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At the Movies… The love of Flicks! (Day 8 of the 30 day challenge.)

I have spent a great portion of my life watching flicks. I can recall times where my father took us to the cheap shows. It was at the crappy theatre of the town. I like to think that’s where all the movie reels from the expensive theatre end up. It would have the new movies weeks after they have already showed at the newer theatres for dirt-cheap. One of the earliest movies, I can remember is Jurassic Park. It had to be around 1993, the year Jurassic Park came out, and I wasn’t even 10 years of age then. We really wanted to see it and our father took us. The filmstrip ended up burning in the reel and we had a pass to see another showing of JP at a later time. I do remember seeing Fantasia and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well. With a Father, who worked over nights, would fall asleep during these showings and we would have to constantly keep waking him up so we would not get into too much trouble for the loud snoring.

When I got a bit older, I started to build my own collection. Someone gave me a gift of a DVD player. I bought Gone In 60 seconds with Nicholas Cage, Broken Arrow with John Travolta and the cartoon movie, Shrek. I have seen all those movies a hundred plus times since I couldn’t afford new movies. I would only buy movies that I really wanted to see again. I hardly bought stuff that I haven’t seen unless I was familiar with the director or actors involved. I eventually ended up with a wall of movies that would surprise anybody who came over. Around that time, I would also make it a weekend ritual to go the movies and catch cheap matinees. For a movie that came out on Friday for ten plus bucks a ticket, I would catch it the very next morning for four bucks or less. Even if I have seen everything I wanted to see at the show, I would watch something I haven’t seen, even if I didn’t know what to expect.

I eventually got to a point where I had given up, and sold majority of my collection. The people I sold my collection to, ran a movie resale shop. They constantly repeated the joke, “With this much, we can open a new shop”. I guess it was an addiction. In a world where movie streaming is king, I try not to spend so much on movies. I do hope to get my daughter into the entertainment of motion pictures. I even started off her collection by collecting every cartoon Disney movie made. I started this movie podcast as well with my brother, called MuvCast where we would talk about flicks we have seen or information about flicks.

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Comic Review: Fairy Quest Outlaws (Day 7 of the 30 Day challenge.)

I have to admit, I am a pretty big comic reader. Especially on my commute to work to avoid raising data charges on my cellphone. I just finish a book and wanted to review it today. The book is called “Fairy Quest Outlaws”. It was written by Batman writer Paul Jenkins, who is also known for his Hellblazer as well as his Marvel’s Civil War tie in, Civil War: The Front Line. The artist is Humberto Ramos, who is known for drawing the Amazing Spiderman as well as the Spectacular Spiderman runs for Marvel. Their Collaborations in this story is extraordinary. The book is very visually appealing and the story is pretty phenomenal. I am not quite sure if it’s in stores, but I know they are showing it off at Comic Conventions. I was a Kickstarter supporter and received a copy as a prize.

Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos’ Fairy Quest Outlaws

In this self published book and fan backed, It begins with a mother reading a bedtime story to her child. The story was Little Red Riding Hood and the big, bad Wolf. This wasn’t the original story; it was the day job of these fairytales. Red Riding Hood had become friends with the wolf and even gives him treats on the way to Grandma’s. Once their friendship was discovered, Mister Grimm wants to erase their memories with his giant mind erase machine and continue the tradition of their dislike for each other. When being summoned to having a full mind recovery, Red Riding Hood flees for her shake in hopes to make it to the real world. Now, the Fablewood gang is after her, including her own Grandma.

I highly recommend this book. It was an amazing read and I can hardly express my enthusiasm for the next story to come out on this post.

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What Would You Do? – Day 6 of the 30 day challenge.

What would you do?

I just finished watching multiple videos on Youtube.com, based on this television series, called What Would You Do? It is based on several different scenarios done in public places to see what would the public do about it. A lot of stories ended up positive because of “Do good things and good things will happen to you”. Which is called Karma.

The first scenario I saw had a woman dressed in a business suit who falls on the street. This was based on an actual situation that happened at the hospital, where a lady collapses in a waiting room and hospital officials ignored her for 45 minutes, which ended up too late to save her. Well the businesswoman was helped in less than three seconds. They then try another actor, a homeless man. A lot of people passed him, but he ended up receiving help in three minutes. They gave him a beer can and the time went up to 45 minutes. It’s hard to believe that a few seconds to make a phone call seems to be an inconvenience for some. I recall having a similar incident where a man passed out on our doorstep and I tried calling 911. They asked if he was breathing, I responded with I’m not sure, he was laying against my door and I had no way getting out. They asked if he was dangerous, I said, I didn’t know. They said okay and took my information and hung up. I looked out 45 minutes later and he was still there, so I called off of work just in case if they had questioning. I noticed an hour later that the man was gone.

Some of the other scenarios in the show was a dad taking his son to a liquor store to purchase drinks for his house party, which we all know is wrong, but apparently a lot of people couldn’t step up to it to stop them. It took a police officer from another city and a mother to stop him. I would’ve step in if the child kept saying that he didn’t want to be involve. At that point, the parent was forcing bad influences on the boy and that bothered me, knowing that there are parents out there in this world.

A mother was at a store buying groceries and didn’t have enough money to pay. A lot of people stepped in to help. A lot of us have been there and that sucks. If I have it and you didn’t, I would give it. That’s a big thing to me. It’s Karma. I have this habit of donating that dollar to whatever cause at the local Walgreens or food restaurant. A lot of times, they give you a cool nifty thing to write your name on so they can place on the walls of donators. I normally write my daughters name or my last name due to a strong belief in Karma.

Father meeting his daughter’s new boyfriend of another race was the last scenario, I saw. Growing up in a completely different race community, it was hard finding the same race, so I dated out my race a lot. I felt more then acceptance in the relationships’ families. I can’t imagine not having a welcoming family to my dates. I even recall an elderly polish lady stopping an ex and I on a date. This ex was dark skin Mexican and telling us how cute we looked and how beautiful she was. I was blown away. I had a grandma who called out a misspelling on a black ladies’ nametag at a retail store. She thinks the reason was because that black people were uneducated.

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Scam artists: Day 5 of the 30 day challenge.

I have always been a fan of Social Engineering. That is the trait of making someone believe you are someone that you are not. I am not a professional at the trait but I have used it to my advantage in high school. I used to make copies of class change forms and stole class codes from my fellow classmates. I would constantly fill out the forms and would convince school officials to sign the form. Anyone could get it approved, from the principal to a counselor, with help from my friends and teachers, who wrote the recommendations that would get an approval. I would then take that form to the a little Asian guy hidden in a room in the back of the school, who inputs the information in the computer. Days later, I would pick up my new school I.D. card. I would always aim for someone different each time so I didn’t get recognize the follow times. I was aiming to have eight I.D. cards for each one of the lunch periods throughout the day. It was my senior year and I had a bunch of classes to make up and the best way was to do it on lunch. Needless to say, I graduated.

I admire Frank Abagnale. Frank was the idea behind the movie, Catch Me If You Can. Tom Hanks and Leonardo Dicarpio, who played Frank, starred the movie. Frank’s parents go through a tough divorce and Frank ran away from home. He begins making a living on pretending to be multiple experts, anything from being a pilot, doctor, and even a Lawyer. The feds follow him to France and ends up arresting him. They offer him a chance of redeeming his self if he worked for the government in identifying fraudulent checks and so on. I know my crime isn’t as major as his. My admiration doesn’t come from the crime he committed but the out come of doing something he liked. I think that’s the ultimate nirvana is doing something you loved.

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Case 2: Someone Else’s: Day 4 of the 30 day challenge!

Attraction. Power of attracting: the power of attracting or the feeling of being attracted “Our mutual attraction was immediate, and we enjoyed one another’s company.” Attraction is something that you also really can’t control. It’s the basic of growing an obsession and gaining feelings for another. Sometimes it’s over people you knew forever. Most times over people you barely knew.
The most common place to grow an attraction is the work place. Come on now, it’s like the next step from school. Personally, I had a rule about dated people in the work place, due to it affecting my performance. For years I followed, and then I had to break my own rule of conduct.
Here we go again.
I was helping in “building” this soon to become successful store. Then I begin to notice this girl. Oh yes, a girl. Surprise. I talked to her all the time. Every time I didn’t see her I would asked her coworkers about her, especially this main guy, who was always around. But I played the safety card and talk to him about her, and he said he wasn’t attracted.
She already told me that she was single. So what, right?
Well, it wasn’t too much longer until her and I were always together, from morning to night, from night to morning. I guess we were unbreakable. Yea. Unbreakable.
Well, she finally came up to me and told me that she needed to talk to me about something. I played the part of the concerned friend and heard her out.
She was having boy problems. I was like ‘dang, There goes my chance’.
She told her how her boyfriend abused her and cursed her out.
I was still stuck on “boyfriend”. Then I told her, we’ll talk about this later.
She came over to my place. We talked about it for a bit and were watching a movie. She explains that the “main guy” from work was her boyfriend and that he was getting mad jealous of me.
She didn’t want to let that out, due to work rules and regulations. But she also broke down and told me that she had feelings for me. So I gave her a kiss. For so many months after that we were kicks, while her love for her boyfriend was off and on.

Then finally, I went to this barbecue, where I ended up drunk, and let it get the best of me. It was really late. I don’t even remember what time it was. I texted her, that I’ve grown feelings for her. Then passed out. She called me the next morning, early, really early. To asked me to do her a big favor. Of course my dumb ass agreed. Well, the favor was that, she didn’t want to live with her mom anymore, so she was moving in with him and needed help and that her boyfriend refused to call anybody for her. I told her that I would. So a group of my hung-over friends and I helped. Seeing her at “the work place” flustered me, but what can I do. As the “beatings” got worse, my words of advice wouldn’t change her mind. She dropped from school and he decided to quit for an under paid job. We suddenly grew distant and never really talked after that, nothing more then the occasional hello. Then finally she told me that they did the final breakup.
I am happy for her. She told me that she had moved in with a friend and hopefully will finish her education.