Frank Miller now number 5 writer of all time

This is quite simply amazing. I guess its not that amazing, I read 6 graphic novels by him. That means I like spent over 9 hours reading his material. And guess what, I loved every second of it. While I don't like the idea of a graphic novel writer being in my top 5, theres simply nothing I can do about it. Frank Miller is a fantastic writer, and evidently my 5th favorite author of all time.



Obviously the addition of 11 stories to the top 50 graphic novels will have much more of an effect on the points used to determine my top 30 authors, for now I will just be impressed by the fact that I have a new 5th favorite author.

Top Ten Authors of all time (with points):
1. Richard Matheson, 1139
2. Stephen King, 790
3. JK Rowling, 460
4. Kurt Vonnegut, 384
5. Frank Miller, 375
6. JRR Tolkien, 326
7. Michael Creighton, 263
8. Douglas Adams, 263
9. Forest Carter, 244
10. Peter Tonkin, 147

Make Way Short Stories

I did it, I added the graphic novels to the "Ultimate Short Story List" I added the first 12 because I could really use some more time to think over "V for Vandetta". I may be leaning to putting that one on the Novel list since it took me like 6 hours to read it, but I guess we'll wait and see. Anywho I added them to the list... heres how they did.

Sin City Volume 1: The Hard Goodbye, Frank Miller - Number 4
Sin City Volume 2: A Dame to Kill For, Frank Miller - Number 6
Sin City Volume 4: That Yellow Bastard, Frank Miller - Number 7
Sin City Volume 3: The Big Fat Kill, Frank Miller - Number 9
A History of Violence, David Wagner - Number 11
Sin City Volume 5: Family Values, Frank Miller - Number 14
The Crow, Jim O'Beor - Number 19
Sin City Volume 6: Booze, Broads, and Bullets - Number 22
30 Days of Night, Steven Niles - Number 27
300, Frank Miller - 30
Dark Days, Steven Niles - 38

Well, all that I have read made the top 40, out of 96 total now. While this suggests that Graphic Novels have an unfair advantage it should be remembered that a lot of those short stories are crap I had to read for high school. If I went and found some new short stories right now they'd be might be likely to do as well. Regaurdless I now have to sift through the total hell that these additions are going to do to my authors list.

I Want to Assure you Now I'm not being Ironic

Ok, just so you know, I have just listened to the song "Common People" by William Shatner for the nineth time since downloading it monday. This means it is already in contention for the Blake Stockdale top 25 that will be coming up Monday. I am just writing this now to insure you that I am not doing this ironically. I feel it is a wonderful song, and I just want to hear it a lot. That being said, I might start listening top the top couple songs a few times, because I'm really hoping William Shatner doesn't end up with the number one song on here.

Top 10 Documentaries

Okay so I've seen a lot of really good documentaries lately. For a long time this was a more or less completely ignored genre for me. But lately I've been watching them like crazy. Anyway I now realize that my total number of documentaries that I like is now above 10, so here they are.

Favorite Documentaries:
1. Ferinheit 9/11
2. Murderball
3. The Aristocrats
4. Grizzly Man
5. Capturing the Friendmans
6. Dog Town and Z Boys
7. Word Wars
8. Spellbound
9. Roger and Me
10. Fast Cheap and out of Control

Top 10 Foreign Language Films

Ok, now Zach has of late insisted on renting snooty French films with his netflix picks. He has done this alledgedly because all of my rankings of foreign films has forced netflix to recommend us nothing but Asian foreign films. To test this I have decided to look into my top 10 Foreign Language Films of all time.

Foreign Language Films:
1. City of God
2. Oldboy*
3. Hard Boiled*
4. The Seven Samurai*
5. No Man’s Land
6. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon*
7. Run Lola Run
8. Audition*
9. The Defender*
10. Ringu*
* denotes an Asian film

Okay, 7 out of 10 are Asian, I guess Zach has a point. I guess that's yet ANOTHER reason I love Asian people.

Movie Reviews and Rankings

Dog Town and Z-Boys, 6/10, 23rd best of 2001 164th in the 2000's, 525th all time
I've been enjoying a high number of documentaries lately, and this one certainly has plenty to enjoy. It's shot beutifully, flows very nicely, and at least for me the subject mater was pretty interesting. I think this movie might have been ranked more highly had I not already seen Lords of Dogtown, which tells pretty much the same story in a non-documentary foremat. I enjoyed Lords of Dogtown quite a bit more purely based on the fact that its just more fun to watch. If documentaries are your thing I'd say go with this, otherwise just stick with Lords of Dogtown. Unless your a big skating fan, or like me you've got time on your hands, than you might as well watch them both.

The Notebook, 5/10, 59th best of 2004, 258th in the 2000s, 783rd all time
This movie started at a clear disadvantage because it is in the "chick flick" genre of which I am not a massivly big fan. It was further hurt by the fact that I was forced into watching it by my girlfirend, and at that I was forced to watch it late at night when I wanted to go to bed. Also, she fell asleep 10 minutes in to the movie, but I already felt I had to watch the entire thing. That being said, the movie was not entirely unpleasant. I can't really pick out anything that I loved about the movie (although I did feel James Garner gave a very good preformance), I didn't necisarily find anything wrong with the movie either. It's relatively bland, predictable, unoffensive, and vaugly pleasant. In my mind this movie isn't good or bad, its just sort of there.

Magnolia, 7/10, 26th best of 1999, 127th in the 1990s, 364th all time
The primary obstacle for this movie to overcome was the fact that it was over three hours long. That's a very long time to spend watching a movie, especially one with no explosions (I'm kidding {sor of}). But anyway the movie is actually very good. Great characters played by great actors. Interesting interweving stories.

(I'm going to talk about something that might not make sense if you've never seen the movie, but won't really give anything important away, read if you care to)
Form what I read a lot of people hated the bit with the frogs, but I really liked it. The plot of the movie, and especially the movies music, really created the feeling that it was building towards something big for about an hour and a half leading up to the frog scene. And you feel like there has to be all these seperate climaxes where one thing happens to this person, and something else happens to another person, and all these seperate amazing climaxes that some how bring everything together. But that didn't have to happen because of the frogs. These people were connected by the fact that they were all in these intense situations that were strangely and seemingly always positively by the fact that it somehow started raining frogs. Maybe I'm off the mark but I took it to mean that God had somehow found a way to help all these struggeling people with one seemingly random and bizzare act.

Thus, this is one of those movies that is left in a precarious position. I thought there was a ton of great stuff here and I liked it a lot. But for a good chunk of the movie I was pretty bored and kind of wanted it to be over. Thus it ends up with a seven.
The sad thing is, there was so much going on that I kind of want to see it again, but don't really want to sit through it again. Really quite the sticky wicket.

Short Time, 5/10, 23rd best movie of 1990, 332nd of the 1990s, 842nd all time
I had actually really wanted to see this movie for a long time. I had seen a preview for it when I watched some movie in high school and thought it was a good idea for a movie. I was actually going to order it on netflix but nobody ever bothered to put it on DVD. But while I was looking for something to watch at Shannon's the other day I saw it was on show time. It's about a Cop who finds out he has a terminal desiease. He is uneffected now, but will be dead in 3 months. He can collect insurance in the amount of 250,000 dollars for his family, but the thing is, he has to die on the job. Thus he starts taking rediculous chances on the job, but keeps accidently succeding, and getting all these commendations for bravery when all he wants to do is get killed. Now I thought this sounded like a very funny idea for a movie. And while I still feel the premise was very good, the movie isn't really done very well. There is one rediculously funny 10 minute car chase scene which I feel shows exactly how good this movie could have been, and single-handedly bumped this movie up from a low four to a low five. But other than that I think this movie is mostly a lot of lost potential.


Upcoming reviews/rankings:
Capote, 2005
Capturing the Friedmans, 2003
Carnival of Souls, 1962
The Hills Have Eyes, 2006

The Stockdale Top 25

I realize that there is not much change here, but I still like the idea of making this a weekly thing. Besides what can it hurt. Anyway here they are...
The Stockdale Top 25...
1. Cattle and the Creeping Things, The Hold Steady (21 plays)
2. Beer for Breakfast, The Replacements (18 plays)
3. Breed, Steve Earl (15 plays)
4. Screen Door, Uncle Tupelo (14 plays)
5. The Factory (Live at Wolfgangs, 1985), Warren Zevon (14 plays)
6. Corpus Christi Bay, Robert Earl Keen (14 plays)
7. Rock Island Line, Johnny Cash (13 plays)
8. Feeling Good Again, Robert Earl Keen, (12 plays)
9. People Who Died, Jim Carroll Band (12 plays)
10. Who Rocks the Party, Les Savy Fav (12 plays)
11. Lets Go Dancing, Driving and Crying (12 plays)
12. Shut Up and Get on the Plane, Drive-By-Truckers (12 plays)
13. Shine, The Meat Puppets (11 plays)
14. Gorilla You're a Desperado, Warren Zevon (10 plays)
15. World Destruction, Public Image Limited (10 plays)
16. Push Th' Little Daisies, Ween (10 plays)
17. I Hung My Head, Johnny Cash (10 plays)
18. The Breakup Song, Greg Kihn Band (10 plays)
19. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, Warren Zevon (9 plays)
20. Ain't That Pretty at All, Warren Zevon (9 plays)
21. Stevie Nix, The Hold Steady (9 plays)
22. Date Rape, Sublime (9 plays)
23. Merry Christmas to the Family, Robert Earl Keen (9 plays)
24. I've Never Been in a Riot, The Melkons (9 plays)
25. I Was in Love With a Girl on LSD, Tom Petty (9 plays)

The problem is that I'm not listening to any of these songs a lot right now, so all the changes are minor. Things won't really get shaken up untill the more popular songs that I got from Zach reach the 9-10 plays level. I predict this should happen in a week or two.

Extremely Difficult List

I think we all know it has to come up eventually. I have done movies, books, songs, TV Shows, all my favorite mediums of entertainment. Sooner or later I'm gonna have to get around to creating some sort of "ultimate Video Game list". But the thing is, I have played hundreds of video games in my life. This will be almost as daunting a task as the creation of the ultimate movie list was when it was first created in 2002. I suppose I could limit it to a certain number so that I don't have to remember the minor insignificant games I have played. But I don't think I could respect myself by doing any less than 100 games. Really there should probobly be 200, maybe 250. But we'll have to wait and see what I can come up with. Also, how do I handle seires games like Madden. Do I put like 14 years of Madden on the list? Can I really distinguish which I liked better Madden 97' or Madden 98'? I have no concept of their differences. And can a clump all the maddens and Tripple Plays and World Cups and NHLs together but distinguish between different Resident Evils, and Marios, and Metal Gears?
Flash of Brilliance!!! I can count games that automatically come out with one new title per year such as Madden as single games, but games that come out with periodic sequals as independent games. Thus the list can include all 5 resident evils, but will only have one Madden, one Tiger Woods, etc.
Well, even with that taken care of there are a dozen other problems to deal with. I don't know when I can get this list started, and even when I do start it I doubt I'll get it done before summer.
But hey, Rome was not built in a day I suppose.

Top 20 Movie Music Scenes

1. Wayne’s World – Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen, sung in the car
2. Reservior Dogs – Stuck in the Middle with You by Stealers Wheel plays as Mr. Blonde tortures a police officer
3. Dawn of the Dead (2004) – When the Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash, opeing credits
4. The Royal Tannenbaums – Me and Julio by Paul Simon plays during the living dangerously montage
5. Napoleon Dynamite – The scene where he dances for his “skit”
6. Office Space – Damn it Feels Good to Be a Gangsta Montage
7. The Blues Brothers – Singing the theme to Rawhide
8. Jaws – Singing “Please Won’t You Let Me Go Home” While the shark sneeks up on them
9. Old School – Dust in the Wind, Sung by Will Ferrell at Blue’s funeral
10. Pulp Fiction – The Dance Contest at Jack Rabbit Slims
11. Repo Man – Emilio Estavez thrash dances to TV Party by Black Flag
12. Kill Bill: Volume 1 – My Baby Shot Me Down, opening credits
13. The Color of Money – Werewolves of London, Warren Zevon, in the pool hall
14. Clockwork Orange – Alex De Large singing “Singing in the rain” while beating people to death
15. Dirty Work – The Pinia Collata Song fight scene
16. Wayne’s World II – Y.M.C.A. The Village People, Sung in the Dance Club
17. The Big Lebowski – Gypsy Kings Hotel California played as Jesus Quninntana is introduced
18. Dazed and Confused – Sweet Emotions by Aerosmith, intro to movie
19. Anchorman – Afternoon Delight by Casey and the Sunshine Band, Afternoon Delight, Sung by the Four Newsmen
20. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels – Now I Wanna Be a Dog by Iggy Pop plays after the poker game

New Proposal: Pie Savings Time

Last night someone mentioned something about daylight savings time. It was something along the lines of, "I think were putting the clocks ahead an hour, so we'll get an extra hour of sunlight." To which someone responded, "I'd rather get an extra hour of sleep." To which I replied, "I'd rather get an extra hour of pie."

Now, here is my proposal. One day a year, every man, woman, and child in America will get one free hour of pie. It will be at 4:00 PM on the third monday of July. Although it will last only 1 hour, it will be considered a national holliday, and everyone will be allowed to leave work, even 7-11s will be closed that hour. You will then report to where ever your local polling station is. From here you will be treated to all the pie you care to eat. All kinds of pie... blueberry, cherry, apple, peach cobbler, rubarb, french silk, pumpkin... whatever your little heart desires. And its all on Uncle Sam's pocket book. This will not be as expensive as people think, it will be run by volunteers, much like voting. The government will ask its American citizens to donate as many pies as they possibally can. Whatever extra is required the government will pay for. All-in-all the whole thing might cost the federal government a couple million dollars. However, just think of the good will all that pie could create.

He we have a wonderful, non-threatening, non-partisan issue that I think the entire nation can get behind. We Need A Pie Savings Hour! If you don't want to do it for yourself, please think of our children, and their children, and thier children's children. Do you want them to have to live in a world without one hour of free pie per year?... I know I don't.

I've made an important decision

It has to do with how I'm going to rank the graphic novels I've read. So when I say its important I don't mean like important for regular people, I mean important for me. Initially I was planning to give them their own catagory. This is a descent plan except that I don't really want to make a list that's only going to have 12-13 things on it. Also, this makes it virtually impossible for me to use this list for consideration when looking at my list of top authors. Thus I've decided to include the graphic novels in the Ultimate Short Story List. I mean most of these graphic novles have taken me between 30 minutes and two hours to read, fairly concistant with short stories. And yes, perhaps most of them will be towards the top of the short story list, but I see nothing wrong with this. It would be nice to have Richard Matheson compose less than half of my top 20 short stories for a change. However, the primary reason I am doing this is that I know Frank Miller should be well into my top 30 authors, and this is by far the easiest way to get him there.

More Boring Rankings

Alas, I am adrift in a pool of 5's and 6's. But I made a little bit more headway and thought I would show you the results:

The Basketball Diaries, 1995
Decent preformance by Leo De Caprio in the starring roll but still not a very good movie. I could point out several things about the movie but I'll simply stick to my biggest problem. This was a character driven movie, and I couldn't help but not give a damn about any of the characters involved. That really hurt my abilaty to enjoy the movie. On the plus side it was shot pretty well and wasn't boring, plus it introduced me to the song "people who have died" by The Jim Caroll Band, which I'm totally loving right now.
--- 5/10, 36th best movie of 1995, 321st of the 90's 815th overall

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, 1997
A documentary that aims high and doesn't quite make it. It's about four guys that have achieved great things in very unussual fields. The director was trying to make a point about what it takes to be a success. He tried to make the argument that although the mens fields were very different (robot designer, mole rat expert, lion tamer, gardener) they succeeded for the same reason. He did this by first introducing the men, than interviewing them, than having the answers of one play while he showed the other working. It was a pretty well made movie and shot pretty well, but it just didn't quite do it for me. It was a well made movie and I enjoyed it, but I feel that it could have done a lot more.
6/10, 23rd best of 1997, 250th of the 90s, 627th overall.

Unleashed, 2005
I believe I already posted about this movie when I saw it... you can go back and read that if you like.
6/10, 18th best of 2005, 168th of the 2000s, 531st overall


Ohh, I also remembered another show that makes it into my top 50 of all time. It's Insomniac with Dave Attell. I put it in at number 40.

The Stockdale Top 25

Well, Zach has a good idea, and as I ussually do when I see a good idea, I am stealing it. Although because he listens to considerabally more music on his ipod than I listen to on my computer, I can report my computers top 25 most played songs, and you will listen, because that is your job! Now this is basically number of plays since I got my computer rebooted which I think may have happened either just before or just after winter break. Here's what I got:

1. Cattle and the Creeping, The Hold Steady (21 plays)
2. Beer For Breakfast, The Replacements (17 plays)
3. Breed, Steve Earle (15 plays)
4. The Factory (Live at Wolfgangs 1985), Warren Zevon (14 plays)
5. Corpus Christi Bay, Robert Earle Keen (14 plays)
6. Screen Door, Uncle Tupelo (13 plays)
7. Feeling Good Again, Robert Earle Keen (12 plays)
8. Who Rocks the Party, Les Savy Fav (12 plays)
9. Rock Island Line, Johnny Cash (12 plays)
10. Lets Go Dancing, Driving and Crying (12 plays)
11. Shine, The Meat Puppets (11 plays)
12. People Who Died, Jim Caroll Band (11 plays)
13. Shut Up and Get On the Plane, Drive-By-Truckers (11 plays)
14. Gorilla You're a Desperado, Warren Zevon (10 plays)
15. Push th' Little Daisies, Ween (10 plays)
16. The Breakup Song, Greg Kihn Band (10 plays)
17. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, Warren Zevon (9 plays)
18. Ain't that Pretty at All, Warren Zevon (9 plays)
19. Stevie Nix, The Hold Steady (9 plays)
20. Merry Chritmas to the Family (live), Robert Earle Keen (9 plays)
21. Die My Bride, The Murderdolls (9 plays)
22. I Hung My Head, Johnny Cash (9 plays)
23. Like a Rolling Stone (live), Bob Dylan (9 plays)
24. World Destruction, Public Image Limited (8 plays)
25. I've Never Been in a Riot, The Melkons (8 plays)

note* there are actually 12 songs with 8 plays.

Summery Post

It would be a good idea at this time for you to go back and start reading this blog about 11 posts ago with a post titled "my o my what a time". Unless of chorse you want to hear about my spring break in reverse, which for all I know actually makes for a better story, so I guess do what you want.

Anyway, that was pretty much my spring break. If it wasn't for that horrible downward spiral at the end I would say it was far and away my best spring break ever, I suppose it still might be. It's all a question of how strongly I weight between 4:00 am - 2:00 pm friday, which were 10 of the worst hours of my life. However, the important thing is, I went to Vegas for spring break, I had a great time (for the most part) with my friends, I actually won money gambling, and when I did get sick I had my girlfriend there to treat me like a baby. What more could you ask for on spring break?

Saturday

My dad picked us up at the airport around 5:30. I slept for a lot of the drive home. I than gave my mom a hug and slept for an additional 7 hours. Around 2:00 Trina called to tell Shannon she'd be in Madison in about an hour. My mom made Shannon and I some grilled cheese for lunch. I asked for two sandwhiches but could only eat one. Shannon went back to Winona. I originally was going to go back with her. However, although I was feeling much better, I still didn't feel great, and decided to put off the trip for another day. For the rest of the day I watched some basketball. Around 5:00 we watched the movie "Just Friends", it was kind of dumb but with a few very funny lines. After that I just sort of sat around and watched more TV. Than I looked some stuff up on the internet and started writing in this blog.

Friday

After falling asleep around 2:00 in the morning I woke up around 3:30 feeling very poorly. I began to get the feeling that I would feel better if I went and threw up. I did feel a little better... for about 10 minutes. After this I felt that I would feel better if I took a crap. I took a crap, but didn't feel better. I spent roughly the next 4 and a half hours walking back and forth from the bed to the bathroom to shit or throw up. While I did my best to walk quitely this was mostly pointless because my vomiting was loud and violent and I am sure woke everyone up. I tried to sleep in the bathroom but found it was just too cold. Around 8:30 people started waking up. This was nice because I had people to feel sorry for me know. Shannon got my some tums to take. I chewed on one for about 3 seconds and than vomited again. By this time the food and liquid had run out in my stomach and I began to throw up something else. My guess is it was stomach acid but I don't know for sure, all I know is that it was thick, it was yellow, it tasted absolutely awful, and when it hit the water in the toilet it sank like a stone. Around this time I called my mom at work back in Wisconsin. She told me it would be a good idea to call a clinic and get some advice. I had Shannon do this. I was told to drink water for the next two hours, and not to worry if I vommited it all back up, but to call back if i was still vomiting in two hours. I spent the next two hours drinking water and vomiting in cycles of about 30 minutes. I apparently had a fever because Shannon told me I felt extrodinarilly hot. I however was freezing in spite of the fact that I had sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and 8 blankets on. Shannon kept putting a cold wash cloth on my face (to spite my complaints) and feeding me ice. I think I may have started to hallucinate a little bit. I stopped throwing up around 2:00. I layed around in the hotel room, but was unable to fall asleep. I did this untill we had to check out at 6:00. We than sat around in the hotel for about an hour and half and than decided to go to the airport in spite of the fact that our plane didn't leave for over 5 hours. We got to our gate a little after 9:00. For the next two hours Shannon and I layed on the ground by our terminal. Luckily, I acctaually slept quite a bit. A little before 11:30 everyone else showed up and we got on the plane. The flight back went much quicker than we expected. We got back a little after 5:00 am midwest time. On the flight I actually slept quite a bit (I'm not positive but I think I slept through our takeoff). While I was awake I managed to eat a cookie and a bag of pretzels, which was very encouraging.

Thursday

After betting on more sports Thursday morning I learned that everyone was going to the jacuzzi. I of chorse joined them. Later that day we went up the strip once again. We saw the lion show at MGM and road the roller coaster at New York New York (both of which were fairly awsome). After that we went to old down town Las Vegas. It was acctually pretty sweet. We saw I live band playing and watched them for awhile. We than at some 11 dollar steak and lobster. Around this time I began to not feel so well. I was in a somewhat awkward position. Mainly that it was 11:00 PM, I wanted to go back to the hotel but nobody else did, and I didn't really feel like going back tot he hotel by myself. Thus we hung out for a little while longer. We saw an awsome spray paint artist, and a pretty decent light show. We than went back to the hotel.

Wendesday

I bet on a lot of tourament games (and did rather poorly) and played a lot of slots (and did better than average meaning I lost money, but slowley) I also lost 40 dollars at roulette and 20 at blackjack. I have now played black jack in a casino, but am still yet to win a hand. Wendsday evening we decided to get dressed up. Shannon and I went to dinner at the Tony Roma's in the Stardust. It was very nice. We than took the shuttle down the strip to meet the others. We hung out a while than took a cab back to the hotel. After that we all hung out a slots of fun. While I applaud Slots of Fun on its name, its also where I lost the most money, thus a deem it, "Slots of no Fun.

Tuesday

Despite the lack of sleep I woke up relatively wide awake around 8:00 AM (what can I say, I love gambling). I made myself stay in bed untill 9:30 but than went down to gamble. I bet on sports and played some slots and sitgned up for the 11:30 poker tournament. After meeting everyone else for lunch (McDonalds) I went to the tournament.
The poker tournament included 43 players who had each payed a 43 dollar entry fee (I was quite sure the winner would be 43 years old). I learned that only the top 4 players got money. I was somewhat dissapointed because I had expected to finish somwhere between 4th and 8th. The game started much like my last game at CGs. In the first 45 minutes I didn't win a single hand. At this point I went all in after the flop with a pair of threes. I won. The next hand I went all in at the end of the hand with Ace high. I won. I than proceeded to go half an hour without winning another hand. However, in spite of the fact that I had only won two hands I had made the final table of 9 players. At this point I finally started getting some good hands. (pocket jacks, Ace King suited, caught a straight on the river to keep me in the tournament). And I found myslef in the final 6 with roughly the 3rd or 4th most chips at the table. At this point it occured to me that I might be able to sit around and wait everyone else out and finish 4th without playing another hand. Evidently this is what everyone else thought also because nobody wanted to play a hand. At this point I simply said, "screw it" at played more aggresively than I had the entire tournament. I acctually played pretty much the same stratagey that I played in free tournaments when I'm playing for a hat or a T-Shirt. Using this stratagey I ended up getting a decent size stack of chips, and knocked out all of my last three competitors. I finished first in the tournament and won about 520$. Previous to this the most I had ever won gambling was 18 dollars on a round of roullette. Deffinately one of the highlights of the whole trip.
After that I called my friends and walked down to meet them further south on the strip. We checked out a few casinos in that area (The Vanthan, The Paris, Ceasers Pallace) than went back to the hotel and eventually went to bed.

Monday

Met Jeff and Trina at Arbys around lunchtime. I had already eaten so I didn't get any food but was very impressed witht this particulat Arbys's bathrooms. Anyway we drove to Danny's appartment in Miluakee. On the way Shannon and I played travel scrabble (I played the word queens for a tripple word score). Anyway we just sort of sat around untill Danny's parents showed up to take us to the airport. The flight took longer than we expected and we met Dan and Jill (Whoes flight left much later than ours) at the airport in Las Vegas. We ended up getting at the hotel a little after midnight. We played some slots than did some graveyard breakfast special at Circus Circus where we were staying. We didn't end up getting to bed untill around 3:00 AM 5:00 AM our time.

Sunday

Met the parents for brunch at the Cracker Barrell, one of my favorite resteraunts (there food is nothing if not uncomlicated). I don't think that last sentance made sense but I'm gonna go on anyway. Anywho luckily because Shannon likes to split two meals with me when we go out I was able to order half of a breakfast and half of a lunch which is great for 11:30. After this we went back to the parents house and watched Iowa win the the big ten championship. Very good time indeed. After that we played some cards. Later Shannon and I rented a movie. I really wanted to watch a movie I wouldn't have to think about. I chose Flightplan, it fit the criterea nicely. It was just a reagular movie without anything too great or too terrrible about it. If nothing else the acting was pretty well done.

Saturday

Shannon and I drove out to Sun Prairie. This was forutnate because it gave me a chance to create a mixed CD for us to listen to (I need a new one for the shower anyway). Upon arriving here we sort of just just hung around untill dinner. We went to some resteraunt. I coan't remember the name of it, but I didn't really like it. They make really complicated food... I don't like complicated food. After that Shannon and I stayed over at my sister's house. Kelli and Brian's friend came over. We all went bowling, listened to rap music, and in general a good time was had by all.

Friday

End of a very difficult week of classes. No classes on friday but I did have to get get up early to finish a paper that was due at noon for my Age of Jackson class. Spent most of Firday just sort of hanging out, winding down, and packing for spring break.
Later that eventing I played in the poker tournament. I think I got roughly the worst cards I have ever had. I played an hour and 15 minutes. My best starting cards were an ace and a three, never caught a pair, never won a hand. This was somewhat discincerning since I planned to play poker in Las Vegas.
After that a group of us went to see "The Hills Have Eyes". Unfortunately this movie had large stretches of time where nothing interesting happened, however the parts that did have things happening were very good. For one thing there is a fight scene between two of the characters (Doug and Jupiter I believe their names were) that is likely to make my forthcoming list of the best movie fight scenes of all time. Also although I do enjoy horror films, I don't find most of them to be all that scary. This movie however was in fact very creepy and actually did scare me a little bit, which is always fun.

My Oh My what a time

Since the last post quite a bit has happened, mainly spring break. I must say that this spring break was absolute fantastic, except for the end which was pretty awful (I'll get back to this later. However even with its ups and downs I would have to rate this spring break as overall quite excellent. I'm gonna go through this on a daily basis, which means my spring break will warrant you not one not two but 10 big wonderful posts. Eleven if you count this one. Twelve if I decide to make some sort of summary post, we'll have to wait and see.

Ratings

Nothing to groundbreaking here but just did a little housekeeping and thought I would share.

Music:
Here's how it was supposed to go. I was to rank Dave Edmunds "The Promised Land". It was not going to be great, somewhere between 500 and 550. But the thing is this... that would have given Dave Edmunds 50-100 points. Dave Edmunds is, as of this moment, roughly 20 points away from being one of my top 50 artists, which I feel he deserves to be. However, when I looked at the list of my favorite songs, I know "The Promised Land" did not deserve to be on it. It's a good song... but not good enough. So I guess Dave will have to wait for the next song of his that I like.

"Do You" by Electric Light Orchestra came out of left field to be number 517.

Johnny Cash's "Rock Island Line" came in at number 271. This leaves Johnny only 409 points behind John Prine for 6th place. Somehting I would have considered a long shot a couple months ago before I found "Get Rhythem" and "I Hung My Head"

Movies:
I have a big line of movies to rank that are all 5's and 6's which is of chorse very boring. Thus I was only able to get myself to rank 2 movies.

Brokeback Mountain: 6/10, 22nd best movie of 2002, 573rd best movie of all time

K-PAX: 5/10, 29th best movie of 2001, 656th best movie of all time.


Books:
Finally some big news. I finished the Shining. While the begining was extremely slow and I considered not finishing it caught up with a vengence at the end. This was the first time in a long time that I get genuinely scared from a book. Like I said I like Stephen King in spite of myself. Anyway I ranked The SHinging as my 30th favorite book of all time.

Just because a movie is innovative doesn't mean its good

I wallowed my way throught "Carnival of Souls" last night. It was not enjoyable. I had heard so much about what a classic it was, how it basically created the zombie genre while Night of the Living Dead got all the credit. But you see the thing is, Night of the Living Dead is a great movie. Carnival of Souls was boring and pointless. I'm sure if this was 1962 and I had never seen a zombie movie before I would appreciate Carnival of Souls. But I have not only seen many zombie movies already, I have seen many GOOD and ENJOYABLE zombie movies. Which leaves this movie being only old, boring and although it is original, I've seen this concept so many times that it doesn't seem original to me. I realize this is not the fault of this movie, but it is however a reason not to watch it. I really have to question whether all the horror fans who gas on about this movie do so because they acctually enjoy watching it or because its reportedly so innovative and a "classic". I love zombie movies, so I owe a lot to this movie... but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I haven't ranked this movie yet but I'm thinking 4/10 at best. More likely 3/10.

Another thing I miss about television...

Comercials that change the words to songs to make them about their product. This came up because I remember a comercial that used the song "get off of my cloud" by the Rolling Stones. But I can't remember for the life of me what product that was. However this got me thinking about other songs like that. One that stuck out was the version of "The Wanderer". The Line from the song goes, "I'm the wanderer, yeah I'm the wanderer" The commercial changed it to, "I'm the snake light, from black and decker" Is it just me or are these two statements not similar to eachother in anyway? Shouldn't it at least rhyme or something? These don't evan sound similar except for having roughly the same number of syllabals. And now for the funniest sentence ever created in the history of the world... "who are the ad-wizzards who came up with this one?"

I like Stephen King More Than I Wish I did

I finished reading The Shining the other day. It was very good and will rank highly on my list, it has a very good chance at the top 30. If it does than that would make 7 Stephen King novels in my top 30. Statistically speaking this would pretty much insure that Steven King has to be my favorite author. I don't want Stephen King to be my favorite author! However, nearly every time I read a Stephen King book I like it a lot... so I keep reading them. There are a lot of authors I like a lot and would like to rate higher thank King: Kurt Vonneguet, Richard Matheson, Forrest Carter, JRR Tolkien for example. But I don't think the numbers bare that out. This may be the only thing that has stopped me from compiling a favorite authors list based on my fovorite novels. Well that and the fact that JK Rawling is probobly going to make the top five.

Oh well, maybe I'll try to get into some Tolstoy or something... it won't work.