This quote is from a website that makes looking at Hollywood news not feel so completely moronic. And that’s a hard thing to do. However, some chick on some show I’ve never seen makes more in one week than I will in almost 2 years. I’m talking about The Hills. Some piece of crap show on a piece of crap network about piece of crap people who lead boring piece of crap lives that boring pieces of crap watch and gossip about at their coffee shops. Oh right, the quote…

If it bothers you to learn that Audrina Patridge makes 35,000 dollars an episode to appear on “the Hills”, you should probably stop reading now, because she’s the fourth highest paid.  Defamer has the list:

Lauren Conrad $75,000 per episode (1.425 million per year)
Heidi Montag: $65,000 per episode ($1.25 million per year)
Spencer Pratt: $65,000 per episode ($1.25 million per year)
Audrina Patridge: $35,000 per episode ($665,000 annually)
Whitney Port: $20,000 per episode ($380,000 per season)
Brody Jenner: $10,000 per episode ($190,000 a year)
Lauren “Lo” Bosworth: $10,000 per episode ($190,000 for The Hills Season 4)
Stephanie Pratt: $8,000 per episode ($152,000 for The Hills Season 4)

I don’t begrudge these people for getting paid to be on a TV show, but I do genuinely despise anyone who watches it.  I hate you.  I hate you and I hope you die.  I saw like 5 minutes of it once, and it was roughly a hundred times worse than watching nothing at all.  The only way it could have been any more awful is if that girl from “the Ring” had crawled out of my screen at the same time.

That paragraph sums up everything I wish I had thought about saying first, but that show’s not on my radar at all so I never wake up and think, “Hey! I’m going to write about tv shows I don’t like today!” It doesn’t work like that. But seeing this article or post or whatever you want to call it is ridiculous.

The reason for this quote and post is because of that third paragraph right up there.

I don’t begrudge these people for getting paid to be on a TV show, but I do genuinely despise anyone who watches it.  I hate you.  I hate you and I hope you die.  I saw like 5 minutes of it once, and it was roughly a hundred times worse than watching nothing at all. 

Take that! That is beautiful prose. Somebody give this guy a freaking medal. Wait…I think I have one for him.

Here you go, my friend. You’ve summed up the words of the few men with balls alive today. Stop watching these terrible things. And of course some of you may ask, Why do you care so much? Because I’m terrified. I have a younger brother and sister who probably know people who watch stuff like this show and think that that’s an acceptable way to live. It’s terrifying. Jurassic Park opening up in my backyard is less frightening.

Signed,

An Angry Young Man

Anybody know what happened to XBOX Live yesterday? I thought it was going to be off on Monday, but yesterday Shelley and I are in the middle of a game of Halo 3, the first time either of us has touched it in a week, and she gets booted. We had about 20 kills to go, and we were definitely going to win, and she gets booted. But also, everyone else did too. Only 3 of us finished the game, I got the win but literally 5 of the 8 people playing got booted. Then it never worked again for the rest of the day. Sad Panda.

I also received some CDs in the mail that were all really cheap, and that’s the only reason I bought them. Only had a chance to listen to a little bit of one so far because the new Amon Amarth  pwns that hard.

Got super cheap CDs from Crowpath, Deceased, Asgaut, Eternal Gray, Withered Earth, and Council of the Fallen. All of that for like 26 bucks. You care. You totally totally do.

-E

No really, this blister here….what is it?

Alright but seriously, I got the new Amon Amarth and it’s the special edition with dvds and bobbleheads.

Yeah….I spent far too much money on a comic book, poster, live dvd, bonus cd of the live dvd, and bobbleheads of the band. Was it worth it? Of course. And now I’m cutting stranger’s grass in hopes of getting rent money. But it’s ok….because I rock out in my car like no other.

Monday was a sad day. XBOX Live went down. And so we sat there twiddling our thumbs looking at a blank screen just hoping they’d finish the maintenance early. So I played a couple games of NCAA Football 09 in my second season of the dynasty, and I gotta say I’m off to a good start. 3-0 record with 2 wins over ranked teams….ya heard?

Working on a video at some point of my latest attempt at telling The Aristocrats. I rather enjoy it and it seems to be more of a challenge to not repeat myself than I would have imagined. But I worked on it, unfortunately the tape ran out. I think that makes it funnier, but we’ll see if that ever see the light of day.

Wow this was pointless. And no, that blister wasn’t really me. 2nd page of a Google Image search for “blister.” Look it up yourself.

Oh, and some of those link are VERY NSFW! So let’s hope it’s not too late.

-E

Yesterday’s gaming was very unmemorable. Yes, it was according to plan. It was just Halo 3. I want to do something different today.

I’ve been listening to the new Metallica a lot lately. I’m trying to get into it. I want it to be good. I really do, but there are definitely flaws.

Shelley and I reported in our video game report recently that the processing on Death Magnetic was too high and the music sounds distorted, but not in Guitar Hero 3. Well it does sound bad. And it’s almost distracting. The first time we played The Day That Never Comes I noticed that the drums sounded distorted. I thought it was our fault like maybe we recorded it in our computer too loud. But nope. It was mixed poorly.  But the songs themselves?

I don’t want to go track by track because that just gets tedious. But I do have to say that upon the first couple listens, only one part stuck out in my head. The chorus of All Nightmare Long ran in my head on repeat for days. It is incredibly catchy. The more I listened the more it grew on me and stuck in my head. That was Just Your Life, The Judas Kiss, and My Apocalypse are the best songs on this CD. I will tell you that much. There’s more anger in them. More of a …Justice feel, particularly My Apocalypse, which has a Dyer’s Eve vibe to it.

The music itself is about half and half for me. The leads in some songs are great, vintage Hammett. But then there’s just as many that are pure noise and don’t add anything of worth to the songs. So the guitars have their good and bads. Some riffs are throwaways and remind of something simplistic like from Slipknot. Very basic but offer nothing great. But at the same time, they’ll follow these riffs with a very good riff. So each song is a bit bipolar in that regard.

I do have some main complaints. Hetfield/Ulrich has been the main driving force behind Metallica’s success. Those two as a songwriting duo have done awesome things in the past. But their individual contributions to this CD are lacking. A lot. Now maybe it’s sobriety that’s hurting Hetfield, but his voice is weak. That’s the only word for it. I like to use this analogy for the CD as a whole: If you didn’t know this is a Metallica CD, your first gripe would be the vocals. This sounds like a good attempt at good metal, but these are not solid vocals. It actually makes Dave Mustaine sound strong. And the drumming is pathetic. I don’t want to dump on Lars for no reason, because I’m not a drummer. But in the current metal scene, this is very sub-par. Listening to newer more technically minded bands like Arsis, Necrophagist, or Meshuggah this drumming sounds like a garage punk band in comparison.

That’s enough bitching. This is not an entirely bad CD, but it is not entirely good. I can definitely leave it playing in the car for a few more weeks. At least until my copy of the new Amon Amarth shows up.

 So give it a listen. You may hate it, you may love it. I’m in the middle, there are some songs I may start skipping over. But as of right now I can listen to it all the way through and not be totally bored.

-E

Credit Abe Simpson with the greatest joke in Simpsons history. So that link isn’t the joke, the title is, but now the point is defeated. On to the gaming…

This is what yesterday felt like. I wasn’t shooting bullets, I was holding a dog that shot bees at the enemy whenever it barked.  I flat out sucked. But yesterday was the unveiling of the new Halo 3 ranking system. Now you get a rank in both the “Social” and “Ranked” contests. Social is supposed to be more casual and not count towards your skill. Playing Ranked gives you a skill number. But now everyone is starting from 0 all over again. Some people we played with yesterday didn’t like the change, but because Shelley and I are all over this stuff every week, we already knew it was coming.

But my gameplay was atrocious. I’m a terrible Sniper. I admit that. I suck at getting headshots and I’ll fire off an entire clip at someone with the sniper rifle and they won’t die. With that said, every 3rd game we played was either Shotty/Snipers or Snipers. Of course if I do go check all the stats it’ll be nowhere near that often. So I got incredibly angry at getting my ass handed to me. I literally pulled a Donkey Kong and just punched the floor a lot. It may have been the maddest I’ve ever been at a video game.

So we had to put the controllers down. Because it just wasn’t healthy. No football happened. But this weekend there’s a big EA Sports contest on XboxLIVE so check out Xbox.com to see how you can get in on this deal. Some decent prizes are on the line.

I don’t know if any of you ever played the first 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself but it was so wildly successful they made a second one. And it is fun. Be sure to go there and check this out. It will definitely help kill some time.

I’m still pissed off about Halo yesterday, so there’s going to be some changes to my demeanor when I get my headset on today….I guess what I’m saying is I’m going to be drunk. Like Steve-O drunk.

-E

Because white people love flip-flops.

So that’s my Gamercard, and yesterday I played some games. I played some Ranked Slayer in Halo 3 and got promoted to a 17. Out of 50, that’s not so good, but I’m slowly progressing. But then as soon as I got to a 17, I lost 3 games straight and got demoted back to 16. HOWEVER, that was not all, I was not done and I will not concede defeat no matter how badly I was being beaten. And trust me, those games I lost, I got my ass handed to me.

So I persevered and won a couple games in a row, got back to a 17 and promptly stopped playing so I wouldn’t lose it again. And yes, if I’m playing Halo 3 I’m almost always also playing with Shelley, who was also promoted yesterday. So congratulate her.

So after that, I tried to get started on my recruiting for NCAA Football 09. I use Oklahoma State for my dynasty. Not really sure why, but I don’t have a favorite college football team. I watch it all the time, but being from around here my whole life, no real ties to a college football team. I have family that went to Virginia Tech and North Carolina State so there’s some weak alliance there, but I can’t pull for two ACC teams. My strategy in NCAA 09, and all the college football games I’ve played since NCAA 04 has always been to take a mediocre team, ranked somewhere between the 30s-50s so I can crack the top 25. So I finished my first season with OK St and finished 9-3 with a win in the Cotton Bowl. But then I realized I didn’t have enough time to do the postseason recruiting, so maybe I’ll get back to that today.

Fascinating read, no? Of course it is. It’s all I know, shut up.

-E

Did you really think I’d put something relevant here? Of course not. I’m not sure how often updates are going to be made here, I’ll be honest. Depends on the traffic. So here’s what you do, email me at Eric@fm99.com and definitely do leave comments. Especially negative ones. I feed off that energy and become funny from it. It’s true. But to start this off…

Get ready to lose all of your free time, because this link has EVERY NES GAME EVER all on one website. Dudes, you’re welcome.

-E