Alex Uploaded this as a Test…

…and I think I’m just gonna keep it.

FLAN – The Movie

So back in the day, about nine years ago actually, Danny, Alex, and I decided to make an art film. The premise was simple, put a bunch of stuff together that didn’t really make any sense, throw in some opera, and we had ourselves an artistic masterpiece.


The quality is going extremely poor, here’s why: it was compressed and exported to a DV tape, recorded onto a VHS, captured back onto a computer and compressed again to a WMV. Top all that rigmarole off with uploading it to youtube for more compression, it’s about as washed out as you can get. There’s various inside jokes and the video probably goes on longer than it has to, but whatever, it was in the spirit of being young and stupid and having fun.

Music Stores

Just curious, does anyone remember music stores anymore? Before you got your CDs and such at Best Buy and various other big box stores, remember where you used to buy music, or did you at all? Here’s a list of all the places I can recall off the top of my head, which have all pretty much vanished now:

Virgin Megastore
Tower Records
Coconuts
Sam Goody
HMV
Saturday Matinee
Suncoast
The Wall

I still see FYEs, but they’re fading, so it seems. Can anyone else think of any stores I’m forgetting? I’m excluding mom & pop shops obviously. Other departed big box stores like the Wiz had music as well, but I’m talking stores that were music driven, with maybe some movies and a few headphones on the wall. It just dawned on me the other day that they’re ALL GONE!

Macho Madness Review: Ooooooh Yeah!

Reliving Randy Savage’s WWF/WCW career was quite a trip down memory lane, but there were definitely potholes in this road. It had some key matches of his along the way, but I definitely felt something lacking, sans other superstar interviews.

We start from Savage’s WWF debut, which was a little disappointing, he had plenty of action in AWA and other territories that they could have covered. One thing that really drives me crazy is how the WWE continues to mess with the soundtrack of the original footage. Often they play a badly looped audience track over the original music, and then the replacement music on top of that. It becomes painfully obvious that they’re tampering with the music when you can no longer hear the announcers or interviews over the garbled mess of noise that was produced just for this DVD, lucky us. For some reason, they dub over Ric Flair’s 1992 entrance theme with his current theme, only later to freely play his actual theme from that era in a different match. Why WWE?

Also, a little more back story would have helped in between matches. Matt Striker and Maria set some of the story up for us, but who is going to remember them in 4 years? I was shocked that they edited out Jake Roberts slapping Elizabeth (Savage’s then wife) at their Tuesday in Texas match. Seriously that was a huge selling point of the feud, scrapping it on the DVD is just awful. Savage’s interview pouring emotion out after that match was the cherry on top, which is also absent from this set. Where is the rematch with the Warrior, also?

There were plenty of extras on the DVDs, interviews, his wedding to Elizabeth, although they were distributed a bit oddly. The chronology of the extras didn’t match that of the features. For example, Macho’s wedding took place in 1991, which is found on the first DVD, which covers 1985 – 1988. At least they had it there. His proposal to Elizabeth was pretty much a footnote during Maria and Striker’s chatting.

I was pretty excited about this DVD and feel a little disappointed, but it is nice to have some of these matches on DVD. It was very nice that they didn’t bury him like they did the Warrior. Randy Savage and the WWE are not known to be on good terms and the WWE has a record of really ripping to shreds big name wrestlers who have fallen out of their good graces. If you’re a big Macho Man fan, this DVD is still a must have. I’m not sure if it would make an addition to every wrestling fan’s library, however. For me, hearing “Pomp and Circumstance” and watching this maniac come out in some of the most fashionable robes I’ve ever seen, with a lovely lady by his side, exclaiming “Oooh yeah” and eventually dropping the big elbow on his opponent brought a smile to my face. There is no one in wrestling right now like the Macho Man, I’m not sure there ever will be.

Rating:

My Firefox Extensions

I just decided to list the 4 extensions I use, since they come in pretty handy, or are just a little fun.

First, Xmarks – extremely useful. Formerly known as “Foxmarks,” Xmarks synchronizes your bookmarks and other browser related settings with all of the browsers you use. This is especially useful if you work on multiple machines, multiple browsers (works in IE, Flock and Safari also), or even just a nice way of backing up everything.

Next, Forecastfox. This one is a very simple add-on, it displays the current temp and weather conditions somewhere in the browser, at all times. The default is the bottom right corner, which works out fine for me, but you can put it topside or various other spots if you would like. It also shows you the weather for various different times that you set it up to display.

StumbleUpon is a great little tool as well. It works similar to Pandora, except instead for websites instead of music. It will show you random websites (or websites in a category of your choosing) and you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. The websites it shows you will begin to change based on your votes. It’s a really fun way to discover things that you otherwise would never see.

Finally, IE Tab – This one is particularly useful for those pages that refuse to understand that this is the 21st century and IE isn’t the only browser anymore. Instead of having to give Firefox a rest while you fetch IE from somewhere in your programs menu just to view one page, you can view it in Firefox with ease. If you visit a page frequently that needs IE, you can add these websites to a list that defaults Firefox to open it in IE tab.

I just thought I should share. Enjoy if you end up using them.