I guess it’s time to write about the wedding this past Saturday, as I’ve neglected to as of yet. S’not my fault, though — I blame my damaged digit. (I dropped a cinder block on my ring finger yesterday and it hurt like the fucking dickens to do anything, much less type.)

As I figured, the wedding went quite well. I got to the church ’round noon with Bill and Jason. Over the next three hours, us Groom Guys got dressed in our tuxedos, had our photos taken, played a few games of poker and hearts to kill some time before the ceremony, and generally tried to suppress our growing hunger for food. At about three, we went out — sans Adam, of course — to start our usher-ly duties. This involved seating everyone that walked through the door, including the homeless guy asking if we had some change. Bill seated him right next to Adam’s mom. She looked at me questioningly, but I just shrugged and said, “Guests are guests.”

Bill and I found out the night before at the rehearsal that we were going to be privliged with duties other than the ones previously prescribed. This included lighting candlesticks, escorting the moms to their seats, and rolling out the carpet so Adam and Danielle could carelessly trample on it on their way down the aisle, those fuckers. Sarah was my date for the event, even though I didn’t get to really talk to her much ’til the reception. That’s a hallmark of a true friend: sitting through a relative non-friend’s wedding alone. She had a good time, but I’m fairly sure I still owe her one.

The ceremony itself wasn’t too bad. It lasted, maybe, a half an hour or so. Though it made me realize just how much I want a secular wedding. Jesus will have no place at my wedding, unless he wants to be a Groom Guy and unroll the carpet, or serve drinks, ’cause my wedding ceremony is going to have an open bar. (I figure if people have to attend my wedding, they should at least enjoy it.) At one part in the ceremony, the pastor had been blathering on about “marital duty” and how Jesus is the third partner in a marriage, when he dropped this little bombshell: “In a marriage, it’s the man’s duty to lead and the woman’s to follow. Now this isn’t to say that God has anything against women, it’s just that women need to follow the man’s lead and do what he says.”

Wow. Way to go, buddy. God doesn’t have anything against women, he just thinks they should stay the hell in the kitchen and make him a pie. Let’s hear it for Christianity! Moving on….

So the ceremony’s over. Before we ride in the SUV limo to the reception, we…take more photos. Some of us throwing leaves in the air, some of us beating up the homeless guy — all fun. A short, scenic ride later through some of the finer parts of Main Street (yay, the Art District!), we arrived at the Dayton Art Institute. Another thirty minutes go by of photos, with the end result being my face hurting from smiling and the girls about ten seconds away from hypothermia setting in. We went inside, took advantage of the open bar (“Gimme something that has vodka in it.”) and then sat down at our big fancy table. Being so incredibly awesome, the bridal party got to go through the buffet-thing first. I procured some chicken, some chewy prime rib, and two bizarre apple-shaped potatoes. The food was good, though I compared the cold, tough bread to “cured human flesh,” much to Bill’s lament. Then came the sappy speeches, bad dancing, and lots of sitting and talking. I spent a good deal of the time schmoozing with various guests and sitting at Sarah’s table. Around nine or so, boredom was beginning to set in so we said our goodbyes and bailed.

A short while later, Sarah and I were at my house, chatting with my parents and having our picture taken. We have very few pictures of us together, and none with us looking respectable, so it seemed the thing to do. I swear, it was just like prom. I in my tux, her in a dress. I’ll post the pictures eventually, once I get some decent editing software on my compy. Then, still dressed up, we went to Steak ‘n Shake where one of Lindsey’s creepy friends stared at me for a bit.

I got home by midnight, fucking tired, and fell asleep to an episode of the “Twilight Zone” which I can’t recall at all. The entire hegemony of wedding events went very well, though I must confess I am glad it’s over with. Way too much energy was expended over the weekend. I’d say the end result was worth it, however.

Congratulations, Adam and Danielle.

JAB

That’s right, ladies and gents, the honorable Mr. Nathan Valentine’s wacky review website — Yummy Reviews — is back from the dead!

Okay, that’s sort of stretching the truth. Yummy Reviews has never been dead, per se, just sort of perpetually stuck in the endless Purgatory that Nate loves so much. I’m sure he’ll be writing in it a lot more, though. And to make sure he does, either through guilt or endless harping, I want you all to tell him in the comments just how much you love your Yummy Reviews!

Again, that’s Yummy Reviews, which you can visit at one of our convenient locations: http://yummyreviews.joshbales.net or http://www.joshbales.net/yummyreviews/.

JAB

I got home from work today and discovered a message on the answering machine for me. This is itself unusual because there are never messages for me, and even moreso because it was someone asking if I was still interested in a full-time job. Since the woman spoke very loudly as well as sounding like she did so a millimeter from the speaker, I have no idea what company the offer is for. But like I told the guys at work, so long as the job offer isn’t for a cow milker, I’m interested. And if they paid me enough, I’d probably milk cows for a career. Shit, that’d be an easy job. Get up at the crack of dawn, go down to some farm or gigantic milk processing plant, milk three-hundred cows for four hours or so, break for lunch, eat a Philly cheese steak, go back, milk umpteen more cows, and then go home. That there sounds like the life.

My dad said the lady could be a headhunter. I found this disturbing, si I told him that if I do get called in for an interview, I’m gonna be packing heat, ’cause there’s no way some bitch is getting this boy’s noggin. That’s right — 2005 headhunters beware: Josh Bales is very aware of your devilish, cranium-snatching schemes and will have none of it!

JAB

“Dumb” would have been a much more apropos title for the movie Doom. So would, although in a slightly less clever manner, “Fucking Terrible.”

I know a lot of people go see a movie and say to their friends afterwards, “What the fuck! I could’ve written this movie so much better. These guys are fucking tools!” I tend to do this also, perhaps even moreso than the regular viewer, as I laughingly consider myself a decent writer. With Doom, I think you could pass a laptop around a crowded short bus and a better, more coherent script would emerge. Of course, the laptop may else also be coated in teeth-marks and drool, but hey — that’s the price we must pay for a non-sucky screenplay.

The characters in the movie are all very briefly described caricatures: “the tortured heroic soldier” (codename Reaper), “the gruff sergeant” (codename Sarge), “the greasy, creepy annoying guy,” “the hip black guy,” and “the silent and steely Asian guy.” Force these characters into a plot that really doesn’t make sense (a special operations team must go to a research facility on Mars, where researchers conduct genetic experiments that go horribly wrong, and get picked off one-by-one), throw in the annoying woman (in this case Reaper’s sister, conveniently a researcher on Mars), rip off every horror-movie cliche in the book while adding nothing innovative whatsoever, and you pretty much have Doom.

Basically the movie rapes the storyline of the most recent “Doom” game. I’ve never played the latest incarnation, though I am intimately familiar with the original two games. This movie completely avoids what was cool about those games. The dark humor, the references to the creatures being from Hell and having the hero travel into Hell — all gone. The “demons” in this movie are just humans that have been injected with an extra chromosome. If as a human one is evil, then you get turned into a creature of darkness. If you’re a good person, you turn into a superhuman. What “scientific” reason is behind the transformation? Something to do with the soul being embedded in the as-of-yet-identified regions of the brain. Sweet! Except not.

My second problem is with the Rock. Now I like most every movie the Rock has been in: Walking Tall, The Rundown, Be Cool (where he plays a gay wannabe-actor turned bodyguard), and even The Scorpion King. But in Doom, he was terrible. His lines all came off flat and his character’s transition from gruff sergeant to main villain was awkward and unbelievable. (Oops. Uh, **belated spoiler warning.**) Since he has been pretty good in everything else I’ve seen him in, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and blame his performance’s misfires on the film’s director and a shitty script.

Another thing I didn’t like was the movie’s much-hyped first-person shoot sequence. Towards the end, when everyone else is dead, Reaper gets injected by his sister with the extra chromosome and, of course, turns into a superhuman. The movie’s POV then turns into Reaper’s as he goes through out the facility killing all of the creatures. What works for a video game does not work in a movie. It’s a jarring transition, what exactly is happening is very unclear, and suddenly all of the previously hard to kill creatures are going down in one or two shots. Reaper even picks up a chainsaw at one point and takes out a pinky demon. This last part was admittedly kind of cool, but I think would’ve been much more effective had it been in third-person. Then we could have actually seen Reaper wield a chainsaw, instead of seeing just the chainsaw and the pinky.

Which leads me to my next and final point: where the fuck was my Spider Mastermind, Revenant, Arch-Vile, and Cyberdemon? We see none of these awesome enemies in Doom! The only creatures that are fought are some zombies, a few imps, and one pinky. At the very least, in the crappy final scene where Sarge (turned into a zombie/imp ’cause he was inherently evil) faces off against Reaper*, Sarge could’ve turned into something sweet, like a Cyberdemon or something. One of his hands would be a rapid-firing rocket launcher and he’d march around the room with a sweet-ass yet spooky stomping sound. That would’ve been awesome! It might even have elevated the movie to a star-and-a-half, or two stars!

Usually I like most movies, whatever the genre (unless it’s an “urban epic” like Get Rich or Die Tryin’, the new 50 Cent movie. *shudder*). I’m what Brandon calls “a movie whore.” But not with this Doom. I want to offer my recommendation: don’t pay to see this movie. Not in the theater, not on DVD, not anywhere. Wait seven or eight months and rent it free from the library. Even then, some people — like Nate — will still hate Doom. And I’ll be there, standing proudly amongst their ranks.

I’m now just hoping that the Halo movie will be better. It’s written by Alex Garland (28 Days Later) and Peter Jackson is involved in a producerly fashion, so my hopes are fairly high. So long as Uwe “I-Anally-Rape-Video-Game-Adaptations” Boll doesn’t direct, then it should at least be a hell of a lot better than Doom.

And last but not least, I want to direct you to Ctrl+Alt+Del, where I believe this comic accurately and succinctly captures the experience of watching Doom.

JAB

After a brief hiatus, JOSH BALES dot NET is back and ready to rock and roll!

Sort of.

Bare bones best describes what I have up so far. The main blog is up with its new design and is working smashingly. The comments, archives, and everything else are up too, they’re just using the generic template Movable Type comes with. This will all change in the coming days when I bring those in line stylistically with what I have so far. I like the new design; of course I would, though, being the creator and whatnot. What do you think?

I’m kinda tired of staring at my computer screen right now, so I’m gonna go stare at another screen for a while: the TV, or as Nate likes to call it, the “boob-tube.”

JAB

Yet for some reason I was inclined to take this and post the results. I’m not sure that it’s very accurate, however. Me, rooting out evil? I just don’t see it. But you be the judge. Also, you too can click on the pic and find out which sci-fi or fantasy character you are. Assuming you give a shit, of course.

With the prowess of a seasoned samurai and the wisdom of a wizard, you try to do the sort of things that root out evil.

The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.

Obi-Wan is a character in the Star Wars universe. The Star Wars Databank has his profile.

Remember guys: Obi-Wan is fucking metal.

JAB

I just ate at Fazoli’s for dinner. They have these new cinnamon breadsticks that are completely coated in icing. They rock. But you know what doesn’t rock?

Hangovers.

Adam’s bachelor party was held Saturday, so we spent a good chunk of the day paintballing. There were nine of us or so, including Adam’s dad and Danielle’s dad. Oddly it wasn’t uncomfortable having them around, even later on when we were at the bar, drinking. I felt sort of like an adult myself. It was kinda cool.

Paintball was sweet as hell. There were probably fifty people playing on a battlefield the size of a football field. Maybe bigger. There were woods you could run around in, plus an abandoned traincar, a rusty-ass Winnebago, and a number of huge wire-spindles proving cover. At one end of the field there was even a fort equipped with a machine gun turret that ran on paintballs.

Aside from Eric and Adam having played once, all of us were new — or n00bs if you prefer — at paintball. We had fun though. The only thing I didn’t like was getting shot in the head. Four times. The last headshot gave me a good-sized lump, which I still have.

After four hours of paintball, we left and everyone separated to clean up. Then we reconvened at Jason’s house at 2000 hours to strategize our next move, specifically where we would rendezvous for our next meal. Adam wasn’t sure where he wanted to eat, so four of us made a liquor run. When we returned Adam still hadn’t made up his mind. Eventually Outback was decided upon. We get there and there’s an hour wait due to the fact that it was some high school’s Homecoming and Sweetest Day. Eric and I hiked over to O’Charley’s, Adam’s second choice, but then the other members of our party called and said we were going to Don Pablo’s instead. This was sweet, as I love Don Pablo’s. I would later regret the decision to eat a whole bunch of food at Pablo’s, which I will get into shortly.

After dinner, we went to the nearest bar I could think of, which turned out to be Wing’s. We played a game of darts which, as I briefly mentioned in my last post, “seemed to last forever.” When we left an eternity later, I was pretty juiced.

At this point my recollections grow a little hazy. What I am sure of is that we got to Jason’s house, I started to drink a copious amounts of vodka, we watched part of Airplane 2, I was loud, I wrote a post, I screamed at Bill (he screamed back, so it was okay), I was loud, and I threw up in Jason’s bathroom. Note the phrasing of that last part.

This is all I can be sure of, having blacked out and whatnot. Most of what I detailed seems more like a dream — a fuzzy, loud, vomit-y dream — than reality. I woke up the next morning, feeling very shitty, on Jason’s couch. Someone had given me a blanket and I had some vomit on my left pants leg, thus confirming the throwing up portion of my evening.

Having never blacked out before, I just want to say that it is very disturbing when four hours of your life are reduced to an indistinct jumble of images and sounds. Also, Jason — sorry for making a mess of your bathroom (I don’t even know how bad it was, but I have my suspicions) and to anyone I might have annoyed in my inebriated stupor: my bad. I have been told, however, that I was funny and “a lot like I was in high school,” which to me is some damning praise considering how I was my last two years of high school.

JAB

I’m drunk right now. Very drunk. It’s Adam’s bachelor party. We went to Don Pablo’s — which wasn’t very drunk at all. We first went to do paintball, which was fun, but now we’re fucking drunk. First, we went to Wings, where we played a darts game that seemed to last forever. And, seriously, I mean forever. Then, we went back to Jason’s house, where I drank even more, but, unfortunately, so did Bill, Bill is sorta like the Hulk when he gets angry, he gets stupid angry, where you just wanna throw him off the edge of a cliff, like a stupid apple-cinnamon muffin.

JAB

EDIT: I wasn’t sure if I should even leave this post up, since it makes no sense whatsoever. But this is a good lesson in why blogging should never be done when the poster is thoroughly intoxicated, and I just wanted to share it with you.

I was watching some TV yesterday morning before I went to work. It was like 7:20ish or so and FOX was rerunning old episodes of “Captain Planet.” Talk about a show that’s major aim is to indoctrinate children. In the episode I watched, some bad guys — who kept referring to the Planeteers as “eco-dorks” and other assorted words prefaced with “eco” — were driving huge four-wheelers around in the desert, which according to the Planeteer’s leader, Guinan, was “ruining the desert and setting it back over 1000 years.” So the Planeteers — or as I like to call them, “eco-terrorists” or “eco-nazis” — summon Captain Planet who stops the bad guys and takes their expensive-looking vehicles away to be recycled. Sexually energized by their harrowing victory, the Planeteers then retire back to their lair and have an orgy. This last part wasn’t part of the episode, but from the gay banter I think it can be reasonably inferred.

Now as you all know, I lean much more heavily towards liberalism than conservatism. But this show’s message offended me. Sure, the antagonists were characterized as flat-out villains, but the Planeteers came off as meddlesome zealots who have no ability to empathize with the other side. Captain Planet himself is a big bully, a tool used by the extremist, nature-worshipping left to do their bidding, which basically is to stop the right at all costs. In fact, I think if the cabal of Planeteers used their magic rings to order Captain Planet to kill the four-wheeling idiots, he’d willingly do so. To save the desert. I think “eco-nazis” can accurately describe Der Fuhrer Planet and the Secret Planeteer Police.

And, of course, it’s not just the environmentally-conscious yet emotionally-disturbed left that is trying to inculcate Saturday-morning-cartoon watching kids. The religious right has its own conditioning to instill.

In the middle of being assaulted by Captain Planet, a series of commercials run. The first couple of ads are for toys and such. And then this one innocuously starts:

A teenage girl — a little overweight, a little punk-ish/goth-ish — is sitting alone in a coffeeshop (for the sake of this writing, let’s call her Devi). Devi is reading a magazine and looking more than a little depressed. A half-empty cup of coffee sets on the table.

In comes another girl (we’ll call her Suzie), presumably Devi’s friend, who sits down at the table. Suzie is thin, wears very little visible make-up, dresses conservatively, and looks all-around cheerful and happy.

SUZIE (smiling): “WHATCHA READING?”

DEVI (an unfulfilled look on her face): “MAGAZINE. READ ANYTHING GOOD LATELY?”

SUZIE: “ACTUALLY, I HAVE.”

Suzie reaches into her handbag and pulls out a book which she places on the table.

Devi looks at the book, interest lighting up on her face.

DEVI: “OH WOW.”

SUZIE (smiling again): “IT’S THE BOOK OF MORMON. IT’S ANOTHER TESTAMENT OF JESUS CHRIST. I STARTED READING IT A FEW WEEKS AGO. EVER SINCE, I’VE BEEN HAPPIER, MUCH NICER TO OTHERS, AND, IN GENERAL, MORE AT PEACE.”

Devi looks even more interested.

DEVI: “GO ON.”

Suzie starts to talk again, but we don’t hear it because of the voice-over.

VOICEOVER: “TO OBTAIN YOUR FREE COPY OF THE BOOK OF MORMON, TALK TO A NEIGBOR WHO BELONGS TO THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS, OR CALL THE NUMBER ON YOUR SCREEN. DISCOVER THE SPIRITUAL AND PERSONAL FULFILLMENT PROVIDED BY THE BOOK OF MORMON TODAY.”

…and the commercial ends. It’s pretty basic. To a kid watching, the punk/goth and let’s not forget fat girl is unhappy with her life. The thin, normal-looking girl walks in and is clearly happy. She lays out the Book of Mormon, delivers her pitch, and suddenly, the fat girl seems intrigued, and the audience is inclined to thing it’s probably that she will too become happy. “The Book of Mormon will make you thin, happy, and probably more popular” is the message kids will be walking away with.

Religion has its purposes, I understand. Not for me perhaps, but for the majority of people it works. I just don’t think religions should be pandering to children on TV, and certainly not Mormons. Not that I’m picking on Mormons, or ever have in the past. Parents should be the ones introducing their kids to religion, and most definitely not force it upon them. Religion has absolutely zero place outside the family. It doesn’t belong in the government, schools, and kids’ Saturday morning cartoons.

However, if you read the subtext in the commercial, I think you can read an entirely different message from the commercial….

A teenage girl — a little overweight, a little punk-ish/goth-ish — is sitting alone in a coffeeshop (for the sake of this writing, let’s call her Devi). Devi is reading a magazine and looking more than a little depressed. A half-empty cup of coffee sets on the table.

In comes another girl (we’ll call her Suzie), presumably Devi’s friend, who sits down at the table. Suzie is thin, wears very little visible make-up, dresses conservatively, and looks all-around cheerful and happy.

“Whatcha reading?” Suzie asks, sitting down and smiling.

“Magazine,” Devi replies disinterestedly. Then clearly realizing she has nothing in common with the girl sitting across from her, she lamely asks, “So…read anything good lately?”

Suzie is still cheerfully smiling, oblivious to the fact that the “project” she is sharing a table with is starting to find her toothy grin discomforting. “Actually, I have.” She reaches into her hideously oversized handbag and pulls an oversized book, which she sets upon the table with an audible thump. Suzie’s grin, if physically possible, becomes even wider.

“Uh, wow,” Devi mutters, unable to remove her eyes from the massive tome. Guess it’s too much to hope that she’d have the Necronomicon in her purse, she thinks.

Inside Devi’s a bit torn — partially relieved that she has something to look at other than Suzie’s skeletal smile, but also disturbed that the fucking Book of Mormon is in front of her. Absently, she reaches over and takes a drink of her coffee.

“It’s the Book of Mormon,” Suzie says, as though Devi is incapable of reading — after all, she is a Godless heathen. “It’s another testament of Jesus Christ. I started reading it a few weeks ago. Ever since, I’ve been happier, much nicer to others, and, in general, more at peace.” Her smile now seemingly occupies the entire lower portion of her face. The Cheshire cat would have nothing on her, indeed would probably be terrified of her visage.

This is at least how it seems to Devi, but it could be otherwise — her thoughts are currently too muddled to process much of anything. Except strangely enough, Suzie’s soothingly hypnotic voice.

“Go on,” Devi intones dreamily, picking up the book. She drinks some more coffee.

Eyes carefully watching Devi, Suzie suggests: “Why don’t we go hang out today? We could go to my chur — my friends’ place. They’re all neat people, and we can play all sorts of fun games!”

“Okay.” Devi’s eyes are completely clouded, her brain mushy, pliable. She likes Suzie. Suzie makes sense. Devi likes games too.

“Let’s go.” Suzie stands up and moves around the table to help Devi stand. “Don’t forget your coffee,” Suzie says.

One arm clutching the Book of Mormon, Devi picks up her drink before Suzie leads her away. “Coffee’s good,” Devi says, taking another drink, completely unaware that she’s been ingesting a large dose of sodium pentothal surreptitiously placed there earlier by Suzie.

See? Clearly, Mormons like to employ some insidious recruiting methods.

Basically, as I grow older, I find that extremism in any form is just stupid. Neo-conservatives, far-left liberals, religious zealots, environmental nazis — they’re all idiots. That’s basically my point. That, and they all should stay the fuck away from Saturday morning cartoons.

To quote Maud Flanders: “Will somebody please think about the children!”

JAB