Seven Pounds

I was able to watch Seven Pounds today. This review it going to be hard for me, because I feel like the less you know going into the movie, the better. The trailers don't really tell you what the movie is about, except that it's a fairly serious movie with a pretty good cast. I guess I'd say it's about Will Smith trying to fix things, in many different ways.

On a semi-side note, usually as movies get closer to their release date, the trailers reveal more and more of the movie's plot. This held true for this movie, and for the most part I don't agree with that decision. Although they don't give too much away, I think the 'mystery affect' is part of whats drawing the consumers to the movie. I know several people who have said 'Oh that movie looks good.' But don't even know what it's about. The only reason I can see them doing it is for marketing purposes. By creating a mystery movie, they're counting on sales that mainly come from the start power involved, not because the movie sounds/looks interesting. By revealing more of the story, you bring in an audience who wants to know what happens.

Anyways, onto the review. I really liked the cast, and thought they all played their parts well. Will Smith said it was his darkest role yet, and I agree with him. His character in this is semi-typical..a fairly strong male saving the universe. Well, maybe not the entire universe..but saving people. He's able to showcase his acting ability in almost all areas in this movie from happiness to hate. Rosario Dawson also does a good job. I haven't seen too many of her movies, but I thought she did a good job diving into the role of her character. I was definitely able to get attached to her character in the movie. And on a side note: Rosario Dawson is hot.

The story/structure of the movie was kind of confusing in the beginning to me. There were a few flashbacks shown, which I didn't realize were flashbacks til later on. I think the beginning is the only time when it's better to know part of the overall story, or at least what should be going on in the first few scenes. Besides that, the movie flows well, and Will Smith and Rosario Dawson take you on an emotional ride. There are many bittersweet moments, that tear at your emotions.

I liked the soundtrack as well..besides two songs. One song sounded like a My Chemical Romance (?) cover of Michael Buble - Feeling Good, and whatever that song was, just didn't seem to fit as well with the scene as different songs could have. There was one other song that didn't seem all that great either..but besides those two songs, it was good.

All in all, this is a dark romantic feel-good-while-being-stabbed-with-a-knife movie, and I'd recommend seeing it.

Goals unmet.

So late Saturday night I decide to make a planned impulse buy for early Sunday morning. I woke up at 6:15AM, and at 6:45AM called a cab to take me to a store. I arrived there at 6:55AM and was greeted by a line of ~10 people waiting outside. After waiting in line for 5 minutes, figuring out whether or not to buy out the entire store's stock of Nintendo Wii's for reselling and a ~$35 cab ride, I found myself back at home with this:



And these:

Winter Break Goals

Finally on winter break.. and I have some goals for it:

•Register for classes
•Vacuum & Dust my room
•Keep my room clean

•Find a roommate
•Make one new friend
•See as many friends as possible while I actually have free time

•Go up to Beaverton at least once

•Read one book
•Maintain a fairly steady (and normal) sleep schedule
•Work out 5 times a week
•Eat healthier

•Eat out less
•Spend less than $100 per month, excluding expenses
•Attempt to budget my money for the next 6 months
•Deposit 50% (Or more) of each paycheck into my savings account
•Never have more than $200 in my checking account, unless it's to pay for bills.
•Sell clothes and shoes

•Finish my concert picture project (Whenever I get my $300 from work)
•Figure out what new phone to get and when to get it
•DJ for at least 5 hours per week
•Reformat my desktop????

Red Friday

This year I didn't know anyone who planned on spending a lot of money for Black Friday. No one I knew, including me needed/wanted to make a big purchase, regardless of the fact that there were no really good deals. Getting a $1189.99 42" 1080p LCD HDTV for $581 beats any of the TV sales I saw today. I went out shopping just for the hell of it, and partially because I felt like I was obligated to at least go and window shop/browse. My goal for the day was to spend under $250 total, including random stuff like food.

Black Friday started at about 1:55AM on Thursday night, when I began waiting for Amazon to put some bluray movies on sale. The actual day started out at Best Buy around 7:30AM. I picked up a few DVD's, then headed to the Streets of Tanasbourne mall, mainly for Express. I only walked out with one sweater, well on my way to meeting my spending goal. After Express we went to Banana Republic just because it was basically next door. I somehow talked myself into buying a $59.00 scarf, basically regretting my purchase as I was making it. That is, until I saw it rang up on sale for $34.50 :)





Once we were done with that nice surprise, we stopped by REI, which did a pretty clever promotion. They gave shopping bags to customers entering, and each bag had a random gift card in it, ranging from $5.00 to $100.00. Both Jason & I got $5.00 :( But it definitely made us both feel like we needed to buy something. $5.00 off a clothing/sporting goods store anywhere, especially a store like REI is not a good sale at all, when there are North Face jackets running at $400. But the fact that are giving you free money makes you feel obligated to spend it. In addition to that, they didn't really even have any sales going on, which just brings them in even more profit.

Anyways, after that I went to a differnt friends house to go on Part II of my shopping spree. We went to the Nike Employee store..which was really busy, and shitty. They denied me as a guest, but I still got access to Friends & Family stuff later on. :)

After the Nike disaster, we went downtown. We stopped by several small stores, then went to the REI downtown. I spent the $5 gift cards on Odwalla drinks, because I couldn't find anything I actually wanted.



After shopping at those ~5 stores we went to eat at Mio Sushi, which was good as always, then headed over to Puma and Adidas. I ended up getting a pair of Puma x Evisu jeans at Puma. This put me pretty close to maxing out my $250 goal.

Pic of the jeans didn't come out so well, and I'm way too lazy to take a better one right now..



Next up was Niketown. On the way there, we heard some yelling and then 'I SAID GET ON THE GROUND!' I looked in the direction of the shouting and saw a man laying face down onto the sidewalk, and then saw a cop holding a shotgun, aiming it at this man on the ground. Then a few more police cars pulled up. We decided to take a detour route to avoid that drama. Later, while on the detour route, we saw the man yelling at the cops saying he didn't do anything, and why white cops gotta act like this to black men. :/ Wonder what he did, if anything.

After that interesting moment, I found my way into Niketown's checkout line, buying a pair of shoes, putting me over my $250.00 limit :\



Once I was done wasting my money at Niketown, we wasted a little more time, talking with a store owner, and managed to get a 30% off Nike/Niketown/Nikeoutlet/NikeWomens :) Then I went back to Best Buy so we could look at DVD's, then being unsuccessful at finding all the DVD's my friend wanted, we went to a different Best Buy, which had plenty. I walked out with more useless DVD's the second time going there.

I finally ended my spending spree at a nice, cheap, sit down, Thai restaurant around 8:30PM. Over 12 hours of being out and about shopping, walking and eating, ending with a relaxing dinner and a nice train ride down to Eugene. Except I fell asleep on the train, and now I'm not tired, and I have work at 9:00AM today.

I brought my camera up..but forgot to take it anywhere..so theres no pictures of any stores/scenery/food :(

Total Amount of Damage done (Minus food): $359.44 :/

Final Group Shot of my what I got..minus a few DVD's I bought online and haven't received yet.

Reaching for Mountains

Spending Spree Conclusion..hopefully.

Hopefully this is the conclusion of the rampage that has eaten up my bank account. I've looked at all the Black Friday ad's and have only seen a few random small item's I want..so hopefully I won't spend over $100 then.





and a new case for my Nano.



Little Big Planet is awesome, by the way.

Sweet tooth.

I've had a big sweet tooth lately..and I keep buying random stuff.

Got these within the last week, both are pretty good.

It's all G.O.O.D.

De La Soul, Mos Def, Will.I.Am, Nas, and Kanye West havin fun at G.O.O.D Music's after party.


SEMTEX TV: DELA SOUL, MOS DEF, NAS, WILL I AM, KANYE WEST, DAMON ALBARN ROC THE MIC @ THE G.O.O.D. MUSIC AFTER PARTY, LONDON, UK from DJ SEMTEX on Vimeo

...Almost done wasting my money

Got these and a few other misc. things in the mail last week.. Waiting on 3 more packages, then going to attempt to sell ~$700 worth of stuff, then hopefully be done wasting my money for awhile.

Change.

bored.. and putting off hw...

Election Day

Have you voted yet?



I'm happy to see so many celebrities endorsing Obama. A lot of times celebrities won't speak their political views because it can hurt their public image if people don't agree with them. And it's not just hip hop artists, or African-American's, it's everyone from Jay-Z to Sarah Silverman to Jennifer Anisten to Sacha Baren Cohen.

5 Friends:


5 More Friends:


I've been pretty disappointed with some of the tactics the Republican party has used this year. They have a lot of people misinformed about the other party and Barack Obama himself, leaving them uneducated and jumping to harsh conclusions. I've heard everything from 'He wasn't born in the US' to terrorist claims to 'he doesn't address McCain as 'Mr. McCain,' so he doesn't get my vote.'

On the other side, I just hope there aren't too many people putting all their eggs in this basket and assuming if elected, Barack Obama will completely turn around this country in his four year term. I think some people might have too high of expectations and don't realize that no president is physically capable of fixing every single problem in that amount of time. Instead stand by his desire to implement change. Support him for what he stands for and represents not only as President of the United States, but what he represents for the future of this country.

I'm definitely not very political, but I think this election has been more important than the past several, if not all elections, so I've tried to pay more attention to it. Even if you don't support Barack Obama, the Democratic party, or agree that the political voting system is highly skewed and disoriented, go vote for change. At the very least, we'll have the first ever female vice president in office. (I'm not going to go into whether or not I think shes the best choice for that role)

So go vote. I did.



And if you need an incentive, go vote to get free stuff:
-Starbucks is giving away a free tall cup of coffe
-Ben & Jerry's is giving away 1 scoop of ice cream between 5:00PM-8:00PM
-Krispy Kreme is giving away a free doughnut
-Chick-Fil-A: Free chicken sandwich

Crater Lake Trip

So on 10.19 I went to Crater Lake and a handful of other places for my Geology class.. and over a week later I finally go around to taking a look at the pictures.

Annie's Creek:





Beaver Marsh:


Crater Lake:










Salt Creek Falls:


Diamond Peak:


Mt. Mazama Viewpoint:

And the spending spree continues...

•Bathing Ape Black Crystal Camo Crewneck


•Olevia 2 Series 42" 1080p LCD HDTV
•Philips HTS3565D/37 1000 Watt DVD 1080P HDMI Upconversion Dolby 5.1 Home Theater with iPod Dock



The TV's regular price was $1189.99..I got it for $580.99. The HTS is $229.99 on Amazon.. grabbed that for $69.99. :)

More stuff.

Preparing for the colder weather :O

Random pickups

Recent pickups...









Shoulda had him sign my picture..but its okay.


And finally, my first ever ipod:

808's and Heartbreaks

So, about a month ago Kanye debuted the first single, Love Lockdown, off of his upcoming album, 808's and Heartbreaks and set a release date for December 16.

After hearing Love Lockdown I thought this album would be garbage. The track sounded unfinished and from a technical and production point of view, the song definitely had its holes. It sounded like an unmastered rough cut. Apparently other people (including himself?) thought the same thing, and he redid the song.

This second version had new drums, slight changes here and there in the beat, and he re-sang the whole thing. This new version came out cleaner, crisp and much more complete sounding. People were able to shift their focus from 'this sounds unfinished and bad' to recognizing that Kanye yet again was able to switch up his style and bring something new and unique to the table.

When Love Lockdown first came out, and I heard autotune would be heavily featured on the album, i was disappointed. Kanye is definitely out there having fun right now, which is nice when hes a feature on a track, but I don't I want a full album of that style. Although he will appeal to a wider audience by going the more mainstream sounding route like he did intentionally with Graduation, I would still prefer something more lyrical and creative like his first two albums. I think hes also much more limited on song content if hes not serious and/or using autotune frequently. This has already been proven by the release of Graduation. There were no Two Words', Spaceship's, 'Get Em High's, Gone's or Diamonds from Seirra Leone's on that album. Nonetheless, I'm still confident that he will come out strong with a fairly solid album. After that little rant, you might ask why do I feel that way? He did most of his recording while in Hawaii..which is where Jockin' Jay-Z was spawned, proving that he was in a zone while there. I don't expect this album to be as thought out as College Dropout or Late Registration, but I expect a style that's straightforward and in for your face. Love Lockdown isn't the most aggressive song ever, but it's raw and straight forward like Jockin Jay-Z. I'm also still confident that he has enough gas left in his tank to continue to bring originality to the game at the very least. About a week or two ago, he announced he's pushing up his album to sometime in November, and I look forward to yet another album I can basically listen to front to back.

Rockin the Bells and Seeing Invincible Sounds of Summer

So..What have I been up to..?

1. ROCKIN' THE BELLS



I Worked 14 of 16 days, then on Friday September 5th I worked 8:00AM-1:00PM in Eugene and then hopped on a 3:25PM-5:25PM bus up to Portland. Was able to see a few friends, and relax for a bit, before going to sleep and waking up at 6:00AM on Saturday, and leaving for Rock the Bells 2008 in Quincy (AKA the middle of no where), Washington at 7:00AM. We went straight there and arrived in Quincy around 1:00PM. We were greeted with a giant line, 85 degrees and sunny weather, an almost indescribable venue, and some great music.



There were some classic artists like A Tribe Called Quest and Mos Def, along with some new faces like The Cool Kids as well. We headed out around 10:00PM and drove our ~2 1/2 hour drive to Seattle to check into our room at the Hilton around 12:45AM, Saturday night. After a ~45 minute attempt to find food, we finally landed at a small casino a few blocks up the street from the hotel. We sat down and ordered at about 1:50AM. Both of us got bottled water, and for some reason at 2:00AM they had to take out drinks away..even though neither of us had even opened them yet. We were allowed to drink non alcoholic beverages again around 2:10AM..I'm not sure what kind of rule that was, unless they remove all open drinks from the floor to make sure no one drinks alcohol after 2:00AM. Whatever.





On Sunday we went shopping and ate at the Taphouse Grill, a really nice upscale yet relaxed looking lounge/bar with a great atmosphere and food, but slow service. I got a random combo of food consisting of a halibut burger, Parker Sushi roll, and watermelon lemonade. The slice of watermelon tasted amazing after soaking in the lemonade for a bit. Then we headed back to Portland around 4:30PM. We arrived back at home around 7:15PM, and then at 8:00PM I headed to downtown Portland to sit on a train from 9:10PM-11:45PM, then go to work from 8:00AM-5:00PM on Monday.




2. SEEING INVINCIBLE SOUNDS OF SUMMER



Then last Friday I went to N.E.R.D & Common's Seeing Invincible Sounds of Summer concert at the Cuthbert Amphitheater down here in Eugene. I wasn't too sure how much fun I'd have before the concert because I hadn't listened to any Common music in awhile..especially his old stuff. I was more familiar with N.E.R.D's material, but like Common, their older material was hazy.

I held these doubts (especially after sound ussues with the openers..) all the way up until N.E.R.D. set foot on the stage, grabbed them and immediately smashed them while coming out to Anti Matter. Running through the majority of their new Seeing Sounds tracks like Spaz and You Know What, while mixing in old hits such as Rockstar and Lapdance. Their set was filled with nonstop energy, yelling, jumping, and Pharrell's weird dances. (Videos available here.) If this show had been over after N.E.R.D's set, I would have been completely satisfied.

Enter Center Stage: Common.



Common's set was more relaxed, but still full of energy and fun. It was a more 'controlled' energy, and less Spazzing if you want to. He ran through his catalog well, covering tracks from every album. One ~13 minute medley was my particular favorite. He covered everything from Universal Mind Control to Timbaland - Way I Are, to Busta - Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See to Drivin Me Wild. After a mix of old, new, and brand new joints, he finally closed the show with a freestyle, mentioning everything from MLK Blvd to Taylors Bar & Grill to UO to the weed in Oregon.

Was it worth $32 before fees? Yes, definitely.
Would I pay to go see the exact same show one more time? Yes.
Should you try to go if they come around to your city? Yes.
Should I go to sleep now? Yes.