Underwear Affair - Debrief from being in briefs

So this is a little late, but I did it. I did it I ran and in a quite an impressive time considering the last two months is the most I have run damn near ever in a year. I hardly ever run and I did do training for it though I didn't have a lot of time to train up for it. But here is the run down...

For the costumes, the night before the bunch of us after the pub decided to go get costumes. We hit up Urban something to get the costumes. We decided on short boxer briefs in a light blue cause there was enough of them at that store for use to each get one. Then we choose to get the wife beaters in Brazil colours. I have to mention we all went to Sportcheck and got socks, however the next day I was the only one to have the sock stuffed with plastic Safeway bags, and garbage bags and taped together to make it longer and better. In short none of the other guys were man enough to man up, which was a shame because it got a lot of good attention. It worked great when running, one end in the shorts, helping the bulge, the other end around my neck and pinned to my chest to hold it in place. It was kinda nice, cause I could roll my head back rest on it. We each put nicknames on the back of our shirts with the team name. My name was "LOVE SAUSAGE!!!"

Other costumes were great. The most notable was the guy in (1) the jock strap and only the jock strap with his ass hanging out. (2) The other which was the best costume in the male category was the guy in the Borat costume. You know the one, the swimsuit onsy. The best part was after he won, the buffed up host was asking if he stuffed his suit and Borat goes to tell how he didn't and grabs his crotch and then grabbed the hosts crotch to ask if he did... Then the host got uncomfortable. The best part was how well Borat stayed in character. He carried a briefcase and at the end of the day after they fed us burgers, on the way to the bathroom I saw the Borat shovelling burgers into his briefcase. It was hilarious.

Oh and a friend of mine Courtney, and her mom was there. Here mom won best costume for female as she was dressed as a hot dog, and was tossing hot dog gummies into the crowd as a sort of hot dog fairy. It was sweet.

The run was good. It was a rainy morning but then a hot afternoon and a warm evening. Not ideal for a run in my opinion but tolerable none the less. Of the bunch of us on the team I was at the back by the end, completing the run in an hour and 3 minutes. Not too bad.

The only thing that really went to pot were the pictures. After the race the race we b lined it to the car to get the beer tickets but something we forgot was our cameras. Here's the issue too, a lot of people enjoyed the fact I had the Love Sausage. Made for a lot of great poses too with a lot of girls. They came up and asked for pictures and I was happy to oblige. But we used their cameras so of course, I don't have any evidence of this other then my word. Next time, I will definitely have a camera with me.

Of course after the rest of the boys saw all the attention I was getting, they were kicking themselves, especially the single ones for not packing their socks. Lesson learned rookies... Lesson learned

Here is my boss with a care bear!

Great Source Material, Bad Movies

A lot of movies of course aren't originally scripts or notes in a producers book, but instead they've started their lives as books. We see now a lot of movies with origins from comic books, and video games. This is all fine and dandy cause occasionally a great film is made that captures that same essence and magic that exists in the source material. There are several really great examples of this. Three of the five Batman films, Bryan Singer's X-Men, Iron Man, Silent Hill... I can make quite a long list of movies that have been adapted and have worked. However the list of those that have worked versus those that haven't is a vast list.

The reason this comes to mind is I was watching the new Resident Evil: Afterlife and I am just so disappointed by it. I loved the games, I have played damn near all them, and they were great. When you play these games you are listening close to the surroundings for a zombie that may be stalking around a corner. Your adrenaline is surging as in an attempt to save the few bullets that you have you try running past zombies in long corridors hoping they don't reach out and grab you. In the newer games, you are fighting overwhelming odds, with limited weapons and everything is moving at you very fast. Your trying to flank them, find cover, get them to bottleneck, and use anything the environment offers to quell the threat. And the whole while you are finding clues and research as to the motivations of the protagonists by going through research notes, and logs. You are discovering new hellish creatures that want to rip you shreds in notes before you face them, building suspense, making you jump at each new sound as you expect to find them around the corner.

The original story follows a team sent to a house in the woods where some disappearance have happened. You get attacked by hellish beasts and barricade yourself inside. The first game centers on the team exploring the house, getting clues as to the research the Umbrella Corporation is doing and finding a secret facility. The second game is quite similar but it is in Raccoon City, that has more or less been destroyed by the undead, while the Corporation is moving in to contain the virus. The third one has the same setting and follows a character from the first game as she tries to get out of the City with a monster chasing her. The fourth game takes you to Eastern Europe to save the president's daughter abducted by corporate hounds and the fifth is set in Africa where a bio agent has been used in a sort of Terrorist effort.

When Capcom made the games, they spent the time to do it right and even remade the games on next gen systems to make them more atmospheric, and visual better. Now the movies decided that with all that hard work from a game maker that they would use an element or two from the games, zombies, a corporation, a licker, and coble together a movie that uses a lot of slow mo in an effort to extend the run time. They ignore all the main characters of the game except by cameo only and invent a new main character (who is played by the director's wife) Alice whom is just kinda there, gets some super powers, then an army of clones and is trying to stick it to Umbrella. In doing that it ignores almost every significant story point from the whole series.

Now see I understand that when you are adapting anything you will have to sacrifice certain things to make the transition between one medium to film. Secondary characters, some character development scenes, maybe smaller arcs, but the issue I have is they are calling these movies Resident Evil, when they don't use the source material for story, for tone, for anything that make the game series a great experience. Sure they toss in a few things that make the series unique, executioner, Nemesis, licker etc.

The polar opposite of this series is a movie called Silent Hill. One of the best movies made from a video game. It's not the greatest movie in the world but it captures the story, the pacing, the creepiness and feel of the game. For that reason it is one of my favorite movies. It hits all the right beats, unlike the RE franchise. Check it out.

At one point I heard talk about them rebooting the Resident Evil franchise. I think this is a great idea, cause if they were to do it again, maybe this time they would actually try to make something that is at least similar to the game in some way more then superficial cameos and monsters. Seriously just try...

Garth Ennis - Favourite Comic Book Author - Reason 452**

I have a lot of respect for people that challenge the established norms in story telling to make you think more critically about what you are reading about. Sometimes it is small details like if you were to be ejected into space what would this physically do to the body. Suffocation and hypothermia (BSG) or would your eyes start to bulge out of your head (Total Recall). I like the idea too of challenging norms to make things more real. This is something Garth Ennis does exceptionally well. Crossed shows that there is no happy ending when the world ends. The Boys shows how Superheroes make more sense as giant dicks, then people with the destructive power of a nuke but with exceptional moral standards.

In "The Boys" heroes exist, but they are not the last son of a dying planet, or a person bitten by a radioactive spider but people shot up with a compound that makes them scary powerful. For the purpose of this blog though, that doesn't matter what does though is how the story is constructed. Firstly he takes the whole comic book hero lore and turns almost everything on it's head. The best part is that he has so much thought put into it, that thing that make superheroes unique he put a preversed twist on. Be it parodying the Justice League, Avengers, X-Men, Batman. It is all in there and twisted around into a beast that is highly entertaining.

So we have lots of thought into detail, but we also have a lot of thought into story structure. Crossed was a one off in Garth Ennis's eyes that has spouted it's own series. He wanted to make an extreme story that would go the distance. That would disturb and provoke thought. That would challenge the norm of what you expect from your characters, from the story itself. The characters in it are challenged and challenged, and breaking down and does it ever get better for them? Well you will have to read it to find out, but in short though no. He challenges what is acceptable actions for our protagantists. How fantastic ideas of salt and garlic can stop monsters. Of how scary and intelligent crazy can be. I highly recommend Crossed. From the content it is a hard read, I mean it puts Frank Millar to shame in terms of intensity but it is good cause it will stay with you. It's almost torture porn but it has too much of a point, too much thought put into it.

Then there is the Punisher Max. Slavers in particular is an amazing story that will get you emotionally involved with the story. It is violent and merciless, but in such a context where you wish it could be more violent. It is a story about human trafficers, abducting women, raping them drugging them and forcing them into prostitution. Frank shuts them down and in a meaningful way but what makes this story so good is it feels so real. It feels like it is telling a story of something that has happened, flesh and bone in our world, which it is loosely based on, and this is how it ended. If ever they make another Punisher feature this should be the source material. For the Punisher, Ennis challenges the norm of comic story telling by telling something that feels real, makes you scared, makes you angry. It is an awesome piece.

In Preacher, we have a man forced into religion by his crazy family, who accidently acquires the voice of god when it escaped from some angels, and him and his girlfriend and vampire friend are on a quest across the US to find God (whos in hiding) and get some answers out of him... Nuff said



**Reasons aren't in any actual order. I am not that OCD.

Hitler as a Public Speaker

Today I had to do a presentation for work. Nothing too intense, just a presentation for new hires about a managers report. It went pretty well, nothing really all that significant to report really. Thing is though that every time I have to stand up and do a presentation or a speech of any kind I think about some people who have delivered fantastic speeches that I really enjoy. Adama from Galactica, Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday, Jeremy Clarkson as he presents Top Gear and there is one individual in particular that I think gives fantastic speeches and I almost hate to say it but senor Hitler.

Now to be clear, I am not for Nazis or any thing else like that, but Hitler gave some amazing speeches, and for good reason. His speeches were carefully scripted to hit the exact points, and they were choreographed down to each and every single hand gesture and movement. When he wanted to command a crowd he could. His organization was great at the propaganda and moving a whole people to their cause.

I pick who I want to be before I go into doing the speech/presentation, and try to adopt the physical presence and speech patterns. I tend to choose it based on what the information is, and how I want to present it. For the report today I wanted to convey something interesting to listen to, mostly cause of how dry the material was and because I just love the satirical personality of sir Jeremy Clarkson. So many hand gestures, any tangents, and those epic pauses before making a point. And the best part is that it works. It makes for a presentation that people want to listen to. I haven't had a need yet to use Hitler presence yet I do look forward to it. It will take some work but for that kind of end result it would be interesting. Adama and Al Pacino's coach character I sure have, and I have to say the it helps because if you are trying to adopt someone else's presence it makes the presentation easier because you don't have to worry as much about your hand gestures, or your speech patterns because you've seen it before, you know that it works. When you are thinking about doing those kind of gestures it also helps you be less nervous and less focused the things you are doing wrong.

Thats my trick. Do a presentation, think about Hitler.