during the seemingly never-ending process of rewriting the code to get it to the way it should be, i bit into the head of a solid milk chocolate bunny; fairly tasty; along the same line i saw the premiere of greg the bunny (review will follow after the second show...one episode does not reflect a show) which was genuinely amusing and smacked of fox managing to get another cool show (to go along with 24) which will prevent me from abandoning network tv entirely; puppets taking hostages with scissors? gotta love it...

After reading this a few seconds ago, I realized something I failed to mention in this review of blade I finished today. A couple brought their children, between 5-7 years of age, to the movie. Blade 2 is rated R for strong pervasive violence, language, some drug use and sexual content. I'm no Bill Bennett, but I wouldn't bring my sister (currently 12) to see this movie. I wouldn't bring her when she's fifteen, either. It's a seriously disturbing movie (great, but twisted) that young kids shouldn't see, especially not when they're too young to even realize what's going on. Stupid parents!

they've recently added some new cars to the green line of the metro; each morning i get to stand the few stops i ride from the 'werks to the workplace; i've noticed that on one particular train, the train operator says each morning, right before he gets to Gallery Place/Chinatown "Oh (pause) Happy Birthday" as if someone just stumbled into the driver's area who happened to have a birthday and the driver just remembered. The first time I heard him, I thought to myself that's kind of interesting...i wonder whose birthday it is? but later i realized that maybe it was a special date, you know, like the anniversary of the chinatown exit or something and he was just announcing it; the next time i got on the same train though, he did it again; and again; and again; all in all i must have ridden through the same place with the same operator over ten times and each time he's said it; now it creeps me out; if anyone else knows about what's going on, drop me an e-mail at the address located at the bottom of the main page. thanks!

everyone's favorite day-walking vampire is back in blade II, a saga of a man driven by his bloody thirst to once again stream death upon vampire and neo-vampire (nee "Reapers") alike through the streets and sewers of Eastern Europe; to get up to speed, it helps if one has seen the original Blade but with a little plot from concentrate added to the beginning even a random person should be able to grasp what's going on.

Guillermo Del Toro directs this time around, which is a good thing, leading to some nice subtleties involving the play of light and dark. CGI effects were also well done, for the most part, with the traditional vampire expiration (due to either stake or sunlight) updated to reflect the continuous advances of Moore's maxim. We're also treated to some new weapons including a particularly cool light grenade the absurd physics of which are easily overpowered by the mindblowing (literally) effects of said device. I'm always amazed by the amount of firepower a single superhero can marshal based on one lowly support person. In this instance, however, Blade has not one but TWO different people providing his lethal weaponry. Scud, a new character, and Whistler, a returning veteran. Initially I thought bringing back Whistler (who appeared to commit suicide in the first Blade specifically because he wished to prevent becoming a vampire) was going to be difficult to explain. Based on conversations I had with other people (and the annoying pre-theatre chatter of the people behind me) I wasn't convinced that I would be able to suspend my disbelief. However, the explanation is fairly good, and the entire time wasted on it short, so after a few minutes we're back to ass-kicking and blood-letting.

Sans spoilers, I'll simply mention that the rather unnecessary plot involves a new species of vampires called Reapers that feed upon other vampires in addition to humans. (Actually, this common-sense omission seems long overdue, for instance I left Resident Evil with only one nagging question: why don't zombies simply eat each other instead of the living?) The Vampire Nation decides to re-allocate their fancy hit squad called the Blood Pack (original, isn't it?) from Blade-killing duty to Reaper-killing duty. Blade must lead the Blood Pack through waves of Reapers to kill the original, carrier Reaper who is helping Reapers multiply faster than rabbits. Nicely, just as humans gain strength when turned, so to, do Vampires when they become Reapers.

Overall, this sequel performs well, not due to an exceptional cast (remember, we're still toting Kris Kristofferson around who manages only one really insightful moment when he notes that the vampires, despite repairing his body (after blowing his head off, he'd need some work, eh?) have forgotten to repair his gimpy leg! Oh, the irony!) although Mr. Snipes is in fine form, and the blood pack contains some interesting characters. The femme vampire Blade doppelganger is all right, bailing Blade out from time to time but never being truly cooler. The absence of the charismatic Stephen Dorff is a loss, and some of the original's humor (Vampires losing body parts, getting angry, etc) is pushed aside for good wholesome American violence, but it still exists, in smaller form. David S Goyer who wrote the original Blade manages to cut out almost all of the superfluous slow scenes that padded out the original (there are still a few) which results for a much quicker pace. Combined with great directing from Guillermo del Toro, these two are an unstoppable force. Each scene in the movie conveys a sense of darkness, with occasional bursts of light reducing vampires to rubble. A good example would be when a pair of Vampires opens a manhole cover, exposing the light from above and disintegrating. Truly, the world in which Blade lives in is one of shadow and darkness...to escape from it is to die, for at least most of the characters of Blade II. (The Dorff trick of using sunscreen evidently doesn't fit the bill for the sequel...Eastern European vamps can never be quite as cool as their American counterparts.) Fittingly, though, the movie's denouement comes full circle and even throws in some humor, a nice touch in comparison to the original Blade, whose test audiences complained so much that the studio altered the ending to reduce the amount of CGI involved. (Dorff was simply too popular to be replaced by a spinning vortex of blood.) In this round, both audience and director are on the same page and the results speak for themselves. Go out and watch it today...er, tonight!

with the initial round of testing over, dredwerkz .1a is ready to roll; over the next few weeks i'll be adding articles, reviews, blogs, etc. in an attempt to get the site up to snuff in time to declare it in beta; once in beta we'll open it up to the internet so that people can see what's there (technically, it's almost all open now...the main page is simply not linked in) hopefully i can convice my fellow dredwerkzians to contribute once it's out of alpha mode; i really want them to see what it's like in beta mode before they buy in; check out the brand new review of Blade2 while you're at it!

three is a crowd, or so they say...i'm now seeing what happens when the blogs get too long, and whether to cut off by date or line number; so, let's see how it looks!

yes, it's the latest installment in a series of boring blog entries...hopefully this will conclude the testing portion of the blog, but i'd just like to try out linking this to an article; here goes!

okay, this second blog is mainly to help me test all the backend stuff that happens when things come out of the A box; there really isn't much to it but i'm not a coder, so i need stuff to help me manipulate; plus, the css is probably going to need to be reworked based on the floating properties i ripped from ala; i think i may have to kludge together a new solution that's still 100% pure compliant -well, here goes!

the website still isn't fully functional, but this is the first blog entry; the code here is still very alpha (some of the methods involve too many loops which are hurting performance) but it's much better than it used to be; as such, i think it's time we got things off the ground; so far none of the information is legit (the rollerball review is the closest thing to being for publication) but that should change within the next week; here's the to 'werkz!