Slamming Through A Sophomore Slump

It won’t come as much a surprise to anyone that knows me to find out that I’m something of a dork. What can I say? I love pop culture. Super heroes in particular. Ever since I was a kid I enjoyed reading, watching, or listening (my parents had a record player and I would listen to the Spider-Man adventure from the library) about these amazingly colorful characters battle one another for the fate of the earth. So it was somewhat out of character for me to completely ignore the show Heroes when it debuted on NBC in September of 2006.
There were two reasons for this. 1.) I hadn’t really heard that much about the show so I didn’t really know what it was about. And 2.) I had a night class when it was on. Also by the time I got to second semester 24 was back on and as it turns out not even a team of rag tag superheroes is a match for the utter badassness that is Jack Bauer. So even though I heard about how great the show was I completely missed out.

And then came the DVD.

Oh what a marvelous invention these discs are. Allowing entire seasons of television shows to fit in a mere seven discs. Such a thing was thought impossible even a decade ago and if you missed a show you were going to have to hope to catch them in order over the summer. I don’t think they even air reruns anymore. I decided, because I didn’t have a enough time to watch the entire season before the new one came on TV I’d treat this DVD like it was the current season. Let me explain. Most people get a TV on DVD set and watch every single episode one after the other until they get to the end of the season. If an episode ends on a cliffhanger it doesn’t matter because the next episode is just a click away. That’s not what I did. I watched one episode a week.
“You bought the DVD, why don’t you just watch the whole damn thing?” You may be asking yourself. Because…wait for it…I thought it would be fun. Yes, I consider doing something like that fun. And I could now begin to explain why that may have something to do with why I’m currently single but I think we’ll save the blog for another day. (Presumably one when I’ve had more liquor.)
Anyways, come May I finally got to the end of season one of Heroes. Final verdict-Not Bad. I don’t know. It didn’t blow me away like it did for some people. I thought it was good. Well acted, well written, cool characters. It just seemed like not a much happened from episode to episode. What took twenty two episodes probably could have been done in twelve. Still, there was enough good to keep me interested in the next season. But everything I’d been reading said that this new season was horrible. Hell, the creator of the show out and out apologized for it. Swearing that season three would be better and that they’ve corrected their mistakes. I don’t know I haven’t seen it…yet.



Yeah, I bought the DVD. Come on! What did you expect? Only this time I’m going to do things different. You see due to last year’s writers strike season three got cut in half. There are only twelve episodes this time. That I do have time to watch. And then when season three airs I’ll be able to watch it as it’s happening instead of having to wait a year! How awesome is that?!?! (Once again being single comes into play here.)
I think I’m finally gonna crack this baby open on Sunday and see what the hype is all about. And I figured “Hey! Why not blog about it?” Hey it’s my blog I can talk about whatever I want! So in the next couple of days you’ll be getting my opinion on a TV show that’s a little less then a year old how exciting. It’ll only be a matter of time until this blog sets the internet on fire. (Buy ads now, while space is still cheap!!!).
In the mean time here’s something I’ve found very entertaining. There’s a YouTube channel that does hysterical Marvel/DC parodies. There set up like the Apple “I’m a Mac” “And I’m a P.C.” ads (which I love by the way). This one came out two days before The Dark Knight came out and it’s perfect. Enjoy.

Barack Obama: He Completes us.

Here is THE DAILY SHOWS absolutely hilarious tribute video to Barack Obama. I'm not going to use this blog to talk about politics that much, but I do have to say I think McCain's choice for V.P. is pretty ballsie and ingenious. With so many Hillary voters angry over the primaries it'll be interesting to see if Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is enough to win them over.
I also think it would have been kind of funny if McCain's announcement speech would have gone something like.

"You know what? Fuck you Obama! You think you're the only one who can make history? Well I'm picking a chick to be my VP! Oh!! Suck on that one asshole. I hope you got a whole lot of hope stored up somewhere because you're gonna need it now sucker."

This could be why I'm not a speech writer. Anyways here's the video.

A Perfect Video For Radio

So this is one of the videos I was watching on YouTube when I should have been doing something else. Anything else really, because after I watched it I kind of felt like I wanted my money back which was odd because I didn’t pay for anything in the first place. I’d never heard of this band Metro Station before but Will turned me on to their first single entitled “Shake it”. It wasn’t bad. The chorus was stuck in my head for the next couple of days and instead of downloading the song I decided to just get it on YouTube. Big mistake.
For starters when I actually looked at the band I kind of wanted to slap them. They have the distinct look of someone who’s been told by girls all their life that they’re good looking. And they agreed. And then there’s the kid in the red pants. Whenever they cut to him it looks like he’s trying to have sex with the camera. I’m not sure if it was his idea or the director’s but all it does for me is scream “TOOL!!!” In fact that’s what I get from most of this video. That these guys are massive tools. They look like they want to be hard core but when their biggest claim to fame is that one of their members is Miley Cyrus’ brother that’s a little hard to do.
I have a slight suspicion however that fifteen year old girls will find them “totally hot!” I’ve found girls in general seem to be attracted to massive tools. This also got me thinking (as so many things have lately) about my age. Have I already aged out of a demographic? When record labels decided which bands to sign am I the guy they’re thinking about when it comes time for them to take out the pen? No. Probably not. And they really shouldn’t. I haven’t been nearly as into music as I used to be. Not for the past two years. Now when I turn on the radio it’s usually either a CD I already own or N.P.R. Oh my god, did I just say I listen to N.P.R.? No wonder record labels don’t care about what I think.
When I actually listened to the song a couple of times I decided that I liked the “Shake it” chorus but the verses were incredibly lame and I can’t believe…wait for it…this is what kids listen to now a days. I’m saying that already! I’m 24!!! In a couple of years I’m going to be telling kids to get off my lawn. Ok so the music scene is done with me. That’s ok, I can live with that. I have enough CD’s as it is. I just fear that one day movies will leave me too.
That, my friends, will be a dark day indeed.

YouTube won’t let me embed the video so here’s the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpU78IeTx_c

The King of Procrastination.

Nobody wastes times like I do. I’ve almost mastered into an art form. It sounds simple, figure out what is absolutely the most important thing you have to do with your day and then wait until the last minute (sometimes after) to do it. But it’s harder than it sounds. For example, you have to be very open minded to the world around you to be a true procrastinator. Turn on the TV; it doesn’t matter what time it is. Turn it on and start flipping through the channels. Don’t think there’s anything good on? You, my friend are not a true procrastinator. A true procrastinator knows that there’s always something on worth watching, or at the very leas more interesting than that thing you’re supposed to be doing.
Sometimes you’re lucky. What’s that? King of the Hill rerun? Jackpot! I actually like this show and I haven’t followed it enough so it’s almost always one I haven’t seen. I might actually make time to watch this even if I didn’t have to do something.
Sometimes you're given something of a surprise. The Worlds Largest Roller Coasters. Hmmm, I’m actually afraid of roller coasters (making my 8th graduation trip to Great America none to fun) but this is actually kind of neat. It shows how the engineers design the roller coasters not only for safety but to try to do something new. They want to be able to really wow the riders. Now when I say this is a surprise I mean it’s something, while I’d never actually go out of my way to watch, if it’s on I’ll stick around. Even through a commercial to see how things end up.
However, more often than not, I find you’re stuck with what I like to call an alternate. As in, maybe in some alternate universe what I’m watching is interesting and will one day make me a better person but in this universe all it’s doing is insuring that the main thing I have to do will be rushed and of poor quality because instead of doing it I’m sitting on my ass watching this. That was one hell of a sentence. Yes, you’ll find this all over TV. Infomercials, The Hills, anything on Oxygen. All of these are things that not only do I not normally watch, but actively avoid. But hey, when it’s two in the morning and you’re paper’s due at ten, suddenly you want to know how you could be a million in just three weeks without ever leaving your home.
The internet is even worse. I’d say in actuality there’s only about three sites I go to on a regular basis www.newsaskew.com. A website that gives up to date info on my favorite director, Kevin Smith. www.aintitcoolnews.com What I feel is the best movie news website (and one of the first) it also has one of my favorite reviewers, a guy that goes by the name Moriarty. And Facebook (I assume you don’t need the link to that one and no what it’s all about. By the way I don’t use myspace. Is it still around I heard Facebook is kicking its ass now. Eh, topic for a different blog). I also enjoy Jenna Fisher’s blog, http://www.myspace.com/pambeesley. The point is, all in all it probably takes me ten minutes to get through all of them. Twenty if I find a particularly long review on Aint It Cool, or if there’s actually something I want to look at on Facebook. But if you think I only spend a half hour a day on line you don’t know Jack about procrastinating. They don’t call it the wide web for nothing. If you want it, it’s out there. And if you don’t really want it, well, it’s out there anyways and it sure as hell beats being productive. Whether it’s watching Simpsons and Family Guy clips on Hulu, watching old Daily Show episodes on their site or God know what on YouTube, if it’ll make me momentarily not have to do my original goal it’s all gravy to me.
I’ve currently moved back home with my parents and cleaning my room has become somewhat of a chore. Suddenly I feel the need to read all my back issues of Entertainment Weekly and all my old Comic Books. Haven’t they been available for years? Of course they have but I had time to read them before, now they’re truly serving their purpose. Distraction. And that’s, I guess what procrastination truly is. Becoming easily distracted by something and then pretending like it’s actually very important. It’s something I have to work on. Seriously it’s caused a lot of problems for me in the past. For example I started this blog at 10:30; it’s now 2:30. In that time I’ve found out that The Dark Knight is now the 2nd highest grossing movie of all time. Beating out the original Star Wars but not coming even close to Titanic. Looked up not only how to spell the word particularly but how to properly pronounce it. There’s two different ways too if you’re interested (another good test to see if you’re a procrastinator). And I went on Facebook (There’s a Calvin and Hobes application!!!) and caught up with a friend.
Ready for the punch line? This wasn’t even what the blog was supposed to be about! I wanted to talk about my DVD collection. Oh well, I can always do that later…

Inauguration Day

Welcome. My name is Scott Heaton.
“Well Scotty I see you’ve got yourself a blog here. Why should I care?” You may be asking yourself. First off, why so hostile? Secondly to put simply, you shouldn’t. I’m no one special. Not yet anyways. That’s not to say that I know that one day I’m destined to be someone whose thoughts are worth reading. It just means that at this point in my life I’m just your average 24 year old with a computer.
Now this may not sound like the most compelling jumping off point but wait, there’s more. You see I feel like I’m at a bit of a cross roads in my life. When I was filling out the profile for this blog I was supposed to write a bit about myself. I thought this was kind of stupid. Why write about myself in the profile? Isn’t that what the blog is for? But when I started something strange happened. I started to describe myself as a twenty year old and I realized that wasn’t accurate. I’m not just in my twenties. I’m in my mid-twenties!
There is a difference. I’ve been noticing a trend lately. People I graduated High School with are now graduating college. And not just graduating, they’re getting jobs. But it doesn’t stop there. Do you know why they’re getting jobs? Not just so they can feel like the time and money they spent on college was well spent. No, they’re doing it so they can pay for things. Things like weddings! People my age, my supposed peers, are getting married! They’ve found someone they want to spend the rest of their life with. Which got me to thinking, the rest of their life (and mine) is getting shorter and shorter by the minute.
I should be used to this by now. I’ve always been the last one to pick up on a trend. In middle school it was Starter jackets (remember those!!!), high school, it was drinking, and you better believe everyone and their T.A. was having sex in college before me. Sometimes with their T.A. Not that it matters really. I’m in no mood, or place for that matter, to get married. But that begs the question-What am I in the mood and place to do.
Watch TV and talk about it. That’s what. I love pop culture. I don’t just enjoy it, as most people do. I consume it. I study it. I keep it stored up in my brain so at any point in time if I come across a situation that in any way resembles something I’ve seen I can say “Have you ever seen that movie/TV show/comic book? This is just like that!” You wouldn’t believe how many girl I pick up talking about The Simpsons. On second though, you probably would. But there’s more to me than that. I have an active social life with lots of great friends. I work at a job where my co-workers are interesting to say the least. And I feel like on the whole I’m a pretty funny guy.
So maybe that’s why you should care about this blog. I’m no one special. Not yet anyways. That’s not to say I won’t be someone whose thoughts are worth reading someday. It just means that at this point in my life I’m just your average 24 year old with a computer. It’s you and me. Just two cool people hanging out talking to each other. I’m assuming you’re at least as cool as me. If you’re not sure here’s a test. I have a drawing in my room of my head on Spider-Man’s body. I also have a similar photo where I’m now Anakin Skywalker. It’s everyday life. It’s something you can relate to. And honestly I don’t think there’s a lot of that out there right now. Can you honestly say your life is anything like The Hills? If you can don’t. I’ve never seen the show and don’t plan to. The point I’m trying to make is that this could be fun. Maybe we’ll end up learning something and growing together. If nothing else it’ll be a great way to kill some time. And in the end, isn’t that really what the internet is there for.
That and porn of course.