Walt Disneyworld of Marvel?

I woke up this morning and found out that Disney bought Marvel comics for a whopping 4 billion dollars.

In my opinion, 4 billion dollars seems a little small for acquiring the ownership rights of icons like X-Men, Fantastic 4, Iron Man, etc. But I'm not an investor so I don't know a lot about it, but I seriously doubt either of these two companies will be losing money any time soon.

However, I'm still not sure what to think of this. I hope the Disney CEOs are smart enough to realize what they have done and how much of a fan base they have just picked up along with the fact that said fan base can easily turn on them if any Marvel characters are ruined.

Some people are saying that the comics will now become "Disney-fied" I guess meaning that they'll lose a bit of their edge in order to be more family friendly, but I doubt that will happen.

My only worry is that if I so much as smell the Jonas Brothers or Miley Cyrus making an appearance in a Marvel movie or in any comics for that matter, I'll be gravely disappointed in Marvel.



wildwombat

Space Travel

I found this photo in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to take it seriously or not, but then I did some research and found various articles talking about Space Tourism, private companies making space shuttles and things like that.

Space.com

The advertisement reminded me of all these posters from the 50s about space travel and things like that.





Are we really that close to casually traveling to space? Granted the definitions of "Going to space" vary greatly. It could be a 5 second ride into the upper reaches of the atmosphere before falling back to earth or it could legitimately be leaving the atmosphere and docking with a Space Hotel or something. To which those guys at the International Space Station would be like "Wait, I spent years in college and training to become an astronaut and these rich suits just casually came up here too?! Careful, these doors aren't big enough to fit your wallets through!"

I'm not too sure how I feel about space travel. I think it'd be cool, but it would be incredibly expensive, unless it becomes popular enough to be a regular thing like airplane travel. Although, I can't even stand sitting in a plane for a 16 hour flight to Australia, how am I supposed to handle a 3+ month ride to Mars? Easy solution: Hypersleep!!

Anyway, I think space tourism is in the beginning of beginning stages, but it would be awesome to see a major breakthrough in my lifetime.

We could easily be going from life like this:


To life like this:



wildwombat

When you fell through the clouds, you found me

I like this video a lot for a lot of reasons. The song. The color. The setting. The animals.






wildwombat

And that's why...

Well, after being extremely tired from Warped Tour, I was invited to go jetskiing out at Mission Bay the morning after. I'm not sure if it was against my better judgment to go, but I'm glad I did...after I got there.

My body was still tired from Warped Tour and being thrashed around on a jetski and tube didn't seem like the best way to help it.

Nevertheless, I was told that I would first have to ride the tube before getting on the jetski, did I say told? I think the words forced against my will and peer pressured are more appropriate. Anyhow, riding the tube isn't as bad as it sounds. I'm not really sure if you put your life more in the hands of the person driving the jetski or in Sir Isaac Newton, but it's still fun. I mean your butt becomes jelly after basically being slapped over and over again, plus there the chance of being thrown off and landing badly, but it didn't happen. Damn good thing the water was warm.

However, the subject of this is a lesson about a tube, the engine running and a rope around my arm. Do not ever mix those. I was wrapping the rope around my arm to pull the tube in after my friend had been throw off. Yeah didn't really process that the engine was still running until my sister accelerated and the rope tensed pulling me into the water and wrapping my arm in it. It was pretty bad because it was stuck on my thumb as well, pulling it away from the rest of my fingers. So many things could've gone wrong. I could've broken my thumb or wrist, the rope could've cut into my arm badly, things like that.

Broken thumb probably would've been the worst, I mean how am I supposed to play Halo or write with a broken thumb? (yes in that order).

But instead I just ended up with this:





Basically massive rope burn. I guess I've been good about drinking my milk because I seriously thought my thumb would be pointing towards my body after that whole thing.

I think that experience was as close to being constricted by a giant snake as I'll ever get...unless I actually get constricted by a giant snake.

So lesson learned, jetskiing is still badass, I loved it. We went off some huge wakes and got the entire thing out of the water, hence the badassness of it all. My entire body is sore today, mostly in the thighs, glutes and lower back, but it was totally worth it.





wildwombat

Vans Warped Tour 2009

I went to the Vans Warped Tour for the first time yesterday. It was awesome minus the heat and driving there. Who would've thought that it would take over an hour just to get from El Cajon to Chula Vista? Well, it shouldn't for those who are unfamiliar how close those places are. Plus it was about 87 degrees on the way there so it was hotter in the car.

But we got there nonetheless, missed Less Than Jake and Underoath, but it was alright because the bands we mainly came to see weren't playing until later.

We started by seeing Thrice who are pretty good live considering I only have one song by them on my iPod.

Then we looked at the schedule and realized Saosin was having a signing soon and they were the band I came to see the most. Didn't have to wait very long in line to get the entire band to sign my program. Win!

Most of the day was spend just walking around seeing the march and trying to survive the heat, but 6PM rolled around and the sun wasn't too bad.

NOFX live is great. They're extremely entertaining, but I think they did more talking and joking than they did singing because their songs are so short. Probably the biggest crowd I've ever been in the middle of.

Then 3OH!3 came on. You might ask, how NOFX had a bigger crowd than 3OH!3 and I'll say that I wasn't in the middle of the 3OH!3 crowd because they were playing around the same time as Saosin. I stood pretty far from the crowd and I was glad I did because they have a HUGE fan base. They're pretty entertaining for 2 dudes jumping around the stage with crazy electronica music going.

Saosin was awesome as usual. Guess they have a new record coming out in September that I got a copy of just by buying a shirt. Sweet! Best part though was getting a picture with Cove, the lead singer. Completely unexpected, just walked around to the side of the stage and he was standing out there talking to people. Pretty cool, he seems pretty chill.

Warped Tour was awesome, I'd go again for sure.



wildwombat

Flickr

Happy 101st post!

Gosh you guys keep me writing, can't thank you enough. I guess I better enjoy it if I'm to try and make a career out of it.

Anyhow, I successfully made a Flickr account.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wesasaurusrex/ in case the link doesn't work.

I'm going to put more of my "artsy" photos on there, mostly because I think Flickr has somewhat of a copyright policy so no one can make money of my pictures...not that I really think anyone is right now, but whatever.

I'm not really a fan of the MB limit per month, but that's why this Flickr is going to be completely devoted to my better photos.




wildwombat

District 9

I'm currently writing this review about 20 minutes after I saw this movie and I'm going to say this over and over again to anyone who asks me.

Go. See. This. Movie.

For the life of me, I can't run out of good things to say about District 9. For a budget of only 30 million dollars (compared to movies like Transformers and Harry Potter that have budgets of 100+ million) this movie blew me away.

The documentary style camera angles completely immersed me in this movie. I rarely find myself experiencing different emotions during a movie, but this one made me feel a lot.

I won't say much about the story because I think the publicity of this movie kept a lot of people from really knowing what it was all about, just know this is NOT a typical alien movie. No invasions or Tom Cruise saving the day, this is completely different and original.

That's probably the best way to describe this movie is completely 100% original. And it knows it, and it doesn't hold back.

Some articles were saying that this was Peter Jackson's saving grace after the death of the Halo movie (which may or may not be back on after Spielberg announced his interest in producing it) But I would have to agree with that speculation. The gun battles are awesome especially with having cameras attached to the side of the gun so it feels kind of like a first person shooter game. There's also lots of futuristic guns made by the aliens and a few rifles that look suspiciously similar to the Halo Battle Rifle.

I hope this movie gets some kind of nomination for cinematography, achievement in special effects or something.

Bottom line, this movie is on a whole different level from Transformers, Harry Potter, GI Joe or any other mindless summer blockbuster. This movie is great, I loved every moment of it.

You should see it now.


wildwombat