December 23, 2004

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  The Twelve Days of Dram – Day 11

  
  

  FAILED BLOGS

  
  

  Not every idea here at Dramamine Boy’s Xanga ends up as a blog.  While some ideas that Dramamine Boy’s Xanga staff members come up with are immediately dismissed and the staff member flogged, there are some ideas that get approved, worked on extensively and then are later found to be deemed unworthy… which requires extra flogging.  Here’s some ideas that were kicked around here at Dramamine Boy’s Xanga for a blog, but never made the cut.

  
  

  
  AMC Moviecard -

  
  

  

  
  

  This is my MovieWatcher card (and as you can see, it’s been used quite a bit).  After using it for awhile, it was deemed blog-worthy and the following was written up: 

  
  

  
  

  AMC (and apparently a few other movie theaters) have this rewards card you can sign up for where you can get free popcorn, sodas and even tickets.  My cousin told me about it, so I signed up for it.  This is perhaps the greatest thing ever!  For years I’ve been going to movies and I never got crap for free.  Now, every three or four visits, I get free stuff!

  
  

  When I first got this card, I started going to all sorts of movies just to earn points so I could get free stuff.  Who cares if the movie was crappy… I’m only 2 points away from getting a free popcorn!  If they came out with Ishtar 2 back then, I probably would’ve been first in line.

  
  

  Also, Wednesdays are “free popcorn” days, so Wednesdays are my new favorite day to see a movie.  How many of my friends want to see movies on Wednesdays?  Zero.  That’s okay… more popcorn for me!  Here’s the schedule of rewards you get:

  
  

  

  
  

  What’s it say about the profit margin of popcorn if they’d rather give you a free popcorn before they give you a free small soda that they charge you $4.00 for!?!

  
  

  And… well, that’s all that ended up being written.  Not very blog-worthy, I must say.

  
  

  Trip to Japan - I really want to go to Japan one of these days and a blog was going to be written about it.  But until that happens, I was going to take a trip to Japan… through the internet.  So, I have this pic:

  
  

  

  
  

  and it was gonna be inserted into all sorts of pictures of Japan found on the internet.  For example:

  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  

  Then, stupid touristy things were going to be written about each picture, as if I actually went there.  But as you can see, all the pictures look crappy, except for maybe the last one.  This is not only because the picture I’m using is low quality to begin with, but also matching the brightness/contrast of the surrounding picture hadn’t been a part of Dramamine Boy’s Xanga’s Photoshop repertoire yet (and actually, it still isn’t).

  
  

  BayStars Update - Boy, I haven’t posted one of these in awhile!  That’s because the BayStars had yet another lackluster season, languishing near the bottom of the standings for most of the year before turning it on at the end of the year and… ending up in last.

  
  

  Anyway, one of the BayStars updates was going to be my letter to Peter Gammons (who is the baseball expert on ESPN), but nothing else was written other than what is below:

  
  

  
  

  Dear Mr. Gammons,

  
  

  Knowing that your knowledge of baseball is not just confined to Major League Baseball, what do you think the effect of the BayStars’ hiring of Daisuke Yamashita will have on the BayStars?  Don’t you think that his hiring will put the BayStars on track to break all Japan League performance records and win championships for as long as he wishes to manage? In fact, don’t you think his hiring will stimulate the entire Japanese economy and quite possibly put an end to all wars around the world for eternity?

  
  

  Thanks,
  Dramamine Boy

  
  

   

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Dear Mr. Boy, Get lost. Sincerely, Peter Gammons

  
  

  WELL EXCUSE ME, MISTER BASEBALL “EXPERT”!

  
  

  Kill Bill -

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Before I went to see this movie, it seemed to be the perfect movie to spawn a Dramamine Boy’s Xanga blog.  The reason?  If you didn’t see the movie, the synopsis goes something like this:

  
  

  Scrawny white woman kills a bunch of highly trained asian assassins

  
  

  If there was ever a time to reel off a “doggone asian discrimination, I tell you”, this would be the time.  But, that was pretty much all I had to say about the movie.  Well, that and my hypothesis that the reason the Crazy Eighty-Eights all wore masks is because Hollywood didn’t want to hire 88 asian actors, so they added in a bunch of white guys. 

  
  

  Other than that, the only story I have is about when I went to go see Kill Bill.

  
  

  
  

  One night, I was talking to Ben and Cindy on MSN and I mentioned that I hadn’t seen Kill Bill yet.  They replied as if I just told them I eat baby birds for a living.

  
  

  “WHAT!?!  WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!?!  GO OUT AND SEE IT RIGHT NOW!!”

  
  

  By that time, however, Kill Bill wasn’t playing in the regular theaters anymore.  The closest theater it was playing at was the Elmwood in Berkeley.  Now, I had never been to the Elmwood, but it’s been there forever.  It now plays movies that are no longer at the main cinemas and it only costs something like $5.50 to see a movie.

  
  

  

  
  

  It’s truly an old-school type theater.  I walked in and there was one person at the tiny, sorry excuse for a concession stand.  I get a popcorn and soda and walk into the theater.  There’s no music playing, no stadium seating and there’s a curtain in front of the movie screen.  I sit down on the tattered seat and a spring greets my butt.

  
  

  The lights dim and there were no previews, no THX “The Audience is Listening” promo (heck, I’m not even sure if there was stereo), no dancing popcorn and sodas telling me to visit the tiny, sorry excuse for a concession stand… just the curtain opening and boom, the movie starts.

  
  

  Now, those of you that have seen the movie know that the beginning was made to look like a ’70s style movie, complete with pops and hisses and pieces of dust and stuff on the screen.  For those that hadn’t seen the movie (e.g. me), I’m sitting there in my crummy seat thinking…

  
  

  “Whaaaaat kind of CRAPPY THEATER did I just sit down in!?!”

  
  

  I almost walked out!  Heck if I was paying $5.50 to watch a print of a movie that looked like something that was downloaded off the internet!  I can do that for free!

  
  

  Man… actually, that was a lot of information.  Maybe I shoulda used that for a blog.

  
  

  Stereograms -

  
  

  

  
  

  Remember these?  They were also called “Magic Eye”.  At first glance, they look like a repetitive pattern, but if you stare at them correctly, they contain a 3D image.  I remember these things would appear in the Sunday comics and I’d sit there forever trying to see the image. So, a committee was formed to create a blog about them, but all that ended up happening was the creation of this:

  
  

  

  
  

  Blogging once an hour - This idea actually ended up evolving into The Twelve Days of Dram, except instead of blogging once per day, it would’ve been once per hour.  It woulda been like the blogging version of “24″.  But heck, it’s hard enough to come up with something to blog about once a week, much less once an hour!  However, little ideas to come up during the day… not enough to warrant blogging about, but significant thoughts nonetheless.  For example, when Matt Leinart won the Heisman Trophy, did anyone else think he looked like a Chia Pet?

  
  

   

  
  

  So who knows, maybe this “blogging once an hour” idea will surface one of these days.  Maybe that’ll be the day I choose to sleep for 18 hours.  That’d make things much easier.

  
  

  Let the floggings commence.

  • 6:40 am
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