I made a new blog

If I keep with it (unlikely as that may sound), it'll be a general movie critique site, and can be found at http://gorginfoogle.blogspot.com. I'll try to keep from being too spoiler-heavy, but you get no guarantees.

I am surrounded by death

In the past week, my betta fish Xander died (yes, Stay-C, named after Xander from Buffy), my high school calculus teacher died, and my uncle got diagnosed with probbly terminal pancreatic cancer. It does not seem to be a safe time to be someone that knows me. On the flip side, my cousin (the one with the horse habit) just gave birth to a boy named Jared, so if anyone I had mentioned that to was wondering how far along she was in her pregnancy, apparently she was very far along indeed.

Florida Day Sixish

For our final day of vacation, we ventured back to Animal Kingdom with the apparent dream of going on every ride again except Expedition: Everest, which was my favorite one and I'm not bitter at all about it being cut from our itinerary by my stupid jerk family. After going on such things as the safari and It's Tough to Be a Bug once more, we did some surprisingly fruitful last minute shopping before the rain chased us back to our hotel, where I got my last trace bits of the pool before we made our way to the airport for the ride back home.

The plane ride back home seemed like it was going to be a bit of a disaster at first. Due to my mom's inability to work a computer, our seats were scattered all around the plane, leaving me sitting in a window seat with a lovely view of the wing, with a kid behind me that kept kicking my seat, and a fat man next to me that was oozing over onto me. Once we got up in the air (I didn't really wait for the seatbelt sign to go away), I made my bold escape and sat down next to my mother the rest of the way, where I got my much-needed arm space and got to chat with a cute girl on the rest of the ride back home, which makes every day but the first on the vacation I got to meet someone new. After landing, we had a nice walk to our luggage, as it arrived in a different terminal than we did, and we made it back home just after midnight so that mom could yell at me for all the packages from Amazon that had arrived for me while we were gone. A damn good trip, I'd say.

Florida Day Cinque

Taking a break from Disney World, we ventured out to Universal, which had gained an awesome new park based largely around Marvel superheroes since I had been there last. We made our way onto the Spider-Man 3D adventure, which had a cartoon J. Jonah Jameson being all kinds of awesome in it, the Hulk, which was an awesome roller coaster that sends you looping around upside down and whatnot, and Dr. Doom, which lets you watch some brilliant propaganda videos while you're waiting in line (the ride itself, which just sends you shooting straight up in the air and back down, was pretty good too).

The new park also had some non-Marvel rides, including a log flume that just completely drenched us all (with my sunburn paining me as much as it was on this day, I wanted nothing more than to ride this all day) and a stupid jerk pteranodon ride at the Jurassic Park section that I wasn't allowed to go on because only children and people with children were allowed on it. There was also the Dueling Dragons or whatever the hell it was called, that surprisingly wasn't about the adventures of Billy and Jimmy Lee, but was two roller coasters that occasionally come charging at each other (it's really only noticeable once while on the ride, at least if you're in the back like I was).

Eventually we left and made our way to the other park, where we promptly went to Terminator 2, as it was indoors and we were all really overheated. We also saw the Shrek 3D movie, which meant that we made a possible miscalculation in doing both of the big 3D shows back to back rather than spacing them out a bit more, but we stalwartly soldiered on anyway. The Mummy turned out to be a cool ride, much better than the movie itself (and also rather violent, as we kept changing directions pretty viciously and without warning), and I even convinced my family to go on Earthquake, whch they claimed to enjoy. Unfortunately, the line was too long to justify going on Jaws, and it looked like it was about to start raining, so we made our way back home.

Once at the hotel, I of course spent my evening at the pool with two girls rather shamelessly hanging off of me (Hi Dom!), and unlike my future Brazilian wife, they actually live only half an hour from me, so we exchanged Myspace pages and I woke up my brother in law to let me back into my room, because really, why on Earth would I take my room key anywhere?

Florida Day Fear

As none of my family wanted to go to a water park, this day I ventured forth to Blizzard Beach by myself, which wound up being both a good thing and a bad. It was bad in that I thus had noone to let me know that sunblock was mostly waterproof these days, so it was foolish to think it pointless to put it on in the first place, which resulted in me getting second degree burns on my shoulders (seriously, they got all yellow and waxy and bubbled up and pus oozed from them occasionally -- so hot). The good came a bit later.

Iimmediately set out for the park's signature attraction, a water slide that takes you just about straight down from your starting position towering above the rest of the park (and most of Disney -- I think the Tower of Terror might have been the only ride at any of the other parks that went up higher) to the ground in less than five seconds. It's very good to get this out of the way at the very start of the day before the lines get too long, because it doesn't go on for anywhere near long enough to justify even a half hour wait, let alone the hour+ lines that it gets later in the day. I also went on just about all of the solo rides, even going on one of the kiddy rides, as I hadn't been paying attention to what section of the park I was wandering into.

I had accomplished all of this by noon, much to my dismay, as I didn't really want to go back to my sister in any timeframe that would vaguely resemble me admitting it wasn't great enough to justify spending most of a day there, so I resolved to go on one last ride -- a group rafting ride that I'd been avoiding thus far, as it would mean I'd be getting partnered up with a group of strangers. It turned out I needn't have worried about this, though, as I got partnered up with the most stunningly beautiful girl at the entire park and her two younger siblings. After the ride was over I blatantly stalked them all for a bit, and we got to talking as I joined them on a number of rides that I had already been on. She unfortunately wasn't able to stretch out my overall time there by much more than two extra hours, as her family was leaving around two, but we exchanged phone numbers and emails and I awkwardly hugged her in front of her parents (She's 19, people! Leave me be!) nad made my way over to MGM, where my sister and brother in law were.

One more thing bears mention, though. When I'm with the two of them, bus takes twenty minutes to arrive, and makes a half dozen stops before getting to where we need to go. I'm by myself, the bus is idling there waiting for me, and takes off as soon as I sit down with me as the only passenger, and takes me directly there. Those two are damn jinxes, is what they are.
I don't honestly remember what we did at MGM, quite frankly. I know we went on the Tower of Terror for the second and final time of the trip, during which I got to further frighten a semi-terrified little girl standing behind me in line by trying to reassure her that, while we do all get flung out of the top of the building, we all land on cushions so it doesn't hurt at all. Disney, take note: a ride like that would be completely awesome. We tried to get to the Indiana Jones Stunt Show, but it was down to standing room only by the time we got there, so we just went back, and I lounged in the pool a bit before we went to Downtown Disney for dinner.

After dinner and some more shopping, we went over to the movie theater in search of 1408, only to find that it had started a half hour ago. Our options limited to Evan Almighty and Live Free or Die Hard, Brad and I decided on Die Hard, while my sister stormed back to the hotel because we had the nerve to want to see a different movie than she did. It was well worth it though, as this was easily the best Die Hard movie since the original, filled with a bunch of great action scenes and Bruce Willis being his usual awesome self. One of the best parts of the movie has to be how he's evolved from the standard action hero concept of snapping off dumb one liners after he's taken someone down, and instead just looks at all the carnage he's caused and giggles like an asshole. It's a brilliant movie. And Kevin Smith so totally tries to channel Quentin Tarantino's acting style when he first appears, for reasons I can't even begin to guess at.

Florida Day Trois

We started the dayout at Epcot, and after going on the required rides, of which Mission: Space (featuring the acting talents of Gary Sinise) was really the only good one, and of which Ellen Degeneres's fucking 45 minute long movie about energy was just torturous to sit through, we split up for lunch at my suggestion. Since Epcot's known for being the park to go to for a variety of food, in large part because it has sections devoted to a number of countries, I made my way over to Japan to have some nice sushi for lunch. Of course, being a relative novice to sushi, I used way too much wasabi (pretty much dumping the entire glob into the puddle of soy sauce my two packets had provided and mushing it around a bit), and had to run back in the building for more soy sauce packets to dilute it a bit. After enjoying my now appropriately-watered-down meal, and washing it down with some plum wine (Disney is very good to the winos), I explored a few more of the countries, during which I learned one very important fact: Disney is so totally racist against Asians. Seriously, the night before this I had scoured two enormous toy and gift stores at Downtown Disney as best I could in search of a Mulan doll or memento for Stay-C, and found stuff for almost every movie BUT that one (seriously, they even had stuff for Pete's Goddamn Dragon), and, even though they have an entire section at Epcot devoted to the country Mulan came from, there was still nothing at all to be had there. Just shameful, is what it is. They did have a nice short video on the history of China's culture, though, so that was good.

After being disappointed by China, I rode a viking log flume and got my face painted in as girly a manner as I was able, including glitter (yes, there were photo ops) before rejoining my group just in time to watch the 3D film Honey I Shrunk the Audience. I had seen it the last time I was at Disney, but it was still great.

Making our way back to the hotel, I played in the pool a bit more (after trying my hardest to wash off the face paint, and succeeding to remove all but the parts around my eyes that made me look like a damn drag queen in the water), we went to the Magic Kingdom again for dinner, then enjoyed Buzz Lightyear's shoot em up ride (I got the highest score of everyone in my party, go me), and then my sister and I made the foolish decision to go on the swirling teacups a bit too soon after eating. As I normally do, I spun them so fast we both got retardedly dizzy and had to lay down for a bit after we got off the ride. This was a bit of a fatal miscalculation, as it left us stuck on the wrong side of the parade that goes through the Magic Kingdom every night at 9 and 11, so we had to wait for it to finish (the dwarfs pull up the rear, if anyone was wondering) before going over to the new Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The ride itself was mediocre, but it had the best line ever, as we just wandered through the various catacombs of the building the entire way and got to the ride without being slowed down by a single other person. My mom and her friend left for the hotel afterward, but my sister, brother in law and I all stayed for Splash Mountain, because dammit, I like that ride. The line was awkwardly long, given how late it was, but it was totally worth it. We then hurried to make it back to the bus stops before we got cut off by the next parade.

I would be remiss if I omited what happened at this point. You see, while I do like to think that I'm pretty good with children, the ones at Disney, or, more precisely, the whatever attitude the parents that take their kids to Disney have, were kind of grating on my last nerve by this point. So with that in mind, here's what happened. Much like the delightful bus system they have at Rutgers, Disney tends to limit the number of busses that arrive late at night, so we joined an already large crowd of people waiting for the hotel bus, and then had another large crowd form behind us by the time the bus actually arrived. It also bears mention for this anecdote that for whatever reason, the back door of the busses at Disney only open to discharge people or to admit handicapped people, everyone else has to get on from the door in the front, I guess to be fair to the people that had been waiting longest. Whatever the reason, we all started getting into the front door, and after my sister and brother in law had made it on, a little girl that I would guess was about 3 or 4 years old decided to get up from her mother's lap right in front of me and block the whole aisle so that I, and the twenty or so people behind me, couldn't get past. I waited a good four or five seconds for the mother to intervene, but as she seemed unwilling to resolve the situation, I took matters into my own hands and roughly shoved her out of my way into whomever it was that was sitting next to her mother. I was not expecting it, but really, it would have been nice had the people behind me given me some amount of applause for my heroism, but as it was I still made my way to my family, and then back to our hotel room, feeling pretty damn good about myself.

Florida Day Dos

While I avoided the Internet the entire time I was on vacation, CNN helpfully informed me this morning that Chris Benoit and his entire family were dead. While I haven't watched wrestling in years, he was the last of the guys I had loved to watch that hadn't yet died or retired, so I initially felt a bit bad for him. You know, until later in the week when it came out that he had murdered his family before killing himself, making me somewhat less sympathetic.

We started the day by going to the Magic Kingdom and taking the monorail to Chef Mickey's for lunch. This was somewhat of a rocky ride, as we had the good fortune to sit down on the monorail in front of a mother whose kid had just crapped himself, and we got to enjoy the pleasant aroma while we waited in midair for five minutes while the monorails ahead of us slowly got out of our way.

Chef Mickey's was a presumably typical theme restaurant, filled with Goofy, Pluto, Minnie, and what have you roaming around for photo ops, and every half hour or so we all had to show our party spirit by waving our napkins around in the air (yes, pictures of my shame will be forthcoming whenever my brother in law e-mails them to me). Most important, though, there was a middle aged woman waitressing nearby that had a five o clock shadow.

After lunch, we went to Animal Kingdom (So yes, we waited for a bus to go to Magic Kingdom, then took a monorail to our restaurant, then took another bus to Animal Kingdom, keeping us from reaching the park itself until noon. This led to me and my sister deciding that we were no longer going to follow my mother's itinerary, as it was completely retarded.), where we were swarmed with people, as evidently this is one of the most popular parks at Disney. Animal Kingdom and Epcot definitely seem to be the most popular parks for the Asian crowds, as they were everywhere (though for some reason they don't seem to be big fans of Blizzard Beach). We knocked out the big rides as fast as we could (meaning within two or three hours), checking out Expedition Everest (possibly the best roller coaster at Disney), the safari, and the river rapids. The worst part of the waits was the hour in line for the safari in which we had an obnoxious redneck guy behind us (sorry Southerners, but your atrocious accents make me want to kill whenever I hear them) spouting off nonsensical rants about Disney to his no doubt long-suffering wife and child. We also caught the 3-D adventure It's Tough to be a Bug, featuring part of the cast from A Bug's Life, which was a good deal better than the movie itself, despite the nonpresence of Heimlich.

For the evening we all went to Downtown Disney, where we did some shopping, and I stayed after everyone with the promised lure of an improv comedy show on Pleasure Island. While it had its moments, it really wasn't worth the money I spent on it, so I made my way back home and ventured out to the hotel pool just as the rest of my family was going back inside. I wound up playing catch with this family who had two pool balls in the vague shape of baseballs. I unfortunately arrived at the pool at exactly ten o'clock, which is when the big scary clown slide got shut down for the night, so I had to wait until the next day to enjoy its dark delights. I made my way back to my room just before midnight, as the pool closed then and I'd start needing my ID to get back in my hotel room, which I didn't have with me, and so went to bed feeling somewhat unfulfilled.