Up late talking games & writing? You're...

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Film: The wife and I watched The Road Warrior today as we were enjoying the afternoon. She had never seen it before, and although she is as close to perfect as any man could ever hope to expect, I've taken on as my own personal mission to expose her to some of ‘the classics’.
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We’ve watched RoboCop, Big Trouble in Little China, Alien and Aliens already, but we still need to get to Evil Dead 2, Dead Alive, The Thing, and Predator, among others. Anyway, today was the day for post-apocalyptic road rage.
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Although I've seen Road Warrior several times, I hadn't watched it lately and I was a little curious as to whether or not it would still hold up as well as I remembered it.
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It TOTALLY did.
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Even after all this time, that film remains an emotionally bleak, brutal masterpiece. Complete thumbs up.
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Games: As we near the arrival date of our son (still in utero) we find that we are in kind of a holding pattern… since we've got all the baby stuff and reorganized the house several times over, there's not really a lot to do but wait. Helping us pass the time today was House of the Dead: Overkill on the Wii.
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Although the game felt a little bit shallow (and took us about three hours to complete) I've got to say that I absolutely fell in love with the presentation-- Headstrong Games pulled a really genius move in positioning the entire thing as a 70’s exploitation film.
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Instead of having it be another laughably stilted ‘serious’ entry in the series, it gains a significant amount of cool by being completely irreverent and quite foul in some parts. (That final 'mommy' scene? Eccccchhhhh!) Although I wouldn't recommend this treatment for every game, it really works here. After all, light gun games on rails are slightly absurd to begin with, so why not up the ante?
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In my opinion, it made the whole thing a lot more interesting than it would have been otherwise, although if you’re not in the right frame of mind I can see how it would be fairly irritating… the f-bombs drop with unbelievable frequency and the music will either get you in the mood, or drive you completely insane.
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I had a blast with it as a rental, but considering that we were pretty much done with it in one day, I can't really recommend it as a $50 purchase. Still, check it out for the style, if nothing else.
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Misc: My job takes me lots of different places during the week. It's one of the reasons why I enjoy doing it; there's a ton of variety. However, today was something a little different because it was familiar-- I had the opportunity to revisit the school where I was originally trained myself.
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The pictures on the wall were all new and I didn't recognize many of the faces, but the thing that really struck me was that it was odd to be a seasoned professional sitting in the exact same room where I started as the greenest of greenhorns.
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I didn't have much chance to talk to the people who were there, but just setting foot in the same space sent me back. I'm still sort of digesting the experience, but I was glad (and maybe a little weirded out) to have had the opportunity to come full circle and see those who are just starting out on the path my life took thirteen years ago.
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