:00 and it took about an hour just to get to the place we were going to push off with the canoes.  If you are not aware, that means it was starting to get very dark by the time we had all of our stuff put into the canoes and put them into the water.  This is when I found out two new pieces of information about our adventure, first that we had a 45 minute canoe out to the island we were staying on given you are experienced at canoeing, second I found that none of us were experienced at canoeing.

We aren't this good...

After taking about 20 minutes to figure out we were in the canoe backwards and another 15 to figure out how to pretend we were canoeing straight we started to canoe straight off into the massive lake.  The sun was going down rapidly and our island was far out of sight, but that did not break our resolve at all.  Now a couple of interesting things would happen, first once the sun was officially down and it was very dark out, and then fireworks filled up the sky!  Take this from me, there are not many things more awesome and peaceful than floating in the middle of a lake watching a fireworks display in what is pretty much perfect weather, it was amazing.  Then a little later when it was pretty much pitch black, we started going by a dock on what we now refer to as "Old Lady Island" in which we got heckled by the old lady inhabitants of the island.  They started yelling "What you are doing is dangerous" and "you guys should stick together" saying it as if both of these tidbits were completely foreign to us before meeting with them.  Really? Canoeing in the dark when we only have a few flashlights to make people aware of our presence is dangerous?  I would've thought it would be more dangerous to cross an empty street at noon, go figure.  Also, I don't know if these bitches ever rode in a canoe, but it isn't exactly a wheel turn to change your direction, it is difficult for us to stay as close as they would've liked (which would be more-or-less canoe buttfucking.)  

Isn't there a kitchen you should be in?

Eventually we found our island and campsite, which was right on top of another which was inhabited and the inhabitants were sleeping.  We decided to take up another empty one for the night and be prepared to leave if someone showed up the next morning.  What happened the rest of the night was a few beers and someone trying to throw a bowie knife into a tree, it was fun.  The next day was regular old camping experience, sit in the outdoors, go swimming in the lake and do camping-type stuff.  This was nice until  we had a park ranger come by and inform us that we had to move because the people who's campsite we took couldn't talk to us themselves, so we moved back on top of the inhabitants of the previous night.  This was a really annoying inconvenience to an otherwise relaxing day.  But once again the sun would go down and we would have some good old fashioned fun.  Drinks around a campfire and one friend became the topic of the night as he tried a to inhale a certain type of plant for the first time in his life, it was not a pretty sight as a normally outgoing kid was more or less comatose for the better part of an hour.  Don't worry though, he was fine, all he had to do was throw up in the tent right next to me and he was back to normal.  I guess he just went a little too far.  

Truly words to live by.

I don't recall anything particularly interesting happening on the last day besides moving back of the island and returning to civilization.  I eventually found myself back home and writing this so I figure all turned out well.  I also learned a valuable lesson, whenever you are doing anything you just have to remember two important things "what you are doing is dangerous!" and "you guys should stick together!"

I Said What?

Chase's comment on my most recent article brought up a very good memory from high school that I would like to share because it is marginally funny and entertaining. If anything, it might make you think about laughing or something. Anyways, it happened our final glorious year of high school. Chase and I, along with another of our friends, were blessed with the great fortune of placement in the same gym/study period. This was awesome because I didn't have to hang out with all the weirdos I didn't know, and it was the last period of the day so I could leave school early on the days we went to study!

Let me first provide a description of the gym class. Chase and I were without a doubt the minorities in a class filled with Puerto Ricans and probably some other ethnic groups. I'm too ignorant to know all the ethnic groups by which I was surrounded. Our other friend that I mentioned was in the class with us is Puerto Rican, but he's very different from his brethren. I'll refer to the other people in the gym class as the majority in this particular post. So, the majorities were the classic high school students who thought they were great at every sport, regardless if we were playing basketball, football, softball, it didn't matter, they thought they were great at it. No matter how many bricks they put up, how many passes they dropped, or how slow they actually moved, in their heads they were superstars. That must be why most of them didn't play any sports even at the high school level. My apologies, some of the majority might have been on the 3,209 person football roster.

Gym class itself was, and I have no doubt in my mind that it still is, a complete joke. Really all that the "physical education" teachers did was take attendance and then give us a ball. "Here's a basketball. Now try to get it in that hoop." I just remembered the stupid fitness test thing we had to pass each year, what a load of garbage. On this one particular day we were "playing" softball. I didn't give a shit about anything going on in gym class, so Chase, our majority friend, and I were just standing in the outfield chatting. Somehow we got on the subject of girlfriends. The conversation was flowing along smoothly, nothing out of the ordinary, until the utterance of the question. The question was served up by our majority friend. The question: "How about you, Toninho (I get to refer to myself in the third-person with my blog name!), have you ever had a girlfriend?" Before I get to the answer to this question, I must first give background information on my friendship with Chase and our majority friend.

I will start with our majority friend. I had first met him in fifth grade, I believe. So we certainly knew each other, but we hadn't hung out or anything at this point. We were on good terms and were beginning to develop a good friendship. I'll just say that we didn't know very much about one another in particular. As for Chase, I had just met him about halfway through the previous school year. I don't know why it took so long for our paths to cross, but we met in a totally awesome English class! We had hung out once outside of school for the first time at the very end of junior year and were in the process of mixing our groups of friends together. However, we still didn't know each other too well. So all three of us were friends, but not extremely close friends that know all the mannerisms and tendencies of each other, at least not at that point. Make a sense? That might be somewhat funny if you get it. If not, then you can blame China. This information is important when thinking about how my response to the question weighed between my companions.

The utterance of the question brought with it silence among the three of us. My simple, concise, straight to the point reply verbatim: "Nah, I'm pretty gay." Silence. More silence. And a little more silence. Then I laughed, bringing delight to our little pow-wow. This historic moment remains a focal point in the development of our friendship. I hope you enjoyed the story, and if you didn't, you can suck my big, fat, hairy left toe!

An Excruciatingly Painful Relationship

I love video games, I hate video games. Quite often when I play video games by my lonesome, I end up in an uncontrollable fit of rage. Video games are very fun for the most part, but there's always some aspect or part of the game that just pisses me off to no avail. Regardless of how angry the games make me, I always come back for more. Most of the time, a gaming session starts out relatively fun, but there always seems to be that moment where I just get ass-raped and that is what makes me go on a hell-bent rampage. No, this is not an article about a horrible relationship I had with a girl.

Sophomore year of college I used to play Halo 3 all the time with the people I lived with. I had a great time and it was actually really fun to play with a team that you could communicate with by just yelling to the other room. The problem here is simple though, it is the same problem I run into at tremendous speed in every game I play online. Some people are just way too good and it makes it double plus ungood. I don't know how some people get so good at games like Halo, but I can take the stereotypical approach and assume that they live in their mom's basement and play games all day, after all, it's probably true. Anyways, it is very common that we would be stuck in a game with those assholes that run shit in Halo 3. The people that get perfect head shots with the battle rifle, but could beat the shit out of you with any weapon whenever they wanted. Other times it was those pieces of shit that stand outside the lifts with the swords and wait for people like me to come up so they can ram the sword in my asshole. These are the types of things that pissed me off and made me yell terrible things about how playing the game was worse than cancer.
 

Something all gamers should strive for

My ranting doesn't end with Halo 3, recently my anger has shifted to one of the 3,000 Call of Duty games, Black Ops to be specific. Lots of people who play that game seem to already have a year worth of gaming time when the game has only been out for about seven months. Yeah, I'm talking to you guys with your golden guns. I don't know why, but it always makes me extra mad when someone with a gold gun kills me. Those nine-million prestige bastards. I'm just trying to have some fun. I get my shit rocked in this game all the time, usually it's because I try to do stupid things and continue to get angrier with each death until it's absolutely unbearable and I have to stop playing.

Gordon Freeman, a man after my own heart

It's not only online gaming that pisses me off, I have a hatred for some parts of campaigns in games. This hatred is just not as prevalent because I don't get my ass beaten to a bloody pulp as often in campaigns. Believe me though, there are always difficult parts in campaigns that make me want to hit things. Sometimes I wish I could go back and watch myself rage because it's actually really funny from a third person perspective. I have considered getting one of those capture card things so I could record myself, but they're kind of expensive and I'd probably need to buy an external hard drive, too, so I would have space to store all my outbursts. I won't rule out the possibility of this happening though because it would sure make for some great entertainment!