Tonight at 12:01 AM Colver and I will be attending the first showing in Anchorage of Christopher Nolan's new Batman flick, the Dark Knight. Reviewers have thrown around terms such as "masterpiece" and "revolutionary" while using the word "best" in conjunction with many other words (such as "superhero movie" or "crime drama of the past 25 years").
Really, if it's good as Batman Begins (I'm watching it right now to prepare!) I will be happy beyond words.
Needless to say, I'm mildly excited.
At work this week I was thrown a very awesome going away bash. It was really fun and it featured some of my favorite people at work. What's that? I'm not leaving my job? Then why were they throwing me a going away party?!
Because I'm moving to the other side of the building.
Coworkers Judy and Sharee decided after it was announced that I had to move from cubicle between the two of them to the other side of the building that I needed to have a going away party, and they succeeded at providing it for me. About seven people showed up (including the VP/GM of our section of the company) which is a pretty amazing total for a party honoring someone moving 150 feet.
It was a hilarious party, and I got to spend thirty minutes joking around and eating strawberry shortcake. Sounds like a great time right?
I have the best coworkers.
As many will know, I'm a huge, huge fan of comics. Have been since pretty much as long as I can remember (excluding a 3 to 4 year period where I stopped reading entirely) and I'm rather encyclopedic with my knowledge. I love the medium absolutely, and for the general populace, Watchmen remains as the single greatest creation the comic form has made. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created a deconstructionist view of superhero comics that both tore apart the medium and rebuilt it stronger than ever.
Or so they say.
I'm a fan of the series. Don't get me wrong, just like I'm a fan of Dark Knight Returns. But a certain level of "is this overrated?" constantly creeped into my head while reading these two books. I very much enjoyed Watchmen but I had to ask - is this really the best the medium has produced? Of course the last time I read it must have been 5 or 6 years ago (if not more) and perhaps my less developed teen mind couldn't wrap itself around the complexities the alternately straightforward comic/dense prose present. I'd say it's still one of my top 20 all time comic stories, but when most others put it at number one with a bullet, I scoff a tad.
However, the trailer for Zack Snyder's (300) adaptation of it is out, and good god...it's spine tinglingly delicious. Maybe it's because the focuses are clearly Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach (my two favorite characters) within the trailer, but I don't know. It rocks hard. Watching it gave me goosebumps. I feel as if I may have to dust off my old copy this weekend and try to figure out what I missed, because clearly Snyder is aware of it and wants to rub my nose in it.
Well bring it on Zack.
Check out the new trailer here. It's worth it. Or you can go see the Dark Knight as it is supposedly playing before hand. I hear that may be a good movie or something.
So I've been kinda busy lately. Over the last little while, I had a bunch of friends visit, a wedding to go to, dates, working longer than usual hours, much socializing, and as per usual, a significant amount of ridiculousness. Really, what else would you expect from me? However, I do want to say I promise to get back on a more regular schedule. Things are starting to settle down and I've officially decided that I'm going to use this weekend to rest and get everything back on track as the fourth of July time period really threw me out of whack.
But it's all good, there are worse things in the world than getting out of touch with your blog. Also, I just wanted to apologize really quick to someone that I wrote about long ago who discovered what I wrote and did not appreciate it. I should have thought that out and your email definitely made me think about how open of a forum this really is. I'll handle this bad boy with more care in the future.
One thing I did want to mention was how unbelievably awesome Motion City Soundtrack were when they visited the great and frequently white north. They came up with Anchorage band (and current pop punk fave) the Lives of Famous Men and were supported by local sensations the Hoons (still managing to be incredibly shocking in their ability to go from crap to awesome in a year), and both openers were excellent.
However, MCS blew them out of the water, as they played a stellar 14 song set and then followed it up with a three song encore, culminating with "the Future Freaks Me Out" from their debut album I am the Movie. Even better than that were other random things like Justin Pierre (the lead singer) taking people's hats from the front row during the set and wearing them, the out and out fist fight between two girls and a wasted guy that happened during the set (the girls win! the girls win!), and the fact that when everyone was chanting for the encore Justin came out into the crowd and yelled encore with us.
Needless to say they played one, and it rocked. Hopefully MCS spreads the word about how great Alaskan crowds can be, but if not, we at least had the great time that they shared with us last Thursday.
Motion City Soundtrack rocking Koots
Lead singer Justin Pierre trying on someone in the front rows hat
Justin from MCS yelling "Encore! Encore!" with the crowd 
Every once in a while I get kind of obsessed with a band. Sometimes it's something entirely new, sometimes it's something old that's new to you, and other times (far more rare) it's something you've heard before, had for a while, but all of a sudden something snaps into place and you say "holy crap! this is awesome!"
Right now? That's Hot Chip for me. These guys are rocking my world over the last few days. All three of their albums are pretty much being constantly played on my iPod at work, and once again, thanks to my mom for getting me hooked up with them. I probably would have let those albums slip by when I was working at my school's radio station in college, but she asked for them and now I'm really thankful that she did.
I thoroughly recommend checking them out if you get a chance. They are pretty awesome dancey electro pop. The song up above ("Over and Over" off 2006's The Warning) is a great example of the dance part, and is just an absolute blast of a song. Enjoy!
