Red Lobster & gluttony

Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster may seem like a good idea when you see the commercials on TV, but when all is said and done it is ultimately a grave mistake. Restaurants like Chili's and Red Lobster are one of my guilty pleasures, I hate that they are big corporately run chains and that they hurt local economies but boy do I love their cheese biscuits.

Today was a pretty successful day for me so when I got text message from a friend seeing if I wanted to eat at Red Lobster tonight I decided it would be a nice way to celebrate. The day finished and by eight I found myself seated at the location of S. Lamar. Myself, and three other friends, decided to order the limited time only endless shrimp. After enjoying a salad and some biscuits the waitress arrived. We each had our own little army of dead shrimp looking up at us.

Three hours and around 100 shrimp later I found myself here on my bed clutching my stomach hoping the pain will end soon. In all seriousness though the shrimp tasted fantastic. Each time we ordered more we got to choose from teriyaki, cajun, coconut, garlic, and hand battered. I tried all but hand battered and was, at the time, happy with my decision to spend the $15 on the special.

Do I regret my decison? Yes. Would I do it again? In a heart beat. What can i say, I'm a glutton for...well...gluttony.

Another sweaty house show

A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I went and saw one of our favorite bands play at a dirty sweaty house show, this weekend we went and saw one of our favorite friends play with his new band at a dirty sweaty house show.

My friend Justin was the first friend I made here in Austin and the dude is awesome. He’s a really great friend so when he invited us to come see his new band at a house show we where onboard. Cut to Saturday night as we walk up to a house a few blocks south of campus and are greeted by some acquaintances that I knew from school.

One of them, who I had had a couple of classes with last year, was really excited to see us and told us that it was some guy’s birthday and the party was western themed. I thought that was strange seeing as he was wearing nothing but a few plastic grocery bags and some duct tape…but I went a long with it.

We hung around in the house for a while and chatted with some friends until it was time for the band to play. The music was pretty good; in fact I was surprised by how well they played for it being their first performance. I would go into more detail but this isn’t about the music, it is about something I never thought I would see.

Towards the end of the performance things started getting weird. There was a few guys collecting money for another keg and they where barely clothed. There was the very drunk birthday boy dancing around with nothing but a “Come and Take It” flag wrapped around his waste. And there was someone flinging glow sticks around on strings.

In a matter of seconds all of these things combined into one of the most insane moments of my life. The band started jamming louder and the glow sticks where flying when all of sudden the birthday boy fell on to the ground and exposed himself to us. The band kept playing and the glowsticks kept spinning…but the genitals didn’t move. They just stayed there on display in front of everyone to see for what seemed like minutes. The flashing probably only happened for 3-4 seconds but for those of us in the front row it is an image we will never forget.

Review: Halo ODST's Fire Fight mode

Last week the newest game in the Halo franchise was released for the Xbox 360 and so far gamers are having mixed feelings about the game. Halo: ODST, which was originally just going to be a small downloadble side story, takes players and puts them in the shoes of regular solider instead of the franchise’s main hero Master Chief. The game also includes a new mode called Firefight. I haven’t had to opportunity to play through the main story but I did spend a lot of time playing Firefight.

It is fairly obvious after playing Firefight that the developers of ODST looked to last year’s Gears of War 2 when designing Firefight mode, as it is almost identical to the Horde mode that was included in Gears. Players team up in a certain area and fight off wave after wave of computer-controlled enemies. To succeed the players must work as a team and find the best places to defend and what weapons to use.

Firefight is simple enough to be able to jump right into, but with every wave ads more and more complexity. It is the perfect way to kill half an hour with your roommate/brother/a perfect stranger on the Internet.

More Highland Mall love

I actually wound up at Highland again this afternoon and saw these posters that pretty much summed up why I love the place. It feels like the past.

The Death of a Robot

This semester I'm taking a class on sequential art (comic books) and I had to make a flip book for a project. I opted for the digital option and made this little jewel.

My unnatural love for Highland Mall

Life's rough for Highland Mall. In the last couple years things have been pretty bad, JCPenny is gone...Dillard's is gone...and there really isn't much of a reason to go there.

Even without reason though I love going there, in fact I went this morning. For some reason I love this mall. I think a lot of it has to do with it's age. Walking down past the different store fronts and kiosks you can see that the mall has been there for a while. It has been through a lot. The mall opened in 1971 and was Austin's first suburban shopping mall.

It smells like a mall is suppose to smell. It has elaborate stair cases and escalators that come down on cheesy fountains and shrubberies. The food court isn't cluttered with fast food chains like every other mall but it's instead full of goofy little food places that you've never even heard of. There's even an ice cream shop with a giant fake ice cream sundae on top. Highland is a sad empty piece of history that for some strange reason makes me very happy.

And I don't dislike Barton Creek Square, I just feel like it doesn't have the soul that Highland has. Highland feels like a mall that Zach Morris and the gang would come to, and I love just being there. A lot of analysts are predicting the mall will be demolished sometime in 2010. That's too bad.

Movie Review: Away We Go

I’ve always loved Maya Rudolph but have never really had a reason for doing so. She was alright when she was on Saturday Night Live, and until very recently I never saw her in any films that I liked but thanks to a free screening at the University of Texas I can now say that I have seen her in a great film.

The film is Away We Go and Rudolph stars along side The Office’s John Krasinski. The two play an unmarried and rather quirky couple that is about to have their first child. Early on in the movie they decide to move to a new place and the film follows as they travel the United States and spend time with old friends and relatives as they try and find the perfect place to raise their child. The story is nice, and something different that we don’t often see in movies.

All the acting in the film is lovely, and there is a lot of it. Each person that Krasinski and Rudolph meets or revisits stand out, and some almost seem like too much, but they also all retain something real. They all seem like people that I’ve met or seen in real life. Krasinki rock a beard and some black plastic rim glasses as if to add a little more distance from his usually smirky Jim Halpert like characters, but even with out the visual help he does a great job creating and being this new character. Rudolph blew me away. The rest of the cast could have been played by anyone and Rudolph could still carry this movie. She is sweet, sincere, and beautiful.

Away We Go is something a little bit different, and something very very good.

3 Days without my computer

For the last 3 days my girlfriend has had my computer and it has made me realize how much computers have become a huge part of our, or more specifically my, day to day life. Not being able to do small things like quick google searches completely changing how I function. I'm sure analysts and doctors would comment on how bad this is for our future...but I really don't have a problem with it. Computers are a very important tool and it is up to us as individuals to decide how reliant we will be on that tool.

Tomorrow is going to be a big day for posting. All the stuff I wanted to post yesterday and the days prior.

The Negative Effects of Netflix

For the last year or so Netflix has been allowing users to stream thousands of movies live on to their computers, TVs, and through their Xbox consoles. I recently resubscribed to Netflix and have been loving the service. It gives the ability to watch tons of incredible films with great ease.

Unfortunalty nine times out of ten I find myself wasting away my time with stupid slapstick movies (Little Nicky) and tween comedies (iCarly). Today I found my self watching an hour and half worth of Inspector Gadget. Time well spent? I liked it so I guess was worth it.

Sea Dog Raspberry Ale: Raspberry or Mustard?

A few weeks ago I turned 21 and since then I’ve been slowly dipping my feet into the pool of alcoholic beverages. So far I’ve been pretty unimpressed. Beer tastes pretty gross. Didn’t really like white wine. But I’m still trying things.

Today I was at Central Market and I saw a bottle of Sea Dog’s Raspberry Wheat Ale. I figured regular beer tastes kinda gross…but throw some raspberries into the mix and maybe it’ll taste better? So I bought it.

After a few hours I popped open the bottle and poured it into a glass. I did a surprisingly good job of pouring into the glass, there was a good amount of head and the beer was a nice shade of amber that looked like John Hammond’s fly cane in Jurassic Park.

I couldn’t smell any particular flavors at first so I took a sip and definitely didn’t taste raspberry. The first flavor to hit my tongue was spicy deli mustard and then a pretty standard beer taste. I was surprised. I thought it would be a lot sweeter. It wasn’t the worst beer I’ve ever tasted, in fact it wasn’t bad at all but the raspberries on the bottle had me hoping for something else. The mustard taste eventually went away towards the end I started to taste the raspberry.

Maybe it was my imagination, in fact it probably was, but by the last couple sips of the glass the raspberry almost overshadowed the gross beery taste that still grosses me out.

I still don’t like beer but this bottle was halfway decent.

Master Pancake presents Total Recall

I’ve lived in Austin for around two and half years now and there is still a lot that I need to experience, last night I checked one item off of my list. Master Pancake.

For those that don’t know Master Pancake is comedians John Erler and Joe Parsons performing a live, and hilarious, commentary track over popular films of that past at the Alamo Drafthouse.

This weekend the two performed their comedy over the 1990 hit Total Recall. There is no doubt in my mind that you’ve all seen at least a little bit of Total Recall on TNT at some point of another but it is a terribly dated sci fi film about Arnold Schwarzenegger going to Mars and becoming a spy. My mom raised my brother and I on sci fi and since she was in town this weekend I thought it would be the perfect place to take her.

I don’t have the words to describe how funny the show was. It was a crude, vulgar, and almost serious critique of the film. The joked about everything from the cinematography, to the cheesy special effects and off course Arnold. I was there with my little brother, my girlfriend, and my mother and the comedy was broad enough to make us all laugh continuously.

If you’ve never seen a Master Pancake performance I highly recommend you buckle down and spend $12.50 next weekend, and if you grew up loving terrible science fiction movies then you’ve got no excuse. The duo will be performing Total Recall every weekend until October 10th and after that they will be doing A Nightmare on Elm Street. For more information visit their website.

Keanu Watch 2009: Point Break

Gun play, surfing, Gary Busey, skydiving, and a killer chase scene. Sounds like the formula for a perfect Keanu Reeves 90’s action movie, unfortunately it also sounds like the perfect formula for a mediocre 90’s Keanu action movie. The question really lies in weather or not the movie’s got soul.

The movie starts with Keanu playing a former college football star that has just started working for a bank robbery unit in the FBI. He is partnered up with the department’s oldest, and arguably craziest, officer played by Gary Busey. The two are tracking down a group of bank robbers known as the “Ex-Presidents.”

Busey suspects that the bank robbers where actually a group of surfers and so Keanu goes undercover as surfer to try and find the criminals. Long story short: Keanu befriends the leader of the surf crew, Patrick Swayze, then Swayze and Keanu grow close and Swayze teaches him his Zen surfer ways.

90’s action flicks typically hold up the way we’d like them to, but Point Break manages to do it pretty well. All of the action scenes are still pretty solid. The acting, with the exception of Keanu, is all pretty good. This is the second time I’ve seen a movie with pre-accident Gary Busey and I have to admit I was incredibly impressed. Swayze was incredible…and Keanu may seem like he’s doing a good job but his character is just a cop going under cover as Ted from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and that isn’t much of a stretch for Mr. Reeves.

The plot might be a little bit ridiculous but Point Break remains an incredible action movie. It’s fun, energetic and has some soul. If you’ve never seen it and want to see Keanu and Swayze shooting guns and jumping out of planes then this is a must see.

This Week in Food

If you follow me on twitter (twitter.com/proctoranderson) you know that I love to upload pictures of food that I make...and pretty much food I eat. Here are four things I've eaten this week.

Rapper of the week: Method Man

I want to share my love for hip-hop with the world and to do so I will shine light on a different rapper every week. Here is the first installment.

Two years ago I was lucky enough to go to a Method Man concert at the University of Texas. Before that night I had always laughed about Method Man because of his stoner comedies and undying love for marijuana but his performance opened my eyes to the talent and humor that is Method Man.


Method Man, or Meth, was one of the founding members of the Wu-Tang Clan and after the success of their debut Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) Meth launched his own solo career. He has since released four solo albums and two albums with friend and frequent collaborator Redman.

What separates Method Man from the rest of the rap industry is his ability to very successfully mix humor into his rhymes. They're usually rude, crude, and fairly profane but he plays with the words in ways most other rappers spend their entire careers trying to master. His voice manages to be smooth and raspy at the same time.

Suggested Tracks:
M.E.T.H.O.D. Man by the Wu Tang Clan
I'll Be There For You by Method Man feat. Mary J. Blige
City Light by Redman & Method Man feat. U.G.K.

Keanu Watch 2009

I've decided to take on an a new challenge, it is something that I'm calling Keanu Watch 2009. I've spent my whole life watching Keanu Reeves movies and wondering why people cast him in movies. In all the Keanu Reeves movies that I've watched I haven't seen a shred of evidence that he in fact has any acting talent. He's charismatic...sometimes...but I want to see his acting chops. If you have any leads as to what movie the talent may be hiding in let me know. The hunt begins!

This has never happened before!

Guess who this Craigslist missed connections ad is aimed at? I'll give you a clue, pay close attention to the 39 second mark in this video.

George Bush doesn't care about black people.

Kanye West is a terrible person. It can't be put in a simpler way.

Tonight at the MTV Video Music Awards the unpredictable West grabbed the mike away from Taylor Swift, who was giving her acceptance speech for Best Female Video, and told the audience that "I'm sorry, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time."

Sure, he prefaced his message by telling Swift that he was happy for her and that he would let her finish, but that doesn't make it ok. It was rude. It was in poor tasted. And it was disrespectful.

Shame on West. Shame on MTV for doing nothing to stop it. And props to Taylor Swift for handling it like class act.

Source: MTV

Trashy

Today I had the best taco of my life.

Around four my girlfriend Emmy and I decided to stop at Torchy's and grab a quick bite to eat. Torchy's is my favorite place for quick food that's under $5. Emmy ordered the baja shrimp taco on corn and I got a trailer park on flour.We where really hungry and it took longer than usual for our food to come so by the time it came out we where more than ready for the sweet taste of tacos.

As soon as the tacos hit the table my hands went to work. I grabbed the back half of the taco with my right hand and craddled it so I could catch anything that fell out the back of the taco and used my right hand to guide it to my mouth. Usually the trailer park is just a good taco. Fried chicken, queso, and green chilis all melted to together. Today's was phenominal.

After finishing up Emmy and I went back to the front desk and we each ordered another to go, drove home, and enjoyed.

Friends, Sweat, and the greatest band in Texas

The greatest band in Austin playing an incredible show last night, and it wasn't at some fancy club downtown. Nobody had to pay for parking, with the exception of the one guy whose car got towed. And everyone looked and smelled terrible by the time the show was over. The band was The Eastern Sea and the venue was some beat up house on Cole Street that may forever be cursed with the sweet aroma of Lonestar beer.

If you've never been to house show then you are missing out on something incredible. Sure it is crowded and sweaty and the sound is sort of terrible, but the concert becomes something completely different. It becomes something much more intimate and personal. It becomes a story that you can tell you're friends. I've been following The Eastern Sea since their creation five years ago and I've seen them more times than I can count (Not in a bragging kind of way, but an embarrassing obsession way) and last night was easily one of the most memorable shows that I've seen them play.

To listen to The Eastern Sea check out their Myspace.

Sega does what Nintendon't

Yesterday marked the ten year anniversary of the release of Sega's Dreamcast system. I bought and loved a Dreamcast a few years after it was released and even though I don't have it anymore I will never forget the system.

My parents bought me a Sega Genesis when I was a did and it changed my life. It was my first experience with video games and from that point I was in love, and because my parents bought me a Sega I would become a Sega fan for life.

When I got my Dreamcast I really wanted it to be the best console I ever played. It had some of my all time favorite videogames. Sonic Adventure, Shenmue, and Powerstone are games that I would still play today if I had them.

Unfortunately the console wasn't as succesful as Sega, and myself, had hoped. The system died and Sega announced that they would no longer be making consoles and only create software. The announcment was sad. And I was sad.

My week in movies

This last week I have watched a lot of movies. A lot more than usual.

Speed: Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! (See review type of thing a few posts down)

Pan's Labyrinth: I think I really liked this movie. I say think because I fell asleep in beginning and wasn't really in the mood for trippy Spanish civil war fantasy but by the end of the movie I was glued to the screen. The visual effects where stunning and the film's story was fantastic.

Enemy of the State: Wow! I'd been meaning to watch this movie for years but just never got around to it. I'm sure part of the reason I enjoyed it some much was my never ending love for Will Smith, but it was a really solid movie. The only complaints I had involved how realistic technology in the movie was, and that it also wasn't as cool as I imagine it would have been had i seen it in 1998.

City of God: I had heard a lot of good things about City of God and for the most part it didn't let down. Great story, interesting setting, and great style. There was clearly a lot of thought put into the way that the movie was filmed. The one thing that could have used work was the 130 minute length...little lengthy.

20 minutes of Hancock: What a terrible terrible disappointment. I love super heroes and as I mentioned before I love Will Smith but good God this movie was bad. And of course by this movie I mean the first 20 minutes, but if a movie can't hook me by then then whats the point in wasting my time with it? The visual effects looks horrendous. The romantic subplot was predictable. Just a bad movie overall.

It was my birthday

I was worried that after I blogged about getting a bunch of Facebook birthday wishes that I wouldn't actually get any comments...but the comments poured in. Here are a few of the meaningful ones.

Justin W: happy birthday same age brother

Caleb S: happy birthday dude... sorry for breaking the 8 girl streak you can delete this if you want

Dana M: 21? Really? Holy crap! Happy birthday, I guess. Jeez.

Brenda B: Happy 21st birthday Proctor! And, congratulations on the guest blog spot. You rock! I hope you enjoyed lots of your mom's home cooking and all of the parental love while you were home for the weekend.

And the last one is from my brother, an avid reader of my blog.
Walter A: Happy Birthday _____! ______ I can't believe you are finally 21. Have a good B-Day _____.

It was a good birthday.

Going into labor day

In 17 minutes I will be turning 21 years old. I'm excited. It is a big day apparently. But I'm also unexcited. Unexcited about the avalanche of comments I'm about to receive on Facebook. September 7th is the day that a ton of my closest facebook "friends" read that it is my birthday and then leave a stock standard birthday greeting for me. Is that suppose to make me happy? Or gracious. Usually there are about 7 people that are actually wishing me a happy birthday and putting some effort into a unique and meaningful birthday wish. As for the rest of them? Nothing. The clock hasn't even struck 12 and the comments have already started to roll in.

"Happy Birthday _____!"
"______ I can't believe you are finally 21"
"Have a good B-Day _____"

I like my birthday to be low key. Spend time with those closest to me. And eat cake. Tomorrow I'm going to spend time with my family, drive back to Austin with my brother, and go see Inglorious Basterds at the Alamo Drafthouse with my girlfriend. I think it is going to be a pretty good day.

Fast bus

Action movies get a bad wrap, and for good reason. A lot of them are very very bad. And even some of the best action movies still have a little bit of bad in them. Speed is no different. It has all the early 90's action cheese that you would expect from a 1994 Keaneu Reeves movie, but it also has something awesome.

Last night I couldn't sleep and wound up channel surfing on the couch. That's when I decided that I was going to watch Speed. All I really knew about it was the premise...which sounds pretty bad after 15 years. There are people on a bus. There is a bomb on the bus. The bus can't go slower than 50 mph or the the bomb explodes and kills the people.

The cast list is also pretty laughable. Keanu: Guy's just not a very good actor. Sandra Bullock: Meh, just don't like her. Dennis Hopper: Past his prime. The only two actors whose performances I actually enjoyed where Jeff Daniels and Matthew Broderick's best friend from Ferris Bueler.

But despite all this I LOVED this movie. Movie starts with action. Then 15 mintutes of story and the rest is action. Really intense action. I've never seen a movie that filled me with this much suspsense. By the end of the movie my veins where full of adrenline. Thank you HBO on demand.

Home yet

This weekend I'm back in Houston at my parent's house. Monday is my 21st birthday and we're getting together with my aunt, uncle, and grand parents to celebrate. What does being home mean to me? A lot of things.

1. Homemade meals from my mom. Today my little brother and I came home to incredible pot roars, biscuits, and cooked vegetables. No matter how hard I try when I make dinner at my apartment it never tastes like this.

2. PUPPY! My Dad got a little tiny yellow lab puppy on July 2nd and I love her to death. Over the summer the two of us spent a lot of late nights snoozing on the couch. Now she's big but still the best pup ever.

3. DVR. Life with basic cable is rough...well not really but we've got a backlog of Arrested Development episodes on our DVR. Sure, I've got them on DVD at my apartment but watching them on my parents big TV with the whole family around is just so much better.

4. And of course family. Mine specifically. What would I be without my parents. They give me drive, humor, support, love, and many other things. I can't thank them enough for all that they've given me, with out them I would be nothing.

Funny stuff

Tuesday marked the beginning of the "Out of Bounds Comedy Festival" here in Austin. Out of Bounds is a 7 day comedy festival that features some of the countries best improv, sketch comedy, and stand up performers. One of the groups being spotlighted is Scatter, a long form improv group from Houston.

Tonight I was lucky enough to catch Scatter's performance at the Savage Vanguard theater. Scatter wasn't however a group that I just randomly stumbled upon, when I was in high school I did improv with Scatter's Matt Lusk. Lusk is two years older than me and was the guy that influenced me to try out for the group...so I may be a little bit biased in my evaluation of the performance.

After high school I decided to stop doing improv for awhile, and instead worked more on school and getting used to living in Austin. So now, 3 years later, I have trouble remembering the good parts about it. Instead my mind is cluttered with the obnoxious people we used to perform with and the outrageous skits we would end up doing. Improv can very easily slip and become a very silly, and very stupid thing. The guys in Scatter realize this. You can tell when they perform that they are aware of the inherent goofiness of improv and they make light of that. For example half way through their performance one of the 8 members called for a break and all 8 members walked over to the side of the stage and grabbed their water bottles, rested, and discussed their work so far. One member said they needed to work on their environment in scenes and when they started back up two of them intentionally performed a terribly hilarious improv scene where they broke almost every basic rule for making a good scene. In the hour that they performed they covered all sorts of topics and as morally wrong as it sounds made even the most terrible of topics, abusive step fathers, and hilarious subject.

The troupe was incredibly funny, making sure that everyone in the audience had a good time. After talking to the guys after their performance it was obvious that they where good friends, and that contributed a lot to their on stage chemistry. The best part of the performance was that it reminded me of the good times that I had doing improv.

Dolphin free

In talking with people I have realized that most, if not all, of us have unexplainable memories from our childhoods. Strange things. Hazy scenes from movies and TV shows that don't quite make sense after all these years. One memory that never escapes me is playing Ecco the Dolphin for my Sega Genesis.

Yes, some Sega executive thought it would be a good idea to make a game about a Dolphin swimming through the ocean.

Yes, my parents saw the box for the dolphin game...and bought it for their 5 year old son.

What terrible ideas! (Sorry mom, I know you read this)

To top off the weird/uninteresting concept of the game the developers made it brutally difficult. I never got past the second level. But I've been told that the game starts to get really weird strange! The dolphin starts flying into space to fight space jelly fish. Weird stuff. There was even two sequels.

Someday I'd like to give Ecco another shot...not today though.

Saves you money

Things are expensive. I know, pretty obvious statement but it's very true. I do my best not to buy expensive things. Most of the time that means I just don't buy anything but other times it means I find ways to spend less on expensive things. Today I have two examples of things that I bought this weekend for less than the sticker price.

First: Planet Earth on Blu-Ray. On BestBuy.com the collection costs $79.99 but thanks to a special one day deal on WalMart's website I was able to get it for $37.99. Walmart.com had run out of copies by the time I found out but my girlfriend and I printed the screen and took it to Best Buy. At try to avoid going to Best Buy at all costs as I can't stand the way they run their business...but I make exceptions when it comes to price matching. I see it as my opportunity to take a little bit of their money. After searching the store for around 45 minutes we finally found one of two remaining copies. Took it to the customer service and after a little convincing we got it for aroudn 40 dollars. Very happy with our purchase. Looks incredible on my roomate's TV.

Second: Guitar Hero World Tour Bundle for Playstation 3. For the last 3 years I have avoided buying plastic video game instruments. Rock Band and Guitar Hero games have always seemed fun but I could never get over the price. The Guitar Hero World Tour bundle costs around a hundred dollars no matter where you look. On Sunday I was at Target buying some deoderant and I checked out the electronics section out of habit. There wheren't any good markdowns in the game section and nothing good in Dvds so I started to walk to the register. Then tucked away in an end cap where two copies of the game and one guitar for only twenty two dollars. So I snatched one up and took it to the register. On my way home I stopped by a Hollywood video and lucky me they had Guitar Hero drums on sale for only ten dollars. So I got the whole bundle for a third of the price. I'm pretty excited about it.

Feels good buying $180 worth of stuff for only $70.