Just returned from River­side, Cal­i­for­nia yes­ter­day and it was an enjoy­able vaca­tion. My wife and I went to Las Vegas for a cou­ple nights stay­ing at the Hilton. Our pack­age (cour­tesy of my Dad for our sec­ond hon­ey­moon) con­sisted of The Star Trek Expe­ri­ence, a din­ner for two at Quarks Bar and var­i­ous other incen­tives. We stayed on the 9^th floor and at first it was a con­fus­ing expe­ri­ence try­ing to get up to our floor. We ini­tially thought that the ele­va­tors, no mat­ter how many of them, all led to what­ever floor desired. How­ever, we didn’t real­ize that there were two sets of ele­va­tors until we asked one of the bell­hops. I think he cack­led to him­self qui­etly as we walked away, “Stu­pid Las Vegas newbies.”

On our trip we also vis­ited the always fun and fan­tas­tic Dis­ney­land. We went with my brother and his friend Brian, so our party con­sisted of my wife and I, my Dad, Brian and Matt. If you’ve ever been to Dis­ney­land you know that some­times you are blessed with the oppor­tu­nity to “spot” a celebrity. Our first encounter was Bean from the Dis­ney Kid’s show Even Stevens. Brian, equipped with his paparattzi cam­era was will­ing to hunt him down for a pic­ture but unlike real paparattzi he decided against it. When we split up we vis­ited Honey I Shrunk the Audi­ence and took a trip on Pirates of the Car­ribean, even­tu­ally meet­ing up with Matt and Brian who found our sec­ond Celebrity sight­ing sit­ting in New Orleans square. Off the top of my head, I don’t know the name of the actor but he played Jef­fer­son from Mar­ried with Chil­dren and his wife, a celebrity as well, was the pros­ti­tute on the short-lived ‘The John Lar­ro­quette Show’.

All said and done, it was a great trip. Although, my fam­ily has decided to put the house up for sale and move to Bishop, CA. It should be an adven­ture and it’s a beau­ti­ful place to live and to visit. When the baby is born we’ll take a trek back to Cal­i­for­nia, but this time avoid­ing the smog and over-population.

Good­bye, Sunny and Smoggy Cal­i­for­nia. We’ll see your bet­ter half soon.

Home​s​tar​run​ner​.com is the home of the infa­mous Inter­net car­toon star­ring Home­s­tar Run­ner and the gang. How­ever, the true spot­light of the site is a char­ac­ter by the name of Strong­bad, a Mex­i­can wrestler with atti­tude and spunk.

Try­ing to describe what is so inter­est­ing about Strong­bad is an expla­na­tion with­out words. Instead, to truly enjoy this expe­ri­ence you could just as eas­ily sift through the sev­eral Strong­bad emails.

As an alter­na­tive, some­one has decided to archive the great­est of the Strong­bad car­toons. See them here.

By now, we’ve all heard of or seen Pixar’s lat­est ani­mated hit, Find­ing Nemo. The story, while extremely sim­plis­tic is geni­une in its exe­cu­tion and pro­vides plenty of eye candy for moviegoers.

Accord­ing to USAto​day​.com (spe­cial thanks to my Dad for the link), Nemo ranked in $70.6 mil­lion dol­lars in its open­ing week­end smash­ing Matrix Reoloaded to the next spot in the Box Office heirar­chy. Dis­ney should be proud that they have such a suc­cess­ful out­fit crank­ing out the hits for them because as of late there hasn’t been an ani­mated block­buster (aside from Pixar’s fea­tures) to come out of the Mouse House. Why? It’s sim­ple, really. Dis­ney needs to find itself again and rework the for­mula that worked so well for movies like Cin­derella, Sleep­ing Beauty and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Was that for­mula only exis­tent with Walt’s direc­tion and vision? Maybe.

Lately, the Dis­ney ani­mated movies have been formula-driven. There exe­cu­tion has been mediocre if not watered down and the scripts have been lack­ing sub­stance. It’s eas­ily said that Dis­ney has fallen short of it’s expec­ta­tions and rather focuses on 3-Dimensional graph­ics to lead the way. In the Aston­ish Fac­tory forums, it was said that the CGI isn’t at fault but the sto­ries and char­ac­ter inter­ac­tions. If there is one thing Pixar is known for, it’s their bril­liantly writ­ten scripts and direc­tors. You can’t build your foun­da­tion on bits and bytes entirely, you also need the brains and a few hearty indi­vid­u­als will­ing to pour out their comedic soul.