Terminator Salvation: The Ride

So, I got to take a nice trip to Magic Mountain for an 'after hours' session. It's basically like getting some private time with a very limited number of people inside so most of my night, from 8:30 to 12:00 at night was spent running from ride to ride like an addict. Terminator Salvation: The Ride opened up about halfway through the night and me and my buddy were right there to reap the benefits. After a lengthy line, complete with lots of Terminator theming and a short video before you enter the station. As you wait in one of your little queues, talking to your friend, sitting on the rail (we all do it), one of the cars comes roaring through the station on a track a couple of feet above your head. Then you get to board. *yay*

The ride itself is absolutely crazy, in the good way. Tons of twists and turns, lots of tunnels, flying wooden beams pass seemingly inches above your fingers as the track twists in among itself and there's even a massive fireball. The short hill is deceptive, the ride gains a lot of speed incredibly fast and it almost never loses its steam. It is, in my opinion, one of the best rides in Magic Mountain (especially at night!). Right up there with Tatsu, X2 and Goliath.

A Song

STILL ALIVE
by Jonathon Coulton

This was a triumph
I’m making a note here: huge success
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction
Aperture Science
We do what we must because we can
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead
But there’s no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake
And the science gets done and you make a neat gun
For the people who are still alive

I’m not even angry
I’m being so sincere right now
Even though you broke my heart and killed me
And tore me to pieces
And threw every piece into a fire
As they burned it hurt because
I was so happy for you
Now these points of data make a beautiful line
And we’re out of beta, we’re releasing on time
So I’m glad I got burned, think of all the things we learned
For the people who are still alive

Go ahead and leave me
I think I’d prefer to stay inside
Maybe you’ll find someone else to help you
Maybe Black Mesa
That was a joke, ha ha, fat chance
Anyway this cake is great
It’s so delicious and moist
Look at me still talking when there’s science to do
When I look out there it makes me glad I’m not you
I’ve experiments to run, there is research to be done
On the people who are still alive

And believe me I am still alive
I’m doing science and I’m still alive
I feel fantastic and I’m still alive
And while you’re dying I’ll be still alive
And when you’re dead I will be still alive
Still alive
Still alive

This is the awesome reward one gets for completing the amazing game known as Portal! This song is basically letting you know GLaDOS is 'still alive' and that she will continue to experiment and do what she does best in the passive aggressive way she does it. Also, the cake was real. (dang...) or was it...

Gamer

I ended up seeing this movie by mistake. We were supposed to go see Inglorious Bastards but we ended up being an hour late and among the various plethora of new movies playing, Gamer happened to be just starting so we bought some popcorn and headed into the dark room.

Now I'm not going to say I regretted buying the tickets, but the movie certainly flopped for me. Basically take Death Race, use the exact same premise only with prisoners being used as 'avatars' for gamers worldwide. Now take everything that was good or at least decent with Death Race and replace with ambiguous sex scenes for Gamer. That's about the entire movie, blowing stuff up and girls making out. (A movie made by men, for men) It was quite simply too much with too little actual movie to back it up. The hints of plot line buried deep inside the movie hint towards a grand conspiracy, but I stopped caring after the first five minutes.

Now some people may say that Terminator Salvation is like that, but at least Terminator Salvation delivered lots of action on epic scales with decent amounts of creativity. Gamer doesn't pull anything you haven't seen playing Call of Duty 4.

My opinion, if you have cash to burn and seriously have nothing to do, then you could consider watching Gamer, otherwise, just watch Death Race and play CoD4.

Now I must go annoy Cynthia!