LosAngelesfootballstadium.com

TWO NFL teams playing in the City of Industry (here in Los Angeles County) by 2013? Hmmm... Just repeating what I heard from Liz Habib on FOX TV yesterday (right after the Minnesota Vikings-Chicago Bears game ended. The Vikings won by the way... 36-10). According to Ms. Habib, if one or two National Football League teams decide to move to Southern California as early as next Spring, they can begin playing temporarily at the Los Angeles Coliseum and/or Pasadena’s Rose Bowl as soon as Fall of 2010...while construction on the Los Angeles football stadium in Industry starts immediately. According to Habib, the NFL wants the new arena to support two clubs simultaneously...in the same way that the New York Jets and the New York Giants play football at the same stadium in um, New Jersey, and STAPLES Center supports both the Lakers and the Clippers in LA during the NBA season. I’m all for that...


MyFoxLA.com

Preferably, I wouldn’t mind the Jacksonville Jaguars and/or the Vikings (with Brett Favre still on the team...assuming he'll consistently play the way he did against the Bears yesterday, haha) relocate to Los Angeles. The LA Jaguars and/or the LA Vikings sound helluva lot better (assuming their names won't be changed after the relocation) than the LA Bills...as in the Buffalo Bills, who are also one of the teams rumored to move cross-country to the City of Angels. Let’s leave that club and its choking ways to the cold wasteland that is upstate New York, shall we?



LosAngelesfootballstadium.com

NINJA ASSASSIN... I saw the film yesterday, and on a positive note, it lived up to its title. For those of you thinking that Ninja Assassin is a superfluous name (haha), the movie is actually about an assassin who kills ninjas. And that assassin, named Raizo (who's played by Korean pop star Rain), kicks ass! I actually saw the film, or at least the last 20 minutes of it, at work when it was test-screened earlier this year. Needless to say, I was so impressed by the climactic action sequence that I had to see the rest of the movie when it officially came out in theaters. Ninja Assassin is what those live-action Mortal Kombat films during the 90's should've been! (Other flicks that I paid to watch despite already seeing their endings during marketing screenings were 300, Superbad and Zombieland. We also screened Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen too...but the only shot I saw, since I had to remain outside the auditorium for much of the movie, was that end credit scene where The Office’s Rainn Wilson calls Shia LaBeouf ‘Professor Einstein’ in that astronomy class.) After Ninja Assassin ended, I overheard a fellow moviegoer who attended the same screening as me compare this film to 300. It’s an appropriate comparison...seeing as how Ninja Assassin, like the 2007 Zack Snyder flick, also had lots of cool action scenes, neat CGI effects and gallons of fake blood...



There are two plotholes that I noticed in the movie though: Who was the lady who called Raizo on the phone prior to him rescuing Mika (Naomie Harris) from an assassination attempt at her apartment? And who rescued Raizo from that river after he was injured following his betrayal of master Ozunu (Sho Kosugi) and the rest of his clan atop that rooftop? Anyways... Ninja Assassin is directed by James McTeigue, who also helmed 2005’s V for Vendetta, and was also the assistant director for Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and The Matrix trilogy. That is all.

Happy Thanksgiving Day, everyone!!! Here’s a link to an article about President Obama 'pardoning' a turkey during a ceremony at the White House yesterday. Instead of getting its noggin chopped off (with Sarah Palin possibly watching in delight), spending a couple of hours feeling warm and toasty inside an oven and then being served along with mash potatoes and stuffing to a family of slightly obese Americans, the turkey, named "Courage", will instead spend the rest of its life listening to crappy music during the Electrical Parade at Disneyland. Or enjoy the daily fireworks show there.

Though here’s a question: What happens if someone ate a turkey that was pardoned by the President? Are we looking at a hefty fine or prison time for that person here? Hm.



Alex Brandon / Associated Press

FAMILY GUY... If you guys watched last Sunday’s episode, you’ll recall that major subplot about how Brian Griffin was trying to earn Quagmire’s respect after finding out that the womanizing airline pilot hated Brian’s guts. Towards the end of that episode, we get that nice little moment at the end of the show where Quagmire, who’s having dinner at a restaurant courtesy of Brian, goes off and lists every single fault that the dog has, and why Quagmire despises Peter Griffin’s "best friend" so much. Anyways, the gist of this journal entry is NOT about this scene...but what led to it during the episode.

Earlier in Sunday’s episode, Quagmire thinks that he’s going on a date with Cheryl Tiegs, a girl who he knew from a long time ago. Quagmire got a letter that was supposedly from Cheryl...not knowing that it was in fact sent by Brian to trick Quagmire into having dinner with him. Quagmire enters a limo that arrives outside his house, and is surprised to see Brian waiting in the car instead of Tiegs. Quagmire then goes off on a rant to Brian about how this girl "was the one who got away", and the reason why Quagmire had flings with so many women was to make up for Cheryl’s absence, and how he felt "lost" once she disappeared from his life. What I’m about to talk about next is an OLD-ASS topic involving a girl I knew from 9 years ago, and how this Family Guy episode started making me think of her...again...

For those of you who have been visiting my Blog since its inception in October of 2000 (Anyone? Anyone?), you’ll remember how I kept talking about a girl I nicknamed Denise (her real name is Duyen) in my entries. She was in my Geology lab class during the Fall 2000 semester at Long Beach State, and the last time I saw Duyen in person was in 2002...on campus during the Spring semester. If you want a recap of the things I said about Duyen, go to this journal entry...which provides a link to every single post (I think) that I made about her (though I’ve just ended up providing links to those entries in this particular Blog, anyway). 2001, as you would tell, was the peak period of my um, ramblings about her.


The reason why that scene on Family Guy struck a nerve with me was that I too felt like I was losing something as I watched Duyen walk away after we headed to our cars following the completion of our Geology final exam. From that point on, every single day I was on campus I would look around to see if "Yenny" was strolling nearby. Even though she graduated from Long Beach State in 2003, that didn’t stop me from continuing to look around for Yenny through my final semester at LBSU...which was Spring semester in 2004. I had a chance to see Duyen in person one last time at my graduation, but needless to say, that opportunity was lost. (Duyen was on campus, but I was unable to look for her since well...click on that last link to know why.)

Before I met Duyen in Fall of 2000, I was pretty much carefree about a lot of things. Nonchalant about life if you well, hahaha. After our final day as classmates though, it felt like I was missing something...as Duyen and I got along pretty well during the semester, and I felt like something great could’ve happened if I made the right moves or said the right things to her (or least ask Yenny if she already had a boyfriend before I started growing strong feelings for her. TOO LATE!). Nope, I was obviously wrong.

To this day, I still go to Duyen’s MySpace page to see what she’s up to (hmm, I probably shouldn’t have said that here). But she hasn’t updated her profile since April of this year, and that’s probably because she only goes on Facebook...which she updates often. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that (too)...since Duyen didn’t add me as a friend on Facebook (Yes, I did send her an 'Add' request). That could possibly be due to the fact I talked smack about her boyfriend in an entry after I found out his name...and Duyen DOES know about this journal page (since I did tell her about my website long ago), and read some of the things I typed about her back in 2000-‘01. Of course, she probably read my little diatribe about her BF on MySpace too (at least she added me as a friend on that site)...since I also posted that last entry on my profile there as well, haha.

Anyways, this Blog is TOO LONG. The gist of this entry: Last Sunday’s Family Guy episode revealed that Quagmire is a womanizer because he feels lost over a girl he cared about a long time ago, and slept with other chicks to take his mind off of her. For me, the reason why I went to so many import shows over the years was to meet beautiful car show models that would take my mind off of Duyen, albeit briefly. No wait— I never mentioned that import thing in this entry. Oh well. I doubt most of you even reached this point on my Blog to realize how incoherent it’s becoming. Later.

IT'S NOT even Thanksgiving Day yet and radio station KOST 103.5 FM (here in Southern California) is already playing Christmas music. Obviously, this is to get people into the holiday—a.k.a. shopping—mood. Capitalist pigs.

THE BIG BANG THEORY... I like this show...not only because it’s pretty hilarious (Jim Parsons, who plays child prodigy/theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper, is a crack-up), but also because it occasionally makes references to actual NASA projects. In one Season 2 episode, Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) was the one responsible for getting a Mars rover trapped in sand (which is what really happened to NASA’s Spirit rover last April. As of this entry, it’s still stuck in soft soil on the Red Planet). And in another Season 2 episode, he was responsible for a poorly-designed toilet installed onboard the International Space Station (ISS). That episode even used somewhat up-to-date footage of the ISS (from the shuttle flyaround in last March's STS-119 mission) at the end of the show. This is the only scripted program I know that somewhat puts our space program in the prime time limelight on U.S. television. It doesn't hurt that the lead actress (Kaley Cuoco, who plays Penny) is pretty hot as well.


The Big Bang Theory airs on CBS at 9:30 PM, on Monday nights.

2012... So I saw the film after work yesterday, and it was entertaining—in the typical Roland-Emmerich-blows-up-national-landmarks-and-other-things kinda way. If you’re expecting a sci-fi film that is as thought-provoking as say, District 9, then you’re watching the wrong film. If you’re expecting a standard Hollywood blockbuster with lots of great visual effects and (extremely) ridiculous action sequences, then this is the movie for you.



I can’t recall any memorable scenes from The Day After Tomorrow, but I will point out that 2012 had a lot more emotional moments in it than Independence Day did (don’t get me started on Godzilla). But unlike 2012, Independence Day (or ID4) had a lot more scenes that made the crowd gasp and cheer...at least at the screening I went to back in July of ‘96. Of course, back then the shots of the White House and other (American) landmarks getting destroyed by giant alien ships in ID4 were fairly new...and the scenes showing F/A-18 Hornet jets engaging in aerial battle with small alien fighters (a la Star Wars, DUH) were awesome. What 2012 has going for it are repetitive shots of airplanes trying to lift off of runways that were breaking apart below them...and a kick-ass scene of Yellowstone National Park going BOOM as the supervolcano beneath it (yes, this volcano is REAL) erupts.



I’d say more about the movie, but I don’t feel like it. I’ll point out one more thing though: I find it interesting and fortunate (ahem, sarcasm) that the computers onboard Air Force One could show real-time images of what’s going on beneath the Earth’s crust, as well as what was happening to the planet's magnetic field as s**t was hittin' the fan across the globe. I guess these comps were modified by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey at the White House's request between 2009 and 2012...the time period during which the movie takes place.


That is all.

CONTRARY to what the TV commercials tell you, Twilight is NOT a saga...but a multi-film Abercrombie & Fitch (or Gap for that matter, haha) ad. You wanna watch a REAL saga? Check out those science fantasy films about that Galaxy far, far away that George Lucas made between 1977 and 2005. Yes, I also included the prequels.

INTERESTING... According to this pic, the Batwing actually exists. Though it's not officially the Batwing...so don't call it that. Just being facetious. I found this image on a message board.

ASSASSIN’S CREED... I’ve never played the Playstation 3 video game before, but the three webisodes below are pretty cool. Known as Assassin's Creed: Lineage, they serve as prequels to Assassin’s Creed II...which comes out in electronic stores tomorrow. It’s a nice touch that the game’s maker Ubisoft made the videos (whose stories take place in Italy during the Renaissance) authentic by casting Italian actors in ‘em. You probably think that this was such an obvious comment, but if Hollywood made these webisodes, Giovanni Auditore (the Assassin) would most likely be played by Channing Tatum. Or Robert Pattinson for that matter. Hollywood blows.