Pokematic Rocky Horror Show Review

Horrid Horid Horid. Don't waiste time.

rocky horror review - The best home videos are here

This was a Blip, but Pokematic got banned.

What it takes to get into heaven, by catholiccontriversy

What it takes to get to heaven, by... by catholiccontriversy

10/27/11

watched me some live at gothom on hulu plus, had tech com, calc, and wrote some of my research paper.

Why I hate the wii

Many many reasons. Just read to find out.

If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?...why pokematic "Hi."

Why I don’t like the Wii. Hmmmmmmm, it boils down to a big letdown. Let me start out with how it was marketed. I had a subscription to Nintendo Power and they really made it look like it was the next best thing to sliced bread. It had Wii connect 24, mii’s, the virtual console, the weather channel, the photo channel, an internet browser, reverse compatibility with GameCube, and best of all, FULL MOTION CONTROLES!!!!!

Let me back up with some things. For starters Nintendo renamed Wi-Fi to Wii connect 24. I know a guy who, when I said, “cool, Wii’s got Wi-Fi,” he legit said “no it’s Wii connect 24.” “Yeah but you get it from a Wi-Fi signal.” “No Nintendo just gets it from like everywhere.” It’s Wi-Fi, we all know it, just like Steve Jobs calling the motherboard the logic board, it serves no purpose. But with the ds it’s Wi-Fi. Oh well let’s call it Wii connect 24 and eventually people will realize it’s just Wi-Fi.

The photo channel and weather channel were nice, useless gimmicks. What don’t agree with me? Ok maybe the weather was a little useful. This was back when smartphones were just starting to become popular and checking up on the weather before spending all day in side is a little useful, but the photo app was useless. Let me ask you this, how often do you pop your sd card into your wii so you can do whatever the photo channel can do? I know you can make stop motion videos, yeah I’ll just stick with movie maker since I can do stuff with it. Really, who uses that?

Now reverse compatibility with GameCube was nice. Sony and to an extent Microsoft have been reverse compatible since they released their second console and here we are at console number 5 and we finally get reverse compatibility; by no means a deal maker for me, but good for those who store their old consoles in the basement. I have all 10 of my consoles connected to 1 TV. No basement for my babies.

Virtual console was also a nice touch, but again no deal maker for me. I have every console that they have available on VC and then some. If I want an old Nintendo or Sega Genesis game, I’ll buy the original and play the way it was meant to be played. I’ve seen controller adapters for classic old school controllers, particularly NES and SNES, and from what I’ve heard they work great. But me, I prefer real carts.

Web browser, it’s a web browser. No real comment. It gets the job done for someone who just wants to screw around and surf the web. It’s got YouTube and is compatible with a keyboard. No deal maker, but definitely nice and would have enjoyed it.

Now the first major let down was the miis. This isn’t the fault of the developers, just Nintendo Power. Nintendo Power deceived me into believing that this was going to be kind of like the sims meets animal crossing’s family friendliness. The screen shots they used were of the miis walking around in their court yard. It never showed that that court yard was the entire environment they lived in. And the walking around, just that, no interactions. Then they kind of described them as sims with them gaining experience with some games. It wasn’t until I saw a demo that showed that all you can really do with them is use them as avatars in Wii sports, file pics in some games, make them look crazy, and then organize them. Congratulations Nintendo for bringing back segregation. Ok that’s a little extreme but that’s what the organization is based off of. I was expecting a sims, and I get a build an avatar. And let me point out, the creativity is lame. Microsoft did it right.

Now for the piece de resistance, the motion controls. All coverage talked about how awesome full motion controls will be. How “this is the first console to do full motion right.” Bull****! If the wii did full motion right the virtual boy did 3d right. The only games I can recall that use the full motion to its potential are stupid mini games, and trauma center. Trauma Center is the best game on the wii. I’ll have happy gamer cover that. But yeah, we get the tech demo Wii Sports with every Wii, and it uses the motion controls well. No substance, but who cares it’s just the tech demo. Well then other launch titles like tony hawks downhill jam and excite truck try but barely miss. Wario Ware uses it but again no real substance. And then after that motion sucks. WHAT!!!!!!!! You mean to tell me that the console that boasted motion controls doesn’t even fully utilize them? WHATTHEBUCK. And then some of the games have these weird motion controls like Marvel Ultimate Alliance. I’m just sitting there playing, and all the sudden, the camera starts acting weird. Wait so you mean to tell me that the control for the camera is in the tilt of the nunchuck. My hand isn’t doing anything with it so naturally it’s going to lay limp next to me on the couch while I move the stick with my thumb, but now I have to be worried about my arm going limp. Wow.

I have been bashing the wiiwii. Like I said, I subscribed to Nintendo Power, and they did a lot of coverage on the Revolution. Yes the revolution. Nintendo should have stuck with the name. Revolution much cooler than wii. We all know what a revolution is, but wii is just nonsense and just sounds stupid. Well NP will naturally do lots of coverage on the upcoming console from Nintendo. They did so much coverage and made it sound so cool. Look back in the review, so much blown out of proportion. It sounded so cool, with the bar set so high. My one friend who loves the Wii probably does because he didn’t have all the coverage and blown out of proportions that I have.

I also had a rather bad first, second, third; ok fourth, decent fifth, great sixth, and downhill from there until I couldn’t stand the thing. Thankfully I didn’t waste any money on the damn thing. I had a friend who got one, and then talked about how great it was and made me play it. He praised all the flaws I saw. Sucked the fun out of otherwise maybe decent games with his “my way to play is the right way” attitude. Generally killed any hopes of me enjoying it. Granted my hated came about at the beginning, but quite frankly there wasn’t much to it.

What would I categorize as the worst game, Boogie. Boogie is by far the worst game I have ever had the misfortune of playing on the wii, and maybe ever. We all know the commercials, where the monster was dancing similar to the motions in the controls, then the girl sings into a mic. Commercial below.

Then they went on to have it as the intro to the game. For starters, the songs suck. Plain and simple, the songs suck. A music game with bad songs is a bad game. I think there was 1 decent song, but that doesn’t constitute the $30 price tag or something. Ok so maybe the songs suck, but maybe the motion controls will save it. I mean look at how good those controls look. Well again, they suck. What is it? Well instead of the cool controls we see in the commercial, we have to move the controller up, down left and right in time with the music. (Takes time to look at skin) I am a white boy with no beat. On what planet am I going to be able to score any points in a game that requires me to keep time? I’m able to do fairly well at DDR and Guitar Hero because they tell me what to do. The notes and beats scroll across the screen as I play. Boogie on the other hand, just says “here’s the song, now wave in time on beat without any indication of where the beat is because we’re all gifted with beat.” I think I played through half a song and didn’t score one point. The only dance I can do is the Macarena, and that’s because I spent many years studying it. And while I’m on it, there’s no customization on how the characters dance. They all break dance. I want my guy to dance like a white boy like me. I don’t want to see my avatar breakdance off beat. That’s just stupid. Now maybe if there were some good tracks the karaoke feature could salvage just a portion of this game, but no one wants to sing along with crappy songs.

Well thank-you for reading this. This has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.

pro-life day of silence, Who am I silent for?

Hello Catholiccontriversy here, and today was the national pro-life day of silence. I took a vow of silence for 24 hours. This is still going on but blogging isn't really talking, especially since I'm talking about pro-life. Well it went really well. I kept silent for all day only mumbling some subconsciously, but I'm going to make that up by staying silent for an extra minute. I started at midnight last night and will go on until 12:01 tonight. It's really hard to do. Now for some details.

I initially wanted to duct tape my mouth, but 2 issues with that idea. For starters, I'm a harry guy, so the bikini wax alone is enough reason to not do that. The other reason was I'm doing this all day for 24 hours. I would have to rip the tape off 3 or more times to eat and I don't want to do that. So to show my participation, I turned my safety vest inside out, put duct tape where the reflective stripes would be, and wrote pro-life messages. Watch the video here.




pro-life day of silence by catholiccontriversy

pro-life day of silence by catholiccontriversy

This is what the stripes say if you had trouble reading them,
"I'm silent for the friends I'll never have."
"I'm silent for the hero's that'll never save the day."
"I'm silent for those that never had the chance to change the world"
"Pro life day of silence."

A couple of my friends noticed but I'm not sure how many exactly. Let me tell you, abstaining from talking is really hard. You don't really know how hard it is to be silent unless you really have done it.

Now for what I took away from this experience. It was really interesting being the ghost of what could have been but isn't due to "choice." For one day, I was a life lost to abortion. The world still went on, but having been told by a couple of my friends, I bring joy to otherwise boring days. A person like that was lost to abortion. Like all the future world changers lost to the Holocaust just because they were Jewish, so many world changers are lost to abortion just because their mother chose she didn't want this baby. Worst part is, this is legal and the government isn't doing anything about the slaughter of unborn babies.

This was a powerful experience, and I feel it would make a larger impact if I had someone following me around explaining that I was a life lost to abortion. Someone to tell people of all the great things I wish to accomplish one day, but I can't because I was aborted. The world never knew my happy personality. I never did or will do the great things, because I was "chosen." If you are pro-life, I strongly encourage you to participate next year. Well this has been Catholiccontriversy, signing off, and may God bless you.

Blithe Spirit Review (text)

Super funny play. The experience was great.

If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?...why Pokematic "hi."

I recently saw they play Blithe Spirit. The story of me getting there can be read here. Before I talk about the actual play it's self, let me tell you about the way the stage was set up. This wasn't your typical set up where "there's the stage and there's the house." It was set up like the stage was in the center of the room and stadium bleachers surrounding it on all for sides, but they were more like a hybrid between normal theater seats and stadium seats. I walked in and didn't fully realize that when I went to an open seat, I completely walked across the set. That was a really interesting way to tell the story. Instead of everyone getting a relatively similar experience by all facing the same way, there were 4 different perspectives. With that, things were a little more real since everyone wasn't coming from the wings to go on stage and there wasn't cheesy isometric sets. But the best part about it was that things weren't awkwardly set to face the audience and actors weren't awkwardly always facing the audience. For those of you out there who aren't familiar with theatre performance, a big thing in performance is to always face the audience so they can fully see and hear the actors, sometimes resulting in slightly awkward performance. Well no worries here, the actors were always and at the same time never facing the audience. Well now that I have that out of the way, now on to the review of the play.

Blithe Spirit is about a spirit, but surprisingly not Blithe's. There's this guy who's writing a horror novel and he hires a medium to help get inspiration. In doing so he cojurs the spirit of his first dead wife. This leads to hilarious issues because he is currently remarried and he is the only one who can see and hear the spirit. The spirit will talk to him and he'll reply, but then his current wife thinks he's talking to her. Over the course of the play, everyone else begin to realize that the spirit is real and not just the main guy going crazy. I can't go on without spoiling plot elements so now I'll just talk about aspects of the play.

For starters, it was really funny, and I mean really. I didn't really have many pre-conceived ideas, but since it was sponsored by he honors college for a cultural event, and free through them, I guess I thought it might be culture heavy in a less than happy way. But this was hilarious. And this wasn't like some hilarious plays I've seen where all the humor is rooted in blue comedy. Almost all of it was intellectual comedy, or just ridiculousness, but never blue, which is good for me. I enjoy probably every form of comedy, except for blue. I guess I don't like lame, but does anyone besides who's telling it find it funny? Blue is just cheap though, and I can't take a writer seriously if they rely on it for laughs. I can take this playwright seriously, because this was some quality comedy.

As stated earlier, it wasn't a normal set up for the stage. This led to more believable interactions among actors. It also made it more believable when actors would enter and exit the stage. From my spot, the front door was my top left corner, the kitchen was bottom right, the place where the spirits entered and exited was my bottom left, and the corridor for the stairs was my top right. This was better than just right wing, left wing and some openings on an isometric set being entrances and exits. The raised seating helped with not having things obscured and made for more realistic prop setup. I wonder if it was meant to be shown that way or just adapted like a 3D movie. Oh well still really good way to tell the story.

I feel I should also talk about the ghost aspect. Since this is stage performance and not movie, there is no double exposure and other special effects to allow for ghost aspects like floating, invisible forces holding up objects, and human hands phasing through the ghost. The actors made it so that we believed we were seeing the story unfold with the perception of reality of the guy who could see the ghosts and not just people acting like they can't see someone right in front of them. They couldn't see the ghosts. As for the phasing, it didn't happen a lot and jokes were used to keep the ghosts from being sat on. At one point a ghost couldn't be seen yet by our main character but could be by another. The ghost at that point was hitting the character that could see it, and acted as if being hit by the ghost. Really believable.

Sound effects played an important part in this play. Like James Cameron uses 3D to it's full potential, this production used the surround sound to it's full extent. A record playing on the turn table didn't have it's sound projected out of all the speakers, only the one that was over the turn table. When the phone rang, it came from the speaker above the phone. When the doorbell rang it came from the speaker above the "front door" corner. This lead to a believable setting.

An interesting thing that helped us know who was a ghost and who was alive was that the ghosts wore all white and the living wore predominately black. I didn't pick up on this immediately but then I realized it and it made it really easy to know who was alive and who "passed on." I keep my reviews as clean as I can, and ghosts get offended by "deau...." no I will keep this a family review and say passed on. The clothing did through me off at this one point in the play, but I won't mention it for fear of spoilers. It was a cool way to tell it.

This is probably just part of theatre but I feel I should at least mention it. 2 of the characters smoke in the play, and at fist I thought it might just be a regular cigarette, until I realized that no matter how long they were lit they weren't getting any smaller. It wasn't until I heard a clinking when it hit an ash tray that I realized it was some kind of prop cigarette that doesn't burn and leave ashes everywhere. It did give off smoke because the actors did breathe smoke so it wasn't just sticks that look like cigarettes. The end also glowed with embers when they inhaled. It's probably not new, but it's cool.

If you have the chance to see it, I strongly recommend it. While I can't guarantee that the acting will be equally as good, the writing and story will stay the same and hopefully the experience will be equal to mine. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu bye.