A vacation away from vacation.

Tonight I am leaving for the city of Las Vegas! A place known for it's gambling, erotic showcases and pure alcohol and drug driven festivals of lust! None of which I can partake in because I'm underage.

I'm sure there's other stuff to do.

Oh boy here we go...

Some mornings- or evenings, if that is how you wish to see my ruined sleep cycles- I wake up and something deep inside me knows that something is going down. This morning was one of those mornings. Apple released new products.

Say hello to the Magic Trackpad! It's a big wireless version of the trackpad used on MacBook Pros except now it works on your iMac! My initial reaction was "what?! gimme!" as the Apple sheep inside of me was dying to run to the Apple store and throw bundles of cash at the employees. Then I thought about it and realized I didn't need one as I already had my multi-touch Magic Mouse. In the end both devices serve the same purpose and it really all lands on your preference of navigation.

While the trackpad has some extra fingery flourishes such as 3 and 4 finger strokes to bring up expose or applications and even allows for rotation and dilation of images for photoshopping and the like. That's pretty damn cool but it's not really my sort of thing and there really isn't much else besides that. You may not be all that crazy about using what some would see as a limited means of computing control designed for laptops. But maybe you really like laptops, in which case this is perfect for you. Go nuts.

So maybe I don't need one, but it sure would be neat to use it.

Apple also released a new eco-friendly battery charger to fit their line of wireless AA battery powered products. It even comes with six Apple rechargeable batteries which I can only assume were blessed by Steve Jobs himself. Two for your mouse/trackpad, two for your keyboard and two to keep charged. I know I'm definitely getting this and it's convenient because I've been meaning to get a wireless keyboard for a while now.

Apple also released a new 27" LCD display and more powerful iMac models but I'm certainly not paying for a new Mac. That time won't come again for another decade. But I can wait.

And what a Fine Hour it was!

I experienced a strong sense of closure last Thursday as I finally got to read Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour. But before I got to read it I went through absolute hell as all the forms of book distributors failed me in what was clearly a sick practical joke to make me miserable. So I ended up getting the book at a comic shop the day before my shipment arrived 3 days late. Now I have 2 copies and I guess I'll just keep both. People will surely be impressed when I tell them I love Scott Pilgrim so much that I own two copies and it was not an unintended result of emotional weakness.

**SPOILER WARNING**

So Finest Hour wasn't really what I was expecting but that doesn't mean it wasn't totally great either. One thing I felt and apparently pretty much everyone else that read it did too is that it has a totally different tone from the rest of the volumes. While all the other volumes felt like systematic books in a series with a beginning middle and end, Finest Hour just felt like an end. It made me look at the previous 5 books as the beginning and middle which I guess makes sense because then that explains the whole volume situation. It is just one long book broken into pieces.

The humor in this book is much less focused on video games and is rather based around the characters themselves. Scott has totally lost and is still recovering from when Ramona left him in the last volume. He makes out with Knives and Kim and tries to with Envy to fill the emptiness that Ramona left him with. So Kim helps him confront his past so he can go and face Gideon. Then the rest of the book is pretty much Scott fighting Gideon, dying, (totally called it!) coming back to life, reuniting with Ramona and then they both kick his ass together. Also, Gideon is totally a dick. He created a machine where he kept all his ex-girlfriends like trophies. Scott and Ramona end up together and the book ends with them falling into Subspace holding hands. It really was much darker than any of the previous installments. I mean really, you should have seen the blood splatters.

I wasn't expecting O'Malley to make it all work out but I'm glad he did. In the end Scott Pilgrim is a story of growing up and learning from your mistakes while letting go of the past. I read it twice back-to-back and I was sad that it was the end of such a precious and hilarious story but I also felt really happy for all the characters that I love so much.

So now I have the movie to wait for. Reading Finest Hour totally shifted my perspective on how I see the film. It's like I'm really seeing it as an adaptation for the first time. Before I just saw it as another chapter in the SP saga but now that I know the whole story I feel like this is a story that has been around for a while and I just found that they're making a movie and I'm thinking to myself, "How are they gonna handle all of this?" I'm as excited as ever!

I think I might read it again right now. Then later I'll be doing the same.

P.S. Seriously, what am I gonna with that second copy?

Inception: Your Mind Is the Scene of the Awesome

I've gotten into the habit of making lines for a lot of things lately. Last night I was at the front of the line, proof that the more lines I make the more my skills grown within that world of linear patience. Oh yeah, and the line was for Inception.

Judging from what I had seen in the trailers- rolling city streets, spinning hallways, slow-motion- I had expected Inception to be a total mind-bomb. I was expecting to get lost fast and be on the edge on my seat wondering just what in the hell was happening. This was not the case and it's a good thing too. Inception is one of the most ingenious and original concepts I've ever seen in a film. I was captivated from beginning to end.

To run it down for you, Inception is about people who go into dreams and perform theft operations on ideas to extract information. Heres the kicker though: now they have to plant an idea. So they go through several layers of dreams and the whole world just starts to collapse and ohmygod Ellen Page is so cute.

I love seeing movies at midnight. Or doing anything at midnight for that matter. I feel like I'm taking away more from the film than anybody who will watch it after me. I know I'm not. It's just a feeling. It's like I was there, man! Ya know? No? Okay...

This was also the first time I tried out Regal's new RPX or Regal Premium Experience. If you're a film buff then RPX is totally worth the five extra bucks on your ticket. Where in a regular film auditorium there is a wall with a screen mounted on top, in RPX there is naught but a screen so monumental that you forget you're in a theater. In a normal auditorium where the walls are lined with dim lights, in RPX the walls are lined with beastly speakers created to make your ears bleed with pleasure. And in a normal auditorium where the seats creak and fight the curve of your body, in RPX you have perfect leather seats that look like they were ripped out of a Ferrari and when you sit, well, the seats gently release a breath of air as you gently sink to the bottom of your new 2 hour home. It's nice.

So go see Inception!

P.S. I don't know anything about cars.

Better Late than Never

I successfully purchased an iPhone 4 last Tuesday. All it took was an 8 hour wait outside of an AT&T store. It was quite an adventure. Most of which was spent looking for a water fountain and getting down to the philosophies of what a line truly is and the place that they hold in this world.

So this thing is amazingly beautiful. Like you can see pictures and read impressions and think to yourself "Hmm that looks nice" but when you hold it in your hands you could swear somebody took beauty and sculpted it out in the form of a phone.

I'm also very surprised by the camera quality. I can expect to take pics and shoot small vids all the time now. Should be a neat hobby. FaceTime also works well. I remember getting a call from a pal of mine and when I saw that the screen read "ANONYMOUS FRIEND would like some FcaeTime..." well at that very moment, I got a little chill and a quick thought passed through my mind where I felt like we'd reached the future. That sounds pretty dramatic but all the stuff we dream about in futuristic technologies are happening. It just may not seem like it because everything isn't metallic silver and robots aren't your best friends... yet.

P.S. I'm sorry about not posting in a while but dammit I have a life to live!