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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Classic YNTE


Posting this because I have way too much stuff to do before the end of the month and I probably wouldn't have another chance to post.

In Blackjack you could double your money


...But in a KFC, a Double Down could double your chance for a heart attack. Above is a (pretty crappy) picture of a half-eaten Double Down sandwich they started selling. It was one of those things that they revealed on April 1, but then we found out it wasn't a joke. Of course, I had to try one. It required finding our way to the KFC Taco Bell in the next town over, which was a pain in the ass because Moscow sucks and doesn't have coherent roads.

So it's 2 pieces of boneless chicken acting as the bun and containing 2 pieces of bacon, 2 pieces of cheese, and ?? of mayo (I don't even know if it WAS mayo). Don't get me wrong, it was good... but the taste of the KFC chicken overpowered everything else. Honestly, if you were to just slap 2 pieces of chicken together and ate it, that's probably going to have the same taste as this, just fewer chances for heart attacks. Oh, and it was like $5. So you could have gotten 5 snackers instead of this, or 5 tacos.

Consensus: It's alright, but I probably wouldn't have got it if it weren't for content on a blog that's partially about eating. But, if you have $5, a KFC around and are immune to heart attacks, I guess it couldn't hurt to try.

Friday, April 23, 2010

YNTE Movie Night: "I've Seen That!" Edition


So this month, it seems that I actually have seen Avatar. I had the privilege of seeing it in 3-d with a free pass, too. It's been a while though, so my memory might be a bit rusty. In any case, here goes (also I'm on cold medicine that's supposed to make me drowsy, so my writing quality might degrade after a while):

The Plot
You start the movie seeing a Marine named Jake Sully wake up from cryo-stasis, and you quickly learn he's a paraplegic. He's been assigned to a team lead by the lady from Alien (Sigourney Weaver) to take his dead twin brother's place as an "Avatar," a creature using both human DNA with that of the native alien race, the Na'vi. Basically he's piloting a chimera that's 3 times bigger than regular humans. Oh and also he's the only military-backgrounded guy with an avatar, since everyone else is a scientist. This creates a convenient plot point that leads him to get lost, find the native tribe, and befriend them. But at the same time he's also working with some dicks in the military that want to destroy the tribe... anyway.

This is all taking place on a planet named Pandora (well I guess it's technically a moon but whatever). The whole purpose of the human operation there is to mine the precious element named Unobtainium, which is obviously a better name than Francium. But this native tribe is hostile, since well, the humans are kinda mining in their territory. The Avatar program was an attempt to befriend the Na'vi for them to get permission to continue their mining operation.

Without spoiling too much (and thus spoiling everything), it goes like this: Sully befriends Na'vi but is also gathering intelligence, Sully becomes attached to them and does one of the alien chicks, the information he gathered is used by the military dicks to enact their great plan, great suffering ensues, corporate greed overcomes that of common sense, big battle happens, and everyone lives happily ever after in the end ('cept the dead ones). The plot is, to quote Christopher Titus, "Reliable, not inspiring."

The Good
-Effects are great, of course. CGI sure has come a long way since The Last Starfighter.
-The cast of characters is strong and they play their roles well
-Plot is reliable, and if you like most movies then you'll like this one too. (People say it's a blend of Dances With Wolves and Fern Gully and a bunch of other movies... probably, though it's been forever since I've seen any of those).
-The Na'vi are like giant blue kitties. And everybody loves kitties.
-The 3D effects DO NOT USE CHEAP GIMMICKS. This is what I found to be a very important point... if you've watched ANY 3D movie, you'd know how often the producers like to throw shit at the audience to give them a jump. Avatar rather augments the experience, and doesn't cheapen it with cheesy effects and making the audience jump.

The Bad
-Effects are a good part of the movie, but like most movies today it is heavily reliant on CGI.
-The cast of characters are kinda stereotypical.
-Plot is predictable, and if you hate most movies then you'll hate this one too.
-The giant blue kitties will never love you back.
-The 3D effects made my free ticket actually cost $3 more. And no aliens were leaping out of people's chests. (This is the ONLY acceptible gimmick because of Sigourney Weaver's role).

The Ugly
-The fans oh god the fans. Remember what people say about Jesus, "It's not the actual person I hate, its their fanclub."
-The Fans. (On par with Trekkies and LotR nerds by now)
-Did I mention the fans? Jesus Christ seriously?

If anything look at the last link. It is a link on the Avatar forums to help people cope with the depression that the movie is causing, because, and I quote, "Because the dream of Pandora can never come true." Seriously, it was a good movie and all, but people are going nuts and growing attached to a piece of fiction as if it were actually true. It's nuts and people really need to get a hold of themselves.

Consensus
Avatar was pretty good when it comes right down to it. It was well crafted and well deserving of its praise, even with all of the criticisms. Basically, if you can avoid the rabid rampant crazy fanclub, you'll be alright.

Final Thoughts
Give this a watch after you've seen the movie.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

YNTE Movie Night: April Edition

April may be a bit of a controversial month for YNTE Movie Night.

The idea is that I pick out a movie that I have never seen (and thus have no firsthand opinion of) and based on what I have seen/heard/googled, looks pretty terrible. This month's movie is no exception.

The reason it may be a controversial choice, is that it is the #1 highest grossing movie of all time, James Cameron's Avatar.

Here's the plot as I understand it: Humans are on the far off planet of Pandora, attempting to mine a rare, hard to obtain mineral, literally called "Unobtainium". Unfortunately there's a race of 10 foot tall cat people who aren't fond of the intrusion. The humans decide that in order to broker peace, they will find a way to wear the cat people as skin suits and infiltrate their culture or something. This is the best the movie has been explained to me.

It's Dances with Wolves meets FernGully with a little bit of the Smurfs and Freaky Friday.

And yet, every single person I've talked to who has seen it has said it was awesome. Am I missing something?

Anyway, the DVD comes out tomorrow. I'll be watching it and posting my thoughts sometime this month. Will the movie be as stupid as it has sounded every time it has been attempted to be explained to me? Or is there some nugget of awesome contained within that everyone else has already discovered and I am last to the party?

If you want to participate, email your review to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I'll post 'em up at the end of the month.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Jeepers, Creepers... Where'd you get those peepers?!

Evan. You know me too well...

I present "a piece of bread with a pineapple and melted cheese"



If I get enough interest, maybe I'll include the recipe.

Enticing Tom to Post

It occured to me that maybe Tom isn't posting because he doesn't feel that what he would contribute would pass the super stringent rules for content. Perhaps he was put off by the "No Malarky" tone we have here.

So, to make Tom feel more welcome, I'm going to add in some malarky to make him feel more at home. If this doesn't get him to post, I don't know what will.

So without any further ado:

Monday, April 5, 2010

March Roundup: It's already April 5th Edition

Am I slow on posting the March Roundup? Yes. Moving on. Graphs!



The determinations from this data:
1) We're still kicking ass this year. Even with a dip in total post count this month, we managed to surpass 2008's total in just 3 months.
2) Evan had kind of a busy month
3) Tom is still failing
4) Delayed explanation poop jokes count as content

Matt's still on track to earn the full 50 bucks. Tom, if he bats a perfect game between here and the end of the year, can hope to earn 20.

Mind = Not Blown


It seems that Tom is into a more literal reverse psychology... from the comments:

"Tom said...
Reverse psychology doesn't work on me. only ygolohcysp esrever does. Therefore I'm content with posting comments -- April 2, 2010 10:11 PM"

Well, in that case, I'll say something in a way he could understand.

Ti ta kool uoy woh rettam on yenom gnisol htiw tnetnoc era uoy erofereht. Tnuoma lluf eht htiw tuo emoc ot stnemmoc hguone evah ton llits dluow uoy, yenom gnisol ton uoy rof detnuoc stnemmoc fi neve tub. Stnemmoc gnikam htiw tnetnoc era uoy, stsop golb gnikam ton yb.

Hope that clears some things up.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Jimmy and the Hammer is 50 strips old!

Today's Jimmy and the Hammer marks the 50th strip, and also my 6 month anniversary of doing the comic.

To commemorate, there is a special double size comic packing some pretty major plot revelations.

To view it, head over to http://www.jimmyandthehammer.com !

April Fools Day sucks.

For one day, the internet just breaks. In the name of "humor", sites pop up with annoying features and fake news stories. It's gotten so prevalent that I just turn off the internet entirely that day and live in a cave.

I've gotten pretty sick of it, but I'm not the only one. There's a video of a guy explaining the whole phenomenon - and it's good enough that I won't repeat what he says, just send you to watch the video here.

Prank of the Ages


At first I thought that the best way to have an April Fool's Day prank would be to change the blog layout into something whimsical... but by not having admin rights and by not remembering the login information for the original account, that was a bust.

But then I thought of the best thing. I decided that the best April Fool's Day prank would be to log into Tom's account and make a post for him. But... My plan failed when it came to the login field though, so scratch that...

But wait! It would be even funnier if Tom had posted himself! But it's too late for that. Stevo is still beating him.

Shit wait, it's April 2 now. Too late to do shenanigans. Oh well, happy post-April Fools Day.