Notes from 2010...in no particular order

Happy New Year! Here's some random year wrap up/next year predictions from me.


TV-
Lost eneded. I really liked that show alot. The first few seasons were great. Even though the last couple seasons dragged on a bit, I still liked it. I just re-watched the last episode today(DVR) and I actually enjoyed it more than the first time I saw it.
I started watching Entourage this year. Never seen it. So I watched all of the seasons on DVD and was consistently entertained. A show about 4 dudes who are friends, rip on eachother and live in Hollywood. And lots of babes too. What's not to like?
Dog the Bounty Hunter. - A guilty pleasure, yes. But good entertainment....brah.
American Chopper. - Always liked it, always will.
Palladia.- It's a channel I get with comcast. Its all concerts, videos, specials. It's awesome. It's really what MTV should be. Ive discovered many new bands from palladia.
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. - Best late night on TV. period. Classic songs like"balls in your mouth", and the Neil Young impresions. Cool games, good humor. Definetely worth watching.

Movies -
Iron Man 2. - Loved it. Iron Man is my favorite super hero ever. It wasn't quite as good as the first one, but I still dug it anyways. Good fight scenes, Mickey Rourke was cool as Whiplash, and it had War Machine. Dope.
Stepbrothers. - Awesome hilarity with Will Farrell and that other guy. Good laughs.
Gran Tourino. - Clint Eastwood makes a good film. And he has the craziest racial slurs ever.

Music -
Album of the year - Minus the Bear/OMNI. Freaking sweet. Such a great record that flows. Every song is worth listening to, and they sound good live. Check em out.
On a side note, last year's album of the year was Silversun Pickups/Swoon. Check it out too. Next year's album of the year - The new Twilight Singers album due in Feb. Already heard 2 songs from it and it sounds great.
Other noteables to check out - III/IV from Ryan Adams, Broken Bells, Jeff Klein - Death of the fox, and anything from Citizen Cope.

Other -
Tums. So much for heartburn, Tums kicks ass.
Nebraska football-Last year in the Big 12. 10-4 record. Some tough losses but they are imroving. Bring on the Big 10 next year.

Thats it for now. Peace out 2010. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

K

Helpful technology, unhelpful people

As I have worked in the retail sector for years, I understand the importance of customer service. I went into Best Buy tonight to look at computers, and found my way to the desktops. I found an HP that was on clearance, and looked beneath it to see if there were any in-stock. I saw a different HP with similar features but there was no price. So I waited for a customer service person to come and help me....and waited...and waited. I then decided to grab my phone, log onto bestbuy.com, and search for the computer. I found the price, realized it was too much, and left the store without talking to a person. Someday there will be no need for people to work in retail in a salesperson capacity.

It was faster for me to use the internet on my phone then to talk to a real person.

Someday people won't sell computers at BestBuy anymore. Computers will sell computers at BestBuy. Guess I better learn how to fix computers. Hmmm..now I wonder if they will just make more computers to fix the computers. Oh well. All humans will be gone soon and I won't have to worry about not getting service at BestBuy.

Affirmative. Binary Solo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BdQcJ2ZYY&feature=related

Oh what a feeling....Toyota!

Sometimes you just have to be there. I get it. Sometimes you hear a story that someone thinks is hilarious, but you just don't think it's that funny. Hopefully you, one of 7 readers, will enjoy this story as much as I did when I lived it.....

So I'm at work, and I'm walking through the store, and I walk up to a couple of associates standing there talking. Alicia is staring off in to space, as if she were in deep thought...

Me - "Alicia, what are you thinking about?"

Alicia - "Jen told me the miles she has on her truck, and I'm trying to figure out the decimal point."

Me - "Oh, ok. Jen, how many miles do you have on it?"

Jen - "Two Hundred and Ten Hundred Thousand miles."

Me, looking puzzled.... - "Um... you mean Two Hundred Ten Thousand, right?"

Jen - "No, Two Hundred and Ten Hundred Thousand miles."

At this point, I had given her the chance to correct herself, and she didn't take it. Maybe she was just tired. Maybe she hadn't taken a math class in a while. Maybe she didn't see the huge grin beginning to form on my face. So me, being the nice guy, tried to give her another chance to get out of it...

Me - "Jen, that's not a real number."

Jen - "No, when I bought it from the guy, he told me that's how many miles it had on it. He had it on a farm and they drove it alot."

Me - "Well Iv'e heard of some old Toyota's getting up to a million miles, after 20 years or so, but that's about it." (At this point I'm just trying to wrap up the conversation so I can go somewhere and laugh....)

Jen - "Well he said Two Hundred and Ten Hundred Thousand miles on it."

Me - "Well, whatever you paid for your truck, you have certainly got your money's worth!"

So I walked away, and the whole time, Alicia is still trying to figure out the decimal point.

I couldn't keep myself from laughing the rest of the day. I would think about the seriousness in her answers and I would start to grin and crack up.
Unfortunately, Jen quit, and is moving to Alaska with her boyfriend.
According to mapquest, it is 3227 miles from Englewood to Anchorage.

That would put her Toyota truck at

Two Hundred and Ten Hundred Thousand Three Thousand Two Hundred and Twenty Seven miles when she gets there....I think...

Oh what a feeling....Toyota!

My last three blog posts

My last 3 blog posts have NO comments. None at all. Throw me a friggin' bone here, people. Isn't the point of blogging to share a bunch of stupid stories with people and then have them comment on said stupid stories? Do my stories need to get stupider? More stupid? Stupid-endous? Stupidtacular? I feel like they are getting stupider by the second... I can feel the stupid.

Fun stuff from Jury Duty

So it was a couple of weeks ago that I went to jury duty. Iv'e pretty much told everyone about the facts of the case and how it turned out. So I'm going to post a few things that I thought were interesting about the whole experience.

Some interesting names of people in my jury pool:
Quintas
Robota (yes, as in "domo arigato, Mrs. Robota, domo domo....)
And Melinda, the baliff.

The jury sits in a slightly raised seating area, on the side of the courtroom. There are two rows of chairs, with a small wall separating the jury seating area from the courtroom floor. I found it highly amusing that someone had carved graffiti on the inside of that wall from the jury seats! Someone had been so bored during a trial that they pulled out their car keys and started carving on the wall! (There are no pocket knives or any sharp objects allowed into the building so I figure they did it with car keys.)

Our judge was an older man, who had come out of retirement to help with the case overload in Arapahoe county. (Talk about an overload, the case I was on was already 2 years old....) He was a very astute judge, who was spot on with the information on the case and was very sharp. I did find it amusing though that it looked like he was asleep during most of the trial. He would lean back in his chair, and look out through the bottom of his eyelids through his glasses. Just when I was convinced he would start snoring, one of the lawyers would object to something and he would instantly take care of it.

Couple of things I learned:
The state does provide enough coffee for everyone. (In both the jury selection room and in the actual jurors deliberation room)
They do NOT provide food. (muffins, doughnuts, etc.)
Your job is required by law to pay you for at least 3 days worth of jury duty. After that, the government will pay you $50 dollars a day....I'm still waiting for my $50 check!

Castlewood Canyon

So I live on the Southeast end of the Denver Metro area. I really liked it when I lived on the west side of town, becuase I was close to the foothills and plenty of good hiking. But, I don't, so I either have to drive accross town, or find somewhere near me to hike. I have heard of a place called Castlewood Canyon, which is near Parker. (about 15 miles from my place.)

So last weekend I took a drive there to check it out. The closer I got to the park, I realized that it is far enough out of town and is down inside a nice canyon with pine trees and cool rock formations. As I drove up to the gate, I rolled down my window to pay my entry fee (its a state park, which was kind of a downer...) and the Ranger at the gate had a bullsnake wrapped around her neck! I said" Hi! How much do I owe?" She said "6 dollars." I said, "Ok, do you know you have a snake around your neck?" She laughed and said"Yes, this is Sid. He's super nice." I quickly said goodbye to the Ranger and Sid and drove in to find a parking space.

I found a spot near one of the trails and just started to walk. It was a 4 mile loop so I figured that was perfect for what I wanted to do. The trail was nice, relatively unkept (which was nice) and had plenty of shade with the big pine trees. The trail wrapped down into the canyon, and ran away from Parker Road. It actually went far enough so I couldn't hear the traffic and was really starting to have a nice outdoor experience. It's about at this point, that I something caught my eye, so I stopped to take a look....it was a deer leg just off the trail. Now, I have seen carcases of animals before and they don't really bother me. But what really caught my attention, was that this particular leg was completely cleaned of all meat. Stripped raw. And, the rest of the deer body wasn't anywhere nearby..... so something had taken this leg and dragged it over by the trail to eat it...

If there was any doubt that I was actually having a good outdoor experience, it was now gone. I continued hiking for a couple more miles and then came back. I didn't see any wild life except for birds and squirrels. But the hike was nice, the views were great and Sid was a nice snake. I will definetely head over there again.

Slacking

Yes I'm slacking with the blogs. Yes I went hiking at Castlewood Canyon this last weekend and want to post about it. Yes Iv'e been through two days of jury duty and want to post about it. No I'm not going to do it now. Thanks.

Go back to Oregon, lady!

Dear Lady from Oregon,
I know you will never read this, because you are not one of my blog followers. But that's ok. I'm just putting this out there into the universe. I'm sure some karma will come back to get you. But let me tell you this, I don't appreciate you cutting me off on the interstate, and then throwing your half eaten bagel out the window. As it exploded on the ground and lauched chunks onto my clean truck, I was not happy. Then as you proceded to quickly change lanes and cut off another person, I really wasn't happy. So please, take your polluting, non-safe driving, jerky ass back to Oregon. We (all descent Coloradoan's) don't want you here.

Lost

Iv'e been thinking about this post for a while...not sure I'll actually be able to cover everything Iv'e thought about, but here's my best shot.

I saw an episode of Lost in my Television Appreciation class at Metro back in 2004. The episode I saw was when Sayid met Danielle, and she told him that she hadn't seen "other people" on the island, but she knew they were there....then Sayid went out into the jungle and heard the "chi chi ahh ahh" of the others in the jungle...I was hooked.

Although the show's quality has declined over the years, Iv'e always looked forward to watching the weeks' episode, and speculating on what will happen. It's been more than just a TV show to me, and to many people. Here's some things that I will always remember when I think about Lost.

1. The reason I bought a Tivo was because of Lost. I had to work every Wed. night, and my VCR would not record Lost correctly and I would be pissed! So I upgraded to a DVR and ditched the VCR for good. Thanks, Lost.

2. Cameron's old web board was there, but not really being used. Lost gave us all an excuse to log on every Wed. night, or Thursday morning to discuss the episode and throw out therories about the show and what would happen. Then after talking about Lost, we would go on to discuss any old topic. It was a great way to have a social connection with people I didn't get to see very often. Thanks, Lost.

3. I was able to introduce the show to most all of my good friends. I can take credit for turning them on to a good show, and I can continue to build my massive ego with that knowledge. Thanks, Lost.

4. Every year, the season finale would fall on the week that we would take our traditional memorial day camping trip. I would always look forward to coming home from my sweet ass camping trip, and being able to watch the season finale. It was always a great ending to a great few days. I still think of Lost when I think of camping at Lake Dillon. Thanks, Lost.

I'm sure there are many memories of the show that I am forgetting. And maybe it's a little sentimental. But even though the show isn't what it was in the first 2 seasons, it's still one of my favorite shows, and it will be missed.

Thanks, Lost.

The Donkeys and Donkey fans

My Dad always calls the Denver Broncos, "The Donkeys." It's not really a derogetory term, as he is pretty impartial if the Broncos win or loose. I share the same enthusiasm about the Broncos. I am a very casual fan, who will watch the games on Sundays even though I occasionally fall asleep on the couch during them. But overall I really don't care what happens to them. So here is my list of grievances against the Donkeys and their fans:

1. I was excited when Denver drafted Jay Cutler a couple years ago. Cutler is mobile, has a strong arm, and brings a swagger to the game. He also made it to the PRO BOWL. I will revisit this fact in a minute... Then Josh McDaniels comes to town and decides that Matt Cassel is a better QB than Cutler, even though Cassel has little NFL experience. So Cutler's hand is forced, and he asks for a trade. Suddenly, the Denver media and fans just decide to turn on Cutler and call him the bad guy. How would you feel if your brand new boss came into town, and wanted to replace you with some other guy without even giving you a chance? After you had proven to be one of the top performers at your job the year before? It's rediculous. So the Broncos traded one of my favorite players.

2. McDaniels can't get along with Brandon Marshall. Somehow he manages to piss off one of the leagues most exciting young players. All Marshall wanted was a long term deal, which he had earned as one of the leagues top recievers the 2 years before. Great recievers are hard to come by, and he too, like Cutler was traded.

3. Denver completely blows this years' draft, with a 1st round selection of Tim Tebow, Florida QB. Every NFL draft person, scout and housewife knows that Tebow doesn't have the skills to play QB at the NFL level, at least for a couple years, if ever. He still has an ackward throwing motion, and poor footwork. They could have picked Jimmy Clausen from Notre Dame, or stuck with the recently aquired Brady Quinn. But no, they have to go with the QB from the spread system who is way overhyped. C'mon Donkeys...

4. The fans - Now, I occasionally jump on the bandwagon, i'll admit. Like the Nuggets for the playoffs. I don't watch basketball throughout the regular season (another blog for another time) but I will watch the playoff games. But Donkey fans, it's a different story. Take last year for instance..The Broncos opened up the season going 6-0, where McDaniels was appointed football czar to Obama and Kyle Orton was the next John Elway. Every media outlet was all about the Donkeys, talking about Super Bowls and championships. Then Denver manages to loose 8 of their 10 next games and drop out of the playoff race......what happened? McDaniels was the end all/be all of coaches? Kyle Orton was the leader that Denver needed. Where are all the die hard fans now?

All this adds up to a couple of things. As long as the Donkeys continue to trade away their best players and waste draft picks for an unproven coach, I will continue to call them the Donkeys, and fall asleep during every game Sunday afternoon.

Oh yeah, and they should wear those ugly brown and yellow uniforms every game until they make it back to the Super Bowl.

Citizen Cope

So a couple of months ago, I upgraded my Comcast cable for high definition. I ended up getting a new channel called "Palladia", which is all concerts, music videos and specials. It's awesome. It's been a nice way to discover new music. (because listening to the radio just isn't what it used to be...but that's for another post..) Anyway, I was watching a concert and heard a song called "Bullet and a Target" from an artist called "Citizen Cope". I was immidiately drawn in and really began to like the song.
When discovering a new artist, I like to buy one album, and then I'll usually end up getting all of them if I really like them. Two weeks ago, I bought two Cope albums and will buy the other two soon. He has an interesting mellow style, that lies somewhere next to Everlast, or Ben Harper, or occasionally some Reggae. His lyrics are about social issues, his take on the world, love, dispair, and hope. He is one of those artists where, if you leave his album on repeat, every time you listen to it, you will find something new to love each time. Every listen is better than the last. That is hard to find in today's ultra pop super crap music industry. Give Cope a listen, you won't be disappointed. (the 6 of you who actually read my blog that is)

Silversun Pickups - Swoon

Every once and a while I just stumble onto some random song or band that turns out to be pretty cool. I love it when that happens. My latest find is Silversun Pickups - Swoon.

This album is pretty cool. It's got a 90's alternative feel, with some indie sounds too. It's mostly high energy, mid tempo stuff that has great grooves. Iv'e been enjoying it for the last couple of days and think it's really worth a listen or two. Or seventeen or eighteen...anyways, check it out. You can listen to the whole album for free on their myspace page.

Highlight tracks:

Panic Switch - High energy for sure. Kicks ass.
Draining - Moody, slower but nice and powerful.

Let me know what you think!

My Detailed Description of my great trip to Moab (part 2)

Ok, due to popular demand...here is the rest of my Moab trip.

After watching the boy get bit by the dog, we drove the 6 hours to Moab. We found a campsite in a canyon about 5 miles out of town and set up camp. It was about 2:30 in the afternoon and right around 100 degrees. We went into Arches National Park, and hiked a few short hikes that afternoon. The Park really is quite a sight to see. The rock just seems to cut right out from the dessert floor into the sky. I'm not sure any of the pictures I took can really do justice to the immense size of the rock formations.

We decided to do the two hardest hikes first thing in the morning, one on Wed. and one on Thursday. We are smart, becuase by 8am it is already near 80 degrees...

So Wed. we went to the Delicate arch, which is about 3 miles roundtrip. It was a moderately challenging hike, with great scenery and the ending payoff at the arch was awesome. I was surprised at how many people did not carry much water with them. John,Chad and myself all wore camelbacks, and carried water bottles with us. I drank all of my water by the time we returned to the car at noon. There were Grandma's there with grandkids who had a half bottle of water with them on the way up....good luck with that!

We hiked our butts off on Wed. We hiked all day up until about 4pm. We then went to the visitor's center, where they played a 15 minute movie about the park. We enjoyed/slept through 2 sittings of the movie as we enjoyed the air conditioning.

On Thursday, we went to Negro Bill's Canyon. (Yes that is the official name of it.) This was a great hike that is outside of the park, and is a must-see if you make it to Moab. It is a 5 mile roundtrip hike, that takes you down by a small river. You have to hike close to the river, and some serious undergrowth, and as you travel further in, there are places where you have to cross the river. Definetly some fun there. At the end of the canyon, is the country's 6th largest natural land bridge. It was awesome! We were dead tired by the time we got there, but it was really worth the hard work. There was a natural spring that cut through the rock, and you can tell that not many people hike back to that arch.

After we crawled back to the car, we decided to spend the afternoon driving to the canyonlands, which are about 15 miles from Moab. We drove into the park and stopped off to enjoy plenty of great veiws, even though our feet and legs were totally tired from all of the hiking.

That night, we decided to drink heavily and go to sleep. (Always a nice option.) I awoke at 4am to rain pounding on my tent. It rained from 4am to 8am that day. We woke up at 8, not ready to pack up yet, so we drove into town. We enjoyed breakfast at the "Pancake Haus!" (yes the exclamation point is needed..) Then we returned to camp, packed up the muddy tents and drove home.

All in all, a great trip. Definelty worth traveling to Moab and enjoying the outdoors.

My Detailed Description of my Great Visit to Moab

Ok, so it's probably not going to be that detailed, but the visit certainly was great. I went to Moab, Utah a couple of weeks ago with my friends, John and Chad. Let me kick it off by what happened during the first 40 minutes of the trip...

We decided to leave John's house in Morrison, and head up to Frisco where we would get a greasy gut-bomb McD's breakfast sandwich. Next thing I know, John decides he doesn't want to wait until Frisco and pulls off at the Idaho Springs exit. We find the Mcdonalds/Gas station, and get out of the car. A black volvo pulls up next to me on the passenger side as we get out. We go inside, the guy at the counter says" can I help you?" I said, "just a second, I'm deciding." Then I wait, and tell him I want my gut-bomb breakfast sandwich. It nearly instantly appears in my hand, as if God himself told Mcdonalds to have it ready for me. I paid, thanked the worker and walked by John and Chad as I went to the door. Here's where it gets interesting...I push open the door to see a wild scene....

There's a man in his 50's, standing in the gas station parking lot, with a good sized bulldog (I think it was a bulldog) in a choke hold. Yes that's correct, a chokehold. Standing next to him is an older hippie-looking stoner dude who is just looking at him and the dog. Next to him is his stoner looking hippie-wife ( I presume..) After my jaw hangs open for a minute, I realize that Chad and John have joined me, both with similar looks of astonishment on their faces. Only then, do I notice a 13/14? year old boy, who is sitting on the curb, with blood running down his arm. He is not screaming or crying, just sort of moaning to himself. Then I notice two other random people taking in the whole scene. Obviously, this kid was attacked by the dog.

My focus returns to the guy with the dog in the chokehold. He says to the hippie guy"Are you ready? He's about out cold and I'm going to set him down. Then he's all yours" The hippie guy sort of nods his head in some sort of stony agreement, and the man starts to lower to dog to the ground. Now, a couple of things enter my head. One, the boy seems to be ok, and I have no emergency medical training, so I am not going to focus on him at the moment. Two, the dog is NOT unconscious, and the man is about to release him. I'm thinking, "either that dog is going to attack the guy who had him in a head-lock, or he's going to attack myself or one of my friends. And all I have to fend him off is a greasy, soggy bag with my gut-bomb egg mcmuffin sandwich in it."

As the man goes to lower the dog, he looks right at me and says, "did anyone call 911?" I figured that one of the other witnesses had already done so, but I guess not. I walked immidiatly back into the gas station, and went to the counter. I asked the girl to "call 911 cause a kid was attacked by a dog." She looked at me and pointed to some dork who seemed to be the gas station manager. She said"he already did". I looked at the dork/manager, who had some white towels in his hand. I followed him back out into the parking lot where he attended to the still moaning boy. The dog was laying down on the ground next to the hippie guy, and the other headlock guy was giving him dirty looks and telling him he better "keep his f'ing dog inline." I couldn't agree more.

Now, John had made it into the car, and was waiting for Chad and I to get in so we could get the hell out of there. I looked down and saw the black volvo, with the rear door open, and a dog dish sitting on the ground. It was then I realized that the kid must have interrupted the dog as he was going to get a drink, and the dog was extremely upset. So he took it out on the kid's arm. I asked John to back out the car, so Chad and I could get in. He did, we climbed in the car and drove down the road. We looked at eachtoher for a minute....then we began to review the previous 4 and a half minutes of our lives. No one could touch his greasy gut-bomb sandwich.

We hit the interstate, and somehow our stomachs took over. We ate the gut-bomb sandwiches and left for Moab.

Camping May 2009!

I spent Memorial Day camping with my friend John and his two boys, Nick and Christian. We camped on the South Platte river, a few miles from Cheesman Resivoir. We had an excellent time! The weather was nice, a little rainy but not too bad. We hiked, played some fun camping games like; throw the pinecone at the cup and camping football. We hiked around Cheesman Resivoir and checked out the burned out forrest left over from the Heyman fire. (A woman started the Heyman fire becuase she was mad at her man....look out!) It was sad to see all of the distruction first hand, but it was nice to see how resiliant nature is and how the forrest is coming back. Please checkout some of my pictures from the trip on my FB page. (yes, i'm too lazy to post pictures on both pages..ha!)

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/album.php?aid=25114&id=1300096714

Hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day weekend, and that everyone remembers all of the soldiers who fought.

MOAB trip in 3 weeks!

Lost

Well, for those of you who watch Lost, I'm sure you enjoyed the season finale last night. I certainly did. I was chatting with a friend this morning about next season, and if I was sad that the show will be ending. I have always liked this show, and it will be sad to not see it on Wed. nights, but overall I will be glad when it is over. I think they did a great job of picking an ending date for the show. Many of the questions are starting to be answered, and I am glad. I'm sure that next season will wrap most of it up neatly and I look forward to it. For those of you who didn't see the finale.....it's a shame.

A Good Breakfast

There really is nothing quite like a good breakfast. I'm not much of a cook, and I don't really enjoy cooking overall, but I do enjoy making a big breakfast. Eggs, pancakes,bacon, french toast, hash browns. Who doesn't love that? There's nothing like brewing up some coffee, firing up the griddle and making it happen. I wish I could eat a good breakfast everyday, and not have to slam a bowl of cereal before I rush to hit the door. Someday when I rule my own country, large breakfasts and siesta's will be enforced by law. Hopefully you will all join me in Kilzland. Or the United States of Kilzerica. Or Kilzakestan.

Hope you all enjoyed your breakfast today.

K

Most Irritating

Let me tell you all what irritates me. When people have a headlight that is out on their car, and rather than fixing it,they drive around with their brights on! Seriously, I know that in today's challenging economic times it is hard to spend money on frivilous items, but a headlight is NOT a frivilous item! They really don't cost that much at all! If you can afford to drive, you can afford to buy a new bulb! I wish these lazy people would just drive to frickin' Auto Zone (in the daytime please....) and buy a replacement. They usually cost under $10, and there's a handy guide there to tell you exactly which bulb to buy.

Shut off your brights! It's annoying to people in front of you! It's also annoying to people drving towards you! Take the bus! Walk! Hitchhike! Don't leave the house!

I will continue to drive 10 miles under the speed limit if you are behind me until you pass me. Then I will drive right behind you so my lights (not my brights mind you...) will blind you in your rearview.

Fix them already!

That is all for now.

Kilzing you soflty with my words

Changed the blog name to "Kilzing you softly with my words." Thanks to Cameron for the great name. That's about it.

K

Watchmen

Watchmen (Kilzer's first movie review on the blog)

I saw Watchmen tonight. Let me say first, that I have not read the graphic novel(even though it is regarded as one of the best of all time, and I intend to buy it at work tomorrow...) and I didn't know much about the plot line. So going into it, I had little expectations. I was pleasantly surprised...

This movie really felt like you were watching a comic book. Not a cheesy comic book movie like George Cloony's Batman...but like a well written comic story that was actually turned into a movie. Now, I am a HUGE fan of Iron Man as well as the first 2 X-Men films. I think they were created with a "good" comic book feel. But I do believe that Watchmen was a more "direct" translation.

The characters were developed, but not overdeveloped. I was able to get a good sense for each character's life, history and purpose. By the middle of the film, I defiently cared about each person and their own personal struggle.

The fight scenes were great too. Not overdone or campy, but the right amount of close up action, mixed in with some slow-mo shots too. Other great action was the love scene between two characters....I won't give up the details of that!

One of the things I love most about super hero movies, is the point in the film where the hero suddenly realizes that he/she is capable of achieving great things, and then becomes an active participant. No longer someone who doubts themselves. Examples from some of my favorites:

Unbreakable - The scene where David calls up Mr. Glass on the phone and asks him what to do...Mr. Glass says"go where the people are". David goes to the train station and steps in to find his destiny...awesome.

V for Vendetta - When Evey is released from the "prison" and is set free by "V". She goes outside into the rain to realize she is reborn, and actually has a meaningful purpose.

Iron Man - The scene where Tony is repairing the armor. Pepper tells Tony that he is going to get himself killed and he needs to stop. He tells her that there is "no benefits. no art showing. there is only the next mission." Spoken like a man who realizes what he has to do.

The reason I write about these scenes, is that Watchmen has smiliar scenes/realizations too. Except these heroes are more of the fallen type. They have to remember what made them great and somehow dig down deep inside to regain the confidnece to do the job. I won't ruin it by giving away what happens, but there are fine moments.

Oh, there is plenty of violence, sex, nudity and cursing too. If that's not your cup of tea, then stay away! Otherwise, enjoy Watchmen. I certainly did.