Dangerous Business

Yesterday was the opening of Transformers 2, all across America. Everyone was flooding to see it, including me and my two best friends.

We were thinking that we were just going to go down, and be a couple minutes early to the theater, and get our tickets there. My friend Lauren told us that we should buy our tickets online before hand, because it was most likely going to be sold out. This seemed logical, so we did just that.

Because of this, we were a couple minutes late, but no big deal. I drove a little faster than I probably should have, but it wasn’t anything too worrysome. We stopped in Chatsworth on the way to get pizza, because we hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Of course when we pulled up, there was a line of cars at the drive through. Luckily it didn’t take too long for the guy to come to us and ask what we wanted. We ordered our pizza, and he said it would be about 5 minutes.

5 or 10 minutes later we pull out of the parking lot on the way to Dalton. We’re running a little behind, but still not too bad. We figured we would have time because they always show 45 minutes of previews before the movies anyway.

We arrive at the movie theater and walk in, there is a mile long line up to the counter to order tickets. We smile, because we got ours an hour before… Then we read that you have to get your actual ticket at the counter. The Fandango page is just a place holder, really.

5 minutes later, we get up and get our tickets. We go into the theater, and they are just starting the previews. Not too bad, we wound up timing it just about right.

Only problem was… the show was over sold. That’s right, the movie theater sold more tickets than they had seats for. Well, no biggie… we’ll just sit on the stairs like the other people are doing. More people came in after us, and did the same thing. We settle in for our two and a half hours.

Clint turns to me 30 seconds later and says, “This is probably a fire hazard.”
I smile, knowing all too well that he is correct, and hoping no one will say anything about it. The previews end and it doesn’t look like they’re going to make us move. I was quite happy.

20 seconds later, an employee rounds the corner of the stairs and looks up. Aha.
He makes his way up the stairs stopping at the people in front of us and telling them something. They slowly make their way down the steps. I know what’s coming, but I don’t want to believe it.
He makes it up to us, “Find a seat, or get out. You can’t sit here.”

They make an offer at the bottom of the stairs saying that if we can’t find seats, they’ll let us get a refund for our tickets. We opt to do that after much talking and decision making. We’re not the quickest decision makers in the world.
So, we head out front and get an “IOU” type thing from the theater, so we can go back any time within a month and watch any movie playing.

Alright, well… that sucked. I know what happens in the first 20 seconds of the film, but nothing else. We mope around in the car for a few minutes, eating pizza, then head into the mall. We walk around for about 45 minutes or so, then head on home. We make a split decision (shocker!), to go to Wal*Mart.
Detour ensues, we walk around there for a while… hang out in electronics… then we leave.

We stop at a convenient store to get something to drink, only to soon realize that they apparently only like beer in the south, and nothing else. Everything there was just… not too enticing… so we split.

Convenient store number two. We pull in and five people are standing outside the door smoking their life away. The lady that works there, kind of gives us a cold stare… wondering why we’re there to interrupt her break. Again, the inside is filled with beer. At least they had a slightly bigger selection of other products.
I pay with a 20, and the lady looks at me coldly again. I just smiiiiile…

Finally we’re on the road again. We are almost home… five minutes out, and there is a truck parked in the other lane. He flashes his lights at me, and I just think that he thinks I had my high beams on, so I don’t pay any attention. Right before I pass by him, I see this woman walking on the white line and I swear, I almost hit her. I swerved (what felt like) pretty sharply away from her and then put my breaks on. It scared me half to death.

Tonight was just… bleh. So was this post. It doesn’t seem to flow very well. Anyway… yeah…
Maybe Friday, I’ll get to see Transformers… Ha…

Why is it that I get so much spam here on my journal? I get pretty much one spam message a day. They tend to not attack the older posts, but the latest two or three posts, they just bombard.
The latest spam I got, was for an escort service in the Ukraine or something. Classy.

So, I am going to keep this post updated on how much spam I get for this post, alone. I would post all the spam in the comments, but I am afraid that would draw attention to the site and flood it with even more. So, I’ll just write what the spam was about in an edit of this post.

Ah, the joys.

Numero uno:
Pretty good post. I just came by your blog and wanted to say that I’ve really enjoyed browsing your posts. … — Mary

I go in, get the case… walk up to the front counter. There is another woman standing there in line as well. We wait around for about 5 minutes. No one. The phone starts ringing… No one. Nothing.
People coming in, the door chime going off… Nothing.

Finally, I go to the back and hear voices. It sounded like they might have been having an argument or something, I have no idea.
So, I call back.
“Heellooooo?” and finally a young lady comes out.
“Oh, sorry. I was in the back cleaning the tanning beds.”
Ah-ha. Okay.

So, we get up to the front… I let the other lady go first. She gets done and it’s my turn. The girl looks around for the game, and then gets on her cell phone and calls her boss or something to see if THEY know where the game is. Nothing. Can’t find it.

She looks around for a little while longer. Then she asks me if I want the Wii version. I told her no… So then she asked me if I would like to leave my number and she’ll call me when she finds it.

I opted out, told her not to worry about it, and left.

Well, this has really been an interesting show. Some really good things, and some really bad. Which of course is like any other E3.
This year E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) has moved back towards it’s roots a little bit and has opened the doors to a wider audience. They still are not allowing general admission, but it’s close. They estimated that there were roughly 40,000 people at the show this year.

I personally have to say that I think Microsoft took the cake out of the three big names (Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony). Microsoft revealed a couple new games that are going to wind up being big sellers, and demoed a couple of games that gamers have been waiting for, for a while.
I was really impressed with the Modern Warfare demo, and cannot wait to play the game when it comes out.

Microsoft also revealed their new motion capture device (known as Project Natal). At first it was not all that impressive, especially the debut.  The big cheese behind it came out and was showing off his avatar with it, and it was freaking out pretty badly. Contortionist extraordinaire.
From there they showed off a simple paint program (that worked pretty well) and a game that’s a cross between soccer and breakout. Both seemed to work fairly well, but they still weren’t anything to really write home about.

Then they revealed the new project by Lionhead Studios called Project Milo. If that wasn’t scripted, then that is one scary program. I caught myself thinking “Terminator” several times. It was a boy that would interact with you, and could read your emotions. He could recognize your face and call you by name. You could hand him sheets of paper that you had drawn things on, through the sensor at the top of the screen. If this truly does work like the demo did, then it is beyond anything I thought was possible right now. It seriously gave me chills.

Next in terms of how well their show went, was Sony. They had a very slow start, and things were not looking well for them. They finally saved themselves when they brought out their motion capture wands. It looks like an advanced version of the Wiimote. It did have some pretty wacky balls on the top of it too, which made it look kind of retarded. Then they went on to show some demos and trailers for what will probably be some really good games.

The one thing that annoyed me greatly about Sony’s show is that they kept on repeating the lines “This is only possible with the PS3″. That is the biggest load of rubbish I have ever heard. They had nothing to back it up with, not to mention that a lot of the things they were saying that about… were not all that spectacular. The PC could easily outdo it, and the 360 could have done it just as easily. I really hate when people say something and then can’t back it up with facts.

Nintendo came in last out of the big three, not really having much to show for themselves other than the new Metroid game, and Mario Galaxy 2. It continues to be the console for the entire family, but seems to lack in very many games that really catch your attention. Most of what they showed was geared more at physical fitness and tween girls. Physical fitness is fine, but they shouldn’t try to make it seem like a game… because it’s not.

I was severely disappointed with the Ubisoft conference. They had James Cameron come on and pretty much open the show. By the time he was done, I think most of the people watching had probably tuned away. He talked for (probably) about 30-45 minutes about nothing in particular. He stood on stage and droned on and on.

From there, things didn’t get much better. The best thing they had was game play from Splinter Cell: Conviction, and it had already been shown earlier in the day. They tried to save themselves with a pre-rendered trailer to Assassin’s Creed II, but it fell flat after the torturous 2 hours of absolute nothingness. So, it started as crap… and ended as slightly better crap.

So, all in all… Microsoft and Sony are taking the lead. We’ll see who else can pull some tricks out of the hat, as we still have a couple days to go.

Games to watch out for:
Alan Wake
Assassin’s Creed II
Arkham Asylum
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Splinter Cell: Conviction
Shadow Complex
God of War 3
Crysis 2
MAG
APB
Forza Motosport 3
The Last Guardian
Uncharted 2