I'M SO FUCKING SICK RIGHT NOW!!



... and it's absolutely terrible. I picked up a cold over the weekend (Danielle did too, I think she had it first because I've got it the worst). I'm pretty much bedridden today, but I manged to make it to work yesterday. It sucks so much ass... I'm going stir crazy, but the WORST thing is that I don't have the DRIVE TO PICK UP AND PLAY ANY VIDEO GAMES. OH GOD. HORRIBLE!!! It's okay, I watched some deadwood and drifted in and out sleep. Now, Danielle and I are sitting in the living room watching some TV (Danielle is also doing homework). I feel pretty crappy, but this tea I'm drinking is going down smooth... aaaaaah.

On Friday night, I went to Chuck and Alice's new place in Bedford for a kick ass potluck. Danielle, Omar, Chris, Jess, Gordon, Sam, Samantha, Sean, and Rob (I've never met him before at length) were all there as well. I made a GIANT pot of Chili (it was still boiling hot even after being off of the burner for 2 hours), which turned out great... I've kind of got the recipe down to a science. A delicious, spicy, tomato-y science. Omar made a delicious salad with peaches (?) in it, Chuck fixed up some chicken/rice/veggie combo, Chris and Jess brought an antipasto platter and some mussels, Gorgon and Sam brought broccoli salad, Danielle brought a cake, and I think everyone else brought along dessert. After we ate, we sat around, talked, and listened to music for the night. It was a great night. I really like the set up that Chuck and Alice have there. The living room is great for everyone to sit around and talk in. Oh yeah, photos...















we're kind of blurry (I was feeling blurry for sure)!













LAMP







Totally super cool awesome











Woo hoo. We've got to have another one of those sometime soon. It's great to have everyone around eating/talking/everything else.

Yeah! So on Saturday night, Danielle and I were going to go see Batman again in theaters (we had free passes) but things kind of run aground in terms of time... we went out to dinner, but we somehow expected that Bayers Lake would not be busy at all and that we'd be able to get ourselves some supper at a sitdown place in less than an hour and a half. Anyway, after we realized that our plans had hit the fan, we decided to say "fuck it" and just take it easy. We headed over to Future Shop after supper to pick up Buzz! for the PS3.





It's a quiz game the covers a TONNE of topics. It's great though, because you can play it with 4-8 people locally, online with people, AND if you ever get bored trying to tear through the 5000+ questions, there are user generated quizzes (I already made a Simpsons one) and expansion packs that can be downloaded. Sean and Omar ended up coming over that night, and we played a few rounds. I would have settled for one, but some other people got addicted. HA.

I worked on Sunday, but I could really feel being sick coming on (on top of worrying about the "hurricane", which was not much around here) so we decided to call it a night and take in some TV. I worked again last night, but I felt DEAD at the end of the night so Danielle and I came home, watched heroes and hit the sack.

Anyway, I'm going to sit tight here tonight and watch a movie or something, but I'm SUPER excited for next week on Tuesday. Sean and Omar are coming over in the daytime and we're going to start playing through MGS4. OOOOOOOOOOOOH MAMA!! I've been waiting a few weeks to start this, and it'll be fun to play a fuckton of the game through with the guys.

I'm done for the day though. I can't believe that I got this far today.
BOO-URNS TO COLDS! BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Tony

PS-> I want to wish Chuck good luck for his trip to Montreal tomorrow. Have fun, and kick some ASSES.

PPS-> I was going to write about the financial crisis in the states today, but I lack the energy. That'll be another post I guess.

CAAAAAAKE POOOOOOOST!!!

Well... where do I start? I feel like keeping this short and sweet. But things don't always go as planned.

First, Omar commented on my last post, saying:

"at wii music thing does look really stupid and a little too dumbed-down, even for the casual gamer...i mean if you don't have to follow the rhythm or melody all that much, then what's the point? t's also sad to see nintendo cash in on ideas innovated and made popular by other systems, considering nintendo used to be on the other side of that fence"

I have to say that I agree. All that I've seen in the last few months, in terms of exclusives, from Nintendo has been direct pandering to the lowest common denominator. It kind of hurts me to see one of my favorite video game companies essentially ignore their innovative direction, simply to shovel more crap onto the pile. Oh well, I'm eventually going to have to come to terms with the fact that core gamers are going to be ignored for a long while with the Wii. I'll have to look elsewhere... oh wait I kind of have already.

So, we went to Chris's place to watch "The Comedy Roast of Bob Saget" (watch it. It's fucking awesome). It was absolutely hilarious. Norm MacDonald was sooooooooo rediculous. All of his jokes were terrible, but the delivery was immaculate. I think I was in tears. I took a few shots while we were there...





Jess made a cake...





DANGEROUS!











AWESOME.

I've been working 1:30-9:30 all week, so I'm pretty tired. LOOK AT THE PHONE I USE.



I picked up LEGO BATMAN!!!!



I'm so stoked to play it. Danielle are going to hack through the game as a team, which is exciting. FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN!!!!!! I hoping that breaks the monotony of working like a DRONE all week. I'm not working on Friday and Saturday! I'm stoked to jam on Friday, and Saturday is an open book. WOO!

OH YEAH! It was Tony Says' 5TH birthday yesterday (proof)! I can't really believe I've been doing it this long. Sure, the older posts were riddled with lingo, grammar errors, and NO PHOTOS (for 10 months). It's grown a bit since then, but to celebrate, last night Danielle and I made a cake...



IT LOOKS LIKE THE OLD FORMAT! The icing recipe that my mom gave me didn't take to colour all that well (it's more likely that I made it wrong), but the cake is delicious. And there's lots left. Come get some. Or not.

I'm done for tonight...

Tony

Hey There


So here I go again with another post... although this one is lacking in photos, but not my thoughts.

So, what am I doing during this post? I decided that I'd give some CBC radio a spin to hear what's going on. There's a lot of news on one, and some hot swingin' jazz on the other local channel. It's not bad. At least it's something to go by. HA.

I kind of had a slow week, and I didn't really go to the gym as much as I wanted to... I only went twice. I skipped on Monday because I thought I was coming down with a cold, and then on Thursday because it felt like somebody had kicked me in the back. It wasn't cool, but I have to keep getting on that horse. I DID beat my 10Km time for the bike though, so I guess it wasn't that bad! I felt really good about that.

Enough with the CBC for today it seems. iTunes, here I come.

What to talk about, what to talk about...

Oh, I guess this is of some interest to me. Nintendo is making a lot of money right now with their Wii system. The thing is damn cheap, and it really caters to the "this thing is really neat, I should buy one and play it for a week and then never play it again and eventually put it in the closet or sell it on kijiji" market (note: I love the wii. It's great for the casual game, and it is really good at a lot of things, but there's a lot of things that it can't do too). Although a lot of people that are into more "hardcore" games (those that require effort/time/skill) own the system, nintendo has kind of abandoned those type of gamers for the casual crowd.

Enter WiiMusic.

Due to the gratuitous success of rhythm-based music games, nintendo thought that they could find a way to cash in on this market by creating a dumbed down version of that type of game. How dumb? Well, look at this kid playing Guitar Hero (don't bother watching the whole thing, just give yourself enough time to start watching him play...

Guitar Hero 3 'DragonForce Guiness Record' clip

Now... look at this video (start at about 7:15 unless you really want to see the build up).



Wasn't that so bad that you felt uncomfortable?

Anyway, what has me so riled up about the game is the fact that I can't STAND the fact that there is so much more that could be being done with the wii, but Nintendo insists on pandering to the lowest common denominator when it comes to working on games. What is sad is that this game will sell millions of copies. I can only imagine all of the midi-based and nintendo themed music being played out of time and sloppily all across the country.

Sorry about that, I just get heated when I read about that damn game.

On a lighter note, I've been vising the Onion pretty consistently over the last several weeks and have found some gems for you all to enjoy.


Obama Promises To Stop America's Shitty Jobs From Going Overseas

and


Disney Lab Unveils Its Latest Line Of Genetically Engineered Child Stars

Yeah... this is really turning into a video post.

I jammed with omar today, which was a lot of fun. We didn't jam for long, but we kinda fleshed out a few ideas. Christian couldn't make it, which means ANOTHER week without a recording that I can share with you guys. It's ok... you'll just have to wait. Before the jam, I helped my sister out with getting her hands on a new camera. We had to run around town to get things together, but the camera is REALLY nice... and now I want one. Who wants to give me $900 for it?

Well, I'm kind of out of things to write about tonight... I searched through various news sites to see if there was anything I could find to talk about. Meh. I'm on vacation tomorrow, and I'm headed to watch the roast of Bob Saget at the Shrew-hole (that's what I'm calling it from now on... do shrews even live in holes?) I'll have some pictures of all of that.

I think I'm going to get a beer or something. Hmm. I wish I had some nachos. Damn it!

Tony

PS-> I really really hate WiiMusic. Doesn't it look really bad? Basic even? Let me know what you think, I like the comments!!

RRRRRRRRRRIGHT ON!

So, here it is, another Sunday, and it's time for another blog update.

What am I watching this time? The VMA's.
Fuck this is lame. Pink is performing. She sucks, her song sucks, and her face sucks.
You can bet this will be a cynical update (well, at least some of it).
The guy hosting the the awards is pretty funny. I don't know his name, but it seems that the crowd doesn't get him. Maybe he's too sarcastic. Also, Pink says "thank god for double sided tit tape" males in america, however, do not. Travis Barker is playing the drums. This I like.

Anyway, update update update... I guess last week was kind of a slow week... I worked days all week (which I am NOT used to), so I was pretty tired most of the time. On Tuesday night after work, I blogged... so I don't really know why I'm writing about it.

Christina Aguilera is TOTALLY lipsyncing. Like, she's not even trying. It's nice to see that she's back to her stripper-esque roots. Haha. Russell Brand (the host guy) is awesome. He just said he didn't want "any of that rhubarb".

WEDNESDAY: I GOT MY HAIR CUT. Holy fuck, it was really out of control. I'm glad that's over with. Then we headed into Bedford to visit Tophe at work... I had to pre-order some stuff, like LEGO BATMAN(!). We picked up Omar, drove back to Halifax, and hung out here. Danielle was eager to fire up America's Next Top Model, which worked well for me, because I was feeling SUPER CYNICAL. It was kind of a funny night.

On Thursday, we went to wings at Bubba Rays. I love the wings there. I also found out that there is a use for Budwiser, other than making people vomit. It puts out the HOT FIRE IN MY MOUTH better than the keith's I had. It was weird. Chris, Jess, Tophe and Ben all came out, so it was a good time all around.

On Friday, Omar and I jammed. Well, we set up the gear in Omar's most-recently-old room. Then mic'd everything. Then spent time trying to adjust levels. Then played for about 10 minutes. IT WAS STILL awesome though. We got so much shit done, and now there's a tonne of potential that can come out of these recording/jamming sessions. I took a few pics, so they kind of help explain what the hell was going on in our heads as we set things up.

So we moved Steve's kit over to the room, and set up two mics, one being overhead (on the ride cymbal side of things, I think you can see the stand) and one on the underside of the high-hat/snare/tom. After testing it out, we found that there was NO bass drum sound being recorded properly, and when we adjusted the levels so that we could hear it, it sounded like crap.



SO, Omar hauled out a dynamic mic that had a low-end setting to it, which was good. Unfortunately we were without another mic stand, BUT(!) I was able to jimmy-rig something in about 2 seconds to hold it.



HAHA. Here's the whole thing now...



Next we mic'd up the bass amp (pretty straight forward)...



and we ran it into a four track...



As you can see, we have 3 mics for the drums alone. This means that NEXT time we jam, we're going to get our hands on a mixer so that we can bump the drums into that into the four track on 2 channels instead of three. This will make room for a guitar hookup. The sound is pretty good, and surprisingly not over crowded, as I think the dynamic mics really pull their weight and mix down really well. It's amateur, but it's working well so far. I'm so excited I could explode over this.

Here are some more instrument shots:







I gave Omar my USB joypad controller thing, because my PSP is now my emulation-station. IT HAS THE BEST NAME EVARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!



I was going to finish this tonight, but Danielle wants to go to bed, and I'd rather get some sleep than keep writing, so I'll get back to this tomorrow...

***

So, back to it, I suppose (it's now Tuesday night). On Saturday night, Omar, Sean, and I Hung out here for a bit, and then we headed to pick up Mike D so we could go to Chris and Jess's new place downtown. It's really nice there, and we had a good time just hanging out AND WATCHING AWESOME HISTORICA MOMENTS ("I smell burnt toast" just to name one). Afterwards Omar stayed over, and we pretty much crashed.















On Sunday, Omar and I hung out all afternoon while I hacked through MGS3 (which I am about 15-20 min of playtime away from finishing). I drove him home when I dropped Danielle at work, and just hung out here and started blogging later on.

That pretty much wraps up what was going on last weekend. Tomorrow brings Chuck's show at Gus's, Thursday is workday (as is tomorrow, but I don't really have any plans. Maybe some after work wings....? Who knows. I sure don't. On Friday, I'm jamming again, this time with Omar and Christian. Christian is bringing out his mixer so we can work around the drum problem, AND, he's bringing out an external HD and an external sound card so we can record right to my hard drive. I'm so damn excited. Maybe I'll be putting some stuff up for you all to listen to. MAYBE. Haha.

Anyway I'm out for the night, so enjoy yourselves, this blog, and the rest of the week.

Tony


PS-> HARVEST MOON KICKS ASS.