Doctor Who S7 Finale

~SPOILERS~

Not only did a get to see the AWESOME Star Trek Into Darkness (check out my previous blog) but afterwards I came home and got to watch Doctor Who Season Seven Finale. Now if you've been reading my blog you know that I haven't been a big fan of the second half of season seven. I mean this season hasn't been bad, all the episodes have been good, some even really good but none of them left me with the OMG moment like they have done in the past.

I so loved Clara in the Dalek episode and the Christmas special, but they haven't really done much with her in the series. I loved the whole "Who is Clara" storyline and why is she showing up through out the Doctor's lives. But again none of the episodes really dealt with that. It was mentioned here and there but nothing to serious. For the most part episodes have been stand alone episodes not really relating to the others.

Like I said I'm still enjoying the series but alot was riding on this finale and I have to say it didn't disappoint. I loved it, they finally explain who Clara is and why there are multiple versions of the same person. I loved how they blended her into all the other Doctor adventures. I like that they brought back the trio (Vastra, Jenny, Strax) and I really loved that River was back. This is one of those episodes that after it's over you are throughly confused but as I read more online and other peoples thoughts things start to make a little sense. 

The final shot of John Hurt and then they title it As The Doctor, but he's the one that was never called the Doctor. Many are speculating that he's actually the 8th Doctor, the one during the time war. This entire episode is leading up to the 50th Anniversary episode in November. Should be pretty EPIC!!! Can't wait. 

So did this finale change my thoughts about the second half of season seven. Not really it's still a season that I really don't need to go back and watch.. but I think the finale did get me super excited for the 50th anniversary.

Star Trek Into Darkness - My Review

So here are my thoughts on Star Trek Into Darkness (be warned there will be spoilers)

First let me say that I'm a HUGE Star Trek fan. I really got into Star Trek when The Next Generation had started. I mean I saw alot of the Original series but I was more of a Star Wars fanboy then a Trek fanboy... like I said... until TNG.

I enjoyed the reboot and the first movie from JJ. I like how he didn't destroy all that had happened in the past, they just created an alternate universe, brilliant idea. Keep the original fans happy and bring in a whole new crop of new fans.

So it's Saturday and the movie came out here in the U.S. on Wednesday, and actually came out in other countries a few weeks ago so it's been the tough avoiding spoilers. I am happy to say that I avoided most of them.

When the movie was over I was grinning from ear to ear, this was such an incredible movie. Action packed, amazing camera work, the acting was superb and the story was great.

Yes the main bad guy was Kahn and yes they pulled scenes directly from Wrath of Kahn and switched them up a bit. Do I wish they would have had a different bad guy.. of course. The Trek universe is vast and I was really hoping they would use someone that we didn't already know. I mean we are in a different universe why not see different bad guys. But with that said Kahn being the bad guy was pretty much out there, we all knew it was going to be him or Gary Marshal and everyone was leaning towards Kahn. So when he revealed his name I wasn't shocked or disappointed. And I have to say Benedict Cumberbatch did an amazing job portraying this iconic villain.

Most of the twists and turns I did not see coming which made it fun. I like that Uhura got a more substantal role in this movie. She was pretty bad ass. Scotty and McCoy's roles weren't that large but they had some crucial scenes. Chekov and Sulu didn't have a ton of screen time or much to do. Sulu had a bit more then Chekov and he also had a great scene where he became temp Captain of the ship which of course is foreshadowing of him becoming Captain of the USS Excelsior.

I loved the interaction between Kirk and Spock. These two actors have such great chemistry and really play well of each other. The scene that was directly pulled from TWOK but with a twist was when Kirk sacrifices himself to save his crew and subsequently dies in front of Spock. Of course in the original Spock dies but here Kirk does and the interaction between those two brought me to tears. I mean I knew Kirk wasn't going to die, as soon as this scene started I knew where it was going, I knew Kirk would die but they were going to bring him back with Kahn's blood. But even knowing that the acting from those two guys still moved me. The audience may have known that Kirk would be brought back to life but those two did not.. this was their final goodbye. Quinto's Spoke was amazing here. And of course once Kirk is dead you get Spock (instead of Kirk) doing the infamous yell of KAHHHHHNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!! Some folks are comparing it to the NOOOOOO from Vader in Episode 3. I thought it worked for the scene as well as being a nod to the original. I loved it.

I enjoyed seeing the Klingons.. I'm so glad they had their ridges. It was great getting the cameo of the original Spock (I didn't have a clue he was going to be in it). I like that they introduced the future wife of Kirk, Carol Marcus to the story.. look forward to seeing where that goes. I like the final battle scene with Spock and Kahn and the fact that Spock would have died if it wasn't for Uhura beaming onto a moving transport and attacking Kahn.

There was some amazing camera work here.. when the Enterprise is disabled and falling to Earth and it's twisting and turning and everyone inside is being thrown around was fantastic. Kirk, Scotty and Chechov running while the ship is falling so they were running on walls and then ceilings and falling and through corridors was so well done.  I loved that entire scene.

As you can tell from my review.. I loved the movie I don't think there was a single thing that I didn't like. I actual enjoyed this movie more then the first one and I can't wait to go back and see it again.  I give Star Trek Into Darkness a solid A

Family Visit

It's been a few weeks so today I went down and visited my dad, brother, sister-in-law, nephew and niece. First went to lunch with my dad. He wanted to try P.F. Changs. He loved it, especially the garlic noodles which are one of my favorite things from there.  Afterwards we drove over to Toys R Us as my nephew's birthday is in a few weeks and we wanted to pick up some gifts for him. Dad couldn't find what he wanted to get at Toys R Us so we stopped by Target and he found the laser tag guns that he wanted to get.

We headed back home and I hung out with the rest of the family. Got to play alot with my nephew (who adores me) and a bit with my niece (who is still unsure if I'm a good guy).  Had dinner with the family before calling it a day. I think this visit was the longest I have done in a long time. It was a great time hanging with family. My niece and nephew are getting so big.. Kenobi is going to be 4 years old on June 4th... where does the time go!!!

D&D Dice & The Tomorrow People

Got my new D&D dice in the mail today.. of course if you know me you know Green is my favorite color so my dice had to be green. Some folks are surprised when I say that this is my very first set of D&D dice. But understand the last time I played D&D I was 11 years old and didn't play long enough to buy my own set.. I just used friends dice. I played plenty of RPG games over the years but they didn't require dice. Now that I started up a new D&D game with a bunch of friends and it seems to be going really well so I figured it was time to buy my own set... can't wait to use them on Sunday.

I did a blog post a few days ago talking about the new TV series I was looking forward to in the fall. At the time I said there was nothing from the CW network.. but today the CW released trailers for their four "genre" type shows. The only one that really caught my eye was The Tomorrow People, which come to find out is a remake of a 70's British kids show. Quick sysnopsis of the new version; The story of several young people from around the world who represent the next stage in human evolution, possessing special powers, including the ability to teleport and communicate with each other telepathically. Together they work to defeat the forces of evil.

Here's the trailer

And here is a scene.

This looks like my kind of show.. I can't wait!!!!

Ever Changing...

I'm starting to make scrapbooks of my past movie marathons so I've been doing through hundreds of pictures picking ones that best represents the event. Looking at pictures reminds me of all the great times we've had the past few years but it also saddens my heart knowing that we will never have those kind of times again as a group. It was one of those rare moments in time when we all came together in all our geekiness and bonded as one solid group of friends. But over time people change, feelings are hurt, cliques are formed, people move away and what was once this awesome "Geek Mob" is just a faded memory.

But I won't be sadden by it's demise I remain happy that it happen. For a moment in time I had the perfect group of friends. I have the most wonderful memories and pictures to remember all the good times we had. They may never come again but who knows.. maybe something bigger and better is waiting just around the corner.

Now I'm not saying that those friends are gone... most are still around, we've just splintered off into smaller groups. We tend to hang out with those that we bonded with most when we were the bigger group. We have several folks who met through The Geek Mob who are now roommates. We also have some who are doing projects together like webseries. The Geek Mob will continue in some form or another... it will never truly go away as long as a few of us keep it's light burning in our hearts.

Buffy Rewatch/1st Time Continues...

It's Wednesday so that means I drive down to my best bud Robert's place for some dinner and Buffy. We walked over to Taco Bell for some vittles. Back at his place we continued the Buffy marathon. We are in the middle of Season Six. First up is Episode 7 "Once More With Feelings" In this episode, a mysterious force compels Sunnydale residents to sing songs that reveal their true feelings and deep secrets. Buffy is forced to finally admit to her friends that they pulled her out of heaven—not hell as they believed. Later, she and Spike share a kiss.

This is one of my all time favorite Buffy episodes. I have the sound track and listen to it often. I know most of the words to most of the songs. The music is great but so many things happen in this episodes. Tara finds out about Willow's mind trick on her and is devastated. Buffy reveals that she was in Heaven and everyone is devastated. This episode was a game changer for story and for story telling for a TV series.

Next was Episode 8 "Tabula Rasa" In the aftermath of the discovery that they had pulled Buffy Summers out of Heaven, Rupert Giles finally resolves to leave Sunnydale and return to England to allow Buffy to gain independence. Meanwhile, Willow Rosenberg agrees to go a week without using magic when Tara Maclay threatens to leave her, but almost immediately goes back on her word and casts another memory spell with the intent of making Tara and Buffy forget the damages of the spells she used on them. The spell goes awry and gives the entire Scooby Gang, including herself, complete amnesia, which puts everyone in danger when a demonic loan shark, Teeth, and his vampire enforcers attack the Magic Box to collect Spike's gambling debt.

This was a fun episode in the since that the actors got to play completely different roles.  Once the spell was broken then all the seriousness took over. Willow is going down a dark path and it's hard to watch as she's one of my favorite characters (of course I've seen all these episodes before so I know what happens but it's fun watching with Robert who has never seen it). Robert could not believe that Buffy and Spike continued with their weird relationship.

Our third episode of the night is Episode 9 "Smashed" Willow "de-rats" Amy. The Trio rob the Sunnydale Museum of Natural History. Buffy and Spike engage in some very rough play.

Again hard to watch as Willow continue down the darkside with the help of fellow witch Amy. And Buffy and Spike finally have sex while destroying a house was epic.

Our final episode of the night is Episode 10 "Wrecked" Willow is finally forced to face the consequences of her addiction when her carelessness lands Dawn in the hospital.

Willow finally hits rock bottom (of has she?) Alyson's acting is incredible. When she is pleading with Buffy for help it's heart breaking. There is no excuse for what she did but part of me still feels so sad for her. She addicted to magic, she can't help herself.

Season six isn't my favorite season.. but I do love the final four episodes, they are some of the best episodes of all of the Buffy series.

Another great Buffy and Bros with my best bud Robert.

My Blog

First of all let me say if this blog post upsets anybody I am sorry as it's not my intention to do so, but I need to get this off my chest and my personal blog seemed like an ideal place to do it especially since it's about my blog.

This all started last year during my 42nd birthday. I had a rather large party weekend, there were just over 30 or so people here. On Saturday evening things got a bit crazy and I got upset. The next day all was well and I had a fantastic Sunday and overall an amazing weekend.

Well come Monday when I went to blog about Saturday I mentioned that I was upset and that several of my friends were acting "out of character" and I didn't like that.

I was not prepared for the backlash that blog post would caused. The majority of my friends were great and said "sorry, wish you would have told us at the time", but there were few that weren't happy but one in particular who was extremely vocal at how upset they were and how they almost considered ending our friendship over it. This truly upset me but also angered me as I felt that I did nothing wrong. I didn't mention anyone by name in the blog (which they were actually upset about) and I was just blogging about what happen on my birthday weekend.

Anyways words were said, emails were sent and I figured everything was behind us with this incident. Well recently I was talking so some friends and come to find out that this "blog post incident" is still being discussed amongst my friends. They worry that they will say or do something to upset me and next thing they know it's in my blog.

This hurt my feelings. I have over 2800 blog posts. I have been blogging full time since 2007 and I have never bad mouthed a friend in my blog or said anything negative about any of my friends. My blog is normally about geeky things. Things I watch, things I podcast about, things I do in my daily geeky life and occasionally I'll get on my soapbox once in a long while and talk about religion or being gay or how depressed I am. But I make a conscious effort to not talk about friends & family personal lives. I have a ton of very personal conversations with family and friends.. I don't go blogging about it the next day... never have and never will.

To know that my friends think I'm going to blog about something they say or do makes me feel like these guys don't know me at all. I blog one time about four people who upset me during my birthday party weekend and I will forever be labeled as someone they need to worry about how they act or say things around... that's just crazy and hurtful.

I write this blog first of all for me as my memory is pretty bad and I love going back and reading all the cool things I have done. Secondly it's for my family and friends to keep up on my life. I don't get to talk to as many of them as I would like and this is a great way for them to keep up on my life. Thirdly it's for the general public, being a podcaster I do have a few listeners/fans and this is a great way to keep in contact with them and let them know what's going on.

I really don't know what to do about the situation. I'm not going to stop blogging or change how I blog. But it bothers me every time I blog I now think "I hope so and so doesn't gets upset over this".. it stupid.

Thanks for letting me vent my frustration and actually taking the time to read it. :)

Trailers for S.H.I.E.L.D & Wonderland

The networks continue to promote their new TV series coming out in the fall. ABC had their upfronts (a news conference) and premiered trailers for two upcoming shows that I am so excited to see.

First is Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. They released a teaser trailer a few days ago but this is the full on trailer and it's amazing. Has the same feel as the Avengers Movie.. I just hope they can keep it up.

The second trailer that got me excited is Once Upon A Time In Wonderland. I don't know if this is set before, during or after Once Upon A Time but it looks amazing. I thought SHIELD was going to be my must see series this fall but Wonderland looks just as amazing and I'm just as excited to see it.

LOTRO Fiasco & Once Upon A Time Finale

Today a huge update to Lord of the Rings Online was released (Updated 11). It took about two and a half hours for me to download the patch. Once it was downloaded I tried for over an hour to get LOTRO to launch but it wouldn't. I finally was about to get to my character screen and all my characters were gone. A slight panic took over as I have put in hundreds of hours on those characters and I didn't want to have to start over again. I the panic soon left as I figured they must have back ups of everyone just in case something happens.

My buddy Chris uploaded and opened LOTRO with no issues. At first I thought it was just me but soon I found a thread on their forums with hundreds of people who were having the same issue. Finally LOTRO released a tweet saying they were trying to resolve the issue but didn't have an ETA of when that might be.

Come to find out that this is the norm for a major update to this game, always has bugs that effect a large number of people. Guess I was lucky that I was only down for half  a day.. could have been worse.

(IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST FEW EPISODES DON'T READ.. SPOILERS)

So Chris and I decided to watch the last two episodes of Once Upon A Time. Since Chris has been on vacation the past few weeks we haven't been able to watch together. So we had the second to last episode and the finale to watch. If you read my blog you know that I love Once Upon A Time, it's my favorite new TV series on right now. I loved season one and I loved how season two took the series in a whole new direction. So I was looking forward to seeing how it all end. The second to last episode was all about Baelfire and Peter Pan, was very enjoyable.

The finale was AWESOME... everything I hoped it would be. I had no idea that the previous episode was a lead in for what's to come. And the final scene leads to what will be the main story next season. Who'd of guest that Peter Pan is the new bad guy (or it seems that way) Looks like we will be spending the majority if not all our time in Neverland with the main characters. Kind of bums me out that we won't be seeing any of the secondary characters next season (at least it seems that way). I want to know why Peter Pan is looking for Henry, kidnapping boys from all over? And for that matter I want to know who Peter Pan is.. is he someone we already met or a completely new character? Guess will just have to wait and see... so excited.

After Once, Chris and I attempted to get back on LOTRO and after some tinkering around it finally worked. I logged in and all my characters were there. So Chris and I played for about four or five hours before calling it a night as we both needed some dinner.

To end my night I finally managed to finish editing my next MASH 4077 Podcast, which is due out on May 15th... woohoo

Mom, Flowers & Dragons

Today I was up fairly early.. did something to my left foot yesterday while out in the yard. Feels like it's bruised on the inside and I now walk with a slight limp, hope it feels better soon.

Visiting Mom for Mother's Day today. It's kind of a tradition I always visit her and either take her out to lunch or we BBQ at her place.. this time around it's going to just be her and I for Mother's Day. I don't get to see my mom as much as I would like so the time we do get to spend together is very important to me.

Stopped by Starer Bros to pick up some flowers.. I was there way to long, I always get her several bouquets of flowers and then combine them into one large bouquet. But I went back and forth debating on weather to get a plant this year as it would last longer. I had many items in my hand but kept going back and forth for about 20 minutes before finally just going with my original idea and get the two bouquets.

I got to Mom's and she was surprised that I had gotten her flowers (since I'm jobless at the moment), but it's a special day and I had to buy her flowers. Took her to a local Mexican restaurant.. one that she rarely goes it.  We had a great lunch, we got to catch up on each others lives.

Afterwards we headed back to her place to relax and just hang out for an hour or so. I had to leave around 3pm as I had a D&D campaign tonight at 4:30pm. They actually pushed it an hour so that those of us who had Mom's close by could still do something with them and still participate in the game.

Got to Dallas' by 4:00pm and still had a half hour to kill so I went to the local Ralphs to pick up some snacks. Walked into Dallas' place at 4:20 to find Dallas (of course) with Brett and Aaron. The next half hour the rest of the gang showed up. It wasn't the full crew like last time but a good amount. Dallas, Brett, Aaron, Will, Anthony, Rupert, Josh, Luis, Kenny and a new addition Adam. Later in the evening Jes and Jen would join us.

Once again my character Dash was quiet and pretty much took a back seat to the more prominent characters. We fought some Chocladites for the majority of the night before being arrested (and meeting Adam's character). We met with the Major and a Widow who gave us a task. We came into contact with some low lives in a seedy bar before calling it a night.

Dash did pretty good at fighting some Chocladies but wasn't able to kill any, but I think he held his own. He needs to come out of his shell a bit, maybe find someone within the group to buddy up with. The whole reason he volunteered for the quest was to help cultivate he's people skills. So far he's not doing a great job at that.

It was another fun night of D&D with friends. Instead of waiting two weeks to meet again we are actually meeting next Sunday to play again. Can't wait to see what this mysterious town has in store for us.