That is all.
TEN YEARS! I can't help but think of Jeremy Piven yelling that in Grosse Pointe Blank as I write those words. Ten years ago this morning I was coming down from the last gasp of a caffeine infused all-nighter, sitting in the CCCB cafeteria eating biscuits and hash browns and watching Saved by the Bell on TBS with Eric Wright. Earlier in the wee hours of the morning, Eric had shown me Blogger. I had converted my crappy tripod site into a blog and had made my first post. Then I invited all my friends to join in. The rest is history.
I know the blog has changed a lot over the years. I feel at times that Facebook and Twitter and other things like that have almost made it obsolete as far as this being a place where a bunch of friends can stay in touch. But there's so much history in these pages, so many memories, that I could never let it go. It's just nice knowing it's here. It's also nice having a place where I can still post my thoughts on things that don't quite belong anywhere else.
I want to give huge hugs and props to everyone who's ever posted here at brendoman.com. You guys are all awesome. I also want to give hugs to all the people we've connected with exclusively through this site. You are a constant reminder of why the internet isn't always dumb and evil. I met tons of cool people thanks to this blog and this community. When I think of all the stuff I've learned and ideas I've had that have come directly out of this, it kind of blows my mind. Case in point: Danny taught me some Linux command line basics so I could manage the site better through SSH. That knowledge helped me get the job I have now.
Speaking of Danny, biggest hugs of all to him for being the true keeper of the keys for all these years. We've changed blog software three times. We've changed hosts four times. Without him, I would have thrown in the towel a long, long time ago. I can't even count how many emails I've sent over the years pleading for help and he's always quick to respond. YTMND.
I could go on and on but I feel at this point, the blog speaks for itself. Here's to ten awesome years and many, many more. Hundie Jo!!!
I know many of you already are aware but for those folks who aren't on Facebook or Twitter, I will post the news here. Phil and I are recording new episodes of Radio BrendoMan! You can check them out at our new site or on Facebook. Phil and I have been wanting to do a podcast together for years and I thought this would be a great way to bring back the show. Basically we just record both ends of our Skype conversation and then I mix them together. At some point we would like to have some guests, maybe some of the brendoman.com crew, as long as everyone is capable of recording their end of the conversation and uploading it to dropbox or something like that it should work just fine. So check out the show and let us know what you think!
Review: Bully exposes MPAA flaws and a touchy feely approach to schoolyard harassment - HitFix.com
Let's make this clear. The very reason the MPAA assigned "Bully" a R rating - which means children under 17 need to be accompanied by a parent or guardian to watch the movie in a theater (at least a theater that properly enforces the ratings, but that's another issue) - is because kids WHO ARE CLEARLY UNDER 17 say the "F" word too many times. In a documentary. There is no explicit sexuality (or sexuality of any kind really), no graphic violence, no gratuitous language, no complex adult themes or situations that parents may understandably deem unacceptable for mature pre-teens or teens. And for that "Bully" receives the exact same rating as "Saw 3D," "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and "The Hangover Part II." If that's not a sign of a broken or at least nonsensical and unreliable system in need of an overhaul, I'm not sure what more it would take.
I really want to see this movie. As the excerpt points out, it is mind blowing that a movie with f-bombs in this context is considered rated R. While I agree with its PG-13 Rating, it's nuts to me that the Hunger Games has some pretty graphic child on child violence yet movies like this get R ratings for language. It makes no sense. Thoughts?
7UMJ9PZCAK8B
I guess it's only appropriate that as we approach our ten year anniversary, I finally got around to creating a Facebook Page for this site. A few years ago I would have thought it was a dumb thing to do, since why have a facebook page for a website since you can just go to the website. The reality now is that a whole lot of people go on Facebook and don't really leave. It's like the old days of AOL. I find that very strange. On the other hand, it's nice to have all the information you want in one nice little place. So if someone who normally wouldn't go to the trouble of coming here will like our page and then find out about all the stuff we post about and our other projects, why the heck not.
To summarize, Like our Facebook page and maybe we can have a second life on Facebook. Who knows.
I was a little surprised to see that this was still around. I was telling my friend Ish today about how we (the brendoman.com crew) would jump from game to game every couple of months and that this was one of our bigger obsessions for a time. I think we should have a brendoman.com Retro Game Night sometime on a weekend and play some Gunbound, Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament, and maybe some Age of Empires 2. We could open a Ventrilo channel or some other voice chat and just party it up. What do you guys think?
Hey look, it's the first one of these of 2012! This is only my second post on here this year. I am sorry.
Awesome
Not Awesome
Happy Valentine's Day!
Behold, my first brendoman.com post of 2012! Unfortunately I don't have much to say. I am in a weird nostalgic mood today because it would have been my dad's 60th birthday. I started thinking about old friends and then, thanks to modern technology, I added some of those old friends on Facebook. Thanks internet!
Living in Irvine is cool but I now feel completely detached from north Orange County and like a planet away from L.A.. It is taking some adjustment. I saw Haywire the other night with my roommate Jon and our friend Edgar. It kicked a lot of ass. You should go see it. It is nice living right by a cool Imax theater but it is not nice paying $19 to see said Imax films. Batman will be worth it though.
2011 was a pretty epic year for me. My good friend Derick Armijo invited me to co-host Pop Sickles with him and that is still going strong. Even though we said goodbye to Smodcastle in June, it will always live on in my (and many others') memories. The other highlight of the year for me is definitely the fact that Phil and I finally published the first Brax book.
Even though most of my online activity has been on Facebook and Twitter, I still have a huge place in my heart for this blog and all that it represents. We are celebrating our tenth birthday in 2012! That is crazy! We've all moved on to various things, many of the original folks have families now. We've come a long way from that group of young college kids who tended not to sleep very much. This blog helps me remember what good friends I have and that thanks to this site and many others, we can still keep in touch and share thoughts and ideas.
I wish you all the best in 2012 and thank you for being part of making 2011 awesome!
I've been listening to The Smile Sessions a lot on Spotify and it's really taken me back to a lot of good memories I have listening to albums like Pet Sounds and Spirit of America with my dad, who was a huge fan of the group. I remember seeing them a few times play at Padres games, which were always a blast. I will never forget dancing to "I Get Around" from our field seats as the band played in the outfield. The greatest Beach Boys memory I have though occurred the summer after my senior year of high school. I was at a party at my friend's house in Del Mar and we were outside in his front yard. We could hear "Good Vibrations" playing down the street but thought nothing of it. Then we realized it was a band playing and decided to check it out. So we went over to his neighbors house and there was Brian Wilson strumming a guitar. My friend's neighbor had hired him to play their party. It was pretty nuts.
Thanks to my awesome friend Ross I got to go to the PGA screening of The Muppets yesterday at The Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. It was everything I thought it would be and then some. There was a great mix of new and old songs and it really captured the spirit of the first three Muppet movies, something I really felt has been missing in the later efforts. I was smiling pretty much the whole time. While it was definitely a nostalgia trip for me, there is plenty here for kids who might not be as familiar with the Muppets to enjoy. There were a lot of kids in the audience I saw it with and they loved it just much as the adults. Walter, the new Muppet, fits right in with the rest of the gang and Jason Segal and Amy Adams hold their own as well. As it wouldn't be a Muppet movie without them, there are also plenty of great cameos. If you're looking for something to watch this week, this is definitely the one to go with. I know I'll be seeing it again.
It's coming up on the anniversary of my dad's death. I can't believe it's been 18 years. The last few years I've decided to spend some time on Veteran's day remembering him instead of that horrible anniversary. I think he would have wanted it that way. He was extremely proud of his service to this country. My uncle and grandfather are both navy veterans as well and let's not forget our very own Gringo. Here's to all you veterans out there.
Hello there. Yes, I know it has been awhile. Work is NUTS. I am getting ready to move to Irvine. Skyrim comes out tomorrow. That is about it.
Not Awesome
I really want to make this a Wordpress blog. I feel like I would use it more if I did, but that's probably wishful thinking. So I'm thinking of ways to make that possible. We'll see. Oh, I am really excited about The Muppets. And the Pete and Pete Reunion I am going to next week. Seriously, holy crap.
Phil and I are pleased to announce that Brax The Alien Rocker Presents: Tales From Planet Earth Volume 1 is available for purchase. We got our first copy and it looks even more awesome than I thought it would. Thanks to Wil Wheaton for recommending Lulu for on-demand publishing. HUGE thanks to my cousin, Jeremy for the awesome cover art. It turned out really great. Thanks to everyone who supported us in this ordeal as well. Now that we figured out how to do it, the next book should hopefully get finished a lot faster. You can order the book here and it will also soon be available on Amazon. Please tell your friends or anyone else you know that likes comics, music, or cool things in general.
There are a group of people I guess I would consider my geek forefathers. Without them, I wouldn't be the person I am today. I wouldn't enjoy the things I enjoy now. I definitely wouldn't be in the career I am now. Steve Jobs is definitely one of those people. While the first computer I ever used was my mom's monstrous IBM that my dad sat me in front of before I could even read, the computers that actually planted the seed that would bloom into the geek I am today were the Apple II's in the computer lab at my elementary school. I learned simple BASIC programming and graphics creation using LOGO. I played hours of Lemonade Stand, Oregon Trail, and Gertrude's Secret.
When I was in 4th grade, I was finally old enough to use the shiny Macintosh that actually had a modem. It was so special it had its own desk at the front of the library. It was on this computer that I first connected to an educational BBS and sent my first email. In high school I played my first LAN game on a Mac Performa. My fellow geeky classmates and I had managed to sneak in a copy of Marathon and install it on a bunch of the computers and we would play over the AppleTalk network during our computer class and after school.
Fast forward almost twenty years and even though I've never actually owned an Apple computer, I'm still being influenced by the creation of Jobs and Wozniak. For this, I am forever grateful.
G4 was at the signing for Ernest Cline's amazing book, Ready Player One and they interviewed me. You can see for yourself at the 1:50 mark. They misspelled my name but that was probably my fault for not writing legibly on the release form. Thanks to Nerdist's Jonah Ray for deciding I was interesting enough to include in this segment.
Awesome
1) Breaking Bad. Holy crap, this show is amazing and now it is on Netflix Instant and did I mention it is awesome.
2) I went to the book signing for Ready Player One in Hollywood on Saturday night and met author Ernie Cline. He was really nice and very cool. I also got interviewed by Jonah Ray of awesome comedy and Nerdist podcast fame for G4. Maybe it will be on some show there sometime. I have no idea.
3) My new teen melodrama of choice right now is Pretty Little Liars. It takes the insanity of 90210 (which starts tomorrow, wooohooo!) and ramps it up about 10 times. It is hilarious and awesome.
4) The True Blood season finale was really great and full of great quotes. "We are not puppy dogs!"
5) The fall TV season is starting. Can't wait for new 90210, Parenthood, all the NBC shows, and whatever other stuff I have time to watch.
Not Awesome
1) HBO very lightly teased the second season of Game of Thrones before True Blood Last Night. Now I wish it was next year already.
2) Everything else is pretty awesome, so that is all I got.
Thanks to Malcolm Ingram for posting these pictures from my set visit with Derick and Melissa. They really made my day. Red State hits On-Demand today. I am excited to finally watch the movie in the comfort of my own home. The first time I saw it was not in the most ideal conditions, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. As I said previously, it is definitely not for the faint of heart and it is absolutely not a "Kevin Smith comedy." That aside, I think it's pretty fantastic and if you're up for trying something different and a little crazy, you should check it out.
It's that time again! I would really like to see some more dedicated players this year as last season half the team stopped updating their rosters by about the halfway point in the season. I have the draft set for tomorrow but that can be changed if necessary.
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Password = westeros
Liked
Bridesmaids
Thor
X-Men: First Class
Kung Fu Panda 2
Cowboys vs. Aliens - NEW
30 Minutes or Less - NEW
Super 8 - NEW
Captain America - NEW
Rise of the Planet of the Apes - NEW
Sort of OK
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Did Not Like
The Hangover Part II
I really want to see Horrible Bosses, Fright Night, and Attack the Block. I forgot to talk about Super 8. I absolutely loved it and think the over-analytical criticisms got kind of out of control. Most movies start to crumble when put through the scrutiny folks give them these days. I think that takes the fun out of them. If I was the same age when I saw Super 8 as I was when I first saw The Goonies, it would have made my head explode twice. It would have inspired me just as Goonies did to have wild and crazy adventures with my friends, to explore the unknown. Those kids were fantastic and I don't want to live in a world where the idea that a bunch of kids having a totally amazing adventure in the summer isn't awesome and is picked apart until there is nothing left. You can have that if that's what you want. I'll be over here having fun and letting my imagination run free.
/end rant
So anyways, there are some movies I didn't see because I find these days that about half way through the summer I kind of burn out on going to the movies and have no patience to see something I am pretty sure I will not like and pay way too much money to have to deal with people being jerks in public. That's just me though.
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Not Awesome
I have always been very proud of my brother Carson. He has been a stage actor for the past several years and is pretty fantastic. He's also one of the funniest people I know. He is now doing stand-up comedy in Portland. You can find out more at his website, which I was happy to create for him. If you're in Portland, definitely check out one of his upcoming shows!
Seriously, this is amazing. You can actually sort of play the game.
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