Fall is my absolute favorite time of year. For those outside of the Sunshine State allow me to break down Florida weather: hot, hotter, and unbearable. But Fall is the season when the intolerable heat starts to break and one can actually enjoy being outside. The weather gets cooler and because it gets darker earlier you don't have to deal with the sun beating down. Of course, so far this year has kind of sucked as we've only had two decent days so far with temps here in the Orlando area still in the 90s everyday.
In addition, Fall brings Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Florida. As I no longer have to work them, I can actually enjoy them. While I'm still too big of a wuss to go into the haunted houses, I did take the opportunity during the employee preview night on September 22nd to check out the shows and scarezones. First off, this year's Bill & Ted show is the best since I came back to Universal in 2006 (I've seen 9 of the 17 shows, so I do have some frame to judge them by). Plotline involves a fanboy who uses the phonebooth to pull characters out of movies. Leave it at that so as not to give anything away. But great music, love all the references to Internet memes, just totally geek-worthy. The Rocky Horror Tribute Show is cool as well though no uber-hot dancer for me to drool over this year and at the show I saw Rocky was black. WTF?! Gone this year is the random magician/psychic/acrobat/random crap show that they normally hold in the Animal Actors stage. Guess they finally realized that nobody goes to that show and thus there's no point in having it. Of the scarezones, I absolutely love the area around Mel's Drive-In, which has been renamed the Horrorwood Die-In. Now every year the sign of Mel's has the "I" and "E" removed to be the Die-In, but this is the first year that I can remember where they designed a scarezone around the theme. The area is a drive-in movie theater with random horror movie monsters wandering around. But what makes it ultra-cool is that, on the drive-in's movie screen are trailers and clips from classic and current horror films, and my favorite, old-school drive-in concession advertisements. In addition, the Chainsaw Drill Team gets their own scarezone around T2:3D. The others were just the random frights every year (zombies and such). And even if you don't get a chance to go into the event but happen to be in CityWalk, head over and watch the video on the big screen "movie marquee". One segment of a rude movie-goer is hysterical!
Best/Worst of the Summer
Yea, so I got a lot of gaming and a lot of movie-watching in during the Summer. Normally I write up an individual review each time, but as I haven't blogged in over 4 months I'm just going to a best-of/worst-of the Summer edition.
- Best Movie - Star Trek: Surprisingly good, as I'm not a Trekkie. But just a good, all-around sci-fi movie. The whole time travel aspect was kinda cheesy (actually, like a lame Star Trek episode), but I'm definitely picking it up on Blu-Ray when it comes out.
- Worst Movie - X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Very, very glad that I didn't pay to see this (made it a Daytona double-feature at the dollar theater with Angels & Demons, that's how bad it was... I refused to pay to see it at the DOLLAR THEATER!). Just so much incredibly bad story and such bad CGI that I think the reel I watched was the unfinished version that leaked onto the Internet. Plus, how the butchered Deadpool's origin pretty much makes it so that he won't be able to get his own movie without a total relaunch.
- Best Video Game - Batman Arkham Asylum: Lots of nerdy goodness and inside references to the Batman comics. Plus, the gameplay was great with a really fun fighting mechanic. And I loved the 90s Batman cartoon, which this game borrows its story (written by the show's writer) and voice talent. So it was like playing through the show's best episode.
- Worst Video Game - NCAA Football 10: What the f, EA?! It's like one step forward/two steps back with you guys. You make one cool advancement but then take out several cool things. And the gameplay is a lot of meh, nothing new. Feels like playing NCAA Football 03, which I had for the original Xbox, with nicer graphics. Really wish someone could afford to throw some cash towards the NCAA and NFL to break EA's stranglehold on football games.
Speaking of college football, I have to bring up my alma mater. For the first time in 11 years, I got to go up to Tallahassee to see a game in Doak Campbell last Saturday when the Noles played my brother's school USF. Now, considering that I'm not a particularly big football fan and especially don't like college football, I was just happy to be back in Tally and enjoying the atmosphere. But things are obviously getting bleak at the ol' alma-mater. FSU this year is at 2-3, and barely beat I-AA Jacksonville State. One girl from my old fraternity joked that I went to school when the football team was actually good. Now, personally, if they went 0-12 I could care less. But here's what's upsetting to me: the treatment of Coach Bowden. Now, for years I didn't really get why he even still is the coach. He doesn't even bother wearing a headset anymore to call plays. He's more of an inspirational leader for the football team than a person who acually gets his hands dirty drawing up plays. But, the upsetting thing is all of the talk behind Coach Bowden's back about how he needs to leave. The man has been there for ages, is really the father of that program. In my opinion, he gets to choose when he leaves. You're not firing Bobby Bowden. And for those who wish to push him out the door, people our next coach is already on the staff. I'm sure he'd probably change some thing, but he's already there so he has some control over the team now. I'm just saying, I don't expect a lot of change either way.
Well, that's it for this post. I'm not going to pretend that I'm going to go back to posting weekly, but I'll post as much as I can. Otherwise, you can follow me at twitter.com/grandowl77.
