Andy Gapin

Pretty decent show last night. Good mix of stuff. There isn’t really a whole lot to say about it, so here’s the music!

Source: 90.3 The Core

I actually saw this a couple weeks ago, but I wanted to watch the original again before saying anything about it since it had been a while. I wish I hadn’t. It made me hate this even more. It was awful. Everything that the original had going for it was thrown out the window. There was no real connection between the characters like there was in the original. There was no real reason for the killer other than some dude just going completely crazy. The original had so much more than that going on. He wasn’t just obsessed with a student, all of the characters were connected and there was reason why they were each targeted.

The original was a half decent slasher that fit the standard when it was made and I guess they were trying to make a slasher that fit more with current trends on horror, but they completely failed. There was no suspense and there was very little gore. All of the original’s comic relief was also left behind.  I really don’t know what they were thinking. Don’t bother wasting your time with this.

Rating: D

I caved.

I really wanted to hate this thing. When Steve Jobs first announced the iPhone at MacWorld 2007, I thought it was absolutely silly to have no buttons on a phone. And the fact that the system was so closed and there is no removeable media wasn’t helping anything either. So later that year when it came time to buy a new phone, I went with the AT&T Tilt, a Windows Mobile phone with a slideout QWERTY keyboard and GPS made by HTC. It’s a really great phone. I tweaked the hell out of it–I won’t go into details–but at the end of the day, Windows Mobile is slow, ugly, and slow. It needs a complete overhaul. I got sick of how cumbersome the software was to use and started looking at Google’s Android, but even a few months after the first phone, the T-Mobile G1, has been released, I think it still needs about another year worth of work before it is really ready for primetime.

About that same time, I was playing around with my friend’s iPhone a bit. I found that on my very first try, I could type out a message almost as fast and just as accurately as I could on the QWERTY keyboard on my Tilt. I had a series of other things I thought would be problems with the iPhone, but this was the biggest and it turned out to be a non-issue. Then I started looking through the AppStore, there’s an application for everything! I also realized that even though my Tilt had a microSDHC slot, I never swapped out the card or needed extra space so this wasn’t an issue either. At this point, with the overall slickness of the user interface which is a complete departure from any other smartphone I’ve ever used, I was sold. Very sold.

So a few weeks later, I picked one up for myself and after using it for a month, I can easily say that this is the single best electronic device I have ever used. It’s actually not even a close call. I can do pretty much anything you can imagine with this thing, a lot more than you can do with any other smartphone other there. It’s incredible really.

I generally like things to not be dumbed down for me, but the slickness of the user interface and overall snapiness make it such a joy to use that I don’t even miss some of the more advanced things that Apple likes to hide from its users. And when I do, I can usually get to them via a jailbreak application. So far, I have found very little that I couldn’t pull off with my Tilt if I wanted, but this just does it many levels better and faster. In comparison, the only thing that I don’t have on my iPhone that I had on my Tilt is voice based navigation, but I’m pretty convinced that this will be coming soon through the AppStore.

Even the minor details that Apple added in are wonderful. For example, the screen. The auto-adjusting of brightness based on ambient light is amazing. On my Tilt, I had to map a button to be able to easily adjust how bright the screen was. I had to use it all day long. Since I got the iPhone, I haven’t had to adjust it once. When I’m laying in bed at night, it’s perfect, doesn’t hurt my eyes at all. When I’m in the office, perfect. Outside in direct light, perfect.

Seriously, this thing is always in my hand. I use it constantly. Battery life has been bit of a complaint for a lot of people, but I find no trouble getting through a full day with a lot of usage and I think it could be possible to get through an entire weekend on a single charge just by turning off 3G and wifi and being mindful of data and GPS usage. Really it’s about the same, if not slightly better than, my Tilt.

There are a few minor complaints that I have with it, but they really are minor. Lack of a flash for the camera, lack of video recording, lack of any ability to do any photo album management on the phone itself, and the fact that multitasking is not available for third party apps. Most of my other complaints that I would have had, includind lack of copy and paste, have been fixed simply by jailbreaking the phone.

I think my biggest problem with it now is actually that I’ve gotten completely addicted to the AppStore. I’m constantly looking for new apps to install and mess around with. I think I’ve downloaded like sixty or so of them so far.

I actually don’t use it at as a music player much. I stick with my three year old iPod for everything but the gym. So the iPhone is only loaded up with maybe 20 or 30 albums to get me through my workouts. However, if they could put out an iPhone with as much or more storage than my iPod (60GB), I’d be all over it. However, when I do use it as a music player, I find that I absolutely hate coverflow. I think it’s really annoying to go through more than just a handful of albums that way. And most of my music doesn’t have artwork with it so it kind of defeats the purpose.

I feel like a complete nerdy fanboy for liking this thing the way that I do, but Apple really outdid themselves. I know it’s been two years since it was first announced so I’m a little late, but I can’t get over how obsessed I have become with this thing.

Here are my favorite apps so far:

• Facebook
• Twitterfon – Great free Twitter app
• eWallet – Stores  and encrypts passwords and all kinds of personal information
• Bankarama – Basically just a simple way to keep track of expenses and the money in your bank account
• Guitar Toolkit – Tuner, metronome, chord finder and more
• iMapMyFitness – A nice little interface for mapmyrun.com. Includes GPS tracking for when you’re running outside and can upload your run right to your account
• Toodledo – Interface for toodledo.com, an excellent todo list site
• Now Playing – Great app for getting movie showtimes, reviews, and information and managing your Netflix queue

I have a ton more that I use everyday, but these apps really stand out as being insanely useful. I also was able to set up FTP, MySQL, and text-editing very easily so that if I need to quickly troubleshoot a bug in the software that I develop and manage for my radio station, I’m ready to go. It’s actually a lot easier than it was with my Tilt.

This was one of the best films I have ever seen in my life. I only wish that I hadn’t taken so long to actually see it. Besides the fact that Brad Pitt was ridiculously good, it’s just an amazing story from beginning to end. I’m going to have to put the short story at the top of my reading list because I want more. It’s one of those stories like Forrest Gump where you’re just completely sucked in and in utter amazement the entire time. At times it’s heartwarming and at others, horribly saddening.

The movie is close to three hours long, but it never once felt like it. I actually wanted some parts to keep going. But it may have helped that the nature of the story made it easy to keep a good mental pace of where things where at just by seeing how young he was at any given time. The one thing that I think would have helped the story just a little would have been to mention his age more throughout the movie. At only a couple times did they explicitly give an age or a year. Most of the rest of the movie, you’d have to make assumptions based on the current events, the clothing styles, or the cars. It wasn’t terribly bad, but a few times I found myself just wondering how old he was.

The only issue with the story itself that I have is why at the end, Benjamin would have shrunk back down to an infant. Granted, his medical condition was so out there to begin with that making this kind of sense of it may be silly, but he was born the size of a newborn so why would he go back to that? Why would his bones actually be shrinking? I think that his outward appearance becoming younger otherwise is a little more believable than his internal organs shrinking. Throughout the movie, it was clear that his mind was aging and developing. He was a mature boy growing up, probably because of the way he was treated because of his condition, but he clearly was maturing mentally and not going the other direction. At the end, he even grew to have dementia. His mind was not getting younger, why were his bones? And why would I even question this?

But really, other than that, this movie was absolutely phenomenal. At first it seemed a little odd that the story was being read during Hurricane Katrina, but everything eventually was brought together really nice. I won’t go into some of the symbolism so that I can avoid giving too much away, but it was very well done.

The acting, the story, the cinematography, directing, producing, visuals, everything. Just wow. Go see this while it’s still in theaters.

Rating: A+

For pretty much no reason, I felt like making a few little lists and posting them. Maybe it’s just because I want to update this thing more often. I don’t know.

Current pluses:

• snowboarding
• How I Met Your Mother
• iPhone (more on this coming later)
• 2009
• being in the best physical shape that I’ve been in in almost ten years
• high level of productivity and busyness in my life over the past month and a half
• cat

Current minuses:

• the current lineup posted so far for South By Southwest

Horror remakes that I actually like a lot:

• The Amityville Horror
• The Hills Have Eyes
• My Bloody Valentine
• Halloween
• Dawn Of The Dead

Only bands I’ve been listening to recently (actually this is pretty standard):

• The Replacements
• Minus The Bear
• Gaslight Anthem
• Sundowner
• The Lawrence Arms
• Challenger

I just got in from the Brian Fallon show at The Court Tavern in New Brunswick. As should be expected from any show at The Court, it started more than two hours late and didn’t end until around 1:30am. It’s kind of annoying when you were already sleepy before you even left you house to go out, but it was well worth it.

To be honest, I was really hoping that he was just going to play his own stuff (some of which is on his MySpace page) instead of a ton of Gaslight Anthem songs. This hope was not fulfilled, but I think I’m okay with that. The set was almost entirely all Gaslight Anthem songs played acoustically, most of which were newer songs from The ’59 Sound. However, the songs sounded absolutely amazing. They are still just great songs to listen to. It doesn’t matter if they are live or recorded,  with a full band or just acoustic. They are great. I can really appreciate that.

The only real negative thing that I have to say about Brian’s set tonight was his storytelling. I generally think that he is a really great storyteller through his songs, but in between when he is just bantering with the crowd, the stories are awful and aren’t even told well. At one point he was trying to tell some story about Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen that made very little sense. All I got from it was that The Boss has had sex with most 35-45 year old women from the Jersey Shore. He did tell one interesting story though about how after they played on Conan a few weeks ago a lot of their friends came up to him and said that he looked really nervous, to which he flat out replied that he looked nervous because he was flipping out about the fact that he had never been on TV before. I’d say that’s pretty understandable.

The two opening bands were half decent. The Royal Sons actually opened the Gaslight Anthem show a few weeks ago at The Court as well. They sounded slightly better this time around. I think that last show may have actually been their first. They have some good stuff going on, but they sound really sloppy still. Look out for these guys in about six months though after they play some more shows and tighten up a bit. I wish I had taken a picture of the guitarist’s beard to put up here, but I was too far to get a good shot with my phone. The thing was amazing. I completely have beard envy over it. The other opener was a band called Minnesotas Calling. I think they are just starting out as well. A little boring, but could have some potential.

Anyway, here are a few really crappy camera phone pictures…

Last night, I was out at a bar in the city with a few friends and a discussion came up regarding the sexuality of a guy on the other side of the bar. He was pretty muscular and talking to a girl, but exploded with the vibe of not quite being ready to admit the truth to himself just yet. After a short while, we decided that the only way to find out was to send someone over to walk by and see if he checked them out.

None of us are really sure why we cared so much. It didn’t matter at all. We just needed an answer at this point.

Somehow, I was selected as the guy to do the walk by. The girl we sent, nothing. No acknowledgement whatsoever. But me, yeah, he looked me all up and down. It was quite flattering actually. But I couldn’t help feeling a little dirty afterwards. Here I was, a relatively straight man, trying to get a guy to check him out solely to prove a point. I almost felt bad, like I was duping him or something. I felt like one of those girls that go out on Friday and Saturday nights with the intention of being hit on by guys and being bought drinks all night. Then at the end of the night, they just go home to their boyfriends having had no intention of ever actually speaking to any of those guys again.

This got me thinking about two things…

One, why do gay guys seem to be way more into me than girls are? This is not even close to being the first time that I’ve received interest from a guy. Do I give off a vibe that I’m into men or something? I realize that I’m not the most masculine dude out there, but do I come across as being that gay?

And two, I think it’s sad when people have trouble just coming out about who they are. I have a couple friends that I think are afraid to come out of the closet. I feel really bad for them. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable, but at the same time, I just want to scream at them to be who they are and be happy about it. Quit trying to hold it in!

Last night, I was out at a bar in the city with a few friends and a discussion came up regarding the sexuality of a guy on the other side of the bar. He was pretty muscular and talking to a girl, but exploded with the vibe of not quite being ready to admit the truth to himself just yet. After a short while, we decided that the only way to find out was to send someone over to walk by and see if he checked them out.

None of us are really sure why we cared so much. It didn’t matter at all. We just needed an answer at this point.

Somehow, I was selected as the guy to do the walk by. The girl we sent, nothing. No acknowledgement whatsoever. But me, yeah, he looked me all up and down. It was quite flattering actually. But I couldn’t help feeling a little dirty afterwards. Here I was, a relatively straight man, trying to get a guy to check him out solely to prove a point. I almost felt bad, like I was duping him or something. I felt like one of those girls that go out on Friday and Saturday nights with the intention of being hit on by guys and being bought drinks all night. Then at the end of the night, they just go home to their boyfriends having had no intention of ever actually speaking to any of those guys again.

This got me thinking about two things…

One, why do gay guys seem to be way more into me than girls are? This is not even close to being the first time that I’ve received interest from a guy. Do I give off a vibe that I’m into men or something? I realize that I’m not the most masculine dude out there, but do I come across as being that gay?

And two, I think it’s sad when people have trouble just coming out about who they are. I have a couple friends that I think are afraid to come out of the closet. I feel really bad for them. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable, but at the same time, I just want to scream at them to be who they are and be happy about it. Quit trying to hold it in!

Last night’s show was probably one of the least memorable ones I’ve ever done. It wasn’t even bad, I just had very little interest in it last night. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Here are the jamz…

Source: 90.3 The Core

I can’t think of the last movie that I was this skeptical about before seeing. The original My Bloody Valentine, while not particularly being a great movie, is one of my favorites and since horror remakes can be so hit or miss, I really had no idea what to expect.

I ended up going to see it in 2D instead of 3D because the 3D show was sold out and we had nothing better to do. That being said, it was very obvious what parts were intended to be 3D and, despite the fact that I had read that Patrick Lussier had wanted to do something more with the third dimension to actually give the movie some depth, those parts seemed pretty cheesy. A mine shaft produces a great environment for use of the third dimension without needing to resort to predictable eye-popping style theatrics…which they did anyway. I’ll have to go see it in 3D sometime to see if there was some better use of the third dimension despite the obvious.

The entire vibe of the movie got that modern Hollywood horror movie touch added to it and the story got reworked a bit, losing a little something in the process. They completely lost the meaning on the Valentine’s Day aspect of the movie. Sure they movie took place on Valentine’s Day and there were chocolate heart boxes with human hearts in them, but there was supposed to be more to it. Valentine’s Day was supposed to be played off as the reason for the killings, not just a coincidence.

In terms of being an entertaining slasher, it got there right off the bat with plenty of gore and it wasn’t too far into the movie before we got a nice full-frontal scene. They played down the jumpiness factor that Hollywood loves to go for which I definitely appreciate. I just find the attempts to scare people by having things and characters jumping out to be completely overused and rarely effective.

I think I prefer the low-budget cult aspect and storyline of the original much more than the Hollywood style of this one, but overall, I still liked it a lot. I’m going to put it alongside The Amityville Horror as another remake that I love for a completely different reason than I love the original.

Rating: B

Update: A friend of mine saw this in 3D and said that there was a lot of depth used throughout the movie to show distances and it wasn’t just used for the stuff flying at your face thing. I’m going to check this out in 3D soon. Look for an update.