*Sigh* The Last Day of Summer...

Well, school starts tomorrow. I've just got the one math class at the high school for now, but still, it's the beginning of what I think will be a very challenging school year. I guess the real bummer is the fact that it's the last day of summer, and I'm not going to do anything fun. This is definitely an increase in Suck levels.

Reevaluation...

Yyyyyeah, I'm thinking trying to hold down a job (even as a bagger at the commissary) is not such a hot idea. My Dad and I were looking over my school schedule for when college starts, and as near as we can figure, if I were going to try and do it, I'd have to work and 8 hour day on Saturday and then try to squeeze everything else in somewhere during the week, doing at least 3 hours 3 other days during the week (there's a 16 hour minimum work quota), and that's not gonna fly if I plan on doing well in college classes, NOT to mention maintain my sanity and generally cheery disposition. I'm still going to see if the Head Bagger will let me just work until college classes start. It's easy to work in 16 hours when you only have one class at the high school in the morning and a whole day to kill :-)

Star Wars: the Clone Wars

Yes, I saw it, and it was indeed quite lame like we all predicted it would be. It was half-way decent, but barely. Either way, it has no business holding the "Star Wars" title. I know it was animated, so you couldn't expect much anyway, but it was animated BADLY. George Lucas is the man who started the PIXAR company, you'd think he could do better. When in combat, the characters moved beautifully, but then when they went to do simple conversations and interaction with each other, their movements and gestures were jerky and mechanical. Even my brother Michael, who actually wanted to see this movie, admitted that "Asoka", that little red girl in the picture there, was a dumb idea. She was Anakin's padawan. He was neever supposed to have one. So, yeah, this movie was half-baked, despite 3 years of work, and is in no way worth your time. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was better, actually, and you know what I thought of that little darling. Peace!

Family Reunion

Yesterday was the reunion of my late Great Grandpa Dick's family. I had never met them before, and they were all really nice. As soon as I looked around at all the men, I said to Dad, "They all look like Grandpa!" No kidding, the family resemblance was mind-bendingly obvious. All of them were really nice. We had a good time visiting and eating :-) Sean and Jackie were there too, which was because, while all the extended family were very nice and friendly, they were all old, the youngest ones were probably early seventies hahaha. I brought my guitar with me, so Sean and I took turns playing. Unfortunately, while Sean was retuning for one of his songs, the highest string broke. But, we made do. One goofy moment was when Sean and I were sitting in a gazebo playing and talking with some of the family. Max Kell was talking about how he heard about a gal who figured out that if she stopped buying Starbucks lattes all the time, she had extra money left over. I thought I'd contribute, so I said "Hmm, imagine that!" Max and the others burst out laughing like it was the most hilarious thing they had ever heard in they're entire lives O_O Sean and I looked at each other like "What on Earth??" That was kind of weird :-) But we had fun.

BABYSAT!

Well Mom started working again yesterday and is paying Michael and I to take care of the kidlings, James and Emily. It's not the funnest thing in the world, but, hey, it pays and lets Mom go back to work. The kidlings get irritating, but they're not too bad. The boredom is probably the worst part. When I get bored, I eat, and then I find myself in the middle of a snack when Dad gets home and it's time to run, and that makes running horrible... Anyways, that's what's going on here. It's day 2 of babysitting, and both Michael and I are getting a little bit of cabin fevah. Hang tight, we are too!

The Dark Knight/Makin' Money!/Quesadilla Burger

Well, The Dark Knight WAS everything I heard it was. Nothing's better than having your expectations high and then not being disappointed! The Joker was, of course, the best part of the movie. He was absolutely perfect in EVERY way, and was way better than the Jack Nicholson version back in '89. His sadism, disregard for human life and love for absolute chaos were perfectly portrayed, and his looks were also right on target. He looked as close to the cartoon Mark Hamill version as you can make a clown man and still have him look good and believable. He also pulled of the purple suit beautifully, and the laugh...OH, that laugh. It was beautiful. The Joker was perfect in every way. Two-Face was also well done...no, really, his face was completely SCORCHED LOL! But seriously, he was also very good. I don't have a lot to say about Batman himself, except that I didn't go to see Batman, I went to see the Joker. Batman's voice was weird, even though I know why, and somehow, he didn't look as good as he did in Batman Begins. I don't know why. But who cares? The movie was completely awesome, all the characters were pretty much perfect. This one's an instant classic, without a doubt.

Well, my work day at Aunt Awesome's was fruitful, to say the least :-) She now has space where before there were only boxes and boxes and bags and more boxes, and I was able to pay off some debt. It was very fun. Although I don't know that I'll ever order the Quesadilla Burger from Applebee's ever again. I thought I was gonna puke when I went running with my dad yesterday evening. Well, postya later! Avoid Quesadilla Burgers...

I'M GONNA SEE IT ! ! !

I'm finally going to see "The Dark Knight" today at 3:00! At LAST! Everyone else seems to have seen it already. My brother Michael seems to think it's going to suck for some reason, despite what everyone else who HAS seen it has told us. He is going to lose yet another argument :-) LOL. Anyway, I will be back later to post my review. I've heard nothing negative about it at all, only praises. I'm expecting a lot, and I don't think I'll be disappointed. SHA-WING!

Boredom soon to end...

Don't get me wrong, I love summer vacation and no school, but I get tired of whole days of doing absolutely NOTHING! You can only sit at the computer decomposing for so long before you get some serious cabin fevah. BUT, it looks like that should be drawing to a close for the most part here soon, probably starting Monday. On Monday, me and the fam are going to Aunt Awesome's place to do some work (and earn some money!) Also, my mom might be getting a job, in which case I would team up with brother Michael and watch the little chilluns, and also I might be getting a job. Either way, I get paid :-) And then school (e.g. COLLEGE) will be starting in not a whole lot longer. Hopefully summers of boredom are over. At this point in life, I need to start having work and stuff. I guess the end of boredom also sort of means the end of carefree-ness. Good grief, it's a bittersweet life.

I've just had Rice-A-Roni for the first time ever, and I must say, it was quite delicious! More specifically, I had ^that kind of Rice-A-Roni: Creamy Four Cheese! Not only is it soggy rice, but it's CHEESY! OH so cheesy. Anyways, not too exciting, but it's a first and worthy of note. I highly recommend it for lunch on a slow Friday afternoon :-)

Home At Last...

I'm finally back home on Awesome Island after nearly a week! It was nice getting to see family and such, but it's nice to come back to my own abode. All the driving does get pretty old. And I had my cds that I've been waiting for for several weeks waiting for ME when I got home: "Amnesiac" and "I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings" both by Radiohead. That was sweet. Anyways, not much to blog about, but I'm home! :-)

Freaking and Geeking in E-burg

I left Spokane today and am now in Ellensburg, land o' my birth. It's always nice coming here, just because I know it's home. It's like something that I know is mine, I've just not been allowed to have it for all these years, only little tastes here and there. Today my uncle-might-as-well-be-brother took me for a bike ride around town. It's so frustrating that even though I was born here, I've never really just been let loose to run around and explore the place. After running around and working up a bit of a sweat, Sean took me to the FRIGID river and we went floating. That was fun. Just the kind of rednecky sort of thing life has deprived me of thus far. One of these days, I'm going to move back here, no kidding. I'm so sick of moving! But I digress...
After a nice brisk drift down the river, we went for another one of our "geeking and freaking" rides in Sean's truck: this is where we grab some cds (usually Radiohead) and crank it up, talking about our favorite parts of the songs, how amazing the band is, etc, etc. That's the "geeking" part. The "freaking" part is where Sean and I freak my brother Michael out (because he came too, he had no choice really. It was either freak at our geeking or sit home alone for awhile) with our rocking out in our seats and singing along with Thom Yorke's odd voice :-P So that was fun. I'm really loving hanging out with Sean and I'm having just a really good time :-) That's all for now! Post ya later! -McCletus

Some Travels...

Well, while my Emily may be gone back to Florida, it would be a lie to say that I don't have anything to do now...that's not to say that it's not boring. SITTING IN A CAR FOR MOST OF A DAY IS NOT FUN.
Today, my mom, grandma Sylvia, cousin/aunt Christine, Michael, James, Emily (my sister) and I all drove to Spokane. What really makes a car ride not-very-fun is when you are sleepy and keep waking up all the time from random naps. Especially when you burned your mouth on some food the day before. Mix that with that waking-up taste in your mouth plus a dash of forgetting your deodorant and a handful of being sweaty and lethargic from sitting in a humid car with 6 other people and you have discomfort. It seems a lot worse now that I think about it :-P
I'll be here in Spokane until this weekend, at which time I will go to Ellensburg and stay a couple of nights at Grandpa Jack's house, so that'll be nice seeing him...
Good news! I may be able to go and see Emily in August. Her parents offered to go halfsies with my folks to buy a plane ticket. Mom and I just have to talk to Dad about it and see about scraping together money for that. That would fill both Emily and I with joy if we could visit again this summer, as there is really no other opportunity to get together this year. Keep your fingers crossed!
Just thought I'd give all you fans out there a small update. Keep clam!

My Girlfriend Emily

Well, Emily went home yesterday. That was not a happy thing. BUT, a couple days before she left, we made a wonderful change in our relationship...

I've liked her for quite a while, despite not getting to see her for 7 months :-( But absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. I was unsure, but had my strong suspicions, whether Emily reciprocated my feelings for her. While we were coming back from the beach one evening, I was walking, she was cuddled up riding piggy back. We had just had a conversation that involved me beating around the bush needling her to find out where her head was at...and sounding like a goof :-P On the way back, because I had made myself completely obvious, Emily said, "I like you, boy-o." My heart quicked, and I don't think it was just because I was carrying her :-) So after clarifying what sort of "like" she was referring too, 'cause I'm cautious, we both knew without a shadow of a doubt that we really like each other. And that's how Emily beacame my girlfriend.

Up top is a picture of me and my Amazon. She calls me her Roman Gladiator :-P

Having a Great Time :-)

Well, Emily's been here for a few days now, and we've been having a great time. We walked about a bazillion miles yesterday in Seattle and went to Pike Place Market. It was a pretty neat experience, but I'd rather not go there again. The sea of humanity was insane and the shops were all rather dingy. There was also this annoying Hispanic guy sitting on a crate singing badly in Spanish and strumming irregularly on his guitar. We also hung out on Mercer Island, where my dad grew up, and looked at all the old houses while he named off who lived where and who was STILL there after 40 years.
After we were done traipsing around Seattle, Emily and I were taken to Aunt Awesome's office, where we spent the next 12 hours. I'm typing this after only having had maybe 5-6 hours sleep in about 41 hours (good grief! I JUST added that up, I had no idea...that's unholy!) But we had a good ol' time at the office. We watched one of the bloodiest movies either of us had ever seen ("Interview with a Vampire", excellent movie. We got to see Tom Cruise get poisoned with laudenum-tainted blood, his throat slashed followed by his very profuse bleeding, dumped in a swamp and probably chewed on by alligators, and SET ON FIRE. THAT'S a good movie!) We also played with these fun twirly sticks while listening to Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief", attempted to make a video on Aunt Awesome's MacBook but failed due to lack of sound, ate pizza, ran that way>, watched more movies, dozed in the car and missed Coldplay's "Viva La Vida", and near about starved to death. Fun times... :-) I'll put up a couple of pictures when I get ahold of some. Peace!

It's tomorrow!

Well, it's finally happenin'! After waiting since January 10th, my best friend Emily is coming to visit TOMORROW! I can't wait, I almost want to get in the car right now and 10:17 pm and go to the airport to wait for her plane to arrive :-P But yeah, this week is gonna be CRAZY GO NUTS! I'll tell ye how the week goes later on, I'll probably post again from Aunt Awesome's office. Cheers!

"WALL-E": The Day Pixar Failed

I've been meaning to make this post for a couple of days now, since "WALL-E" opened on June 27. Me and my family went to see it, all anticipating another great work from Pixar, in light of past successes such as "Toy Story" and "The Incredibles". We were sorely disappointed...
The main problem with the movie, was that it had NO real refined story whatsoever. It was like the director (Andrew Stanton who is responsible for another Pixar great, "Finding Nemo")had tons of different ideas of directions that the story could go, and then tried to do them all. He could have focused on the love story between WALL-E and EVE and done a sort of Adam and Eve story (in fact he did, naming the girl robot "EVE"), but that would have been a little weak. Mr. Stanton could have focused on a Noah's Ark theme as well. In the movie, all the people on Earth were gone and on this space cruise, as Earth had become too covered in trash and was uninhabitable. WALL-E then brought a plant from Earth to the ship, showing that the Earth was once again habitable. Once again, however, the guy did not do this either. On the cruise ship, everybody was an immobile blob riding around on a hover-bed/chair thing with everything automated and done for them. The good director could have taken this and built the movie around it but DIDN'T! There were just so many things, obvious and subtle, that the director could have built the movie on, but he instead couldn't pick any one thing, he had to do it all, and the rusult was a huge exploded mess that made for a terrible film. There was nothing else about the movie that I disliked, it simply lacked direction. I did not hate the film, it just was a massive disappointment, and it's a sad, black mark on Pixar's otherwise perfect record.
Don't bother watching it, it's not worth your time, and only made me sad.

Visitor! / Kung Fu Panda

Well, it's only about 8 days or so til by best friend Emily comes from Florida to visit! W00T! It's been about 7 months since we saw each other last, and we are both excited! My Aunt Awesome is planning to have us up to her office to pull an all nighter on the 4th of July, so that'll be pretty sweet, and then on the 8th she's going to kidnap us and we're going to do who-knows-what fun stuff. So yeah, it's gonna be pretty sweet.
I saw "Kung Fu Panda" the yesterday, and I was somewhat disappointed. Don't get me wrong, I love Jack Black's energy, and there was plenty of that in the movie, but it just fell a little short of my expectations. It wasn't even and hour and a half. It was pretty funny, though, and I did like it. Go ahead and get it for the kiddies for a laugh, they'll love it. :-)

School's Out! / "Juno" Review

School is indeed out! I felt so great about the last day, that I wore a tie. I also toted my guitar around school, so that was fun. My fingers are now cut like an emo kid though. But, finally, after about 10 months of hard work, it's over. Now for a nice full summer:-)
In the 8 or so hours I had home alone (the rest of the family was in Seattle, taking my brother to the airport), a friend told me of a website on which I could watch movies in their entirety. She's been recommending "Juno", and I've been wanting to see it, so I went to said website, and watched it.
I had been told that "Juno" was a pro-abortion movie, and because of that I wasn't allowed to see it (don't worry, that's all cleared up). But that was by people who hadn't seen it. My friends who had told me about the movie had seen it, so I was more inclined to listen to them. It turned out to not be any kind of pro-abortion deal after all. If anything, it was the opposite, making the abortion clinic look pretty scary. I'm not going to spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it, but it was an overall great movie. There was quite a bit of language scattered here and there, so that was unnecessary, the teenage characters (mainly Juno's best friend) cracked a good number of dirty jokes, and, obviously, there was some teen sex involved. But, it was funny, and it did not have an evil agenda behind it. I loved it, I thought it was sonderful. Peace!

TOMORROW IS THE LAST DAY OF 10TH GRADE!

Ho, yus! Ho, yus! Ho, yus! Ho, yus! Like the title dun did said, the last day of school is TOMORROW. This brings me no shortage of utter JOY...
This has been the longest school year I have ever had. It started while I was living in Florida, where they start the year sooner than they do in Washington, and where they also finish later: thus, I have done about two extra weeks of school! This is so, so wrong. Now, the year is ending, I only have 3 hours of school (if you can call sitting in each class room for less than 30 minutes school) left to go before a glorious summer.
I hope to get a job so that I can earn money to buy a Macbook and be free of the bonds of this piece-of-pig-droppings computer that I am yet confined to, my best friend is coming to visit from Florida, I get to hang out with my aunt Awesome (though most folks call her "Cara") a bit, and...um...hopefully get my Crown Vic tuned? That's always a plus. Nothing like a finely tuned piano. I'll get some pics of her and the rest of my "posse" on here sometime soon.
...and then in the fall I'll start college...but we'll think about that later on.
HAPPY SUMMER EVERYBODY!

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

WARNING: This movie review may contains spoilers. This is probably because the movie wasn't worth seeing, so go ahead and read it.
The movie, overall, was absolute tripe. The beginning was week, and that probably explains why the guy two chairs down from me fell asleep. I did sort of like the artistic entrance of Indiana at the start, because it really conveyed that whole, "Yeah, 20 years have gone by and he's a geezer now, but Indiana Jones is still kicking butt" sort of deal. But then, the Russian KGB was introduced. This was not cool. As far as I'm concerned, Indiana Jones fights Nazis and only Nazis. And then it got worse with cheesy lines. It finally started picking up a little bit, and then the middle of the movie was really not half bad, but it kind of had hints that it was going to decline when this KGB woman reveals that the crystal skull (oh yeah, the good Dr. Jones found that inside the first hour or so of the movie) is the skull of a space alien. A SPACE ALIEN. I cannot emphasize how much Indiana Jones is not supposed to have ANYthing whatsoever to do with space aliens. Anyway, there were a couple of pretty good chase scenes, and then it comes time for Indiana Jones to return this skull to where it needs to be or something. So he places the skull on top of this alien skeleton (because there's a whole room full of them under this lost Aztec city *rollmyeyes*) and then it comes to life, along with the rest of the aliens. The KGB guys get sucked away into an INTERDIMENSIONAL VORTEX and then these aliens take off in a FLYING SAUCER. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! THIS IS NOT INDIANA JONES! THIS IS GEORGE LUCAS MOURNING THE DEATH OF STAR WARS!
So, I did over simplify some elements of the movie, just in case you still want to see it, but that's the movie overall. It was lousy, that's really all there is to it. If you want to complete the set so you can have all 4 movies, that's your deal, but it was not worth 2 hours of my life. I give it 1.5/4 stars. The good parts aren't enough to compensate for a REALLY bad ending. More reviews as I see more movies!

HELLO, blog world!

Well, I know there's folks that want to hear stories, and others that just want to stay in touch, so I finally got my lazy finger tips away from the iTunes surfing long enough to start a blog. I'll post again when I got somethin' to post!