July 21, 2005

Last week Jermaine and I rented Million Dollar Baby. We had been wanting to see it since it won a bunch of Oscars, and we still had one more free rental coupon from Blockbuster. My brothers really liked it, and I think Jermaine liked it a lot more than I did. I think that I tend to set my expectations really high for movies like this. Then when I see them, I'm not as impressed as I normally would be. It was a pretty good movie though. There was some very cool use of lighting in the movie too.

Jermaine and I were trying to think of things that we would like to do in Manhattan this summer before we leave since we might not be coming back anytime soon. One of the things we wanted to do was visit Manhattan Hill, which is pretty much just a big hill in the middle of town with the word "Manhattan" written really big on the side. It has a little place to sit and look out over Manhattan. It's not real impressive, but it's a nice spot to sit and hang out.

July 20, 2005

Jermaine came back to Manhattan a couple weeks ago, so I have been spending quite a bit of time with her lately. It's nice to have someone to hang out with again. I don't have very many friends staying in Manhattan this summer.

Last week Jermaine decided that she wanted to go eat at Famous Dave's BBQ. It opened in Manhattan earlier this year, and it was extremely popular for a while. The wait time for dinner was usually around 2 hours. I was happy to see that it had calmed down a bit now. Jermaine and I had no wait time at all. Last time I was there I couldn't find what I normally like to get at a BBQ place, but this time I found it. It was really good stuff.

Last weekend when my mom came to Manhattan to help my sister get ready to move, we decided to go see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Jermaine had been talking about it for quite a while. I loved the original movie, which was a musical, so I was really interested to see what this version would be like. Overall I would say that I wasn't all that impressed with the movie. The chocolate factory didn't seem as cool as it was in the original movie. There were also several parts of the story that were quite a bit different. I would like to read the book sometime to see which movie followed the orignal story more closely. I do have to say that despite it's problems Tim Burton did make a really pretty movie.

July 19, 2005

Wow, it's been quite a while since I last posted, so I should have quite a bit to talk about. I have been somewhat busy lately with my job hunt. Last week I drove to Wichita for an interview. I was just there for the day, so I didn't have much time to do anything fun. I did manage to stop by Best Buy though. I would be so much better if they had a Best Buy built in Manhattan. I heard they are working on one, and it should be here in the next year or so. Too bad I won't be around to see it.

Last time I posted was right before 4th of July, so I guess I should start by talking about how I spent the 4th. I wasn't planning on doing anything to celebrate (I'm usually not a big fan of fireworks), but my friend Chris talked to me and asked me if I wanted to do something. We went out to dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings, which has very good hamburgers but is a little pricy for what you get.

After dinner we went to watch I, Robot at Chris' place since I no longer have any furniture in my apartment (my roommate moved out and most of the furniture was his). I had watched I, Robot earlier in the summer, but Chris hadn't seen it yet and wanted to watch it.

Once the movie was over, we had just enough time to make it to the park to watch the Manhattan fireworks. The fireworks were much more impressive than I thought they would be for a smaller city like Manhattan, but they still didn't seem all that big compared to how I remember the Wichita fireworks. It was still a good time, and it was much easier to get a good spot to watch in Manhattan than it would have been in Wichita.

I've been watching the first season of The Office recently (the American one). There are only 6 episodes in the first season, so I have pretty much watched them all now. Sometimes the show is really really funny, and sometimes it's just alright. Steve Carell is always hilarious though, and he basically acts like a complete idiot on the show, which is probably why I like it...

July 3, 2005

My dad and brother came into town for the weekend on their way back from my brother's orientation at Missouri (and I somehow totally forgot to take any pictures of my dad and brother this weekend). They were even kind enough to drive my recently purchased car to Manhattan from Jermaine's house in Kansas City for me.

As soon as my dad and brother got to town we went to eat at Chipotle. Chipotle is one of my favorite fast-food restaurants. They don't have a whole lot to choose from on their menu, but what they do have is very good. The Chipotle in Manhattan is the best one that I have ever been to. They are super fast and everything is usually really fresh. The other Chipotles I have visited are no where near as good. I like it enough that I went there again tonight before going to my sister's to do laundry.

While I was in school, I went to Chipotle every Sunday night with a group of guys from my dorm. The few of us staying in Manhattan kept the tradition going at the beginning of the summer, but it's been a while since I've been there with any of those guys.

On Saturday, my dad and brother went with me to do a little grocery shopping, and then we decided to go see War of the Worlds. I thought the movie was pretty good. Not great, but good. I think it could have been total crap if Steven Spielberg hadn't directed it. But it was a somewhat typical "aliens invade the Earth" type movie. I think I would have preferred to see some other movie, such as Star Wars, but my brother goes to quite a few movies and has pretty much seen all the ones I would like to see.

After the movie we stopped to have dinner at Quiznos, one of my favorite fast-food sandwich places. I think it's funny that Subway has copied the toasted sub idea now that there are so many other sandwich places that toast their subs. I don't really like Subway that much anymore.

After dinner we went to my sister's place to watch yet another movie... did I mention that I like to watch movies?... This time we borrowed my roommate's copy of Miller's Crossing, a pretty good Coen brothers movie.

On Sunday I just went to lunch with my dad and brother before they headed back to Wichita. We ate a Gumby's, a local pizza place, where my brother beat me pretty badly at air hockey (I thought I could take him).

Well, that was pretty much my weekend. I did, of course, play a bit of Counter-Strike this weekend as well. I should have several things to post about this next week since Jermaine will be coming to Manhattan, and I will also be going to Kansas City for a job interview.

And finally, as requested, here is a picture of myself... with a bit of a beard... Not the greatest picture ever, but I think it will work for now. You can even see Jermaine standing there off to the side.

June 30, 2005

Nothing too exciting to post about from the past couple days. When I am not working I watch quite a bit of TV and movies during the week. Lately I have been watching two new shows: Into the West and 30 Days.

Into the West is one of those shows that isn't all that great, but since I started watching it, I feel like I should keep watching it just to see what happens. Into the West is a mini-series produced by Steven Spielberg. I loved Steven Spielberg's Band of Brothers, so I was very excited when I heard about this show. I think the thing that I really don't like about Into the West is that there are so many characters and the time skips forward so fast. It makes it very difficult to care about the characters and be interested in what happens with the story.

30 Days on the other hand is a very interesting show. It was created by Morgan Spurlock, the guy that made Super Size Me (I was really mad when he didn't win the Oscar). In the show, a person spends 30 days living a different lifestyle. The first episode was about living off of minimum wage jobs, and the second episode is about the use of steroids to help middle-aged people feel younger. So far the show has been really good.

Other than watching TV and movies, I play quite a bit of Counter-Strike: Source. I usually play it at least a little bit every day, always online. My computer is 3 years old, so I have to turn the graphics quality waaaay down. Even then, it still runs like crap. I guess I just have to put up with it until I can afford a new computer. I wasn't doing very well tonight for the first half, but then I really picked it up at the end. I think I might actually be getting better though...

June 29, 2005

I'm a little behind on my blogging, so I will have to cover the last few days all at once. I got back to Manattan Monday after spending the weekend in Kansas City with Jermaine. We had quite a full weekend.

Sunday night we met up with a few friends for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. I had heard so much about that place, but I had never been there myself. I heard it was expensive, and it was a little more pricy than the average sit-down restaurant but not too bad at all. Many people I had heard talk about The Cheesecake Factory said that they have been there a few times but have never had the cheesecake. Now I can understand why. The meals are pretty big themselves, but the slices of cheescake are also pretty big. It took four of us to eat one piece of key lime cheesecake. It was really really good though. The Cheescake Factory also has a very large menu. It took me quite a while to figure out what I wanted to eat.



After dinner, Jermaine and I talked to our friends for a while longer and then decided to watch a movie. We had planned on seeing a movie in a theater, but it was 8:15 and all the movies we wanted to see were only showing around 8:00 (which had already passed) and 10:30 (which was a little too late for us). I just thought it was weird that every single theater in Kansas City was pretty much using the same showtimes for their movies. You would think that one of them would change it up a bit. We finally decided to just rent a movie at Blockbuster. We had been given free movie rentals from the Casino in Topeka several weeks ago.

It had been several years before I had set foot in a Blockbuster, and now I remember why. I was pleased to see that they had finally moved out most of the VHS tapes and replaced them with DVDs, but it was still very difficult to find a movie that we wanted to see and that was not totally checked out. The other thing that I noticed was that Blockbuster uses a very loose definition for "new release". Their new release movies include DVDs that came out months and months ago. One movie I noticed on the new release shelf was Dogville. I remember watching that movie on DVD at least a year and a half ago. It's a very good movie, but I think it's about time to take it off the new releases.

Jermaine and I finally decided on The Aviator. My brothers told me it was pretty good, and Dillon's only had it in Full Screen for some reason when I tried to rent it before (I hate "Full Screen"). I knew it was somewhat of a long movie, but I didn't know that it was over two and a half hours. Still, it was pretty good. Not Scorsese's best movie ever, but I liked it. Cate Blanchett deserved her Oscar.

Monday night I watched True Crime, which I purchased for $2 at the Dillon's store in Kansas City. This movie was somewhat entertaining, but I thought parts of the story weren't very well written. Again, not Clint Eastwood's best performance as an actor or a director, but it was alright. For $2, it's still a great deal.

I also watched this week's episode of Family Guy when I got home. I was worried for a couple week's that the show was not going to be as funny now that it was back on the air, but that doesn't concern me as much anymore. I still think the show is quite a bit different than it used to be. It seems like the writers feel as though they can get away with more now that the Family Guy DVDs have sold so well, and it appears that they would be right. The show seems to take jokes a little bit further than it did in the first three seasons.

My friend Kyle finally talked me into watching the pilot episode of Firefly last night. He and his girlfriend have been talking about it all summer. They said it was really good and they don't understand why it was ever cancelled. From what I hear, there is quite a following for this show, and although it was cancelled, Fox did make the show into a movie now. That seems a little weird to me, but maybe the show's DVD sales will help it make a comeback just like Family Guy. I thought the show was pretty good. I was afraid that I wouldn't like it because it seemed like it might be a Star Trek type show. I seem to be very picky about what kinds of science fiction that I enjoy, but this show wasn't really science fiction as much as it was a futuristic show.

June 26, 2005

Today I was interviewed for an entertainment survey!