Last night was the “girls night out.” Myself and my friends Mary, Jen and Emily made the rounds in Philly. We weren’t going to check it out, but first we went to Woody’s. This is one of the biggest and oldest gay bars/clubs in Philly. They do country line dancing on Fridays till 11pm, then the music switches over. Woody’s recently got bought out and got a whole face list as well. I had heard terrible things about it, but we decided to check it out. The clubs new rep didn’t disappoint! As soon as the country people left the place got really deserted, far more deserted than it should be on a Friday night. It was also filled with a very ghetto crowd and the music was ghetto inspired. We decided we weren’t spending the evening there. Plus my friend, drunk at the time, insulted the DJ by asking when he was going to stop playing this shit. Keep on truckin Woody’s, you’ll soon have nobody left in your club!

We then headed to 12th Air Command, a place we hadn’t been in years. It was HBOs Rome night, you could tell because a lot of people were dressed up like gladiators and such. The dance floor had been expanded, the music wasn’t so great, the place was dead. One of the gladiators went after my friend Jen in a big way, which upset this little gay boy in the club! We eventually left there as well.

We next headed to the Bike Stop, only to learn they closed their dance floor long ago.

We finally ended up at good old Tavern on Camac. They have the best music in Philly now, but the problem is the space is so small and they can become so crowded that it’s not really fun. If you can’t even move around, what is the point? Here is hoping they expand real soon because they are the only good place left to go!

Dustin

The cover art for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was revealed today. Spoooooky! I can’t wait till this book comes out. I will be doing nothing but reading that weekend. No sleeping!

In other news, Lucy Lawless is going to be playing Tanya Austin (aka Tanya Turner) in the ABC version of “Football Wives” (aka BBC’s “Footballers’ Wive$”). I love Lucy, but I dunno about this one. It could either rock or be awful. Hunky Eddie Cibrian is playing Jason.

Dustin

So if you have been a follower of my blog, you know I’m a horror movie junkie. You will also know that I have felt most of the stuff put out by Hollywood these past few years has been utter crap. The home video market hasn’t been much better. Most of it seems to be populated by movies that appear to have been made with a home VHS camera and edited on a PC. These movies are of course neatly packaged to look like a Hollywood production, fooling you into renting it, only to have you cursing when you start it up.

Lately there have been commercials airing for this series of horror films, “8 Movies To Die For.” They are straight to DVD movies, though one appears to be a commercial film from Japan. I honestly thought upon seeing the commercials “great, more home horror movie crap.” However having to actually fill my rental Que with something, I added “Wicked Little Things” to my list. I watched this movie last night, wow was I surprised!

The plot goes as follows, woman’s husband dies after lengthy illness, leaving woman short on money with two young girls to raise. Woman finds out husband owned a family home in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Woman sells everything to make as much money and moves family to the home, sight unseen. Woman and kids arrive to find the house is a wreck, the neighbors are bizarre and of course, there is a history to the house and the area. The history in this case is that the house is part of an old mining community and several children were killed in the mines years and years ago. The children are now zombies that come out at night to feed.

The movie was well done. The make-up and gore was a little hokey at times, but it was pretty much a top notch production and included a good cast that could act. While not scary, the movie definitely had a creepy feel to it. It’s basically “Children of the Corn” meets “Night of the Living Dead” and set in a mountain wooded setting. Two things made this movie. The first was the environment. The woods in this movie are just creepy, like “Evil Dead” creepy. You watch this film and thing to yourself “Why the hell are they going into these woods at night?” The second thing that made the movie was the sound. Every time the zombie kids were around or were coming, there was this unsettling high pitched buzzing sound. It just set a disturbing mood.

All in all, two thumbs up! I plan on renting the others in this series and hope they are as good as this one was.

Dustin

Spring has finally arrived. It was a beautiful day out and I hope this gorgeous weather stays. I’m tired of cold and rain, we got gypped as far as snow this year so bring on the sun.

I tuned into “American Idol” tonight again. What was the point of having Gwen Stefanni on when almost nobody sang No Doubt songs? Dumb, dumb, dumb. Oh and I wonder if America’s love affair with Sanjaya has come to and end this week. He was just horrible! Oh course as soon as he goes I’ll probably lose interest in the show!

Over to “Dancing With The Starrs,” I was shocked that Billy Rae was not kicked off. Is he the new Sanjaya?

I got half way through “Eragorn.” So far it’s a cute movie, very Star Wars meets Dragonlance though. I never finished the books, the author’s verbose descriptions of every little thing turned me off and I put the book down and never had the chance to go back. One day I’ll finish them.

Finally, one of my favorite Sega games of all time is making it’s way to Wii, NiGHTS! This was a great game for the Sega Saturn way back when I was in undergrad. It was the first game I ever imported in Japan because I didn’t want to wait for the American version. Great game, I can’t wait for it on Wii. Speaking of Wii, 2 weeks until Paper Mario hits! I have a gift card with Mario’s name on it 🙂

Anyways, I leave you with your moment of zen from Emily 🙂

You scored as Hermione Granger. You’re one intelligent witch, but you have a hard time believing it and require constant reassurance. You are a very supportive friend who would do anything and everything to help her friends out. Hermione Granger 80% Ron Weasley 75% Remus Lupin 75% Sirius Black 70% Ginny Weasley 65% Albus Dumbledore 60% Harry Potter 55% Draco Malfoy 45% Severus Snape 30% Lord Voldemort 25%

Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is…?
created with QuizFarm.com

I finally hit the gym today. Owwwwww! I could feel the tension and stress in my back when what should have been the easiest of exercises made me ache after a few minutes. Obviously I need to do my best to keep going back.

Spring is here, and I need to do some spring cleaning. Somehow my guest room is a mess . . . again! I swear it was clean three weeks ago. I just need to take a day to completely reorganize it.

Speaking of organization, I need to get my taxes done this week. Yeah yeah I’m running out of time. I figured I would probably owe, so no need to rush to give the government their money 🙂 Er, or should that be my money.

Once again, nothing is on the boob tube . . . .

Dustin

Sorry I went missing for a few days. I kept meaning to sit down and write a blog, but never got around to it. I also just feel like I don’t have much to post about lately.

I am so completely frustrated with TV lately. Nothing is on, all repeats because of March Madness. Guess what TV people, some of us don’t watch basketball! When will I get my TV shows back? There seems to also be a lack of anything good out on DVD as well.

I was supposed to go out dancing this weekend with friends, but once again it didn’t happen. Surprise! We are going to try and aim for next Friday, but I’m not holding my breath! Every time we try to make plans something falls through it seems. *sigh* The places to go dancing in Philly seems to be getting smaller as well, which sucks. God forbid we have to start going to places in Jersey!

A local station here, one of those “the best of the 70s, 80s, 90s and today” stations keeps playing Milli Vanilli. Why I don’t know, but they really love “Girl You Know It’s True.” So in honor of Milli Vanilli, I present the following YouTube video. Watch the girl in the back 🙂

Dustin

http://www.dragonlance-movie.com/

This has been a rumor for years, but now it is very very REAL. I literally cannot believe it is going to happen! It’s going to be animated, probably CGI/3D ala the TMNT movie, but has an amazing voice cast.

Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville) as Tanis Half-Elven, Kiefer Sutherland (24) as Raistlin Majere, Lucy Lawless (Xena) as Goldmoon and Jason Marsden (Xmen) as Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I seriously cannot WAIT for this movie!

For those who have never read the Dragonlance novels, if you are a Harry Potter/Fantasy fan then these are a must! Go to your local book store and pick up The Chronicles set, which is the first of several trilogies. Be prepared to invest a lot of reading time!

Dustin

So at first I was really angry that Sanjaya continues to stay on “American Idol.” Now I’m realizing it might not be such a bad thing. Seriously . . . SERIOUSLY! I have said over and over, there have only been a few AI’s that went on to actually do something, most notably Kelly and Carrie. They hit it big and I don’t think I see them fading. Where are the other winners though? If Sanjaya makes it far enough then maybe the love obsession with this show will end. That or like the Olympics there will be some serious changes to voting 🙂

In other news, I got the desktop working . . . finally! I got the wireless card to work, I didn’t need to buy anything new. I still need a new sound card, but it’s not a necessity right now. I need to load all the stuff I normally use on it to see how well they handle, what the issues are, etc. I have to say, the ball was dropped with Vista BIG time. I ran the Windows Vista “upgrade” test and there were no issues with my system, according to Microsoft. So wrong! If you haven’t bought a new system with the Vista Compatible tag and NOT added anything hardware or software wise to it, prepare for issues when you go to upgrade!

Otherwise, I don’t understand what the big tadoo is. Even the BF said “So what is so special about this?” I mean I like the new gadgets feature, but the only real difference so far is a slightly redesigned interface as far as the menu and control panels go. Otherwise, I don’t see what is new. I am able to run the Aero feature, even that isn’t impressive.

Dustin

It’s 3am and I’m installing Vista . . . . AGAIN. I thought I had installed a clean version, which technically I did. However it didn’t FORMAT the hard drive, which I wanted and needed. All my old windows files where placed in a directory. All the old weird crap Dell puts on your HD was left as well. I wanted that stuff all gooooone. So I’m not booting from the CD to install Vista clean. *sigh*

I found out I CAN get a number of new sound cards. I thought my system wouldn’t handle some of the new ones, but they can. I’m still not spending the money though 🙂 I might buy the 30 dollar card still, or I will just stick with the crummy motherboard audio. I’m doing anything fantastic on this desktop, why waste 30 bucks? If the BF complains that the sound is really bad, then maybe I’ll shell some money out.

Still no way to connect it to the net. That will come tomorrow night most likely. Till then I’ll spend tomorrow loading office and anything else I can onto it. I’m slowly getting the hang of it, those I don’t see what all the hype over this “aero desktop” is.

Dustin