August 2005 Archives
Happy 1 million subscriber in NA to World of Warcraft
The Wang just happen to be one in a million now…
Missing the Sunset Junction event, all the Wang had was this Flickr picture of Jenny Lewis. Plus if u wanted to see more of the Sunset junction event that we all missed… unless u went, at Flickr, here’s a link to the sunset junction tag and here. Thank you Flickr for giving us a second chance at living a street-fair life.
WotC (Wizard of the Coast, the makers of 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons, for u non-RPG geeks) has decided to either Jump the Shark, or create the coolest idea evah. WotC is sponsoring tools for librarians to run Afternoon D&D games. What the Wnag and Wang-friends use to do at high school is now turned into a corporate event to lure in the next generation of gamers. Yes the Wang was geeky enough to game at the library during the high school period, the Wang wasn’t a pimp like Kevin Arnold, so the Wang had to fall back on his gigantic imagination. The Wang has always said that “geek is the nerd of the aught." So the influx of more younger gamers is a good thing. Plus the chance at the hawt young gamer girl is always a nice thing, even is the Wang cannot be a recipient of such co-ed social blending events, at least the young gamer geek-dudes can grow up to be cooler geek-elites. But the Wang will make happy visits to these library events and share Uncle Wang’s stories of slaying dragons and fighting of hordes of goblins for gold and loot the glory for righteousness and justice.
Jesus knows about the revolution controllers
Which brings us to the fact that this past weekend was the 2nd Annual Penny Arcade Expo in Bellevue, Washington. The PAX is usually just a mega gathering of uber geeks to play anything they desire. Pretty much its an event for geeks to gather to be geeky and battle it out, since there can be only one. Geek on geek warfare, involving videogames, collectable card games, role-playing games, and gladiatory combat via miniatures. Geeks will pit them selves for the one great geek title, so they can gain each other’s power after defeating one another via the "Quickening." Too bad the King of Geeks was busy to go, otherwise he might of lost his head.
Look on the bright side, at least its nice and warm outside… have good day everyone.
THANKYOUs:
This week has been a party week for the wang. Mainly do to the departure of Mr. Crimsonratt, which lead to our drinking “1 bottle per night" parties. Of course normally that would be a pretty fun time. But we seem to end up in the 2-3 bottles a night area. Though ppl do come and show up in Mr. Crimsonratt’s honor and we all chat the night away. Mr. Crimsonratt is one of those ppl that leaves legacy where ever he goes, and in so leaving California, he will be missed. But until he actually goes, we’re staying drunk. Still the Wang finds some time to bring some of these interesting tidbits to the world of interweb readers.
Watch as a machine gun vs. a katana it took 7 shots to break the katana, and the 6 bullets before were actually shattered or sliced in half.
11 yr old girl hacks website with music and unicorns, because her father wont buy her a pony.
Not usually speaking the political message, but the Wang came across a interesting interview on the Daily Show with author Christopher Hitchens. Much of Stewart’s usual antics are used, but still between the comical jabs, a few bits of good info is there. On the other note, Mr. Starfizzy linked another interesting Iraq article from Kenneth Pollack of Saban thinktank on what we should do to end this war.
Comic strip of Creationism, if god was an artist.
And to correct the mistake of last Friday’s post, the Sunset Junction Street Fair is this weekend, not next. checkout their website for more info.
See Evangline Lilly drink water…
Who is Mimi Holiday? and thankyou Goldenfiddle for linking her.
Also welcome to the new and imporved Movabletype 3.2 blogging tool, can u tell the new changes? isnt it wonderful? u can get ur own here.
Well have a good weekend everyone!
THANKYOUs:
With the coming of the Serenity movie, these little viral marekting clips were released about the past of River Tam.
R Tam Session 416 Second Excerpt
Good stuff, almost goes a little Ring-esque with the video camera thing here. I guess viral marketing is really taking off, even with the recent Xbox, Origen Xbox 360 rabbit and tree thing, which gained some apples today.
Wired’s 10 Years that Changed the World is a must read for ppl of our generation. A great recap of the last 10 yrs on the World Wide Web. Starting from the founding of Netscape to the Empire that is Google, Wired gives us, techno-geeks a look at the past ten yrs of our cyber-lives. Most of us r oblivious to the business and the ppl behind everything that made the interweb what it is today. Wired even gives nods to founding fathers of the multimedia hypertech such as Bush and Nelson, whose idea were not achieved until the technology came around in the 90s. Their visions of a massive repository of knowledge were only truly brought to its virtual existence when we all came to embrace the interweb.
But Wired goes on the mentioning the true spirit behind the interweb. That ppl would gather together without boundaries, to share knowledge, ideas, and files. It is a community of its participants, a entity created by those who feed it. Wired also brings us the last 10 yrs of the struggle between those who wanted to use the interweb for greed and those who want it to be free.
How could we create so much, so fast, so well? In fewer than 4,000 days, we have encoded half a trillion versions of our collective story and put them in front of 1 billion people, or one-sixth of the world's population. That remarkable achievement was not in anyone's 10-year plan.
Writer Kevin Kelly ends with the future. He envisions that one day, the net will becomes a sentient machine. And we, now are the ppl that will bring it life. This machine, much like our brain will be the future of knowledge, and like the visions of Vannevar Bush, the Web will be our collective mind and spirit.
So much as the Wang has learned in the past year in Blogging, some how, this medium, has gotten the Wang of his lazy ass and to create content. I can’t say this is great stuff that I’m writing everyday, but much like the web, it has turned us into active producers. Anyone can and does contribute to this great machine, this mind of the future. In fact we are all parents to this child of Humanity.
Never did watch Six Feet under, but this past weekend of the show’s finale has lead the blogsphere to be littered with info and comments to the show’s end. But amidst all the sobbing and the criticizing, are links to a song by Sia, “Breathe Me".
The video uses a cool animated Polaroid for most of the storytelling. As think much like the show, which I haven’t seen, I’ve guessing it was about living, being alone, and relationships, which seems to be a theme of late. Movies like Lost in Translation, Borken Flower, and 2046 all seem to be tackling this theme. Like do how ppl spend their lives regretting the past, or having problems dealing with ppl. This song’s video seems to carry a little of that message, about asking for friends and how images of ppl are near her, but not close to her.
Recently the Wang is doing this one-bottle-a-night drinking party for a friend that’s leaving the LA area. Its nice to gather the circle of friends and drink and talk about our lives, our future, or just anything. The Wang has always said, “the older u get, its not about the quantity of friends, its about the quality." The Wang encourages everyone to gather, to find ur friends and just to do nothing, and hang out. Find the a reason, make up a cause, and open up a bottle, pour some tea, or just open a 12 pack. Who needs a reason for good friends to gather?
Tis was a most busy-est weekend in awhile. Friends visted, lunch dates, dinner plans, and hanging out snacks took the whole weekend. The Wang got to hang out with some groups of friends that he normally don’t get to hang out with and got to try a few new food places along the way. Not to mention a visit to a Buddhist Temple, equally spiritual Portos bakery, and had the fun time of not finishing a movie in the theatres. There the Wang was, hanging with Mr. Starfizzy, indie-film-companion at the One Laemmle theater in Old Town Pasadena. Happily watching Pretty Persuation, a movie in which, the main theme seems to be how people use their appearance to manipulate others, mostly high school girls using their sexuality to manipulate. It seems to be one of those stories about girls coming to age, and grasping the power of their sexuality type of things. In all this are some serious themes that seem to be imbedded in all this humor of underage sexuality, one of which almost seem to mock the whole concept of watching all these hawt girls doing there taunting. Which then, makes the movie a ironic mockery of its self… but the sad and angry event that followed was 5-10 min. before the end, the Fire alarm goes off in the building thus ejecting the lot of the movie goers. So in fatc, Mr. Starfizzy and the Wang, never finished the movie. This movie seemed like it had some very interesting last scenes that was about to bring the whole movie to some sort of intellectual orgasm. But too bad, the stupid fire alarm interrupted everything. Its when u r parents call u when ur in bed with ur girl or something… bad timing. We got some crappy I.O.U. cards and the Wang intend to go back one day, and watch Selma Blair dance like a school girl in a movie about girls abusing their sexuality and the men who watch them do it.
Flying Spaghetti Monster links gone wild! the FSM event has really taken of with the help of BoingBoing its even getting a bumper sticker printing
“Welcome to Chef Stadium!"
“You too can attract women with this cool conductor hat."
“Checkout my leather pants, I’m the Porn King!"
"You, for some reason, unrelated to my fame as a theme song singer and these semi-cute spokesmodels, WANT this game. You do! You'll even buy the catchy theme song on CD. You just will. Accept it."
Video gaming + Hot women = BabeQuest II search for Antonia
A Xbox 360 count down to 9/27? Wonder what that means…
When WoW gets bored, there will always be LotR Online, coming 2006… or so they say. But isn’t it purty?
DAMN! U thick necked punk!! How can u forget what we had... hermione, it was beautiful... /sob
Remember a while back we mentioned this cute little girl to be Mr. tensai’s dream girl, well she won another eating contest, by eating 40 crabcakes. and they call her the black widow.
THANKYOU:
Logan
Geek on Stun
Kotaku
Joystiq
Thighs Wide Shut
Waxy Links
It has been hella of a week, 3 ppl of no relationship and relatively no contact by are friends of friends passed this week. Still the wang must trooper on in humor and spirit. To represent the little wangs world round, and bring the light to those who cant seem to find it online. but today we start with not humor but art and class.
Noble_zone gives us a review for Wong Kar Wai’s latest 2046. This movie has been out in Asia for about 2 yrs now. And the Wang is an avid fan of Wong Kar Wai, thus the Wang has always been following on the news of this movie. 2046Starts out claiming to be a sci-fi movie, that turns into a romance movie, that turns into a canvas of the human individuality. But Noble gives a nice description of his viewing and his attention to characters and acting.
... then the humor:
Bikinigamers.com is a blog/site that approaches the sexy side of gaming. Also they have a lot of cool pictures like the one above and other hawt gaming related stuff… and humor.
I’m not gay, but Tony with a Panda!? if I was gay, I’ll be in my bunk.
Achtunng baby! brings us this interesting link to this upcoming Animation, Samurai 7. Its based of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, has ship battles that look like Last Exile, and has some sort epic level action combat thing going on. The Wang does approve of this “steam punk" genre that seems to be big in the Japanese Anime world. Plus the Wang like large ship combats, specially when they look like Japanese Tokugawa period Castles. Plus if nothing else, the Wang needs to acquire this soundtrack.
A Gamegal article about hwo XBOX live! Is a bad experience for women gamers. Apparently the voice chat world of gaming makes it so boys, in their immature-ness, revert back to their elementary school yard ways and start fling pool at the girls over these voice supported Xbox Live!. Also speaking of Xboxs, Penny-Arcade gives us the solutions to the $399 “special" Xbox 360 package price.
I give u, baby porcupines.
Remember t.A.t.u? well they r back… checkout their new t.A.t.u. video
Lineage II online mugging by Bots.
This is best pickupline, or it is some sort of Green day peace message… But anyways, The Wang love this song, the video for Wake me up when September ends. Not to mention the girl in this video has Avril Lavigne/Kristen Dunst thing going on…
Boingboing covers the entire story behind the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Don’t u want to know what that is? Well go to BoingBoing they’ll explain to u the whole new religion, created in answer to the whole Kansas “Intelligent Design" event.
Why must the Japanese love to throw liquids on their women’s faces? And why does it have to involve puffyamiyumi?
Lost & Stolen II by goldenfiddle.
Don’t forget this weekend is the Sunset Junction. Starting at 10a every morning, Sunset near Silverlake will be blocked for this street fair. Cheap fastfood and live music including Rilo Kiley on Sat. night. If the Wang wasn’t all scheduled up this weekend, there might be a visit, specially after seeing Jenny, gone fugly.
Anyways, have a fun weekend! The Wang is going to go answer an Ad... did someone say Zepplins?
P.S. The SUnset junction is for next week, the Wang was mistaken.
THANKYOUs:
Zibacco
AFK gamer
DataWhat?!
The 15 min. Hipster
Joystiq
LAist
BoingBoing
Thighmaster
The Wang is usually not about the politics. But this article from Rolling stones gives us a pessimistic future in the realm of lawmakers. IF this is the way congress works, then I think investing in the citizen-ship of another country might not be a bad idea.
In the middle of the exchange, Sanders gets up and, looking like a film lover leaving in the middle of a bad movie, motions for me to join him in the hallway. He gestures at the committee room. "It's cramped, it's uncomfortable, there isn't enough room for the public or press," he says. "That's intentional. If they wanted people to see this, they'd pick a better hall."
Mr. Starfizzy, an avid reader of the onion links us to this hilarious article, called: Rumsfeld Makes Surprise Visit to Wife’s Vagina". Also Mr. Starfizzy gives the Starfizzy thumb to the entire week. But don’t take his word for it, read some of their articles, they are pretty damn funny most of the time, like this article: Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory"
Teen Angst by M83. M83, one of the Wangs favorite bands this moment is a French electronic/trance/space rock –ish band. Check out their surreal electronic layering of sounds. Good stuff. Also at iFilm is “Fix You" by Coldplay, another replay song of choice on the Wang iPod.
THANKYOUS:
10 way MMORPGS will change the future. Not exactly a work of genius, but it points out a lot of interesting directions of the growth of MMOs.
Apparently, ppl get strike by lightning a lot on the great wall of china. Atleast it isn’t an entire plane being struck by lightning. Its probably just the dragons being angry.
Remember the frag dolls? those corporate gaming girls that travel around to sell stuff? Which somehow reminds me of Suicide Girls. A nice starting concept, but they strike me as a corporate sell out, specially with their new relationship advice radio show? On Indie 103.1 (which is beginning to smell like a sell-out also…) This all makes me think of the cosplay sex advice article a while back. Which just proves my theory that even in the realm of geeks, there are the social elite geeks and then there are other hierarchies of geekdom. So u can actually end up to be the outcast, of the originally outcast group… I guess this is what happens when geek-ness becomes the “in" thing. Levels of social geekdom will divide geeks from within. Jocks and Pot-heads will infiltrate the ranks of geeks and one day all geeks shall fall, and the Rockers and Artists will inherited the social non-conforming elite status.
But that not what originally what the Wang was talking about before that last paragraph flew out. Anyways… a real gaming girl group, the Girls of Destruction, or “g0d" has recently kick ownage arse at Quakecon.
White Stripe’s My Doorbell video cool stuff, specially, when jack white "de-arms" a kid.
Alrighty, slow day… so the wang will go home and catch some much missed rest from this weekend of video games, and other debauchery. The wang leaves u with something spiritual:
AFK Gamer
Engadget
Zibacco
Noble Zone
Kotaku
joystiq
Data What?!
The Wang was just browsing many of the usual LA blogs and came accross a thread about ethnic foods in LA on la.foodblogging.com. The Wang felt his national duty to throw out a few fame dim sum spots of choice.
Rare and explusive to LA is Din Tai Fung. Din Tai Fung is a chain retaurant from Taiwan that has only 5 stores in the world, NY, Tokyo, LA, and 2 in Taipei. Their specialties are shanghai style soup dumplings. These small dumplings are filled with a soup broth and baked. They exploded when u bite into them and require some skills before the chopsticks upon them. Due to its wordly reputation, Ding tai Fung does get quite a lot of tourists and can pack quite a wait line. Specially on weekends, when the special weekend soup dumplings are made. Amongst my personal are the crab dumpling and the red bean dumpling, which are on the heavy side, but each bite is a little sweet delight.
Another dim sum store of some fame is Mission 261. Following in the current trend in Hong Kong, fusion Dim Sum, and the success of Koi Palace (which I absolutely recommand)in San Francisco, we get Mission 261. Located in the mission district of San Gabriel, this dim sum restaurant brings us just a few new twists on old dim sum favorites. There mochi wrapped stuff are my favorites. This includes the shrimp dumplings and many of the desert-type dumplings.
The Wang was recently notified by good friends about the Vegoose Music festival in Las Vegas. While the Wang hasn’t truly decided on the Austin City Limit. Which seems to have a much better lineup unlike Coachella, which decided to have every band clash with everyother bands schedule, resulting in everyone making the tough choice to see only a few bands. Sad thing is the ACL weekend 3-day passes are sold out, but u can get individual days still. Anyways back to Vegoose. It is obvs closer to the Wang, and involves Vegas, where the Wang has a nice foothold and a constant place to stay at, which always simplifies the deciding. A decent line-up too. Checkout their website (above) and tickets go on sale tomorrow.
Also this week is the big famous Tofu Festival at Little Tokyo. It is the 10th annual, its amazing that the Wang has almost gone to everyone of them since 6 yrs ago. Well maybe not the last two, but the Wang don’t talk about that… Though in an odd twist, the festival will feature live bands, including Ozomatli on Sunday night at 7p. Checkout the Tofu Cam!
And yes still no Liz Phair tickets… have a good weekend all!
The Wang is sadden since all the Liz Phair shows at the Troubadour is sold out. The Wang was never a fan of Ms. Phair in her glory days, but after reading some nice introduction post to her via LJ’s audiography community and the Wikipedia link for ms. Phair. Of course another reason is that she is quite hot, and one of the reason for the WWW traffic is this hawt picture we had a while back. But since the Wang isn’t going to make any live shows with Ms. Phair, the Wang will have to settle with someone’s experiences last night and a iTune Liz Phair playlist…
A new Domino trailer This one makes the movie feel more like a Lock Stock feel, which seems nice. Always cool to throw in some mob and Christopher Walkens as a producer saying things like “Nunchucks, I like the Nunchucks…"
In the wake of all the GTA violence talks, finally some Scientific studies on video game and violence.. I mean the government just wont let go of this violence-kids-videogame correlations. Its like its another launching pad form some political career. Although the research article does use some weird words that kill its credibility.
Google and CNET has a minor info skirmish this last month. Apparently fearing the information that Google gathers behind the scene, CNET reporter dug a whole bunch of info on Google CEO Eric Schmidt. This apparently landed a “Google will not speak to CNET till 08/2006" statement. Boingboing covers this event as Xeni Jordan reports on NPR today.
Now the Wang is going to go home and cry himself to sleep. Whilest every ticket for Ms. Phair is either gone or insane from craiglist, the Wang will have to settle for the good o’fashion iPod. Though the iPod isn’t as hawt as Ms. Phair, but it does have some nice curves, and the Wang spends a lot of money to pretty up the iPod with cases and accessories. Or the Wang will be comforted by good food from friends… either way, something is getting filled tonight!
THANKYOU:
The Wang spend this weekend in cold-illness, but recovered due to the love of my iPod and the ever caring PSP. Frequently, the PSP would check in on my as I nestled in my bed, and bring me chicken soup or a game of or two of NFL Street. But much bed rest has done the Wang good, cause a warm Wang is a happy Wang.
But between the resting, the Wang did manage to squeeze in two films, one, The Wedding Crasher and second, Broken Flower. Even though the Wang was going for 2046, but bad timing plus a huge line at the Nuart prevented that. So Noble and I went to the 2nd movie of choice, Broken Flower.
Ok but before anything else, *RANT ON* The Wang would like to say that the entertainment industry and the audience of said industry is dead to me… how could crap such as the Dukes of hazard make $30m and own the weekend?
Still, the Wedding crasher featuring, Isla Fisher, was quite funny and entertaining. The overall movie felt like another gathering of the comedy club & friends of Vince Vaughn, where Vince played the role of Vince Vaughn in another comedy. Not that it wasn’t a funny movie, there was just nothing new there. But the presence of Isla Fisher and Rachael McAdams definetly helps the film to be a nice romantic comedy with just enough wackiness.
Then there was Broken Flower by Jim Jarmusch. Unfortunately coming after Lost in Translation and also starring bill Murry, gives it a “copycat feel" to the movie. But beside the underline theme of lonely-ness, I think this movie’s main emotion is actually regret, or choices not taken. Which makes this movie a nice view and a nice thought provoker from anyone that has… a life. And I don’t mean like social life, I meant that they lived, and there were events in their life that leaves marks in the soul. It was a nice theme, just a bit slow with dry humor. Still, some wacky dry humor and Ethiopian Jazz driving montages are just a few of the scenes that drives this reflection story that will make u look at ur own life, and ask the big question of “what if…"
Another interesting entertainment value of Broken Flowers was the trailer to Pretty Persuasion. Starring Rachael Evan Woods. All I can say is Cathloic, School Girls, Sex Scandal, and Selma Blair going, "I'm a little schoolgirl, i dont want Mr. Anderson to spank me." I think those elements have the Wang sold.
new Serenity Trailer. Atleast we can see with the above picture, Inara is getting some screen time, I guess to look pretty. Or maybe it is one of those Eowyn trailer shots that will only show up in the Extended edition.
Kotaku rumors that Blizzard North has canceled their current development of Diablo 3 it’s a shame, many of the Wang’s youth was lost to the Diablo line…
Most interesting photos from Flickr in the last 24 hrs.
THANKYOU:
KCRW is having their annual Summer Pledge Drive. With the recent proposed Public Broadcasting cuts from the Senate, we should take even more time out to help out our local Public Broadcasting. Though KCRW is quite famous and has decent local support, they can always use the help.
Plus look there r a lot of free stuff.
Isla Fisher of Wedding Crasher fame is hawt. Goldenfiddle just posted about how she wrote two best seller novels. So she's hawt and smart. True shame though, she seems to be married to Ali G.
The Wang did just view the drama/chase flick known as The Island. All the Wang can say is: The Wang also would like to pre-order a Scarlet Johanssen clone. This movie aint great, but it does have some very intense action sequences. So Michael Bay good luck, after that craptastic openning last week, i hope u can still find work. its a shame u have to drag down Scarlet and Ewan...
You know its been awhile since we had any Star Wars mockery here at WWW. So here are some more iNet Star Wars fun:
- Right before Vader force-choke Padme, he scared her in bed.
-After the Clone war, Yoda had to make money in the streets by covering Britney songs.
-You too can train in the art of deflecting lightsabers.
New Serenity poster, its spank full of River.
One the ones favorite directors is Wong Kar Wai. He’s the famous HK director of Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love. He is an Auteur in many sense of the word. Most of his works of the last 10 years have involved Tony Leung of Hero, and way too many movies.
The Wang has always told his friends that if the Wang was ever gay, this would be the man that the Wang would put out for. I mean this man is a god. He’s range in movies puts most British actors to shame. I’ve seen this man do slap-stick comedy to some un-intelligible Wong Kar Wai stuff. he’s done comedies, drama, documentaries, action, and romances. He also sings and has 1.5 albums out. I cant say he sings well… but he has 1.5 albums out. Here is an interview with Tony Leung about 2046 and overall working with Wong Kar Wai.
Speak like the kids do on SMS/chatrooms: the Acronyms & Text Messaging guide
Joss Wheldon gives a little on the upcoming Wonder Women.
Apple has finally changed their copyrights of the iPod to include the word "video." I guess this means the iPod Video is pretty set to coming out, soon.
DAMN IT, not only did the Wang missed out on Dashboard Confessionals at the Troubadour last night, the Wang also just learned Canuck indie grrls, Tegan and Sara was in LA last night also! Curses! If it wasn’t for the Like concert tonight, the Wang would be driving down to Anaheim right now!
Well on that note, the Wang is off to see some indie grrl of LA concert. Come on down to the Troubadour and we can all be merry together. Remember the Wang is the tall Asian dude, surrounded by little white folks.
Zibacco
Weblog: Sex and Fun
Data What!?
Thighs Wide Shut
Goldenfiddle
Engadget
