The Midnight Line [A Jack Reacher Novel]

The Midnight Line is a Jack Reacher novel written by Lee Child in 2017. Let me start out by saying this is my first Jack Reacher novel and it is a great one. I would even say superb. Before this, I was familiar with Jack Reacher only through No Middle Name, Child's short story collection about Jack Reacher. That was very good too. But not as good as this novel. 

Okay, so the novel takes place with Reacher somewhere in the midwest. He goes to a pawn shop and finds this ring, the catalyst for our entire story. The ring is engraved with the initials S.R.A and it's from West Point. The very same school Reacher graduated from back in the day. Reacher knows it's a woman's ring because it's tiny. He goes on a quest to find the woman, return the ring, and make sure that she's safe. Because the only reason a West Point student would sell her class ring is that they're in some sort of dire straights and/or trouble. Right? Right. 

As far as suspense thriller versus action this novel is more on the suspense thriller side of things. Which inevitably means its a more serious book. More serious than the next novel in the canon, Blue Moon. But there are still good fights and an incredible climatic takeover and/or heist moment in the end. Jack goes through all kinds of clues, traveling, following, and occasionally beating the crap outta anyone who gets in the way of his mission, to find the woman who owns the ring. One guy even gets his head blown off. Talk about over the top.

The action is simple and straight to the point. It actually reminds me of the action scenes I've read in Cecelia Holland's intense historical fiction novel fights. Except I believe Lee Child knows more about the actual machinations of guns and how and they work. Short, fast, climactic, and brutal in some cases. It's a good writing style. I've learned a lot from it. There's a lot going on stylistically in this novel that Child does.  Also, keep in mind that this novel doesn't feel like he's just making it up as he's going along. [Even if he actually did that.]

The prose is short, simple, and sweet. It's all simple-minded plotting and narration but there's a continuous momentum that keeps the book running from page 1 all the way to page 368. This is a longer novel than your typical suspense thriller. And despite that, it never loses momentum. You want to keep reading until you find out more. You keep reading, find out more, and that propels you into more reading. Well, you get the picture. I read almost half the novel in one day off work. It's that good. It's a great example of popular writing that keeps the readers wanting more. Hence the fact that Lee Child has written twenty-something of these Jack Reacher novels. Not all of them are as good as this one of course. 

So Reacher goes on to find a Private Investigator who is also looking for the woman. An Asian cop is trying to take down a low-level criminal involved in the case. The woman's twin sister gets involved. The Super Intendent from West Point looks back at the woman's records and finds information about her. She's ex-military, been to Iraq five times. Honorably discharged, Purple Heart, face wound. Her twin is so beautiful you don't want to look away. Serena Rose Anderson is the other one.  Hooked on drugs. Has three cowboys look after him in some cabin the woods. A former boyfriend who OD'd himself. No good news.

What we find out throughout the novel isn't quite as much of a big reveal as you'd expect. Nothing truly surprising happens. Rather, it's the way the story is told that is memorable and remarkable. There are touching scenes in this novel. Some that are even very sad. There's a lot of good one-liners from the characters, especially Reacher. 

"I need to pay Arthur Scorpio a visit. He lied to me about Porterfield, and he told two separate people to shoot me from behind a tree. He crossed the line. It's not going to end well for him. He's going in the tumble dryer." 

The actual story, narration, characters, plot, and actions are all very simple. But the delivery and result of all the work put into this are top-notch. Overall, I would say this is one of the better fiction novels I've read this year. Again, it's all simple-minded, and perhaps anyone with decent writing skills could write like this or at least something like this. But it takes Lee Child's drive and will to write an action-packed Jack Reacher story with emotional gravitas. Bravo.    

Much recommended. Better than Blue Moon, the most recent book by Lee Child.

Artemis

Artemis is the 2017 follow-up to The Martian, written by Andy Weir. Here Weir attempts to replicate the success of The Martian in a sophomore effort. Weir is already a writing superstar as The Martian sold 5 million copies fast even before the movie came out in 2015. Weir has a background in computer science, even working the infamous Warcraft II game with Blizzard back in the day, pretty rad. Because of his computer skills its easy to see where Weir gets his technical and scientific expertise, which is where the genius in this novel lies. 

Artemis follows the life and struggle of smuggler, porter Jasmine Bashar, Jazz for short. She's a twenty-something Saudi Arabian woman, who if not for the fact that she reads Saudi blogs, could happen to be any race. She lives in the space the size of a closet, shares communal baths, and eats algae with no extra flavors. She's po. Her dream is to become a tourist guide and make big bucks so she can live a great life. Oh, and all of this takes place on a colony on the moon called Artemis. Jazz gets involved with some criminals on the colony when she's offered a million slugs to sabotage some resource harvesters.

The book is told from the first person, from Jazz's perspective. This is interesting because the last novel I read (Circe, check out the review here) was also told from the first person. Seems like there might be a trend for novels in the first person that I wasn't aware of, the more you know. Jazz is an sweary, original, protagonist and narrator but the other characters are sort of generic. Good guys that help Jazz. Bad guys that want to hurt Jazz. The brainy tech ally. The millionaire ally. The muscle. Etc, etc.

When it comes to dialogue the book is simplistic. I'm not sure if Weir really knows what twenty-year old women really think, how they think, let alone what they think of sex and their bodies. Although these aspects are disappointing there is one saving grace-science and detailed explanations of action scenes. 

Artemis shines in explaining things. Particularly geeky things that I will never, ever hear about again. In that sense the book is a great once-in-a-lifetime affair. Things like how to get into a vacuum-sealed double hull from the outside get thoroughly explained. 

The science gets hammered in more and more towards the end with "little lectures on why the spaces between the inner and outer hull of Artemis’s domes are pressurised at 20.4 kPa, 10% less than the pressure inside the dome itself, or laboriously listing all the MacGuffin’s technical specifications (“I checked the core’s index of refraction: it’s 1.458, a little higher than fibre optics usually are, but only by a tiny bit … a typical attenuation for a high-end cable is around 0.4 decibels per kilometre … the precision of my OLTS is 0.001 decibels per kilometre." (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/15/artemis-andy-weir-review-the-martian)

Some people might not like all this laborious scientific explanation but for me that is the charm of the novel. The dialogue and characters needed more work but these scientific freakouts are what made the writing interesting. A great comment I saw written about the book in a review is that its like a juvenile Heinlein sort of thing. If Heinlein is mentioned in a review about your book, then you know you've done something right.

However, the science doesn't make everything else good. After finishing the novel (I listened to it in audiobook form, narrated by Rosario Dawson) I had a great feeling of satisfaction, from listening to eight discs' worth of narration and finishing a new science fiction novel. However, the plot to Artemis isn't something I'm going to think about two months, two years, or two dozen years from now. Its okay, and that's fine. 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a drama movie written, directed, and produced by Martin Mcdonagh. The film follows a mother who puts up three billboards outside her town after the police fail to find out who raped and killed her daughter. Its been seven months and no arrest. These billboards say "RAPED WHILE DYING", "AND STILL NO ARRESTS?", and "HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?" Needless to say this polarizes the community.

Actress Frances McDormand plays such a fantastic grieving mother and we feel so much sympathy for her despite her doing some terrible and illegal things like setting the police building on fire and insulting the dignity of a midget (Peter Dinklage) that wanted to take her out to dinner and be there for her in a trying time.

The movie mostly revolves around a white town (in Missouri) that is pretty damn racist, where most of the cops are country hicks, real redneck types. The movie is about the characters and emotional seriousness that isn't seen too often in Hollywood blockbusters. This one is a little sad. In the end we don't know what emotions to have, other than the ones we initially had at the beginning of the film when she first puts up the bill boards.

The movie did very well at the box office. At the 75th Golden Globe Awards, the film won the awards for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Actress – Drama (McDormand), Best Supporting Actor (Rockwell), and Best Screenplay-wow! So the masses (regular johns) really loved this movie. I can see why, its quite effective at what it does, intrigue and inquiry, we want to keep learning more and more until the end where we get a non-ending. 

The film ends with a stupid cop and McDormand (playing Mildred, the grieving mother) going to the state of Idaho to find this guy who is supposedly a rapist, and even though the police commissioner told him that his dna didn't match the murdered girl's killer, they still want to go to his place and kill him. But they're not quite sure if they want to go on with the murder, so they agree that they will decide on the way there. That's how the movie ends, essentially a non-ending to which my friend said, "They're just going to end it like that." "Guess so." Its a pretty good ending for what I consider to be a non-linear movie.

The movie doesn't have any particular linear direction where it hits a climax and then things fizzle out, and then climax again, nothing really like that. Instead, a ton of different things happen throughout the film and all of it works in an effective way, everything has a lasting effect in the movie, its very well done. This movie is a more effective movie than The Shape of Water, which I also saw today. I would say this is the better movie but that I liked The Shape of Water better because fundamentally this movie is so serious and goes into the realm of losing a child in such a violent, brutal way, that in many respects I just can't understand that. I can, but only up to a point. The movie is quite transgressive, but again, in a effective way. You should definitely see it if you haven't yet.

Mildred Hayes: So how's it all going in the nigger- torturing business, Dixon?
Dixon: It's 'Persons of color'-torturing business, these days, if you want to know. And I didn't torture nobody.

The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water is a fantasy (and somewhat science fiction) drama film directed by Guillermo del Toro and written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor (of tv and movie fame, she wrote for seasons 2 and 3 of Game of Thrones). The film follows a mute custodian woman working in a security government facility, where she befriends and falls in love with an amphibian creature. Think creature from the black lagoon except this creature is way too cute and human-like. 

Anyways, the plot is simple enough. The woman frees our amphibian dude from the lab where she falls in love with him, and they even have sex! She has a great ass by the way and the film has a bit of sexual sensuousness. There's a couple scenes where we see her masturbating, always in the tub full of water. But I digress. 

It must be said with utmost authority that actress Sally Hawkins (who plays Elisa the lead female role) makes this movie, the monster doesn't add much. Her acting is so lovely, so pure, and in the scene where she was singing I got caught up in her poetic elegance. Back to the story. 

So she frees him (the monster) and the bad guys from the facility eventually find out she has him. The bad guy shoots our amphibian and our girl, and they both die. However, the amphibian heals himself, surprise! He has a healing factor! What is this Logan? After he heals his bullet wound in a second he slashes our bad guy across the face, killing him instantly. If he was this god-like and powerful why was he chained up and beaten so easily earlier in the film? After that he takes Elisa (our girl) and jumps into the river (they were at a harbor where he was to be transported elsewhere but plans got sent to hell), where a sort of magikal realism occurs.

At this point we can choose to believe that a) Elisa gets killed and that the monster turns her scars into gills, thus turning her into a sort of reverse mermaid or b) the monster grabs Elisa and jumps into the river, and what we see is an illusion scene of love, fantasy, and romance, showing that Elisa's love for the monster has transcended human nature, that she has become like him, thus the gills. Either way its quite an interpretative ending, albeit a lazy one. 

Another complaint is that the monster was too damn cute and puppy-like. A true monster by definition has to be ugly, perhaps even disturbed in some ways, think Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. This monster was not a 'true' monster, in fact, other than him eating the head off a cat and killing the bad guy, he was hardly monster-like. Instead, del Toro relies on a cutesy Disney sort of love affair, effective enough for Best Director and Best Score at the 75th Golden Globes but it doesn't satisfy me in any realistic way. The film tries to allow Elisa to transcend human nature with this love story but it doesn't get the nitty gritty down right. The devil's always in the details. 

However, I can see why this movie is such a success. I can see why women and girls especially like it a lot, it is very much a romantic type of thing. This is the kind of movie you would bring a date to, or your girl friend, perhaps even your wife if she's open to different kinds of movies. Its quite good and I enjoyed it very much but the monster isn't really a true monster, he's a sort of cute puppy dog, which I can see why the girls would like the film and the creature. 

Giles: [interpreting Elisa] When he looks at me, the way he looks at me... He does not know, what I lack... Or - how - I am incomplete. He sees me, for what I - am, as I am. He's happy - to see me. Every time. Every day. Now, I can either save him... or let him die.

Last open jam set of 2017

Here's the last open jam set I played of 2017 at Petie's Place, on Reseda and Oxnard Street. I'm pretty happy with the recordings, mostly because my vocals are a lot better than they've ever been. I've really come a long way with my singing starting last year. I'm really glad I started singing rock and roll. It's a lot smarter and easier, as I don't have to rely on other people to do vocals.

We started off with Sunshine of Your Love with this dude named Allan (a typical blues rocker long hair w/ a Strat). He did a great job jamming with me for the first time ever, I especially liked his leads on Spirits of the Dead, the second song we played. I really liked my solo on Sunshine, I was going for my Hendrix style there.

On Spirits of the Dead Allen's leads really give the piece a new dynamic melody. And then there's me doing black metal style coarse/scream style vocals. Pretty funny! A lot of people say to me that they don't expect that when they see me play. It's cool to have one death metal song, and this is my only one as of now. We played the song a lot faster than we usually do but again Allen's leads really pave the way for a great tune, especially when I repeat the chugging bridge riff and he takes some bluesy leads over it. Spirits of the Dead!

And the last tune we have for you is Blues Improvisation no.1. This tune was just a blues Allen and I called in A. I stuck to dominant and ninth chords in the key of A. I might have switched it to minor ninths near the ending too. Added a little bit of the power chord blues shuffle in there too for contrast. I think my blues solo really hits the heart strong. When I do a blues solo I always try to go for the Hendrixy emotion.

Allen's blues solo on this tune was quite something, as you can hear. He hits a lot of the common cliches but it always sounds good. He's a great player and I'm glad to have jammed with him on the last open jam of 2017. I'm going to do even better to sing better and become a better performer in 2018!

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/sunshine-of-your-love-2
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/spirits-of-the-dead-2
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/blues-improvisation-no1

Closing thoughts on 2017

Any last thoughts on 2017? Yes, many. 2017 was quite a year for the world. A terrible year for rock and roll which left many musicians dead, of drugs, suicide, and unavoidable old age. California had the worst fires ever and the blazes were only about ten miles away from my house. Donald Trump was elected and has done a terrible job in office. Americans found out that the election was heavily influenced by Russian trolls, called hackers but I prefer to think of them as trolls. Unrest in the Middle East, especially surrounding Israel and Palestine, after Trump made a comment calling Jerusalem the capital of Israel. I started working in a different department at my work. In addition, I started to read a lot more, to increase my knowledge, improve my writing (for the blog), promote the blog on Twitter, play piano, start singing and playing guitar at the same time at the open jam and with my 'band' (a two man band right now), and really focusing on losing weight. Wow, that's a lot! I could probably go on and on, because this year was jam packed with tons of events, information, and there are probably things that happened that I either don't know about or simply forgot.

Its hard to say anything of real intrinsic value happened to me. One could say that reading has really opened up my world, increasing my knowledge and improving my creativity and involvement in writing. And then there's the different position at my job. Now, the latest I get off from work is nine pm whereas before I was working as late as one am pretty much every shift. I don't miss those days but I'm not totally against them either. Life has improved for me in many ways. I think I've become a better, smarter, and more evolved person. Not bad.

On that note I'd like to say that I'm hopeful about the future, mine, America's, and the world. Things may seem grim and bad things happen all the time but we should continue to work together to overcome these obstacles and improve the world in which we live.

Leave the place better than when you first entered.

Christmas in the Modern Dark Ages

Its two hours from Christmas. I got off work at nine. It was a bit of a downer at work but otherwise another successful (and unfulfilling day). Another day at the office. Sitting down and thinking about Christmas, many thoughts go through my mind. This is a Christmas unlike any other. A medieval Christmas, a Christmas ripe for the modern dark ages. Let me explain.

Sure, life is okay and the economy isn't in a complete recession. You might even have a great job, security, a home, friends, family, and food. But sitting down this year during the holidays I can't help but feel a sort of modern holiday dystopian feeling. Its a gut feeling, brooding within the mind. Donald Trump is President and things haven't improved although many Republicans will tell you the economy is great and that unemployment is down. Even if that was true they haven't made my life better. What has Trump done for me? Nothing great.

Part of this feeling comes from the loss of my step-mother, who loved Christmas and always went all out for gifts. Then there's the age difference. I'm now twenty-eight years old and Christmas just doesn't do it for me anymore. The gifts are still significant, they show that people care for me. However, my circumstance of being 'po' (as black people say) has made me much more disillusioned. In fact, I wasn't able to get everything I wanted for my friends and loved ones this year because I didn't have enough money. And I didn't have enough money because they didn't want to give me more hours at the office. Tough break. Better luck next year kid.

The government, your jobs, big pharma, and businesses want us to spend a lot of money this year but how can one find happiness in buying gifts for others when the state of the country (city, state, continent, world, universe) is in such disarray? You could say, "Look man, you need to lighten up. Its just a holiday." But the thing is that this 'holiday' has a bleak future, that is if we are to keep promoting gifts instead of investing in better lives for the people.

As I sit back and wait for Christmas I think about all the people who have nothing, the have nots, the Untouchables, the Undesirables, the sick, the disabled, the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, and I say to myself, "What does this holiday mean for them?"

The best gift for me this Christmas would be a resignation from Donald Trump. Or people 'smartening' up and running for government themselves. That's the only way to fix this political malfeasance. I'm hopeful in the next generation of politicians, priests, CEO's, writers, poets, musicians, computer programmers, and business owners.

After all, if there's one gift I'm giving to myself this Christmas, its hope. 

The Disaster Artist

The Disaster Artist is an adaptation of The Room starring James Franco and his brother Dave Franco. The Room was a terrible movie I've dubbed (whenever I talk to other people about it) "so bad, its bad." So why would a smart artist actor James Franco want to do a movie about it? The answer to that is (probably) because The Room is a Hollywood success story. Sure it didn't get any awards and isn't a 'good' movie but it has a cult following and a fan-base that loves Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero. And now that The Disaster Artist has done well James Franco and Tommy Wiseau can rest easy knowing they both did a great job in Hollywood. Sure it might be comedic relief but that's not the point. The point is that Tommy came from nowhere and is now a movie star. The dream of every actor that comes to LA. Just like my dream to become a guitar player. And I'm from Wisconsin so I might as well have come from nowhere.

The cool thing about the movie is that it was sort of autobiographical. It shows Tommy trying to be an actor in acting school and he fails hard. When he comes to the realization that he may never become a famous actor he decides to make a movie of his own. Nobody knows where Tommy comes from or where he got his money to make a movie. Let's just say he's probably some sort of financial investor, like how he played a banker in San Francisco with long hair (premise of The Room). Anyways (how is your sex life?), Tommy figures the only way he can become a star is if he does it himself, everything from producing, directing, acting, and casting. A novel idea but nothing to take lightly. You can sink or swim, even more so in the movie business than in music. Seeing his humble beginnings on screen makes me think that everything I do to become a famous guitar player isn't enough. I have to increase everything I do tenfold if I wanna be like Tommy. Or just play so bad its bad (bad as in good, like the jazz cats say). One thing to note is that Tommy worked hard to make The Room a cult classic, even spending tons of money to keep the movie playing in a theater for two weeks so it could get a chance to be nominated for awards. He also had an ad out back when the movie came out that had his real phone number on it.

Its a funny movie but it wasn't as funny as seeing The Room for the first time. Now that's funny, especially the sex scenes. Instead, I watched this movie and took in the more documentary aspects of it rather than any particular laughs, or any laughs at all. However, the audience laughed a lot and they're right, its sort of a funny. But I've seen it all before, all the jokes, the scenes, and Franco is not as funny as Wiseau (but he tries). This movie recreates scenes from The Room in exact frightening detail. Sure its cool that they recreated scenes but to make it exactly to the point that the lighting and shading and details of the rooms (ha) were identical? Now that's something a madman would do. Or just somebody who really loves The Room. In this day and age I suppose that's maybe not so farfetched.

Oh, hai Mark!

King Arthur Legend of the Sword

I figured I'd do a write up of this movie because it was so shockingly awful that it deserved to be written about in a negative way. The only thing worse than paying for this movie is getting in for free and finding that a whole two hours of your life was just wasted, vanished right before your very eyes. I'm gonna give you the good, the bad, and the mostly terrible.

First, what's good about this movie? Not much to be frank. However, if I could give this movie some compliments I would say that Mordred the evil wizard ends up turning into a cool demonic looking creature. He sacrifices the lives of his daughters and these snake women give him this incredible power. He becomes this giant monster with a scythe but that's not all. He can also shoot fireballs a la Skyrim mage. When Mordred and King Arthur were fighting at the end it was awesome seeing how powerful Mordred was physically as well as magically with his fireballs. Super cool villain.

The other cool thing about this movie is the actual sword that King Arthur pulls out of the stone. It turns out the sword is enchanted with magical powers but when Arthur uses it, it sort of just evaporates people into dust magically and can create tornadoes and stuff. It doesn't make any sense but its cool that they gave the sword some action packed fantasy elements rather than just "oh, here's a regular sword". The coolness of the movie ends with these two points.

The movie is mostly terrible. The plot-line goes nowhere and nothing makes sense. It seemed like the whole movie is just one scene to another scene with no thought put into what follows or what comes before. This is a 250 million dollar flop of a movie. If they can't even get the scenes to flow in good sequence what chance could they have for a great action flick? The other problem is that the movie is carried by action scenes. There's tons of destruction, action, fighting, kicking, arrows being shot, etc but its all wasted on a movie with a story line that ultimately doesn't matter because you stop caring about what's happening somewhere near the beginning of the film. The film ceases to be interesting after Arthur's grown up and we see him as a rugged man. Once he takes out the sword from the stone the movie just goes south.

I could see what they were trying to do here but they failed hardcore. They were trying to do a fantasy movie based on King Arthur and set it up for Game of Thrones and action flick crowd. Unfortunately you have to really know what you're doing to make that kind of movie and get people to actually like it. It seems like they just threw together this movie in a backhanded way. Also, the best actor in the movie was a guy who was actually from Game of Thrones. Props to that guy. I think his name is Little Finger.

The trailer for this movie was a little misleading. I thought it would be much better than that. I went in to the movie tired and by the end I was even more tired. I was mortified of the thought that I had just wasted two hours with my friends at the movies seeing a movie that was probably worse than watching a dog drop a turd on your front lawn. Do yourself a favor, don't go see King Arthur. Wait for it to come out on DVD, watch it, and then you'll see why this movie was so bad.

Look at the top, there's a cute Charmander mage!

Alien Coveant

Alien Coveant is a good movie. Not as interesting as Prometheus was but still a fun ride with some great acting by Michael Fassbender. He was the best actor throughout the movie, showcasing a complex android capable of homoerotic scenes. Let's go over the plot-line. Spoilers incoming. 

The story is similar to the original. There's a space colonization ship carrying 2000 humans (in cryostasis) with 15 crew members. The ship gets hit by a random solar flare in space and it messes up the ship. Walter (our good AI, played by Fassbender) wakes them up and has them fix the ship. They realize that they have to go back to cryostasis for 7 years before they reach their colonization planet destination. They hear a human voice through a transmission and they pinpoint where its coming from. Turned out there was a planet capable of sustaining life that they didn't know about (somehow, mysteriously) so the captain decides to go there. You know what happens next.

They land on the planet, walk around and touch a bunch of plants and go in the caves where Elizabeth Shaw was last seen in (the main character from Prometheus). This was the planet where David (our evil ai, also played by Fassbender) was last at in Prometheus. So some crew members get infected by the xenomorph toxin (virus like subsatance) and they get sick. Then the xenomorphs rip them apart and all hell breaks loose.

They're fighting a xenomorph at night when all of a sudden a guy in a hood (with long locks) shoots a flare out into the sky. The xenomorph gets scared and runs off. It turns out to be David. What happens next is the best part of the entire movie. David meets Walter. We find out that David has been genetically engineering xenomorphs and that when he came to the planet he killed all the primitive humans that lived there with the xenomorph virus. Back then it was in an almost infant-like state so it didn't create xenomorphs, we just see a scene of it just killing the inhabitants of this human-like planet.

There's some homoerotic stuff between David and Walter. David kisses Walter at some point. He shows him how to play the recorder and he says,"I'll do the fingering". Kind of funny that they gave an android some sexual elements. There's also a scene where David is trying to kill the female lead role and she asks,"what are you going to do with me"? And he responds,"the same thing I did with her". And then he pushes her on the table, gets on top of her, and then starts to kiss her. What was that implying?

There's a fight between David and Walter. We see Walter about to smash David's head in with a rock but then it ends scene. We don't see Walter kill him so its up to the viewer to make of it what they will. Walter ends up back on the ship with the remaining living crew and they find out an alien infected a guy who got attacked by a face attaching xenomorph. He didn't die but his face was badly burned. Somehow this strain of xenomorph still infects you even if it doesn't kill you. So they have to kill this xenomorph and it turns out to be the standard alien we all know and love. Tall, black, sharp pointy tail, second mouth to feed with. All that jazz.

Our last two living crew members end up shutting it down by releasing it into space. They actually shoot out a giant truck with a spear-like front end and it ends up cutting the xenomorph right through its body, ending the madness.

Then Walter puts the pilot (Tennessee, played by a guy who's shown up in more comedies than science fiction films) into cryostasis. Its the lead actress's turn to go into cryostasis. She's right about to be put to sleep but then at the last second she realizes that something is wrong. What did she realize? Still not too sure about that one. She starts panicking super hard and starts pounding on the class of her chamber. But its too late. Walter puts her to sleep, and then goes to the human embryo compartment. He takes out four xenomorph embryos from his mouth and puts them in there. Good luck with your colonization humans.

The main question is the obvious one. When David was sent out by Weyland corp did he have an objective or did he simply become a crazed android that wanted to evolve the universe and create perfect beings because humans were not that? Another thing to point out that's never been explored before in an Alien movie is that when a xenomorph attacked a crew member David talked to it and said,"calm down, breathe". The xenomorph actually stopped and breathed, talking in its language. Then David said something like,"once you get them to trust you they'll do anything you want for the rest of their life". Boy, so these things can be trained like pets? Mommy, I want one too!

Quite a wild ride of a movie. Everybody pretty much dies and its implied that all 2000 people (in cryostatis) aboard the ship are probably going to get killed by those xenomorph embryos. Who knows, maybe in a another Alien movie we'll see Walter or some other android controlling them like his pets. Like a summoner character in a video game. That would be fun. The blood frenzy was real in this movie too. You should definitely check it out if you haven't seen it!

Rock and Roll Legend Chuck Berry Dies at 90

So today when I went to work an old timer that I know told me that Chuck Berry died. The importance didn't really hit me until I got to relax and think about it. I actually just got into old school 50s rock and roll and found its importance in terms of guitar playing and its place in the history of music. It's important stuff and Chuck Berry was one of the most important musicians to come out of that era. Heck, he might as well have invented rock and roll.

His songs had that snare back-beat, that rock guitar rhythm, and country/blues twanging guitar licks that makes rock and roll rock and roll. One thing to take note of is the fact that there are certain guitar licks on the guitar that people still do to this day that are pretty much stock Chuck Berryisms-things he did back in the 50s that guitar players still do to this day. Mostly the double stops (which is popular in blues) and the bluesy power chord rhythms played with 8th notes in 4/4 time.

More important than his guitar playing (as great as it was) was his songwriting craft. He brought the rock and roll narrative to the forefront where previously blues and country dominated and had a different story to tell. Fast cars, girls, wild parties, etc. This is what rock and roll was originally about. Later the Beatles and The Stones expanded on this and added their own stories to fit the lyrics of the music.

Personally, he's a pretty big inspiration. He's a black guy that can really play the guitar, he's a great songwriter, and he sings pretty well too. He's a great musician. Probably the perfect rock musician. Not every rock musician is good at songwriting, playing their instrument, and singing. He was one of the best.

He lived a long life and probably had a lot of fun. He was about to release an album of all new material but he didn't finish it in time. Oh, well as one of his songs go c'est la vie. 

Play the guitar just like a-ringin' a bell!

Time to pump iron ya string bean

So I finally got around to working on one of my New Years Resolutions. And that is exercising. I started last week with a friend doing a pretty hardcore workout. It was about a 2 mile run without stopping going at a pretty moderate pace. Honestly I was surprised I could even keep up with him without stopping the whole time because I haven't worked out in a super long time. Now is the time to change that!

My main plan at the moment is to work out every other day and keep things pretty moderately aggressive. Don't want to go all out like that day with my friend last week and be sore for two days. The workouts I'm doing by myself are enough to make me sweat hard even though its cold but give me enough room to work with that I'm not completely sore for two days afterwards. One thing I learned from starting last week is that you don't want to push yourself too hard on one day alone because this is something I want to do daily.

Right now I've got a short simple regiment where I'm running from my house to the gas station about a mile away. I run back up the hill and its about shy of two miles with a steep grade of the hill. The hill gives you that extra bit of hard work that you wouldn't get running on flat ground. I'm going to keep doing this and adding other stuff to it afterwards once I get used to it.

For example, after running that regiment I'll go inside and do situps and pushups. My friend thinks running alone doesn't remove belly fat so I'm going to add this other stuff to it as well.

Another friend of mine wants to work out but no running for him. He wants to do weightlifting instead. If I do that it will be even more hard work than running because I'll have to keep doing it otherwise the muscle will turn to bodyfat.

My main reason for going try hard into getting into shape is many reasons. I mostly want to be healthy and stay healthy for the future. I also want to be more slim and in shape to have more confidence with the ladies. But in the end it's mostly for my health. I want to live a long fulfilling life and this is one way to ensure that. My goal is to get to my pre-California weight. So if I can get to around 180-200 I will be pretty happy. 

Goku is my main inspiration! Every workout is going to be like training in the hyperbolic time chamber!

Magic the Gathering, Board gaming, and hosting

So I've been having a great time with a lot of friends who are into a lot of different activities. I have a group of friends that are more into metal music, concerts, and hanging out (with some console gaming thrown in there) and another that is more into Magic the Gathering, board gaming, and meeting new people at these events called meetups. These are events hosted by people and advertised online through the website Meetup.com. We've met so many cool people and a lot of them have become good friends quickly. It's been a blast meeting new people, enjoying mtg (Magic the Gathering), and learning new strategic board games on the fly.

I haven't played mtg seriously since middle school and back then I relied on cheap tactics decks. I had an elf deck and a slivers deck as my main decks. Both were all about getting tons of creatures out and killing off the enemy player fast. Playing mtg again now that I'm older has really made me realize how great of a game it is. I even played in a tournament a few weeks ago. It was an edh (elder dragon highlander) setting where you have over 100 cards in your deck and you have a special commander card that you can play anytime if you have the mana on your turn. Its kind of a broken format but I find it to be super fun.

Magic has a lot of strategic and awe-inspiring elements for a trading card game. Its definitely the best card game I've ever played, sorry Yugioh kiddies. So I've been enjoying getting out, hanging out with friends, and playing magic. Sometimes we'll play until 1 in the morning just enjoying the gameplay. I've become quite serious and I'm even down to play in a tournament again even though last time I got curb stomped. They do tournaments at Fire and Dice, the place I used to go for Smash 4 tournaments. Go figure! 

This past Thursday I was at a board gaming event at this older woman's house in Woodland Hills. At first I was hesitant because we've gone to events like this before and my friend was kind of awkward (he walked in without knocking on the door first lol). However, this woman was so cool, funny, sarcastic, and chill. Her son was there too and we were the first people to arrive. Eventually more people came. We brought food and everybody was enjoying themselves eating fried chicken, pie, soda, coffee, donouts, and Doritos Cool Ranch and Nacho flavors.

We played this awesome game called Salem where we had to figure out who the witch(s) was(were) and if we found out and survived without being killed by the witch we win the game. I ended up using this troll-like strategy where I accused a random dude so much to the point that everybody thought I was the witch. But I wasn't the witch. I was just messing around. Haha, it was really fun and I ended up being a survivor, thus winning! Next time though I will definitely play that game smarter.

In addition, we played this great miniature DnD style rpg game. It was a co-op survival horde zombies game called Zombicide. Its on Kickstarter and I highly recommend it. I was this spellcaster Stormcrow dude who had this amazing spell (that I looted in a room) called Repulse where I could reposition zombies to different squares (only one square away per cast) and I got us a torch for a bile blast that killed tons of zombies in one fell swoop. I got insta-leveled pretty high from that. In the end our team just didn't play together on the same part of the board. So we got surrounded by the horde and killed. Rip. It was a fun game and I would definitely be down to play it again sometime there.

The son was a gamer too and we talked a lot and became friends. I added him on Steam and we're planning on playing Team Fortress and Terrarria sometime in the future.

I'm still interested in hosting my own events. I wanna do game nights at Planet Cyber for Overwatch. I'm currently working on doing this. Now that management has changed at my work I'm back to getting two days off a week, which I haven't had since November. You can bet that I'll be using that free time to the fullest engaged in social activity, friendship, relaxation, and fun.

Are board games better than video games? They just might be.

The Obama legacy ends, enter the Trump era

President Obama did a great farewell address last night in Chicago. He mentioned a lot of important details about his presidency such as the Affordable Care Act and how the economy improved. It was a great speech. As we leave the Obama era and enter the Trump era there's a lot to think about.

What will happen to our so called post-racial society? What about the illegals and the so-called wall? What about the increasing gap between the poor, middle class, and rich? What about the economic crisis? And lets not forget all the environmental problems that the United States faces. What about terrorism and especially Syria? And the fact that Russia hacked the election?

These are all important questions that will hopefully be answered during the Trump administration. I'm not optimistic about Trump whatsoever. He's already shown what kind of person he is in all his speeches. As Obama said a lot during his presidency and even about the Trump campaign, "that's not who we are". Right now I'm watching his first press conference as president-elect and its interesting but I can't help but find everything he's saying to be idiotic. The way they're explaining what's going to happen with his assets is a bit asinine. He's giving control of all his assets to his family but who's to say he won't have a say in whats going on when he's President? They are family after all so they will always be in complete communication. Just not cool.

Having a billionaire President isn't cool. It's very douche-y as the kids say. He's out of touch with the American people in terms of wealth, intellect, and political views. The fact that he won the election shows how out of touch the American people are with politics. I don't mean to put on a top hat and say I'm smarter than thou but I would say Americans are so stupid that they're stupid enough to vote for someone who will lead them to ruin.

However, I believe that stupid people can become smart. And that's my hope. Obama ran as president on hope in 2008 and he won. My hope is that Americans, (my people, that's my heart) realize that they picked the wrong man, get smarter, and pick a better leader in the future. I'm not against the Republicans totally. I think there are a lot of smart Republicans in Congress. But I don't want them running and ruining my life or my future with their terrible ideas. And their ideas are terrible.

In eight days we will have a completely new political spectrum. It will be an interesting four years. Get ready for change. 

Plans for 2017

So I already did a post where I talked about my new year's resolutions and stuff. All I said was that I wanted to get smarter and learn more about the things I like. Specifically learn more about these things on a technical level. Here I'd like to outline some more plans and goals for 2017 that are more general terms and ideas.

• Buy a better laptop for late night gaming sessions
• Start playing Hearthstone
• Learn 10 jazz standards by heart, this includes both melody and chord changes
• Start busking
• Buy a cheap acoustic guitar
• Start a band
• Start gigging
• Losing weight by eating less at work
• Get a better rank in competitive Overwatch 

Learning jazz tunes and chord changes by heart will take a lot of practice but I can definitely do it. Busking will take a lot of work and I will use a cheap steel string acoustic for that as electric doesn't really lend itself well to busking due to the lack of electricity.

I'm in the process of starting a band but to honest with you I'm not too sure if its going to work out so I might continue working with my newbie musician friends in our pseudo band at the moment. Hopefully those two friends (guitar and bass players) can get good enough this year. Who knows, perhaps we could even play a short gig or set somewhere?

Another thing I've been working on is losing weight by eating less at work. I've been eating smaller lunches and watching what I eat during the day as well. I eat three meals a day-breakfast, lunch, and dinner and no meal is that much bigger than any of the others. I've been keeping the weight steady, even losing a few pounds here and there. Just gotta keep it up and I'll lose even more.

Lastly, I wanna get a better competitive ranking in Overwatch. Right now its pretty difficult but I've become so good at the game now that I feel like I deserve to at least be in the platinum-diamond level skill cap. My ultimate end goal for the game will be to hit masters but that will take a lot of competitive game grinding for probably the rest of the year. 

That's all. Sounds easy? Well, it ain't. I'm gonna work my ass off.

A thirst for knowledge

This post is going to be a short irl sort of rant. Somewhere around Christmas I realized I wanted to learn more about the things I do and use, to a more advanced technical level. Perhaps go to school by sometime next year and learn a lot of stuff.

I'm mostly interested in computers at the moment but I'm also interested in learning more about music, rhythm, and harmony. In addition, I'm interested in the science of sound at a technical, scientific, nonmusical level.

So far I've been doing a good job reading up on things online and taking it slow. Friends have suggested that I should learn computers and try to get a job fixing them in the long run. I have tried learning coding but I didn't get very far in that pursuit. Its not that I gave up its just that I took a long break from it and forgot a lot of what I had learned. Its definitely not easy and I don't think just anyone can do it.

I'm not sure if I can learn all this stuff but even if I don't end up going back to school or getting a better job I'm going to learn and read more anyways just for myself. If anything, I want to become a smarter individual and understand the things I care about and use.

I should also learn how to fix guitars. This would be the easiest thing to do because I can just watch YouTube videos and practice on an old axe I have. For example, I want to learn how to replace pickups, setup a guitar, and how to setup a Floyd rose. That way I can just do it all for myself.

All important stuff. To me at least.

That's the end of this rant. My goal for 2017? Get smart.

Overwatch plans for 2017

Jeff Kaplan put out a new video talking about Overwatch and plans for the future.

He began talking about how they haven't changed Sombra yet because they think she has a high skill cap and they don't want another overpowered character like the launch of Ana. They introduced Eichenwalde, Arcade Mode, Seasonal Events, and all the other content. It's been a blast.

Looking forward to the new year there's a lot of stuff for the players to be excited about.

Oasis is the new map that's already on the ptr. They're going to release it early 2017, maybe even by the new year.

More Seasonal Events are coming. Some that we'll see coming and some that we won't see coming.

They're working on customization for a communication wheel (ultimate, hello, voice lines, etc). They're going to put like 4 emotes and voice lines and stuff. There's also going to be custom bindings to trigger these. For sprays they're going to add a spray wheel-up to four sprays. By adding this customization it will make a lot of the voice lines, sprays, and emotes more exciting and rewarding.

Minor upgrades include joining team chat right away instead of clicking on it every game.

They're working on a lot of new content all the time but they also scrap a lot of ideas as well. Genji is an example of this because he wasn't working out in the beginning of the creation process. They have a hero that has been worked through the art prototype already. Possibly Doomfist voiced by Terry Crews?

They're working on other maps other than Oasis. These will be shown next year. Some won't see the light of day.

They're always looking for new things to try out for Arcade Mode.

Improvements for esports will be coming for sure-particularly for spectator viewing. Professional broadcasters and observers have been helping them with this.

The last thing which they mentioned at BlizzCon is that they want to give us a way for us to find custom games. They're creating a server browser so people can see a big list of custom games and players can create them and make them public for people to join. This is the top requested feature and its very common in first person shooters. They're going to have a solid version 1.0 running in early 2017 and they're going to expand upon it later.

The developer updates will keep coming and we'll learn more as time passes.

Oh yeah, Tracer was revealed as being gay in the latest Overwatch comic. Cheers love, the gays are here!