What's Been Going On:
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     Well, the day after graduation, I went paintballing. There was like
twenty of us, so we had enough people to be playing only people I know
and could talk to afterwards. Well, that and I knew they would have their
own equipment. Some of the things other people have are scary. I'm
talking like automatic machine gun paintball stuff. But it was a lot of
fun, and a really big adrenaline high for the day. I didn't eat anything
except like a bagel for breakfast, but we played from like nine in the
morning to like five in the afternoon (Approximately hour games).
     Saw Fight Club. Yeah, I know I should have seen it in the theatres
when it was out, but I just kept putting it off until it wasn't out any
more. I even had a chance to see it once at a sleep over with my peer
group (this school sponsored friend-meeting thing), but they had decided
that they wanted to see "Drive Me Crazy" first. So by the time they
popped it into the VCR, it was like three in the morning, and that's too
late, even for insomniatic me. So I rented it and saw it with Doug, a
friend from high school. Oh MAN, is that a movie. Pure GENIUS! It's
already one of my most favorite movies of all time. And the DVD is loaded
with extras. I know this not because I own it, but because my friend owns
it, and we used it when we made the fan parody. Oops, getting ahead of
myself...
     This one is something I'm sure a lot of you have heard about, but I
got a job. Yep, Lukas Chen is (at least for the summer) part of the work
force. My job? I'm a receptionist at my mom's medical clinic. I create
charts, file them, clean them, and I answer phones. It's pretty good pay,
so I'm happy with it, and I only have to work Tuesday through Thursday.
Course, answering the phones means I have to talk to a lot of people, and
many of them are, how to say... dumb. And then there's the rude ones. But
it's a pretty nice gig, and the girl that I work with are kinda cute. The
first day I worked, they kept saying that I was a whirlwind, always
trying to find work to do, so they nicknamed me Taz...
     My cousins from Taiwan came over to visit. I know, it's like I have
an army of Chens. Well, it's not my army. In fact, many of them just piss
me off. Case in point, these two little Rugrats. For lake of better
translations, We'll call them Kelly and Ezra. They're not too bad, I
guess, except for the fact that they can't speak English, and they only
play video games all day, and they erased my saved games. But they're
here for the rest of the month, until august, so I gotta put up with
them. ::sigh::
     Played Kirby 64! It's actually a pretty fun games. It's less
sugary-sweet than Yoshi 64, but still as accessible to kids. For seasoned
pros like myself and probably any of y'all that play video games, there's
other stuff that keeps you interested. First, there's the completist
instinct, where you have to get 100%, but that might just be the instinct
I had. Course, you don't get the real ending unless you do have 100%, but
the little kids won't notice the evil undertones of the fake ending;
that's only for ever-vigilant older people to notice. The cool part is
getting special abilities. When you eat some enemies, you gain special
powers. But to add more to it, if you do a little maneuvering, you can
get two powers at once, making more combos! There's one combo where you
get exploding ninja stars (my personal favorite), and another where you
get shoot homing missiles. And there's even one where you get this nasty
double lightsabre, and you bust these awesome Darth Maul moves and cut up
everything in your path. It's definitely worth at least a rent.
     I made a fan-parody commercial! What my friend and I did was we took
the audio track for a preview trailer for fight club and put visuals for
an anime over it. I can't tell you which anime it is, cuz that's part of
the fun, but trust me, it's funny. I'll see what I can do about getting
it made into an mpeg or a quick time movie...

     Please return your trays and seats to their upright and locked
position. Deposit any stereotypes or prediction at the door, and get
ready for a (dare I say it?) GOOD comic-based movie.
     After the terrible terrible last two Batman movies, it seemed as
though there was never going to be that fifth Superman movie, that great
Spider-man film, or that ultimate drag-out knockdown Marvel Vs. DC flick.
Sure, "Blade" was pretty good, but it was steeped in gothic culture, and
had very little to do with comics. If the X-Men movie were to come out,
it would have to rely somewhat true to the comics. Could it be done? The
almost resounding answer from the movie industry was a resonant NO. And
then they made "X-Men."
     Not since the first Batman movie has there been a comic book movie
worth seeing (okay, "Blade" and "Batman Returns" are exceptions). The
movie remains true to the heart and core of the X-Men while taken enough
liberties and twists to keep things new, interesting, and best of all, to
attract non-comic book fans. Going in to see the movie, I was worried
about two things: one, Anna Paquin (only a teen) playing Rogue, very much
a grownup in the comic book; and two, that it would be absolute cheese.
Rogue's youth only further intensified the plot, and I had no problem
getting over that fan boy hurdle after the first ten minutes (besides,
she's kinda cute in a girl-next-door kinda way).
     The moviegoer in me really liked the film. The plot was very much
there, and provided a very nice moving force through the movie. The
dynamic interaction between Xavier and Magneto is wonderful, a meeting of
the minds between two distinctly different schools of thought with the
same goal in mind: a safe place for mutants. The character development
was sparse, but understandable with the large cast of "major" characters.
While Logan and Rogue, as well as Magneto, got back histories, most of
the rest were given enough time on screen to flesh out their characters.
But then there was the Brotherhood, who were stuck as, if you'll pardon
the expression, Toadies. I think between the three of them, they had like
twenty lines, and that's only if you count the stuff Mystique said while
she was morphed into other people.
     The fanboy in me was jumping up & down shouting "This movie fucking
RULES!" The Cyclops-Jean-Wolvie love triangle was there, even with Scott
being the youngest one! And there was one part where Wolverine says "Hey,
Bub, I'm not through with you yet." Truly a line for the fans. Magneto's
use of his powers were great visually. At one point, he has to cross this
wide ravine. So he just walks across normally, and you see metal plates
arrange themselves in a bridge like half a step in front of him. And they
made Toad an actually pretty competent villain. In the comics, he's just
comic relief, groveling at Magneto's feet, but here, he's making snide
remarks about Sabretooth and taking down the X-Men almost
single-handedly. At one point, he's squaring off against Jean Grey. It's
a battle, so she flinches and reacts to all his movements. So he totally
disses her and does a little dance with the most condescending grin ever.
He was pretty cool for a supporting character.
     Best of all, in my opinion, mutant powers were presented in a way
that wasn't all action and epic battles. One of my favorite sequences was
when Xavier was explaining the workings of the school. It put Patrick
Stewert on voice-over mode, and just watched kids who happened to be
different. One kid was cheating in basketball by using his super-speed to
pass to himself. Another kid used his zippo lighter to start a fireball
in his hand during class, perhaps to impress Rogue, the new-student
hottie. Course, Bobby Drake puts in an appearance and freezes Pyro's
fireball, getting the kid a verbal reprimand. Which brings me to my next
point. There were great cameos that only comic fans would pick up on.
They mentioned Peter Gyrich, had a cameo by Stan Lee, and even joked
about the original yellow & blue spandex costumes.
     And Jubilee! I was so happy that they had at least a cameo of the
Asian cutie! If you look closely, there's cameos by Shadowcat, Jubilee,
Pyro/Johnny Storm, Iceman, and supposedly Cannonball and Colossus,
although I didn't see those two.
     So go see X-Men, if you haven't already. It's a pretty good movie,
and we comic fans need the business.
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