I think I'll keep her.

I may have created a monster here. My wife just informed me that she'd rather play Army of Two than watch Dancing with the Stars. Where's the pod???!!! My master plan is to eventually introduce her to a little bit of heaven called Gears of War.

Thugs don't need no steenking motivation!!

How do you know when you’re working too hard and your brain is getting crispy around the edges? When you take a break to watch “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life” and keep trying to look for cohesive motivation with the characters and plausible continuity that strings one major event logically into the other. Yeah…I used “logically” when talking about a Lara Croft movie. What the hell??

At the time this is written, the first Skinner book isn’t even out and won’t be out for some time. That being said, I’m still working on tons of different projects (non-Skinner at the moment) and have been writing without much of a rest for two straight weeks. Is it torture? Not hardly. Does it wear on me sometimes? Only enough to mar my enjoyment of Angelina Jolie running around in tight outfits and shooting the living hell out of everything and everyone.

Well…it marred it a little, anyway.

I found myself sitting there, watching her discuss some mystical glass ball thing and how to unlock its secrets, wondering, “Now why is she mad at these guys again?” “Why does that other guy want that glass ornament thing?” “What’s thug #5’s reason for taking that job and how come he didn’t spot some super-hot woman in spandex climbing along the roof?”

The stuff I like isn’t high literature for the most part. I enjoy many different shades of crap and appreciate it for what it is, in all its differing flavors of crappiness. (Not as gross as it sounds). Hell, the stuff I write isn’t even high literature. It’s all stuff that’s meant to be fun and entertaining. There’s plenty of serious, life altering stuff going on in the real world without someone making more of it up. Lara just needs to be enjoyed for what she is: a cool chick in tight clothes wielding big guns (pun fully intended). That’s what a lot of stuff is and should be enjoyed as such.

My name is Marcus

I like crap.

'Till fragged do us part

When I first met my wife, I knew I’d hit the jackpot. Not only did she agree to be seen in public with me, she was also funny, smart AND played video games with me. Ladies, if you’ve got your eyes on someone who plays video games, playing with them is the quickest way to their heart. Well, that and brownies, but that could just be me. Anyway, gaming was something we could do together, it was fun as hell, and it was something different than just watching movies all the time.

Then, as we remained together longer, things changed. We’re still close, she’s still funny and smart, but she quickly revealed herself to be a sore loser. “But,” I asked, “what happened to all those times we’d play and it was just fun??” Apparently, once the whole courtship thing was done, she admitted that she HATED losing and just lost interest in video games.

Lost interest in video games???!!!??? Do those words even fit together???

I was suckered. The ol’ bait and switch. Don’t get me wrong. I love my wife, but it was just SO fun to have this great woman with me who actually sat down and took part in something else I love. Now, years later, along comes the Wii. We play some stuff together and it’s fun. Then, yesterday she dropped a real bomb on me.

“I’ll try Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 with you,” she says.
Shocked, I blink and ask, “Pardon me?”
“You can play co-op on that, right?”
“Yes,” I reply hopefully.
“I’ll try it out.”

Oh, Lord. YES!!! Thank you!!! We tried it out. We even made a custom character for her. We got into a map and I showed her the controls. We got into combat and she promptly became agitated and wanted to quit. It wasn’t the whole sore loser thing, but she wasn’t feelin’ it. Fortunately, I happen to have bought Army of Two and was waiting for one of my distant friends to pick up a copy so we could dive into some co-op goodness.

“What about Army of Two?” my wife asks. “You were talking about that and it sounds pretty cool.”
“You really want to try that?”
“Sure.”

Sitting on the couch, just like a couple of crazy kids, we both go through a tutorial level and then get wrapped up in some serious ass kicking. Not only was she having fun, but she was actually good! YESSS!!

So take heart, everyone. Blasting open virtual skulls truly does make the world a better place. Well…my world at least.

New website

Marcuspelegrimas.com just went online. Sure the name of the site isn't very original, but the name that inspired the site's name has a certain flair. I don't know, maybe I'm biased. At the moment, there's just the "coming soon" image with the link to this blog. I've talked with Steve (who does all the black magic voodoo stuff required to make a website appear) and the finished product is going to look pretty darn cool.

Baltar for Prez

Yeah, I like Battlestar Galactica. Plenty of folks do. I think it’s a cool show that didn’t have as much action as I’d expected, but still liked a lot anyway. The characters are great and the writing is solid and blah blah blah. I’m a fan…you get it. When I heard the show was coming to a close after its fourth season, I was disappointed. When I heard it was closing on the writers’ terms and was only meant to be around four seasons anyway, I felt a lot better. Stories SHOULD have an end and the Sci-Fi Channel has a bad history with cutting series short without letting them conclude properly (I still get an angry twitch in my eye when I think about the abrupt ending to Farscape. Yeah, we only had to wait a few YEARS for The Peacekeeper Wars movie to be released)

Ok. I’m fine with Galactica ending and hope it’s a good one. I have my theories, but so far this show even tends to go against those. Now I hear about a new show being produced called Caprica. Caprica? AND it’s made from the Battlestar people? SWEET! Then I read a quote from them that says, “If Battlestar Galactica is Black Hawk Down, I would say that Caprica is American Beauty. Caprica is all about the inner lives of the people on a planet and how their personal relationships as well as their professional relationships inform what will become the creation of the Cylons."

HUH??????

No action and JUST relationships??? Yeah…THAT’S why I watch science fiction shows. Let’s just remove all the good stuff and make something that “…is really more of a sci-fi Dallas.” And that quote is from the creator of the show.

A sci-fi Dallas. Great. Just fucking great. I had my fingers crossed for a fantasy take on Grey’s Anatomy.

The grind

It's one of those times where things are in the works, work is being done, and hopefully deals are being made. Unfortunately, that results in me clicking away at my keyboard while I hear nothing at all from the outside world.

No news is good news, right? I guess it's better than bad news, but I'd prefer to hear SOMEthing. For all I know, I could be in line for a huge contract. Or, maybe I'm next in line to get axed by a publisher. Maybe none of that's happening and it's just business as usual. Ugh. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Just keep working and hopefully something will pop.

Man, am I excited for Summer!!

And that title comes from someone who definitely falls into the Autumn/Winter camp as far as favorite seasons is concerned. This enthusiasm comes from all the freaking AWESOME looking comic book movies that are set to be released this year. As I get older, and my home theater gets better, I’ve become less tolerant of the whole movie theater experience. The actual theaters are fine, even though the prices are steep. It’s just the assholes who ruin it with their phones, small children, and general assholeitude (it’s a word NOW) that ruin it. Granted, it’s only a few members of those groups who ruin it for everyone, but they truly ruin the hell out of paying to sit in public. Also, those prices make it worth it to wait a few months and buy the DVD to watch at your leisure. It’s even cheaper to rent and blah blah blah.

Then, along comes comic book movies. Say what you want about cheesy plots or two dimensional characters, but this kind of stuff is just fun. I should know. It’s the kind of stuff I write and it’s not meant to be anything serious. Stuff like Dark Knight, Iron Man and Incredible Hulk are just mindless fun that guys like me have been waiting to see since they flipped through the comics and imagined what those things would look like on the big screen. Well, it looks GREAT!!

I’m pumped for Dark Knight because Batman is always cool and Heath Ledger’s Joker looks damn near perfect! Two Face is coming to that series and he was always my favorite Batman villain.

I’ve always been something of an Iron Man fan, but the movie with Robert Downey Jr. looks set to blow folks through the back of the theater! I mean, starting with the clunky old gray suit and showing the progression to the red and gold?? Who wouldn’t be excited to see that???

Today I just saw the new Incredible Hulk trailer and it looks great! The effects look cool. Throwing Banner out a helicopter like a living Gamma bomb is just plain cool. They even stuck a few things in from the Ang Lee movie to tie it together, but use even more images (and music if you stick around to the end of the trailer) from the old TV show. Is that cool? HELL YES!

Ok, so I’m excited about this stuff. Last time I checked, that sort of thing is what’s so cool about these movies. Also, they’re loud enough to drown out the phones, jerky kids and screaming babies.

EVP vs "really hearing something"

If you understand the title of this post, then you probably also know the Ghost Hunters season premier was on last night and it was AWESOME! I love that show. And with the schedule still reeling from the writer’s strike, it was even more gratifying to have a new show (which doesn’t rely too much on writers, by the way because it’s all real!) Yeah, I said it was all real. Sure, sometimes I’m sure they goose up the tension with well placed music or sharp camera angles, but I’m a believer and I think most of those recordings and videos are on the level.

Are they all ghosts or demons or whatever? Probably some are and some aren’t. Does the show make up anything for ratings? I honestly don’t think they have to. I could go into a whole shpiel about paranormal theories (and maybe some other time I should. It would be more interesting than talking about my ancient MP3 player kicking the bucket), but suffice it to say there’s enough going on out there to provide some good TV.

That show is great and so is Destination Truth, where they go out and try to find actual living weirdness like Bigfoot and Chubacabra. Now, that show takes itself just seriously enough to get the job done, but they freely admit when they’re probably just out talking to crazy locals and examining perfectly normal droppings as opposed to the supernatural scat of a Yeti.

Who needs writers!?! Oh, wait. Scratch that last part. Just watch these shows and enjoy.