Back to the Future

Has it really been two months since my last post?

Yes

Have I really been that busy?

Not really

Now that we got that out of the way, let's get some facts down.

I'm still single but I have a huge television and the top three consoles on the market, so I can at least attempt to fill in the whole in my sole with consumer electronics. Oh, and alcohol.

I'm still working on conquering my fears. One day I'll be able to look at a spider without screaming but I've gotta take it just a step at a time.

I went to San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. I went to Haight Ashbury, Berkeley, Alcatraz, and Napa Valley. I saw the treasures of King Tut's tomb, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the house used on Full House. I bought a sweet leather jacket. My body refused to make the adjustment from New York time to San Francisco and I suffered no jet lag.

I finished reading Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life by Neil Strauss. I suggest you all do the same.

I saw Sherlock Holmes. Great film. Robert Downey Jr. does not disappoint in the greatest depiction of the titular character the big screen has ever seen.

Fret not, I shall return some day but I doubt anyone is even reading.

And so Halloween came and went

Halloween was weeks ago, I know. I've been slacking on the updates. To be fair, law school takes up quite a bit of time.

As promised, here are some pictures of the finished product.

This was from my buddy's Halloween party.

From left to right: Penguin, Chicken, Michael Jackson, Ghostbuster

Here is a great one of the group before we headed out to enjoy a night of debauchery and to watch me to lose the costume contest to Teen Wolf and Lil' Jon. It sucks but that's life. At least I know, and the world knows, that I had the best costume ever. Next Halloween better get ready for me, it won't know what hit it!

It all started with a plan . . .

Actually, it all started with a crudely drawn sketch and an idea. An idea that I could construct a pretty sweet Halloween costume in my spare time. I am happy to say I have accomplished my goal. I will be a Ghostbuster for Halloween. Go ahead, be jealous.

The original "blueprint"

I did some research into the subject and discovered rather quickly that there is an entire community of people online that construct Proton Packs and other such things of the Ghostbustin' nature. After I collected schematics and blueprints, pictures of other people's finished costumes, and amassed a pile of miscellaneous parts and wires in a corner of my room I began my work.

I started with the basic shape of the thing. The piece of metal in the above picture was merely there to help me conceptualize it and was not used in the finished product.

Here we start to see the pack coming together. Luckily, I had an old HP desktop computer in my basement, which lent its wires and power supply quite generously. The cyclotron (black circular thing on the bottom) was made out of a to-go container. I measured the circles and cut them out using an x-acto knife, sanded the rough edges, and glued red safety reflectors behind them. I felt that the cardboard housing above the cyclotron was too big, so I eventually resized and cut it down.

Allow me to skip forward a bit. The stages before the above picture involved minute changes here and there. Moving pieces around, finding ones that fit better, and hot gluing them to plywood that I picked up at a craft store and cut down to size. I was surprised to find that spray painting everything made it all so much more convincing. It hid the true identities of all the pieces used. After spraying the finish on, I set to work attaching the details (the wires and safety stickers). I feel it looks pretty awesome. Sure it isn't "screen accurate" but dammit if I'm not proud of the way it looks.

No regrets

I was just going through my recently phone pictures and stumbled on this little wonder. Ah yes, hailing from American Roadside Burger is the Roadstar; 4 cheeseburgers under one bun. I ate one of these suckers and got my name added to the wall of fame, forever immortalizing my accomplishment. Of course I felt like there was a brick in my stomach for the rest of the day but damn if I didn't feel like a god full of delicious grilled meat.

Sexy Ghostbuster exposed my nerdiness

I was looking up Ghostbusters stuff today for fun (actually I'm secretly building a proton pack) and I stumbled on this image of a "Sexy Ghostbuster" costume.

The first thing I noticed on this chick was the fact that her Proton Pack was upside down. Does this make me any less of a man? Hell no. I would let her use my neutrona wand any day to bust some ghosts. She would of course need to be careful, lest she get "slimed."

Batman: Arkham Asylum mini-review

I think I'm still doing well in school. It's hard to tell sometimes. I had a long weekend filled with procrastinating and Batman: Arkham Asylum. So, I'll discuss that.

I have fallen in love with this game. Why? Because it is awesome. The story so far is that Batman has apprehended The Joker and brought him to Arkham Asylum.

Pretty standard stuff, right? WRONG!

Apparently, the clown prince of Gotham still has a few tricks up his sleeve and traps Batman within the walls of the asylum. The battle system is incredible, dare I say flawless? It flows beautifully and with each punch the Dark Knight lands into the heads of his foes you start to feel more and more like him. This game is not just about the sick beat downs though. It has a great story line, captivating realism within the environments, and some really inventive gameplay brought about by Batman's gadgets.

The character designs are what pulled me in right away. When Killer Croc walked past me as I proceeded into Arkham, I nearly crapped myself. If you think Croc is scary then you will tremble in fear (not really, but I'm new at this) at the sight of Scarecrow's redesign. I'm not terribly far into the game (18% completed so far) as I only bought the game a few days ago. I cannot wait to resume cracking skulls and cleaning up Gotham City one henchman at a time. I'm glad that I stuck with the regular edition of the game instead of the so-called "Collector's Edition." I bought the latter originally but felt like a chump the second I got it home. These bonus items (a life size though poorly made Batarang and a "making of" DVD that I would probably never watch) were hardly worth the price of admission. 20 minutes later, I exchanged it for the less expensive version and got 40 bucks back.

Scarecrow apparently took a cue from Freddy Kruger (which makes sense seeing as how both characters use fear as their weapon) and has goddamn syringes on his fingers! As if I didn't have enough issues with needles.

Batman: Arkham Asylum = Greatest Game Ever

That's right. It IS the greatest video game ever. I look forward with great anticipation to games like these. The ones that instill in me a sense of wonder and excitement. That and the ability to unleash holy hell upon my enemies. The last time I fell head over heels in love with a video game was when I played Prototype, and that was months ago. Jeez, where has the time gone?

Possibly a full review later on. My Mom is yelling at me to get going for Rosh Hashanah dinner.