Captain America a hit to the feels.

It took me a week, but i finally got to get out to the theater and see Captain America Civil war.

I have to say i was impressed, the movie was a perfect combination of action, adventure, and slapstick comedy blended into a nice marvel milkshake of goodness.

The movie itself follows closely with the other Marvel movies that have happened. If you can’t remember, The Avengers were founded and the World got attacked, and attacked again. Tony Stark tried to protect the world but he created a super crazy robot that nearly ended the world again.

Steve Rogers has spent a quite substantial amount of time finding and losing his friend Bucky Barnes. Civil War starts with another series of hide and seek with Steve and Bucky. Of course a number of things go wrong or this wouldn’t be a Marvel movie.

I am sure that you all are aware of the new spiderman in the movie. I have to say that i am 100% on board the Tom Holland/Spiderman train. Tom Holland absolutely killed the Peter Parker in my eyes. His accent, his rather naive optimism absolutely sold his Spiderman character. I think when he gets a standalone, he will kill it. I enjoyed watching him and his rather upbeat personality. He was a superhero but when he was around the other hero’s he was like a kid seeing his favorite sports star up close and talking to them. Just imagine if your pro idol walked up and  gave a high five to you, you would lose your mind.

The movie had a lot of touching moments in it, showing the internal pain that some of the characters were going through, they were all suffering in their own ways. Everyone was fighting their own inner demons and couldn’t seem to let go of the past. The story was pushed along by the fact that Captain is the Eternal soldier who can never stop fighting, while Tony is a man who has grown weary of war and death. I walked into this movie siding with Steve Rogers, #TeamCaptain but in the end i could see both sides of the coin, both had valid reasons for taking the stance they did.

Paul Rudd makes a cameo in this movie and he really adds a lot of comedy to the scenes that he is in. I can never take him seriously, he just seems so goofy, and it made the movie very refreshing. I enjoy a dark gritty movie, but Paul and Tom’s light hearted childish demeanor only helped pull the movie into bright spots. When the movie hits DVD i will be picking up a copy that is for sure.

 

Deadpool, Its better than GreenLantern

Tonight i got a chance that doesn’t come by very often. Tonight I was lucky enough to get a chance to see the new Ryan Reynolds movie Deadpool before its release. It was one of those screenings that is usually a bunch of critics for various papers and radios and those people were there as well.

I will say one thing, when they give you a pre release showing, they make sure you are not trying to record it, which i fully support. The movie itself was packed and i don’t believe there was a single empty seat. I want to take the chance to thank the guys from New Dimension Comics and 3 Rivers Comicon. were gracious enough to provide myself and a handful of other lucky Science Fiction Enthusiasts. ((i am starting a new trend, we aren’t nerds. We are SciFI enthusiasts.)) If you get a chance, please go to their Facebook pages and send them some love. Had they not been so generous, I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to see Deadpool. Seeing this movie really made my week.

So the movie itself was really well done. It is clear to me that everyone involved put everything they had into making this movie the best it could be. Ryan Reynolds really put himself out there getting this movie made and convincing 20th Century Fox to let him make it Rated R. I am sure if you ask Ryan, he will tell you that it was the fans that got this movie made. I believe he helped make this movie what it was, a well crafted movie.

This movie is not a typical super hero movie, but i can only summarize that you are fully aware of what this movie it about. This movie is about a man with a heart of gold, trying to save the woman he loves from being a prostitute. Also this movie is about a badass who wants revenge on the man who tried to turn him into a super slave. The movie has some very heavy sexual innuendos that are lined through the movie. I think that the movie had its first last thirty seconds in, and it rolled long through the movie.

Deadpool could honestly be considered a comedy that just happened to be an action adventure flick. The team of writers behind this movie packed as many jokes as they could into every single scene. there were stretches of laughter that lasted minutes.  The Jokes ranged from typical slapstick humor, to tongue in cheek jokes, and even a few smart jokes thrown in there.

I am not sure how i feel about breaking the 4th wall in movies. For people who are not aware what the fourth wall is, basically it is when the character in the movie knows and acknowledges that they are in a movie and are aware of the audience watching them. Most movies do not break this, but Deadpool has always been about breaking the 4th wall, even in his comics. They didn’t break the 4th wall a ton, but it was still done in hilarious ways.

The CGI in the movie was a bit heavy in certain parts, but that is to be expected when you have certain characters like Colossus, a giant man made of metal. The practical affects were also well done, and the fight scenes spectacular. Everything about this movie was crisp and enjoyable. There were a few parts that seemed a little bit forced, but the movie itself flowed well and really seemed to sit well with everyone who was there.

I can honestly say that this movie earned its R rating in a big way and i wouldn’t be surprised if at one point it had a NC17. There is some serious nudity in the movie on top of the sex and violence. I have to say that this movie is going to be one of the best of 2016, and the year has only begun. I fully intend to go to the theater and see this a few more times. I think Ryan Reynolds found his niche. I like the and i bet he is awesome, but he really does come off as a smug self centered smart ass with a heart of gold. He was made to play Deadpool and it showed in this movie. I recommend going to see it in the theaters, but don’t take your kids. After watching this movie, there is no way they could make a PG-13 movie without heavily watering down the movie.

I highly doubt that a successful box office take for Deadpool will bring about a new era of Rated R super hero movies, but i can only hope that we get to see more of them. I think that Rated R movies can let more raw emotion into the film, and really show the dark side of movies. I doubt that i am alone in wanting to see more edgier super hero movies, but i realize that the die hard fans need the mainstream to keep our passions alive. Everyone needs to come together to make movies like this and the other super hero movies a reality.

 

Sorry Mom’s, Deadpool shouldn’t be PG-13

Unless you avoid facebook and some of its click bait posts, or you aren’t a nerd and just so happened to randomly find this, then you have seen the story about the 8 yr old boy who told his mother he should go see it. It was then followed up by a youtuber who decided to start a petition to make the studio release a PG-13 version. It is clear that this woman does not know anything about deadpool, or she would have understood the reason why Deadpool can’t and shouldn’t be made in a PG-13 version.

Deadpool was never written or animated to be a comic book for children. Deadpool has always been a character that was more Adult themed. While he has appeared in a handful of various Spiderman and other superhero comics, he has always been a foul mouthed merciless killer. Since his inception in the early 90’s, Deadpool has been shot, stabbed, crushed, ripped apart, and even turn into a fine red mist by the Hulk himself. He is a bit of a lunatic and has voices in his head. Deadpool is one of those few characters that while in other comics, still always is one of those that was geared towards adult readers rather than children.

I realize that part of this small push for a PG13 deadpool stems from his appearance in the spiderman cartoons. The fact of the matter is, that Deadpool is an extremely Tame and toned down version. I realize that many of the young kids, see the Marvel logo attached to Deadpool and think that is must be another super hero like Iron man, Thor, and Captain America.

Deadpool is quite possibly the polar opposite of Captain America. It’s Ironic cause Deadpool is a Canadian but he is also a man with almost zero morals or filter. Captain America was built to be a character that the whole family could get behind. His comics were something anyone could read, but Deadpool has never been a family friendly character. He has been a mercenary that killed people thought deserved death. He was a killer for hire. Does that sound like a Character you want an 8yr old child to be reading about or seeing a movie about? I would hope not.

Another part of Deadpool’s story has him fall for a prostitute. Yes it is in his back story. He fell in love with a prostitute and then got cancer. He then Went through a similiar process that Wolverine went through which is why he has the ability to heal and is pretty much immortal. Dead pool’s history and story is always dark and marred with nothing but violence and death. As long as i have loved comics, Deadpool was never one of the ones i thought was a kid friendly character. I can not ever support a petition to tame down his character as it would only make children want to explore the character and once they discover his comics and the fact that he is not like the Thor’s and Cap’n of the world, they could be turned off. On top of that if parents were to discover this (having not known what deadpool was about) they could start a backlash against studio’s preventing us adults from getting grittier more realistic movies based on our favorite characters.

I am urging the nerd parents of the world, or the parents who have nerdy kids. If you wish to fight for PG-13 please go buy a few deadpool comics and read them. I assure you that after you read them you will reconsider wanting your kid to follow him. I am not a parent so i can not accurately tell you how to raise your child, i am merely suggesting that anything under 15 is not a suitable age for Deadpool, especially if your child is 8, the fact that you would let him see a pg13 deadpool worries me slightly. Please, as a nerd in his 30’s it is very rare that i get a superhero movie the way it should be. Please don’t take this away from me.

Stop it! Cosplayers aren’t on the Government Radar.

So for some reason today, there have been tons of posts going around Facebook about some copyright suit between two cheerleading manufacturers. For some reason, someone decided that this was in some vague reality an attack on the Cosplay community.

I am going to tell you right you are not in danger. Your costumes are not getting taken away, and the big two ((DC and Marvel/Disney)) are not coming after you to stop playing dress up.

The long and short of it works out like this, there are two companies that make cheerleading uniforms. One of the companies alleges that the other stole their design and is profiting from a design that they have a copyright on. Let me be blunt when i say this is a pointless lawsuit. When you look at both uniforms, basically as you can see, it looks as if Company A took company B’s design and changed it a little bit.

Again i think this lawsuit is dumb. I don’t understand how you can copyright the fact that you put fabric in a certain pattern and direction, that would be like be trying to copyright a yellow lightening bolt and or a blue triangle. Again this comes back to two large manufactures that make rival uniforms. This does not involve cosplay in any way. Well technically it doesn’t involve us.

Why does this have something to do with Cosplay?

Technically is doesn’t, Cosplayers fall under a little loophole called fair use. If you make something yourself, you are more than allowed to run around in it to your hearts content. As long as you are not trying to profit off the design itself you are fine. The fact of the matter is companies like DC and Marvel already own all the proper copyrights to their characters.

Lets take DC for example.

They own the Copyright to the name Super man, the character, and his Trade mark (S) logo.

If you slap that on a pair of Spandex and Run around a convention, you are safe under the fair use act. No if’s no buts, no coconuts. LOL coconuts.

Now, if you start printing T-shirts with that logo somewhere on there, that is where things get lawsuit capable. DC owns that Logo, Its a specific logo. So if you start trying to sell it on your own without giving them a Cut, you are in trouble. Again this is a distinguishable logo. Its easy to know what it is.

The fact that you make your own costumes and Run around is in no way something that falls in on this lawsuit. The only thing that could get covered, would be companies that make the costumes that you can buy. There are companies out there that make Spiderman costumes that you can buy and wear.

That is where the law gets a little hazy. technically Marvel or Sony Owns Spider man. He is their Trademark. They own the Name and the Logo, as well as the design of his costume. It is possible that if they wanted to, they could go after companies that make and sell the costume, as that trademark belongs to them, but i think for the most part the cosplay community and The comic book world have a bit of a silent partnership.

First off, if Marvel were to try and sue some small time shop for making a costume, It would costume them more to take it to court, than they would make in the suit. Not to mention Disney and Marvel have more important things to do than go after every little shop that makes a few costumes here and there. I honestly believe that these companies only help the companies make more money.

Look at it like this. If you go to a convention and you see someone running around dressed as spider man, who happens to be your favorite character, you may walk over to a booth an buy yourself a spiderman shirt, and just like that Marvel got some money coming towards them, all because Brad decided he wanted to play Spiderman for a day.

Also could you imagine, if Marvel or Dc started going after Cosplayers. People Like Jessica Nigri, and the like would probably be the first to get a cease and desist letter. Cosplayers like her make a lot of money off selling Prints of themselves in costumes, cosplaying as Characters that are under copyright of a big company, but the money these small companies and models bring in is peanuts. Disney has made a over a billion dollars on the new Star Wars movie, why would they even waste their time going after a company that sells maybe ten Darth Vader costumes a year, and maybe makes $5,000 off of everything.

 

The fact is you are safe, and everyone is the Cosplay community is safe. DC, Marvel, Disney do not want any of the bad publicity that would come from attacking the cosplay community. The people who go to conventions and dress up are the life blood of those big companies. When was the last time you bought a Marvel or DC shirt, jacket, or other item? You probably just bought one on Amazon without even realizing it. The fact is the cosplay community help keep the big companies alive, mainly cause the most of us are in our 20-30’s and we have the income to buy a $150 remote control bb-8.

For now, lets all just forget some random person wanted to scare you into burning your $600 movie accurate Spiderman costume, because you think Sony’s goon squad is on their way to your house. Mainly because Mickey Mouse is already in your house, and he is mad about those knock off lightsabers you have been making in your basement.

Don’t turn around, he is behind you.

StarWars The Disney Gold Machine.

This Review is Spoiler Free. I double checked.

So StarWars has been out for four days now and it has been raking in the money. Luckily for many of the people out there, it wasn’t relatively spoiled amongst the internet. As far as i concerned, the movie was well received amongst the StarWars fans, and by that i mean they absolutely killed it. I will be honest, i was a little scared at first, I was not afraid of what Disney would release, it was more that i was afraid that the movie would not live up to the expectations. I know there are people out there that don’t like the fact that disney owns the StarWars franchise, but lets be honest with ourselves. How many studios could write JJ Abrams a blank check for the movie. Making StarWars back in the day was on a rather cheap budget, with the amount of money being put into the block buster movies; Disney needed to be able to go distance to make this movie work. Now it has been said that it cost Disney between 175 and 200 million to make the StarWars, and that doesn’t include all the marketing and commercials.

There has been some people out there who may not like the StarWars The Force Awakens because they think that they played it too safe when making the movie. I will agree that they played it a little safe, but they did it right. Lets be honest, no one was more scared than Disney about this movie. While the three prequels did make money, they did not sit well with the die hard Jedi and Sith of the world. Disney knew that if they were going to revive the franchise, they were going to take the safe route and make sure that they kept it true to the original story that the StarWars fans hold so dearly to their hearts. I thought that Disney and JJ Abrams did an amazing job making a new movie. They built a movie that both people who new to the franchise and who have been there since the beginning can enjoy.

I was Lucky enough to get to see the movie on Saturday, and i must say that it brought back all the memories of my childhood. I loved StarWars as a kid. Its funny to think of how popular that movie was in the 90’s when i was growing up, and getting to see what happened to all my favorite characters was like seeing an old friend after years apart. It was touching it was gripping, and it was also a good bit funny. I was surprised how well JJ and the team were able to put in very subtle jokes and digs throughout the movie. It really broke up the movie nicely. The fact of the matter is, Disney is dominating the box office, having grossed over $530 Million world wide. Can it continue this pace through the rest of december; I expect it to dominate. Several of my friends have already seen the movie two or three times and i intend to see it again. While Disney was printing their own Money with the success of Marvel, JJ Abrams quiet possibly secured Disney their very first Solid Gold printer.

I can only hope that the next StarWars movie takes a bold leap in trying to change the game and maybe break the box office with a movie so stunning, no one can match it. I look forward to seeing What the disney blank check has to offer with the resounding success of their newest Franchise. I can only hope that Fort Knox has already given JJ the key to their vault.

May the Force be with you!

Ridiculous 6: Surprisingly good

Yesterday i was sitting around and debating what i wanted to do with my day and i was flipping through Netflix when i stumbled on an Adam Sandler movie. The movie in question was called the Ridiculous 6, which if you know your movie history is a parody of the Magnificent 7 or 7 samurai. Basically there are a handful of movies that have followed the premise of 7 gifted individuals who come together for a greater good.

Ridiculous 6 is nothing like that movie, it is a comedy about 6 brothers who come together to save their father. The movie stars Adam Sandler as the main character White Knife (a boy who was raised by Indians after his mom was murdered.) He meets his father who is played by Nick Nolte. His father (Frank Stockburn) needs his help. Adam then takes it upon himself to help his biological father.

On his adventure , Adam Sandler meets five other people who’s mothers had a run in with Frank Stockburn. (Terry Crews, Jorge Garcia, Taylor Lautner, Luke Wilson, and Rob Schneider.) I am convinced that Rob has a contact that he must be in every movie Adam Sandler makes, but its not always a bad thing.

While the Magnificent 7 was a very serious movie, this is the complete opposite. While there were parts of the movie that made me think that they were trying to be serious, it was quickly broken up by something overly silly. That is what kept the movie interesting for me over the 2 hour run time. This isn’t a typical Romantic Comedy that Adam Sandler has been making on a regular basis, but when you are married with a family, you are going to try and make more kid friendly movies that your family can watch.

I realize that there was a lot of Flack about the movie and the Indians in it and several other things, but as far as the movie is concerned its not bad. I am not condoning any of the things that happened during the filming of the movie, i am merely stating that the movie was better than some of the more Recent Sandler Movies. I enjoyed that they didn’t take historic characters seriously and kind of mocked the movie that this was spoofing.

If i had to give it a rating i would give it a 3/5, its worth watching at least once. I would like to see Sandler maybe invest into producing other movies, maybe start making comedies that doesn’t star him and his friends. I think Sandler if he has a good story and some younger talent, could make some pretty funny movies. Maybe if you got him and Seth Rogan together, they could make a family friendly stoner comedy. Or not, it was just a thought.

Star Wars Battle Front. A good game in theory.

I realize that many of you are probably too busy being engulfed by deathclaws to put down the pipboy and try a new game, but as i am sure you are all aware of StarWars battlefront, which released shortly after Fallout4. If you haven’t then now you know that the game is out there. I am a big fan of Star Wars; their movies and games. Now don’t take that as i know every single aspect of the movies and books because i don’t. I know the basic things about the movies and the stories, but i can’t tell you every minute detail about them.

I loved the last Star Wars game, and i preordered this one long in advance, and i can easily say that i am a little disappointed by the finished product of the game. There might be some people out there who think i must be crazy but hear me out first, there is a method to my madness. The game is worth playing at least once or twice, but there is a handful of tweaks that need to be made or this game will turn into another Battlefield4 where there are nothing but glitches and headaches that cause people to walk away from the game.

Problem number 1: Invincibility glitch

If you haven’t seen it yet, i suggest looking up videos about the battle Front Invincibility glitch. Long story short, if you are in one of the fighter, or x-wings, and the game lags you will crash but the game will toss you out of the ship. When the game catches up, you will find yourself out of the ship and on the ground with a new power, not being able to be killed. Basically something happens where it registers you still in the ship and it allows you to shoot people, but the blasters no longer work on you.

I have seen a few videos of people following the invincible person and shooting them till their blaster overheats and not getting the kill. It is pretty clear that the person exploiting this glitch knows what is going on. At first they may have been confused as to why they aren’t in the ship, but after the kill one or two guys that are tearing them apart with blaster. They realize they are immortal and abuse that new power. While its not the most prominent, it still exists and really frustrates other games and makes them not want to play if this can’t be fixed because more and more people will begin to try and exploit this glitch.

Problem number 2: Poor match making.

If you have played any shooting game ever, then you know there comes a time when you are going to get into a game where you are playing people who are a higher level than you, and you are probably going to have a bad time. This happens quite a bit in Battlefront, where you find yourself playing people who are quite a few levels higher than you, and you are getting blasted by guns that you can’t unlock for a while. The game does try to balance that out by letting you use the perks that your partner has, but if they are as just a low level as you then you are again going to have a bad time. There were several times that i was getting destroyed, barely getting out of spawn before i got roasted by some guns.

Problem number 3: The buddy Spawn is annoying.

Another crazy thing about this game is the way the spawning works. If you have played Battlefield, then you know you can be in a squad and you can spawn on any one of your squad members as long as they aren’t in combat. Battle Front kinda does this. When the game starts you are partnered with one other person, and you can spawn on them where ever they are in the map, and they can spawn on you. This becomes a problem when your teammate is incredibly bad at this game and they decide to rage quite 3 minutes into the game. If this happens then you are out of luck and you get to travel the 120m to the objective.

There were quite a few games where i would capture a point and i would get shot because the entire team spawned on their friends and over ran us, then we would have to run 100m or more to get to the point and by then it is about 50% captured and there is almost no way of retaking it. This becomes a problem when you can’t spawn on anyone because half the people on your team just jumped in and you are sitting there with no spawn friend. This means that if you have a group of 4 or more friends, you can easily dominate matches as long as you can spawn on your friends and not some random kid that rage quits every time he gets shot too many times. I realize that they didn’t want you to be able to spawn on everyone on your team, but they need to fix the spawn because i have watched my team get over run and get a big old goose egg because no one on our team can spawn and the other team is spawning like flies near the point.

Problem number 4: Are the guns broken?

One of the things i did notice about this game, is sometimes your crosshairs are on a person, but you don’t seem to get a hit on the player. I chalk this up to the fact that the bolts have a bit of a delay so you need to lead the person a bit, but it is a little frustrating when you are trying to hammer someone with your blaster and they somehow turn around and pop you with two shots. Another thing i noticed the other day while playing was an issue with some of the guns. One of the cards you can pick up is a scout pistol. Its a little powerful bond like pistol.

A few times i would pull it and empty half the gun into someone and they would drop me, other times i would get hit with one burst from the pistol and fall over. Its really frustrating but it could be sever lag. they might have a super high ping so their game says hey i shot you 5 times when on my game with my low ping i was only shot 1 or 2 times. Another weird issue i noticed was with the plasma rifle. Several times i have point blanked someone with the rifle and not got a kill, but i am sprinting up the map and get dropped from the other side of the map. Server lag again? Its possible but clearly there are some discrepancies in the game. I do think that Hans blaster needs nerf’d (Nerf’d or Nerfed means that you need to lower the Power) just a tad. The gun is pretty much a 1 or two shot kill; at least in the games i was in i was watching people get dropped almost instantly from that gun.

Problem Number 5: OP Heroes and villains. (Op means over powered)

There is a part of the game which is incredibly fun but a little frustrating. Its the Hero battle, where its a 6 on 6 matchup. at the start of each round the rebels get 3 heroes and the empire gets 3 villains. The good guys get Han, Leia, and Luke. Leia is a pretty useless hero by herself. Any time i get Leia i pretty much try to stay close to the person playing Luke or Han, the reasoning is because she has the ability to drop a shield or a health pick up. Basically Leia is best used for healing her fellow heroes and not directly getting into the battle. Han and Luke are both pretty balanced.

Han can do some real damage with his blaster, but if he gets into a gun fight with too many people he is going to get low on health rather quick. If you know how to play Luke right, he can easily win you the game, the same with Vader. If you know how to harness either of those characters, you can more than likely win the game or drop two of their heroes before you die. Emperor Palpatine is a joke. He is by far the worst character to get. He is incredibly slow and his powers are pretty bad. His lightening blast has a limited distance which means you have to get up close to battle which can be a death sentence when he starts taking damage. He has this move where he jumps and spins, but as many times as i have used that move, it doesn’t seem to do any damage but get you away from your attackers. The one good thing he has is his ability to drop hero tokens. He is basically the healer for the empire and not meant to get into the fire fight unless he has no choice.

Boba Fett is by far the most over powered in the game. If you know how to use him and your team is somewhat reliable, then you can wreck everyone in the game. There was a point when i was playing the other night with several friends where we were just smashing through the other team. Boba Fett has the jet pack, which means you can get up high on the map where most people can’t. If you have the jetpack card or are Luke, then you can get up and battle Boba fett, but don’t be surprised if you die pretty easily. Boba has a flame thrower which isn’t that great unless you are in a face to face battle, but his rockets are devastating. Atleast one or two games, i found myself hanging out (Camping if you wanna cry about it) on top of a ship and raining down Bounty Hunter Justice. While my blaster isn’t the best, i can fly and move quick so i was dropping people trying to snipe or hide, any time Leia would drop a shield i would fire a rocket in her direction. I am not sure if the Rockets lock on, or they are wire guided; i am guessing they are wire guided. I was able to nail and do quite a good bit of damage to any hero who got a taste of my rockets. The rockets and flames are pretty much instant death to any regular soldier who stood in my way. Boba Fett can easily wipe out Leia and Han if its being wielded by someone with a few hours under their belt. The hero mode is fun, but it can be a little frustrating when you aren’t the hero. You tend to watch from the kill screen more often than not if you try to rush into things, but it does teach you to work with teams.

Problem Number 6: There is no voice chat.

From What i have seen in the game, there is no public voice chat. this is both a blessing and a curse. If you have ever played Call of Duty, then you know the sound of a 12yr old kid telling you the things he is going to do to your mom, or calling you every vulgar thing under the son. It can be really annoying when someone just starts swearing because they are super tough on the internet, but it also makes the game incredibly difficult, especially some of the games where you need to move as a unit or coordinate where the heroes need to move to. The only time some of the multiplayer games are fun is if you have a bunch of friends in a party chat, other than that you are pretty much just going it alone and hoping one of your partners has the same idea that you do.

Problem Number 7: Lack luster Single player.

It feels more like a tutorial of how to play in the multiplayer than a single player game. I love playing Single player, which is why i bought fallout4, Sometimes you just want to be luke and go to town on some computer AI because they don’t know how to wait until your bolt blocking skill has run out.

 

The game is worth playing, it is a lot of fun and very exciting, i just hope that they make some changes to make the game a little better and more fun for newer players that are coming into the game fresh.

Why my first day working for post mates was also my last

I know this post is a little out of the ordinary, but i thought that it is relevant to all people. Everyone wants to be able to make a little bit more money, especially during the holidays. Almost everyone around had heard about the app based driver service called lyft, uber, and i am sure there are a few more. Recently a friend talked about a courier service called Postmates. If you have never heard of postmates, i am not surprised, i had no idea who there were until a few weeks ago when i signed up for them.

Basically Postmates is a delivery service. Basically its a Pizza boy but for restaurants that don’t have delivery. If you are in the mood for a restaurant that doesn’t have a delivery option, you can just pull up your phone and use the Postmates app. Tell them what you want and they will place the order for you and send on of their couriers to pick up the food and bring it to you. You have to pay a little bit more for food, but now you can get pretty much anything you want right to your door. This is convenient for people who want lunch, but can’t drive all the way out to pick it up, or maybe work a job that makes it hard to go out for a nice lunch.

I am not saying don’t use the postmates app, because it is honestly a good service for people, especially people who maybe can’t drive at all hours of the day or don’t have a car. I am also not telling you that you shouldn’t work for them, but i am merely telling you that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

Lets start with the basic information about being a courier, they tell you that the deliveries are based on who is the closest to the order. a message pops up on your phone (if you are on call that is) and it tells you that there is an order being placed from a certain restaurant. You can either accept or reject that order. Now they tell you that the closest courier gets the delivery so i am not sure how many people before me rejected the order, because i was sent a request for an order, but the restaurant was 16 miles from me. I was under the impression that i would be getting orders for places only 3 or 4 miles.

I decided to take the order because i had rejected two prior. It took me 30 mins to get to the place, luckily the food was ready by the time i got there, i then had to drive half way back to where i live, another 6 miles for the delivery. I made 5 dollars for the Delivery and 1.30 as a tip. Basically i made back enough for my gas money. that took me 1 hour to complete the first delivery for the day. I wasn’t too mad about this one as it was pretty cut and dried. I was hoping that a few more of these would be pretty close and i wouldn’t be driving all over the city in the middle of Lunch hour.

The second delivery is what broke me for wanting to ever deliver again. I had heard that ordering from Chipotle was a hassle, and when i say that i don’t mean that in a bad way. I love Chipotle and the food they make, if you have never had them before i suggest you try them once, unless you don’t like Burritos, then other than that i don’t know what you should do. What i am telling you is ordering from them is a hassle, especially when you have an order of 6 burrito bowls, and they inform you that they have a maximum order of 4. later i found out that apparently there is an online order app you can go through; (why postmates doesn’t use this to make it easier on the delivery driver, i don’t know.)

The problem with this order was they picked the Chipotle in the middle of the city during the holiday season when a handful of the roads are closed. Lets just say there was zero legal parking. i parked in the only place i could because i didn’t want to walk 5 blocks to pick up the food. Needless to say i ended up getting a ticket and i have to wait in line so i could order the last two bowls. You can probably say that i should have just kept driving around until i found a spot, but you are given 1 hour to complete the delivery and when they send you to a place that is 30 mins away, you are on a time crunch. chipotle is super packed during lunch hours, so you are looking at easily 15 minutes of waiting to place your order. that means you have 15 mins to drive all the way across the city to deliver the food, so you are going to risk it.

at the end of the day i made two deliveries in 2.5 hours. i made just about $30 dollars if you include tips, this doesn’t include the fact that when they transfer the money to your bank account, they charge you a fee. Yes you are charged a fee for them to direct deposit your money to you. So at the end of the day i am negative 25 dollars because the ticket i got was for $55. Many of you may still say that i could have avoided the ticket, and you are possibly right, but even without the ticket, i only made $30 so if you take out gas and millage on your car, you are making like $9 an hour.

If you are in need of a job then sure go for it, just don’t be surprised if you live on the outside of the city when all the orders that are placed are coming from the city. I can’t say that i won’t turn the app on from time to time just to see if i get a delivery for something under 5 miles, but i can be sure that i will not be taking any more deliveries from the city. its not worth it. The traffic and the headache is just not worth the extra spending cash for the holidays.

Fallout4 and a new low for my Social life

So fallout 4 has been out for almost a month now and i can honestly say that this has made my ability to go out and socialize with people difficult. I am not saying that i am a hermit, i am merely stating that this game is a lot of fun. If you haven’t bought the game, i would recommend buying it or at least buying your friends copy once they are done. The game is definitely one of the best games of the year by far. I know there are a lot of people who complain the graphics aren’t as good as what some of the other games that have been out, but The game is so emerseive and the story is so detailed, could you imagine if they increased the graphics higher? This would be a PC only and you would need the best system out there. Look at how popular GTA5 was that was not more realistic looking.

Bethseda didn’t the right thing when they stayed true to their roots. They kept the game pure. If you love fallout, there is no way you can’t be a fan of this game, everything feels like the previous games. it is familiar to its predecessors. If you have played a pervious version of fallout, then this game should not be hard to adjust to quickly. They have made a few additions to the game which made it more interesting. They added a customization feature where you can customize your own town, your weapons, and your gear. Instead of picking up gun after gun, you can build your own guns. Another upside is the fact that your guns don’t wear out and need repaired, which i can’t tell you how many times i would need to fix something cause i just got attacked by a horde of super mutants. Another one of the new things is the radiation storms. in the fallout world, there are traveling storms that will give you radiation if you get caught in them, meaning you need to seek shelter. The ghouls and other animals have changed. You can now get radiation poisoning if you get attacked by any ghoul, or radiated animals.

They have said that the play time for this game is 400 hours, which means that my Christmas vacation is going to be spent on my recliner playing non stop fallout4. I can only hope friends and family understand my priorities.

The Floptastic 4

It is pretty safe to say that the latest installment of the Fantastic four franchise hit a wall, and by wall i mean the kind you see in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. The fantastic 4 has never really been a block buster franchise that dominated the box office, in fact every version has barely been afloat. Its not to say that the directors behind these movies or the actors were bad, its more or less the fantastic 4 themselves.

Before Fox began trying to create their own Marvel based money machine, the Fantastic 4 was more or less just a footnote in the Marvel Universe. Characters like Iron man, Thor, and Captain America have always been The Marvel cash crop; even before they were made into billion dollar movies, their comics were always the more popular. The x-men has always been a favorite of mine. I remember when i was younger; There was always something x-men based on tv. They had a long running cartoon that i really enjoyed.

I remember there being a Fantastic 4 cartoon, but i can’t say that i really liked it that much. I never really gravitated towards F4. I think it was because their powers weren’t all that impressive to me. One of them was a giant rock, one was a rubber band, while the female was able to turn invisible and make forcefields, while her brother could be on fire and fly around and all that. To be honest they felt like x-men outcasts.

F4 was never really a huge seller, even their comic books were never really that popular compared to other Marvel characters. There has been a rumor that fox is going to proceed with a sequel, even though the movie performed poorly. Many of the Marvel fan base have cried out that they need to give Marvel/Disney the rights to the movie so that they could do the movie some justice and finally get a proper movie made, but i disagree. I realize that Disney has been batting 1000 making billion dollar marvel movie’s like its nothing, but i just don’t think they can do it with f4, i don’t think that the franchise has the backing like Captain America or Iron man.

I honestly don’t believe that Marvel could right the sinking ship that is the Fantastic 4 franchise. the last two versions of it died in theaters and never really had the pull, even with the right cast and the directing chops of someone like J.J Abrams (Money Printer) could bring this dead franchise back to life.