Andy Gapin

Over the weekend, I attended a BBQ at a friend’s house in Skillman, NJ. His house is on a gigantic property that is partially a farm and has a pond and everything. It’s a pretty solid place to have an outdoor gathering. This was my first time at his place, so of course he had to give me the grand tour. The tour included a walk through the woods to a little dam that was pretty cool to chill at for a while.

Unexpectedly, the dam was right next to Skillman Village which is an old abandoned mental institution that was originally opened as a treatment center for epileptics around 1900. A lot of the buildings have been demolished in the last few years, but apparently, there used to be around 100 of them or so and the entire operation was self-sustaining. I had never heard of it and my camera was with me so I suggested that we check it out. My friend had never been inside so it seemed like a good idea…despite the fact that I was wearing flip-flops instead of proper shoes.

Even though I had my camera with me, I wasn’t really prepared for this. We only went into one building and it was quite dark, we didn’t have any flashlights since it was the middle of the day and this was unplanned and I didn’t have a flash with me. I ended up having to light a lot of the photos with the LED light on my phone.

Here are some of the photos I walked away with. I’d really like to go back sometime soon and explore more of the area.

I want to do a full review of Google Music Beta, but I’m not there yet. I just got my invite the other day and kicked off the upload a little more than 36 hours ago. About 4500 songs have been uploaded so far.

The upload process is kind of annoying if you have a lot of music. I installed the music manager program on the Windows virtual machine I already keep running on my Linux server (I need the VM for Audiogalaxy [which apparently relaunched last year as a site that streams your music from your computer to any device. It's solid] and AirVideo). Once installed and pointed to my music, the application started scanning through to see what I have. The music manager found about 66,000 songs and immediately started uploading. The uploads seem to go fairly quick and songs immediately appear in Google Music for your listening pleasure. The problem is that the music manager made no indication of the 20,000 song limit at this point, it just started uploading.

After a while (and after the application crashed and I restarted it), the music manager eventually said that all my songs would not be uploaded because there were too many. That wouldn’t really be a problem considering that Google is very upfront about the 20,000 song limit. The problem is that you don’t get any control over what doesn’t get uploaded. It seems as though the folders are being chosen somewhat at random.

So what it seems like happens is that Google will upload 20k songs and then stop. In Google Music, you can delete stuff, so I would presume I could do that and then it would upload more. But this means I’m uploading stuff I don’t want and working against my Comcast data cap for music that I don’t really want in the cloud (if it means I can’t have other things; I would put it all there if I could).

The music manager does let you add multiple folders to upload and watch, so I could just go through and pick out the artists/albums I want and add them, but that would be an ungodly tedious affair and annoying to do. To be honest, the way Google should handle this is to have the music manager application first upload a list of songs available to be uploaded and let me choose what to upload. If I have less than 20,000 songs, I could just tell it to upload everything in one click, but if I have more, I would be presented with my entire library and I could choose what I wanted. And the I would be able to change this at any time (on the fly). If I decide that I don’t want a certain album and do want something else, I could go in, uncheck that album and check the other one. Then the manager would upload the new album and the old one would be deleted (from Google Music). This could all be done from the browser without me needing to choose specific folders on my computer.

As far as playing music goes, I haven’t done much yet. I have an iPhone, so there’s no app to use for it, but it seems that Google Music does work in mobile Safari on both my iPhone and iPad which is neat. I won’t get to take advantage of the caching, but I can still control the music using the controls in the multitasking tray thing.

I’ll post more about it later.

Here’s a new shirt I got from shirt.woot.com. I actually picked it up while it was on The Reckoning during the last Woot Off. I almost bought it the day that it was actually the shirt for the day, but I held off…only to be convinced to buy it a few days later for an extra $2. Oh well!

Every Friday the 13th, a group of friends heads over to my place and we watch some horror flicks. This is something we’ve been doing for roughly 7 or 8 years now. Generally, we have a set list of movies prepared beforehand, but last week, our planning failed us. We got through Piranha, which was awesome, but then it was on to Dinoshark. Unfortunately, Dinoshark nearly put us all to sleep. It was quite boring so we aborted it and decided to see what Netflix had for us to stream. After a few minutes, we all decided on ThanksKilling, hands down the most ridiculous sounding of all the movies we considered.

ThanksKilling bills itself as being the “ultimate low-budged experience.” That’s not far off form the truth, this is extremely low-budget. In fact, I’m pretty sure that there’s currently enough cash in my wallet right now to cover the entire production budget for ThanksKilling. Whether or not it’s the ultimate experience, I don’t know, but the entertainment level was off the charts. There’s that cliché saying “it’s so bad it’s good.” That is not ThanksKilling. This is head-hurtingly bad, but if you take this review as a warning to not view this flick, you’re making a mistake and missing the point. But I will say this, ThanksKilling demands to be watched in a room full of people that are able and willing to Mystery Science Theater 3000 the hell out of it.

The premise of ThanksKilling is surprisingly simple, a foul-mouthed, shit-talking, and axe-weilding turkey kills people. It’s that simple. There’s a slight explanation, but between awful acting and fact that nothing really makes any sense, the explanation is rather pointless. But yes, it’s a killer turkey on Thanksgiving. The turkey itself is a poorly-made, rubber-looking puppet that is somehow able to speak English and no one is bothered by this fact. That being said, the English-speaking abilities of this turkey work in our favor, as what makes this film actually worth watching is the horrible shit talking and one-liners from the turkey. Lines like “gobble gobble, motherfucker” and “you just got stuffed” are  littered throughout the entire film with reckless abandon. It’s quite wonderful.

ThanksKilling doesn’t spare the killing, there is plenty of it and much of it seems to have no real reason to it…which is the best kind for a horror flick. However, the characters seem rather unaffected by the deaths of others, they seem to only care about surviving themselves and even when family members are killed, they show little distress or sadness. It’s hard to tell if this is due to extremely poor acting or a poor script. Probably both.

One of the oddest things about ThanksKilling is that there is a certain JonBenét Ramsey joke that made it into the movie that completely throws you off. ThanksKilling was made in 2009 so a JonBenét Ramsey joke is neither topical nor edgy. However, what makes this joke worth noting is that it is said on three separate occasions in the movie. The second time the joke was made, our entire room was left completely dumbfounded, yet the characters in the film seemed to make no acknowledgement to the fact that roughly 20 minutes earlier, the same girl said the same joke. At first, it seemed as though this may have been a major editing goof that somehow made it into the final version of the film, but when the joke happened a third time, it was clear that this was intentional. I really don’t get this, to be honest, but it’s little things like this that make ThanksKilling such an crowd-pleaser.

There is plenty more ridiculousness worth mentioning, but much of what this film has to offer is the shock value of it all as it happens. I wouldn’t want to take that away from you.

Entertainment value (with friends): A
Quality grade: D-

Last week, my fiancée and I went to a Somerset Patriots game after work with her family. Unfortunately, her and her family got bored after the fourth inning and wanted to leave, but it was fun while it lasted. I hope four innings isn’t enough to count as my one baseball game for the year.

Anyway, to get to the point, I brought the camera with me and snapped some photos. All of them except for the zoomed out views of the entire infield were taken with my 70-200mm f/4L lens.

Piranha is a wonderfully gory piece of entertainment that I should have seen while in theaters. Snoozing on this one was a mistake. Piranha is pretty much the Snakes on a Plane of the aquatic movies…only it’s better than that, it’s more of what Snakes on a Plane should of been instead of what Snakes on a Plane actually was.

Piranha marries together horror and comedy in the perfect way with just the right amount of each to make it much more of a horror comedy than a campy horror flick. Half the hilarity comes from the straight up ridiculous approach taken that makes it clear that the makers of this film were in on the joke in just the same way that the makers of Eight Legged Freaks were.  In fact, a reference to Eight Legged Freaks couldn’t be more appropriate for Piranha.

The gore is not rationed out lightly, instead the blood, guts, and dismemberment are poured on so heavily that it puts Starship Troopers to shame. Seriously, this film should replace the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan and become the new gold standard of bloody references.

When Piranha isn’t dumping gallon after gallon of blood onto the screen–which is most of the movie–it’s pretty much softcore porn. There are plenty of boobs and naked girls to go around, enough to make you double check the disc to make sure it’s not a Girls Gone Wild video.

The only real knock against Piranha is that they had Christopher Lloyd on board and completely squandered him. When you have Mr. Lloyd at your disposal, you can’t waste it! You need to use him to the fullest extent. He should be in every scene. Scratch that. He should be on screen at all times. Unfortunately, this was not the case. He was little more than a cameo in the Piranha.

That mistake aside, Piranha is just great and super entertaining. Watch this. Now.

Entertainment score: A

If you follow Judd Apatow on Twitter, you were probably more excited for Bridesmaids to be released so that the retweets would stop rather than actually being excited to see it. That’s not to say that the film wasn’t presented in a way to make one want to see it, it’s just that…well, there were a lot of retweets.

Bridesmaids declares itself as a chick flick (for the record, I don’t mind a good chick flick. I went to see Confessions of a Shopaholic in the theater by myself), but it doesn’t take much to realize, even before you see it, that it breaks the mold a bit in an attempt to be a female-casted version of the Hangover. Sure, it’s a wedding movie, but it’s not really a wedding movie. We barely meet the groom and the wedding-related stuff is barely important, it serves more so as a conduit for a story about maturing childhood friendships, early mid-life crisis, and brides-to-be shitting in the middle of the street while wearing a wedding dress. Bridesmaids is, at times, a raunchy movie that reminds us that girls aren’t always prissy and proper…not that we all need such a reminder. Some of us were already well aware of this fact and don’t doubt the ability of women to be funny.

Kristen Wiig does what she does best with Bridesmaids which is good because she plays the only character that really gets much development. This sort of leaves her to carry most of the movie herself with only little bits of help from the rest of the cast. Luckily, she’s up to the task, for the most part. The biggest problem with the Bridesmaids is that it felt like it was a bit up and down. The film is mostly a series of lulls joined together by brief periods of hilarity. It felt as though Wiig and her writing partner Annie Mumolo had a bunch of ideas that would have been great for a series of SNL sketches, but then just tried to throw filler in between them. The funny parts are really funny, but there is a lot of fat that could have been cut away to produce something that was leaner and more consistently funny. Kristen Wiig is great at sketch comedy so she really makes these sections of the film work, but in between, I just felt myself waiting for the next sketch to hit.

Bridesmaids is worth seeing if you were already convinced that you wanted to see it. It’s worth the two hours of your time, but if you were on the fence before reading this because what you saw in the trailers wasn’t enough to completely sell you, you’re best waiting for a Netflix rental in a few months.

Rating: B

Today was my third official half marathon. It should have been my fourth, but last month’s RU Unite Half Marathon was an abbreviated course due to some flooding. Actually, the shortening of that course was the reason for signing up for today’s race in the first place, I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.

If you looked outside at all today, you would know how gloomy the weather was around here. Luckily, during the race, there wasn’t much active rain, just a constant misting. Though, to be honest, I don’t think I would have minded some rain. I was hot and sweaty anyway so it probably would have just felt good. Besides, the course was already completely soaked as it had been pouring overnight. More rain probably wouldn’t have hurt much.

The Superhero Half Marathon is run through a double loop course in Morristown, NJ and is in its second year. The race is a rather low-budget affair, but is still organized well-enough that that actually becomes a bit of it’s charm. The race is open to both individual runners and two person relay teams.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from myself. My ankle still isn’t 100%, though it’s getting close, and I wasn’t as trained as I would have liked. My training pace has been considerably slower than where I was six months ago, but my speed, stamina, and power are starting to come back a bit. Slowly. My goal for today was simply to beat my first half marathon time (1:47:11) by a couple minutes and finish under 1:45. I figured that shouldn’t be too hard.

I started off the race right near the front, but I didn’t take off nearly as quickly as most of the other people near me. I didn’t really think about this beforehand, but one of the weird things about running a race that also has a relay is that the relay runners just kind of take off since they don’t need to conserve much energy. This threw me off a slight bit as I was looking around at people passing me when I felt I was keeping a decent pace.

Pacing myself was actually a bit interesting because I ran without my iPhone. This is not something I’m used to at all. I always run with music and RunKeeper to keep track of my pace. I can deal without the music because I generally tune it out while running, but I’m still terrible at pacing myself so I rely on RunKeeper as a crutch to let me know where I’m at. However, with the wet weather and the likelihood of more rain, I didn’t want to have my phone strapped to my arm so I decided to just run without it. Early on, this was a bit weird, but I very quickly grew to appreciate running with just me and the course and nothing else. I didn’t have RunKeeper chiming in my ear and telling me some pace that would have just cause me to feel like I was either running too slowly or was way ahead of my target and therefore could ease up. The course itself didn’t have any clocks anywhere so when I finished, I really had absolutely no idea what the time was going to be. I had about a 10 minute window in my head of what to expect. But I really did like this. I was able to just run and adjust my pace solely on how I was feeling and not based around the clock. To be honest, I think this helped.

The course is interesting because it’s two laps around a big 6.7 mile loop (the second lap is 6.4 miles as the finish line isn’t exactly at the start line). This is kind of a double-edged sword. It’s cool because when you start the second lap, you know what to expect. You know the course ahead and you can use this to your advantage. However, it’s also a little boring in the second lap because there isn’t new scenery to look at and you sort of dread certain uphill sections of the course for the second time around.

The course is billed as being fast and flat, but I felt like it was anything but that. Somehow the course felt as though it defied physics and the entire loop was uphill. It was like running in an Escher painting. It just didn’t make sense. Hills are an interesting thing because I destroy short steep hills and actually pick up speed on them, but longer, more drawn out hills completely kill me. The course had mix of these so some were easier to handle than others.

Overall, I had a love/hate relationship with the course, but I would definitely run it again.

Early in the race, I didn’t feel great. I started fatiguing very early and started to dread the miles ahead. By the time I got through the first 5k, I was not feeling good at all. But somewhere after that, I picked it up and got a boost of energy. I ran the middle of the race strong and I even stayed strong through most of the second half. I think I actually felt better later in the race than I did early on. Still, I was glad to see the finish line when I got there.

When I finally got close enough to see the clock at the finish line, this was the first indication of my time or pace that I had all race. I was expecting somewhere in the low 1:40s, but I was elated to see that I was actually at 1:37. I hauled ass to the finish line and finished in an all out sprint at a very respectable 1:37:14 (79 out of 1160 finishers). To be honest, I’m extremely happy with this time. It’s more than four minutes slower than personal record from Disney and at 7:25 minute/mile, my pace was actually just slower than my training pace was for Disney. Still, given the injury problems and everything there is to take into account, today was a very good day for me. I couldn’t be happier, I mean, come on, I was just looking to run 1:45.

So now that this race is finished, I’m going to take a couple weeks to let my ankle finish healing and then it’s time to start training for the Philly marathon. I’ve got a nice long training program laid out so I can try to run it strong. Exciting!

Vibram Five Finger KSO total mileage: 420.26

Today was just a quick little 2 mile run around the block to loosen up for tomorrow’s half marathon. I ran without headphones and my iPhone so I don’t know what my time was, but it felt good to just take it easy and go.

Vibram Five Finger KSO total mileage: 409.16

It turns out that many people aren’t a fan of zom-coms/zombedies/zombie comedies these days. Many think the sub-genre of the zombie sub-genre has gone too far. I disagree. I like to laugh and I like gore and I like zombies. When it comes the matter, sometimes I feel rather Plessy about it and sometimes I feel more Ferguson; that is, sometimes I like my gore and comedy integrated and sometimes I’m in a more “separate, but equal” mood. A well-done zombie comedy is a nice way to bring on the zombie-goodness while still providing laughs for both myself and my fiancée who isn’t big horror fan.

Aaah! Zombies does a great job of this and it brings an entirely unique idea to the table that I’ve never seen before…or even heard of. The flick takes on the perspective of the zombies instead of the still living. Some movies like I, Zombie have been based upon the premise of following the transformation into a zombie, but this is different. Except for about the first five to ten minutes of the movie, Aaah! Zombies is based wholly around a group of friends (and a random weirdo they pick up along the way) who have already become zombies. The transformation takes about thirty seconds.

At first, they don’t even know they are zombies, they are walking around and interacting with each other, but the reality is, they are in fact the undead and the rest of the world sees them as such. This is actually handled rather well. Most of the time, the movie is in color and we see our friends as looking like normal people and moving at a normal speed. Sure, they may sustain some injuries along the way that they can’t feel, but for the most part, they look normal to themselves and each other. However, many scenes flash us a black and white glimpse of what they really look like to others. They are slow-moving, decaying zombies complete with groans and the desire to eat flesh. Obviously, there is a bit of a discrepancy here–the undead are simply unable to move at the same pace as the living–and this is handled perfectly. To the undead, the rest of the world appears to be moving at a breakneck speed around them. People walk and talk super fast.

This is the kind of thing that could easily become a mess and not work at all, but it’s done right and the writing and comedic performances are done more than well enough to pull the whole thing off. It’s actually done so well, that you barely even know it’s a low-budget affair.

In an odd way, and for lack of a better way to describe it, the film is almost like a mash-up between Re-Animator and Clerks. It’s mostly just friends hanging out and being zombies, but it borrows some ideas from movies like Re-Animator that aren’t strict with their zombies. For example, the undead in Aaah! Zombies can function without their bodies and their limbs can be controlled even after being detached from the rest of the body. If you’re stickler for the rules of being undead, you may be somewhat peeved, but it’s all in good fun.

This is definitely worth checking out and with it currently being available on Netflix Instant Watch, you really have no excuse.

Rating: A-

Here’s the trailer: