Summer's Almost Gone [Quarantine 2021]

Hello world, 

It's been a bit of a hiatus but now I'm back and hopefully will resume my regular scheduled programming, aka the blog and keeping up to date with things via blogging. First off, I'll describe the scene in regards to covid and work. 

Things have been going pretty well at the store although things could be better of course. My one complaint is that we lost the $5 increased pay and now I feel ever so sad that my paycheck isn't what it used to be. Yes, we deserve that $20 per hour and I hope we get it back considering that we're still in the midst of the pandemic. 

In terms of covid and everything there's been no new cases at the store. However, in terms of social distancing in the lines there's none of that. In addition, there's hardly any cleaning of any kind except for when customers ask us to clean the register belts when they look dirty. However, most customers are wearing masks so at least there's that. But there isn't much social distancing of any sort. 

I've just been coping with the sustained quarantines. I've been reading a lot per usual, chilling with friends, and enjoying life in general while social distancing. 

Right now I'm reading Ulysses by James Joyce. This is an amazing work of literature. It reads like an off the cuff stream of consciousness. Like a jazz song. I can't go into all the details here but it's something of a monumental work in the western canon. It reminds me of Coltrane sometimes, that sheets of sound mentality in the words and phrasing. 

The direction of the company at work has become a more severe one, in which the workers get exploited just a little bit more. I believe its because of the pandemic that this has happened. The fact that we only got the hazard pay for three months is a shame, we should be getting that pay during this entire period of the pandemic, considering we are frontline workers, around hundreds of people each day, putting our lives on the line to make groceries sales, beholden to the company to give us hours and paychecks.

The name of the game for me since covid has been finding a new way to live and I believe I've succeeded in that. I have friends, family, my job, my reading, my games, my guitar playing, everything seems to be falling into place despite the pandemic. I'm the kind of person who never gets bored so I've found this entire quarantine experience to be highly enjoyable and I've been able to spend time doing a lot of different and new things. 

For example, I started working on a lot of language learning, particularly Spanish, but I've also been learning French, German, and bits of other languages. I'm not saying I can become a polyglot but it is quite fun, entertaining, and something different to do rather than my usual. 

I've also still been jamming once a week with my saxophone player friend Jason Thomas. It's been going quite well and I've learned a lot about comping [accompaniment on guitar, rhythm] through our duo jam sessions. My sense of guitar chords has become vastly more interesting. 

Lastly, I've been reading a lot. My goal for this year is to read 50 books and I've already read 32. Check out my goodreads account https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/56122996-og-space to see all the great works of literature that I've been reading and/or have read. In a world of chaos, reading is the one solace I that puts my mind at ease. 

Want to read more about what it's been like working grocery retail during the pandemic? Check out my plague journal, where I've documented my version of events starting from the day before the pandemic was announced, check it out https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html.

Gracias por leer 

Bonne Nuit

Dragon Ball Super Broly

The new Dragon Ball Z Super Broly movie was pretty cool. It became the best selling anime movie on opening weekend. Although I thought the movie was 'good', I didn't think it was great. However, I don't think one should go to an anime movie expecting something to be great, or for it to change your life. You go in, sit down, suspend your systems of belief for an hour or two, and then move on with your life. I'll explain my problems with the movie as well as what made it good. 

First of all, Broly's origin story in this movie is bare bones basic (b-b-b, anyone?). In the original movies they didn't even try to give him a story, which I almost respect more. Instead they explain how when Goku was a baby, Broly was trying to sleep in his Sayian tank, and Goku kept waking him up with all his whining.Then at some point he broke free, and tried to whoop Kakkarot's (Goku) ass. Pretty simplistic, but it worked well.

Here, we have Broly as a vengeance story. Broly is a baby in his tank and King Vegeta sends the baby off-world because he's seen to have such incredible power, that he might destroy the planet and everyone on it! (surprise, surprise, Frieza ends up doing that anyway) Anyways, Perigues, Broly's father ends up high-jacking a ship to Broly's destination. Once there, he grows up with his son on a desolate planet where everything's trying to kill them. 

Fast forward to Super's time period and all of a sudden Frieza's henchmen (not really lackeys, just peeps doing their jobs as Freiza Force members) find Broly and Perigues on said remote planet. They take them to Frieza, who is in awe of finding more live Sayians. His plan, to pit Broly against Goku. 

Vegeta goes up to bat first. At first Vegeta is beating on Broly pretty hard, even just in base form. Then he realizes that Broly is learning how to fight better the longer the first continues, like a true Sayian warrior! Eventually Vegeta has to keep powering up from Sayian 1-2-blue-god form and every time Broly goes down he keeps getting back up. Eventually Vegeta can't take him on anymore. The power within Broly is immeasurable! 

Next, Goku steps up to fight. Its a brutal battle. In fact, Goku gets thrashed around like a rag doll, screaming in agony, which prompted this writer's laughter in the theater. Super Sayian God form isn't enough to take down Broly, who again and again, keeps getting back up, and powering up even more and more!

Goku talks to Piccolo and they come up with a plan. The only way they can defeat Broly is if they do the fusion dance (embarrassing for Vegeta, a Prince), and become Gogeta! (Gogeta is canon now) Once they combine to become Gogeta, they fight Broly in an epic splatter of cartoon pixels and animation. (the best part of the film) 

Before Gogeta can really do bodily harm or dare I say it, [KILL] Broly, the Frieza Force henchmen steal the dragon balls from Freiza's other henchmen and they make a wish. You see, one of them was a girl that really felt sympathy for Broly, and she even stole and broke Perigues' super strong shock collar that he put on Broly, thus the reason why Broly kept powering up more and more, and he (Perigues) had to just let Broly go on like that. 

Anyways, so the girl wishes Broly to be put back on his faraway planet, away from Gogeta, right before a super strong energy blast is shot at him! This shows you that most fights in Dragon Ball are for the ultimate costs and also for no costs at all. (the true lesson of Dragon Ball) Goku ends up using instant transmission to go to Broly and his two new friends (former Frieza henchmen who saved him), gives them a house capsule, food, and says he will come back to train Broly himself. 

One last thing I'll say is that Broly himself is a simpleton. Although the old Broly movies he was even more of a barbarian who couldn't even speak sentences, here he is still simple minded, like a child. His only friend on the planet was a giant monster that tried to kill him, a play for sympathy that works on the audience. I like the idea of Broly being canon, although I don't think his backstory is very interesting. 

One minor complaint I have about the movie is that the English voice acting isn't as exciting to me, nor did I think it was all that great. Give me Japanese subtitles for any anime or anime movie. I don't mind the reading, plus I think the emotional gravitas (or lack there of) is much easier to accomplish in the native language of the artists themselves.

The animation in this movie is some of the best Dragon Ball I've ever seen, especially in a movie theater where you can really see all the pixels flashing across the screen more easily. Early Super animation wasn't very good but now they've got it down to a t. I'm definitely going to watch this movie again in Japanese and see if I like it any better. 

"We are Gogeta." 

Anime Expo Day Three

So I went to Anime Exp yesterday for Day 3, the final day of the event. I was kind of dreading it at first and I was even planning on not going. However, my friends really wanted me to go so I bought my ticket. Getting the pass turned out to be a hassle because I had to take the bus downtown LA super early in the morning on Friday (also called Day 0). But even that wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It was fun just cracking jokes all morning on the bus with my friends. Now onto the event itself...

I wasn't really too sure what to expect other than a bunch of weebs in cosplay and hot cosplay girls. The best thing I can say about the event was that there was a lot of hot girls everywhere wearing skimpy cosplay outfits. There was a lot of t and a at that convention. It was pretty good. But that's pretty much where the good ends for me. I'll explain further.

So we get in, walk around, and start looking at merch. I actually ended up not buying anything because I didn't see anything that was cool enough or worthy to buy. But that's besides the point. So I see a Reaper cosplay (from Overwatch) with pies instead of shot guns in his hands and nearby I spot a Blizzard merch stand! I love Blizzard so this should be cool right? I look at this awesome D.Va statue model for like 15 seconds and this employee there comes up to me and tells me I can't look at it any longer unless I buy something of worth at least $8. Talk about a fucking rip off. You mean I gotta pay just to look at Blizzard merch? That was too much. Of course I didn't pay for that but man that kinda put a bad taste in my mouth considering that I've been supporting Blizzard for years. This blog is a testament to that. They're really grubby when it comes to money.

After that we chilled at this bar/lounge area and it was probably the coolest place there. There was a live rock band and they were playing anime/gaming songs. The guitarist was great but there were three female lead singers and their voices just clashed so hard on every note. It was like listening to three annoying women singing the Pokemon theme (it literally was that). However, I'd like to give that band credit because the guitarist, bassist, and drummer were all great players. I could tell in their tone. That was fun.

Later we met up with two friends which made our party five and we went to a Dragon Ball Super panel, the only panel I went to for the event. We got there two hours early because if we didn't we wouldn't have been able to get in (too many people). So we sat down for hours just waiting and I just kept falling in and out of consciousness because I kept sleeping because it was so boring. Once the panel started I found out that the voice actors for English version Goku and Vegeta were pretty arrogant. They thought they were just the coolest guys in the room. English Beerus and Japanese Vegeta especially were very humble. Sometimes I think the creators and/or actors behind the scenes are very undeserving of the fans' love and I would say that guy that voices Goku perhaps doesn't deserve the goodwill of the fans with the way he was talking and presenting himself. It was quite troubling considering I've been watching since I was a kid but let's face it these guys aren't perfect. The panel itself was super boring because they didn't talk about anything interesting or new about the show and the Q & A was just general dumb questions from fans. There was no talk about the current events of Super, just mostly the Battle of Gods and Resurrection of Frieza. In that respect it was also a letdown.

We ate at a food truck which was actually surprisingly good. I got a grilled cheese spicy chicken sandwich with tator tots that was actually pretty good. However, it did set me back like $16 so its debatable if it was really worth it. Overall, I found the event to be just a money grubby give me your money! kind of thing with no real benefit other than to buy cool anime merch that you wouldn't be able to find anywhere else other than online. The real disappointing thing was that Blizzard charged to view their gear and I didn't get to meet any of the Overwatch voice actors. That was the main reason I wanted to go.

I think between falling asleep out of boredom and the fact that Blizzard wanted $8 just to look at their merch, I found the whole event to have been a waste of time and money. However, the convention experience (the people and the cosplays) was a lot better than I thought it would be. I really enjoyed all the Overwatch cosplays! So many Hanzos! I did find it a little weird how many guys there were dressed as girls. Apparently this is an event where you can cross dress and not be called a fairy. There was a lot of people but it never felt like it was an unmanageable amount of people so that was good. Even though it turned out to be a bad experience for me at least I can say I've been to one of the biggest conventions ever! I'd be down to go next year but I'd want to go for more days so I can spend more time to really enjoy it.

Dig the Overlord cosplay!

More Soundcloud tracks

Even more good news everyone! I just got the tracks from the last jam I did at the local open jam. I've already posted them and you can listen to them https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763. I'm listening to it all right now and I gotta say that this jam was particularly impressive with three guitarists (one being myself), drums, bass,  keyboards, and vocals. I held everything down together by mostly playing the rhythm guitar. The other two guys were good players but they were mostly only playing lead. On one of the jams we had a trumpet player. It sounds way 1960s rock and roll man! Mighty good jam. The new tracks I posted are Vocal Jam 1, Vocal Jam 2, and Rock and Roll by Led Zep. On Vocal Jam 1 I stomped on dominant 9th chords over a jazz blues progression. Check out the tracks and let me know what you think!

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!

Accepting my role as a guitar teacher

So I've been working with my friends day after day it seems like on teaching them guitar. I think I'm coming to terms that I'm now a guitar teacher to about 3 different people right now. I'm teaching two friends guitar on their acoustics and one other friend bass. At first I wasn't really down because I noticed nobody was practicing but now I see that they're more motivated to play everyday. I told them that they need to play everyday even if its only 15 minutes a day, that will still make you 15 minutes better than if you didn't play.

It's pretty hard teaching 3 almost complete beginners. Now that I'm taking it more seriously I'm thinking about creating lesson plans. One of them is super serious and wants to come over everyday to play. He has the most potential as a band member and collaborator but I'm interested in working with all of them because they're my super good friends. The whole band thing wasn't as serious as it is now, its taken a super long time to get to this level.

But yeah teaching is rough. In the beginning they struggle with basic things like C major chord at the nut, barre chords, and scales. I'm having my friend come over tomorrow to work on stuff and I'm thinking I should have some kind of work out plan.

For example I could show him minor pentatonic scale (in A minor, 5th position, seems easiest there), folkie chords at the nut (C major, G major, D major-Adventure Time Theme), and finger exercises. I think if he could learn and understand all that in a few hours that should give him more to practice. So far he's been working on a Red Hot Chili Peppers song that is way too difficult for him. I don't want to discourage him but at the same time I think having him work on something difficult is in a way making him practice. Maybe I'll look up some easy Beatles song or something, something that uses all folkie chords at the nut. That might give him more of an incentive to practice more, if he has an actual song to play over and over.

It's an added responsibility and at first I wasn't too down for it because I have to teach and I'm not getting paid to do it. But in the long run I'd have band members and musical collaborators. It all depends on how fast they can become good. I feel like my friend that comes over a lot is going to improve pretty quickly. He understands somewhat in that he can find notes that sound pleasing using his ear. The other guys have to work at it harder. His music tastes are more alt rock, classic rock than the other guys who are mostly only interested in metal music, core to be exact. So it makes sense that his ear is more developed.

But yeah teaching guitar is hard, exhausting. I'm suppose to be having fun jamming but instead I'm teaching these dudes the finer points of guitar playing and musical comprehension. Fun. Maybe I should consider becoming a real guitar teacher and getting paid for it? Like working for a music store or teaching in my backyard? Just an idea for now. We'll have to see if my students become anything first. Then I'll know that I'm talented as a teacher as well as a player.

I feel like all my teachers were mostly online players. Most of the guitar teachers I had were usually too strict or too focused on music theory for my tastes. I prefer to play a lot, sometimes just jamming and improvising mostly and there's a lot of teachers especially jazz teachers that will teach you a lot of jive-things that are just not important at all and instead you can just focus on playing the songs and finding your style. That's not to say that a great educated teacher is bad, in fact you should always have one if you're a serious musician but at some point you learn technique and basic fundamentals of music theory. I'm not on the same harmonic level as a classical trained musician but I can understand jazz chord progressions and stuff.

Spawning more musicians

So I've been pretty busy jamming acoustic guitars with my friends lately. I'm spawning more musicians! It doesn't get any better than that other than getting paid for playing music. This past weekend my friend and I went down to Guitar Center Sherman Oaks and he bought his first guitar. I helped him pick out this stunning Luna acoustic electric guitar that sounds really nice.

Today we were at another friends house and they were playing together. Basic acoustic guitar stuff like power chords and simple riffs. It was fun. The Luna sounds great when its plugged into an amp, we learned that today for sure. One of the coolest attributes about the Luna is the moon half moon inlays on the first couple fret markers and the artistic headstock it has. It has this sharpie look black art on the body that looks awesome. Its smooth.

One of them is already showing good signs as a guitarist. I feel like acoustic guitar is better for beginners so I told my friend he would be better off with an acoustic electric that way he could still buy an amp later and plug it in, or buy an electric later once he's got the basics down. He wanted this Schecter electric that sounded so deep and bass-y (because of super heavy strings) but in the end we decided not to go with it. I told him it was a much more metal sort of guitar that's more about playing in drop c or c sharp and chugging metal riffs on the low strings. Definitely not his forte yet.

Usually when I hang out with friends we always play guitar now. In a way I've become kind of a guitar sempai because I'm taken up a teacher role even though that wasn't necessarily what I wanted. I wanted them to work a lot more on the guitar themselves but so far the guys only really play when I'm around. We have a friend that me and my other friend bought a bass for and he had a circuit problem with the pickups and he hasn't played it much ever since despite me telling him that they can fix his sound issue for as little as twenty bucks. 

The original idea was that me and two other friends would eventually create a metal band. The other two guys were suppose to practice their instruments and eventually get to like a beginner punk/metal level of musicianship. Then I would help out with supplying riffs and/or vocals. Its a great idea but its going to take a lot longer than I originally anticipated so that's why I'm working super hard recording and collaborating with other musicians.

I have been able to get some musical works with my friends though so its not like nothings been done. My metal band project will take a while because the guys need to learn how to play better and how to play fast clean but I have other friends and one of them wrote three songs. We even recorded vocals and guitar parts for them already with this super nice microphone that I bought. His vocals aren't the best because he isn't a musician but we did get to test out the mic and the quality was good.

I'm going to give his songs a bunch of edits and possibly rewrite and draft the songs again and see if I can give them more of a indie rock punk sorta vibe. As we recorded it was an indie rock kind of sound but it needs more bite, attack to it if you will. It needs a punk edge to it because the songs are dark.

So all together I'm working with two guitar players in the learning process (one pretty far along that already knows basic chords at the nut), a bass player in training (but still has a long way to go), and a songwriter that works on lyrics. Maybe in the end I'll have the whole Valley working with me on music haha. I have been jamming with a really talented bass player that I used to work with too but it seems that a lot of the time I can't get in contact with him. I rely on texting to contact him and sometimes it doesn't work. Calling never works either.

My main goal right now is to put up some solo guitar stuff, mostly jazz standards. I found out tonight that my Reverbnation account https://www.reverbnation.com/landofigueroaandtheelectricsaxophone?profile_view_source=header_icon_nav is ranked 70 on the indie jazz chart even though all that's on there is low quality jams of things I recorded back in 2015. I'm thinking of replacing what's on there with some better quality music, mostly jazz standards. With my current setup I can record multiple guitar tracks and do a sort of guitar orchestra type of thing. I want to have something up online soon, I'll post when I have it done.

Spawn additional music makers.

Fire and Dice, A Refuge for Nerds in the Valley

I've been on vacation for a week. I'm just hanging out at home away from work, laying low for a while. It's an unpaid vacation so I'm going to be working for free for a week but its fine. I wanted to talk about my favorite hangout place with my friends-Fire and Dice!

Fire and Dice is a hobby shop that I've been going to for over a year now. You can find old blog posts where I wrote about my sm4sh tournaments there and how I did and stuff. It used to be located on Ventura and De Soto but it moved to a bigger space and is now located at on Vanowen and Winnetka. It didn't move far and I can always catch a ride there with friends if I provide a bit of gas money. The place is known for its board games, Magic the Gathering tournaments, and Smash 4 tournaments which occur every Thursday.

I used to be obsessed with attending every sm4sh weekly and getting better and better. As I started working more I never got Thursdays off so I haven't been able to attend for a super long time. However, I've been getting lots of Mondays off, which are Magic the Gathering tournament nights. Since I started playing Magic there I've met many new friends, one of which even made me a really good deck. I've become pretty good at the game and gained a much better understanding of the tactics than from when I used to play as a middle schooler.

I actually go there to play Magic often now. I wish I could go to more Sm4sh tournaments there but honestly I'm so rusty in Sm4sh that I'm sure some high school Sm4sh junkie that plays 24/7 would crush me. That wouldn't stop me from attending though. I'd still be down, and I might even go tomorrow. But that's the topic for another post. Here I wanted to talk about how great fad (Fire and Dice) is.

Fad is the most fun place I can go to with my more nerdy friends. I have another set of friends who wouldn't set foot at fad because they hate smelly nerds crowded in a small space (we experienced this when I took them to a big sm4sh tournament) and also they aren't into magic or board games. However, my more nerdy friends and I love going to fad because its like a refuge, a safe haven for people like us-nerds.

The fact that tournaments are cheap ($5 commander league magic the gathering, which I enter every Monday that I can attend if I'm off work, and $10 sm4sh singles entry) and that you can hang out there until 10 pm is just icing on the cake. If you don't want to play magic, or participate in their Dungeons and Dragon event (every Wednesday) you can relax and play one of their many board games that they have out in the open on display. I really want to play their Mario chess game sometime, that would be sick.

Fad has improved my social life a lot. I've met so many cool people and new friends just by hanging out there. I'm probably never going to meet a girl friend there or anything but I always have a good time every time I go. I've actually come to find video gaming to be a bore because I'm so used to going to fad and playing magic with friends. I find hanging out in a social environment much more fun and better than sitting in my room on my computer and playing games.

All in all fad is a hip and happening place when it comes to hobby shop fun and gaming in the valley. There's other hobby shops but fad is the best one I've been to. Game Ogre was another great place in the valley (used to be in Northridge) but I heard today that they moved to Agoura Hills. Guess fad really is the best place for nerds in the valley.

There's so much more stuff to do there that I haven't done too. I was thinking about eventually getting into the Dungeons and Dragons scene on Wednesdays. Maybe one day. I wanted to write about how cool fad is because I've been really enjoying hanging out there on my vacation. Its a great store and its run by a bunch of super cool Asian guys. If you enjoy sm4sh, magic the gathering, dungeons and dragons, and board games you should definitely check this place out!

Planet Cyber event success

So the Planet Cyber meetup I had with my friends went well. We were all able to play Overwatch on free accounts provided by the cafe. I didn't want to log in using my main account for security reasons. Anyways, we ended up only having a three man party of myself and two friends. I was hoping for more but I'm already planning another meetup next week Thursday to try to get a stacked six man team.

Overwatch worked fine and we had a blast. Talking on the headset was fun, the monitor was super nice, and the computer ran the game just fine. We played really well for our first time playing all together the three of us. I mostly played Ana and had fun. I'm ready to plan more of these Overwatch nights and recruiting more people for the cause.

After we played Overwatch we did run into some technical computer problems. We installed Team Fortress 2 (which took 20 minutes) but after trying to launch it kept giving my computer and a friends' a Steam error. The guy running the place couldn't figure it out so he gave us a lot more time instead. We used that extra time to play more Overwatch.

One of my friends was upset about how Team Fortress didn't work but hey technical issues happen. All the other gamers there were playing Dota 2 and none of them had any problems. I can tell that this pc cafe is a moba cafe because all the guys there play is Dota. Which is actually super cool. Dota is a great game. I used to play it when I first got my computer but I stopped around the time Heroes of the Storm came out. Because of the popularity of the game yesterday I decided to reinstall it last night. I think I'll give it a whirl again sometime soon.

Anyways, I'm planning more game nights at Planet Cyber solely for Overwatch. If I get more people (just five for a full team) then that's all I'll need to get an amateur team going. It's going to be hard because I have to be a community organizer. I might have to resort to Meetup.com and Craigslist to find more players.

Wish me luck!  

X-Men Apocalypse

So today I finally got to see X-Men Apocalypse with two friends. I even got to see it for free! Awesome to have such a great friend that works at a theater. Anyways, let me say that this is a good movie. Not great or amazing but good. Slightly above average. I'd rate it like a seven out of ten-possibly a 7.5 if I was feeling generous. Let me tell you about my favorite parts of the film.

There's a scene where Sansa Stark (Jean Grey), Cyclops, and Nightcrawler are in this government facility and they find someone locked in a metal cage. Jean opens it up and out comes Wolverine! He proceeds to slice and dice every man in the facility, ripping them apart and stuff. It was awesome! Best part of the movie hands down. The price admission would be worth it just for this scene alone. While Logan's tearing the dudes up he looks into the camera because he knew he was being watched, and he growls like a wild animal. That part was really funny.

Then there was the part where Apocalypse cuts off those Egyptian guys' heads off with sand. This movie is super violent. It's like an anime or something. There's blood but its mild compared to horror films. Apoc was a straight up killer in this movie. There was a part where Apoc was making all the nukes in the world go off at the same time and he says something like,"But you can't stop god!" That was another scene that me and my friend thought was pretty hilarious.

Then there was the big fight at the end where Apoc's mutants fight the small X-Men team. I really liked Olivia Munn's (Psylocke) outfit. As my friend said,"The waifu Psylocke." Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Then there was the Egyptian girl who turned out to be Storm. She had a cool energy beam fight against Cyclops that was cool.

Another favorite scene of mine was when the Russian police came for Magneto when they found out he used his powers to save someone at his machine factory he worked at. They took his daughter and he said he would let them take him in if they gave his daughter back. So they're about to wrap his hands up and his daughter starts getting super upset saying,"I won't let them take you." Then all these birds show up out of nowhere and start attacking the police. We didn't know she was a mutant but in an earlier scene we see her chilling with a bunch of bucks so I guess I could've naturally assumed she was. Anyways, the police have bow and arrows because they can't use metal against Magneto and they end up shooting Magneto's daughter and wife with an arrow. That was the turning point in the movie where Magneto goes back to being evil.

The ending was awesome. Apoc ends up getting annihilated by Sansa Stark's Phoenix form. His body just gets disintegrated. It was a glorious death to see him get owned like that. Apocalypse eliminated. It was also cool to finally see Jean Grey let loose and use the full potential of her powers. I can see them go farther with her powers in the next film, making the villains much stronger to evenly match her abilities.

Lastly, the acting in this movie was great. The characters were all believable and we had some of the fan favorites from X-Men First Class, probably the best X-Men movie ever made. To know that they're still making X-Men stuff is pretty cool. It will be great to see them do another one in the future. 7/10, great for friends and family. Not so much for serious adults.

Update 1.03

     Things have been great lately. I've really been enjoying the summer and having fun in the sun. Lately me and my entourage of friends have been going out to the beach to swim and enjoy the weather under the sun. The great thing is the fact that I've actually met a group of friends that I consistently hang out with now. It took me about two years to find friends out here in California. For a while I missed all my old friends back home in Wisconsin. I had made a few friends out here, here and there but they turned out to be very squirrely and sometimes downright impossible to deal with. This includes some bands that I played in very briefly too. I was even in an all Asian band for a while! I met most of these bands and musicians through Craigslist. The internet is a bit iffy and you never truly know what kind of people you are going to met online. Anyways, so things have been fun and I've enjoyed the summer so far hanging out with my buds.
     In addition, I've been hanging out with my older brother a lot, playing Diablo III: Reaper of Souls on PC. The picture above is a cosplay of a Crusader character from Diablo III. I just got into the game again because I played it on console with my friends a while back and I suddenly saw it as an amazing game again after maybe a year after it came out. They've added so much to the game now that its really worth coming back and replaying characters again. They've added an adventure mode where the game feels more like an open world game. And then there are Nepelom Rifts, these levels upon levels of monsters and demons where you kill them all and you get chances for epic loot called legendary items and what not. The experience is definitely a 10 out of 10. 10/10 would buy the game again! Blizzard is adding more content to the game all the time now. Its really become quite a great game now that they've polished it and added more content to it. I'm a Blizzard fan boy. I literally own every game they've made on the PC. I think they're all great but I really like Starcraft II, Diablo III, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm. Pretty much all their triple A titles. Also, they're working on a first person shooter game called Overwatch. I really wish I can get in the beta for that game when the beta is out! Also, Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void, the last chapter of the Starcraft II trilogy is coming out this winter, hopefully by Christmas time. I'm actually in the beta for that right now but I haven't played any of it yet because its only multiplayer and I'm afraid I'll just get rekt because I don't know any of the new units and how they work yet. I'll figure it out eventually.
     Also, I've been playing more guitar. A little bit here and there, even at friends' houses playing their guitars. I've also been watching a lot of Dragon Ball GT. I've actually almost finished watching the whole series now. I've only got about 20 more episodes. Luckily for me I've been able to watch the whole series on Youtube rather than going through anime websites. Makes it easy for viewing. The best part of GT is when this robot mutant named Baby takes on Goku, and when Hell Android 17 fuses with Good Android 17 to become Super Android 17!
     I've been reading Herbie Hancock's biography Possibilities. I gotta say that the guy is an amazing composer and pianist, and his memories of playing with the Second Great Quintet (Miles Davis on trumpet, Herbie on keys, Tony Williams on drums, Ron Carter on bass, and Wayne Shorter on tenor sax) were just amazing! It was the best part of the book, although I'm still not finished with it yet. Other interesting parts was the band Herbie formed after the Miles Davis Quintet broke up. He formed a band with an African name called Mwandishi and they played this real far out free-jazz type stuff. I've listened to some of their stuff online and those cats could play! I'm more into that kind of stuff rather than Herbie's Headhunters period when he started doing funk. But most of the young people my age would rather prefer his funk stuff. It's more accessible and has a beat that you can tap your foot to. In addition it was cool reading about Herbie's Buddhist faith. I like the idea of chanting and meditation but I don't think I'd ever have that inspiration to ever go to a temple and learn and ask questions about it.
     As a customer at my work likes to say all the time,"Life is good". Before the summer is over I want to go out to more concerts at the Baked Potato if anybody interesting is coming to the valley. Also, a while back I was learning more about computers and learning simple things like html and css. Maybe I could actually learn a real program like javascript or c++ or something. I think I have the aptitude for that kind of stuff. My friends were talking about working on programming, learning programming, maybe trying to make ourselves a simple game, or even better yet, an app or something. It would be cool to learn how to do something like that although I'd have to start from the bottom and learn a lot. At least with the guitar I'm already pretty high up the scale. Its been a while since I blogged. Sometimes I forget I have a blog when I don't write for long periods of time. I hope I can get more viewers and keep an audience, engaging them with entertaining posts. Figueroa out.