I am back, reset and refreshed!@

So I was heav­ily incor­rect, as I did choose the The LeBron Cavs to go all the way this year.. boy did those Celtics sur­prise me!

I feel both series are in the bag, and would be even MORE sur­prised if Suns actu­ally pull a shocker and take the West­ern Con­fer­ence series, cause that’s the Lak­ers’ series to lose

And if this rematch from two (or was it three?!) sea­sons ago goes down, my pick is..

Lak­ers in 6

K-Young done did it again

Photo of the Week

Race­track Stars, Rice Jack­son

Open Photo Challenges

New Photo Chal­lenge: Full Cir­cle!

Our world is filled with shapes and pat­terns, both of which look great in photographs.

For this photo chal­lenge, seek out cir­cles and make them the focal point of your image.

(Photo: Kris Dun­can)

Photo Chal­lenge: Phoney Pho­tos

Mobile phone cam­eras are not only con­ve­nient, but his­tory has shown that they can be a pow­er­ful tool as well.

For this photo chal­lenge, show us a pic­ture that you took with your cell phone camera!

(Photo: Dan Flo­rez)

Photo Chal­lenge: A Mother’s Day

Peo­ple say that every­day should be mother’s day because of the amaz­ing things that moth­ers do for their children.

For this photo chal­lenge, cap­ture the activ­i­ties that moth­ers do best!

(Photo: P D Baird)

Best of Photo Chal­lenge: Turn­ing Point!

There are events, days, or even sec­onds that change things mov­ing forward.

You cap­tured these moments, so be sure to check out some of our favorites from this photo challenge!

(Photo: Karen Meny­hart)

The guys and I decided to just ran­domly go check out Iron­man 2 tonight. The last movie we saw in the the­ater was Clash of the Titans 3D, and that didn’t leave me with such a promis­ing after­taste when I walked out of that movie. Any­way, one of those spur of the moment decisions

The great part about tonight being Tues­day, was that tick­ets were only $6 and Tony was so sur­prised that he got coined into doing the $11 spe­cial (your ticket, juice and pop­corn) which was a lot bet­ter than pay­ing almost IMAX value for some garbage attempt at 3D last time (Clash of the Titans)

Iron­man 2

Despite all the neg­a­tive feed­back this movie had received amongst peo­ple I know, I wasn’t falling asleep or truly dis­ap­pointed at all.  I don’t know if it’s based off of high expec­ta­tions or just lack of knowledge/interest into the comic book story itself, but I thought the movie was just how it was intended to be.

I’m glad they went with Dan Chea­dle instead of Ter­rance Howard after buddy (Howard) let his ego think he was big­ger than the movie, and they replaced his ass just as they should have.  So Chea­dle was the big defense guy and later on takes on the role of War Machine, which was sick when they upgraded the suit with all those ill weapons.

Micky Rourke played his part real well, and I was very impressed with all the visual effects that were tak­ing place through­out the movie.  There may have been one scene (the indy car explo­sion) that looked a bit too CGI/green screen, but other than that, this was amaz­ingly done graphically.

Robert Downy Jr. played Iron­man great again, just as he did in the first one.  Some parts were a bit much and unnec­es­sary (his bday party and mash­ing up his own house) but I was more into all the hi-tech gad­getry that he had in the movie.  Almost makes you won­der how much of this stuff they have read­ily avail­able or atleast in pro­duc­tion and beta stage.

After the movie ended, Tony was say­ing how there was this sur­prise addi­tional 5-minute clip after the cred­its.  So us and about 3 other peo­ple sat through all the cred­its (and boy were the credit LONG!@) and when we saw this ‘spe­cial sur­prise clip’, haha.. I don’t even wanna spoil it.  Thor anyone?

If you really do put a small value upon your­self, rest assured that the world will not raise your price

- Anony­mous

So appar­ently it’s about Queen Vic­to­ria.. seemed to always think it was about fire­works, go figure.

Either way, HAPPY LONG WEEKEND!@

Lost : The Series Finale

The time has finally arrived, the answers to ALL our ques­tions, right?

Wrong. I com­pletely read­ied myself to be heav­ily dis­ap­pointed after watch­ing the series finale, due to the sim­ple fact that Sea­son 6 was giv­ing me noth­ing to really hang hope on.  From when they had that episode about Jacob and his brother as young bucks and their ‘mom’ show­ing Jacob that light tun­nel, things were get­ting wack.  And that being the rea­son why the Black Smoke Mon­ster came to be was even more disappointing.

So every­body was dead, no real sur­prise there.  Even as I watched the Jimmy Kim­mel spe­cial where they were fur­ther try­ing to fig­ure out exactly what the show meant, I just didn’t get a sense of con­crete con­fi­dence in the outcome.

Over­all, it was a great show and like the few other shows in which I hold at high regard in their pro­duc­tion qual­ity, def­i­nitely has raised the bar in how TV should be.  I just think this series could have got­ten their point across by Sea­son 3 or 4, because Sea­son 6 was a big waste of time.  And the end­ing didn’t pro­vide the kind of ‘con­clu­sion’ one needs

It was like a past rela­tion­ship with no clo­sure. And that’s how I’ll leave it

oh you know they keep com­ing, riiiiight

Valentine’s Day

Actu­ally wanted to see this on Valentine’s Day that just past, but I’m kind of glad that it didn’t end up hap­pen­ing to be honest.

I don’t think I’ve seen this many a/b-list actors and actresses in one movie since Oceans 12 really (voice over movies like Shrek don’t really count), so I was a bit curi­ous as to how it would play out.

Sim­ple plot, it’s Valentine’s Day and the movie takes you through sev­eral dif­fer­ent sto­ries that all some­how man­age to co-exist and inter­twine with one another.  Not much ‘ooooh’ or ‘ahhh’ moments, no big sur­prise end­ing or shock­ers in gen­eral.. just over an hour of scripted valen­tine dri­ven con­tent.  Again, glad I didn’t see it in the the­ater, cause it was bad enough watch­ing it at home.  Next!

Youth In Revolt

Ever since Super­bad, I have become quite the Michael Cera fan.  There is some­thing about his quirk­i­ness that just makes you laugh and find amus­ing, and in this movie it’s no different.

Play his reg­u­lar ‘can’t get a girl-quirky ran­dom’ type of guy role who is still a vir­gin (sur­prise!) and forced to seek safety with his mom and her boyfriend, finds him­self in a dis­tant trailor park.  From there he meets this girl, falls in love with her and vows to do what­ever it takes to be with her.  And so the mad­ness begins

I’ve never been one to watch a com­edy in the the­ater, but that’s only because I reserve that for more action-based movies that thrive off of big screen and big sound.  Enjoyed this one though!

Even though my long week­end runs a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than most, it was good to get a lit­tle break and you know what that means… movies!

Alice in Won­der­land

The orig­i­nal plan was to see this in IMAX 3D, on some dif­fer­ent vibes (erkz), but nobody was really feel­ing to do it up with me sadly… that sprin­kled with the fact that peo­ple that actu­ally saw the movie kept say­ing that they weren’t too impressed.

So finally got my hands on a great copy and just decided to see what was what, and in doing so I join the ranks of those that expected quite a lot more from it.  Obvi­ously it wasn’t in 3D, so I can’t really com­ment on that aspect of it, but in terms of the movie itself?  The story was long and a bit bor­ing, cause let’s face it.. we’ve heard this story many times in the past already.  And if you ask me, the car­toon Dis­ney ver­sion still holds top rank over all other ver­sions.. MAYBE rival­ing the book.

I was how­ever taken back by all the graphic work done on the movie, ranks up there with the Avatars, Trans­form­ers and Iron­man movies.  And from an inspi­ra­tional stand­point, it did sali­vate my cre­ative gears.. but from a movie-watching POV, didn’t do that much for me.  Rental.

The Backup Plan

A J-Lo movie.  There are like two or three actresses that have their own ‘types’ of movies, and that list is Jen­nifer Anis­ton and well J-Lo.  What’s a J-Lo movie you ask? I don’t quite know how to explain it in words, but watch 3 or 4 of her movies and you’ll get your answer.  Always on this lost-looking for love-somewhat ditz type of vibe

And this movie is no dif­fer­ent.  She basi­cally wants to be arti­fi­cially insem­i­nated, and just as she is she finds the ‘one’.  Of course they hit it off and every­thing is per­fect, expect for the one small detail that she’ll soon be preg­gers with a testtube-baby.  The end­ing is pre­dictable, and I won’t say the movie was hor­ri­ble or any­thing.. it was just, well..

a J-Lo movie.