I tend to spend a large portion of my day of reading really racist comments on the work facebook page from horrible people who will take any opportunity to spew their hatred when it comes to immigration. It’s not just on stories that have to do with immigration either. These people can find a way to make anything about immigration. If we have a story about puppies wearing funny hats, they’ll figure out some way to launch a tirade about Obama, people from Mexico or a blanket statement about all liberals.

You can imagine how exhausting that might be for someone like me, so when I come home, I turn on the tv and zone out until I fall asleep. When I flipped on the tv today, my Tivo was recording the “Goobacks” episode of South Park. If you haven’t seen it, the full episode is online at southparkstudios.com.

This was the part that was on right when I turned the tv on:

I wish I could line up all those people who post all that awful crap online and force them to sit down and watch this. Maybe they’d be like Stan and learn something.

I had the chance to go to my very first Comic Con this year with Trashwire and I had so much fun that I’m already dreaming of next year. I took over 400 pictures, but I put all the best ones in the photo galleries on trashwire.com.

Some of my faves:

Pics from my three days there are at:
http://trashwire.com/2010/07/22/sdcc1
http://trashwire.com/2010/07/23/sdcc2
http://trashwire.com/2010/07/24/sdcc3

Of course, my favorite part of it all was the two panels with Gerard Way. I took a zillion pictures and videos from both the Dark Horse panel and the Spotlight on Gerard Way panel, but these two are my favorites.

See the rest (and the videos) at Trashwire.com:
http://trashwire.com/2010/07/23/comic-con-dark-horse-gerard-way
and
http://trashwire.com/2010/07/24/comic-con-panel-spotlight-on-gerard-way

I’ll be tweeting away from San Diego Comic Con this weekend. Don’t miss out on a minute by following @trashwire on Twitter or checking in here for my live Twitter feed:

I’ve seen so many movies in the past couple weeks that I can barely keep track of all the plots anymore. Everything’s starting to run together and it’s all one big story involving a Predator adopting three little girls to try and break up his mother and her vampire boyfriend. Thankfully, I managed to separate all the plots before I wrote these two reviews.

Here’s my review of the highly-anticipated Predators. I love the original film and was very pleased that this film departed from the corny Alien vs Predator sequels.

The Predator franchise was slipping down the slope of ridiculousness and on it’s way to Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus territory when Robert Rodriguez was announced as the producer of a brand new enrtry to the Predator game. Thankfully, Rodriguez and director Nimród Antal brought back the suspense of the original and ditched the cheesy b-movie feel of more recent films starring everyone’s favorite dreadlocked alien.

Read the rest on Trashwire.com at http://trashwire.com/2010/07/09/predators-elevates-the-franchise-with-suspense

Just a few days after the Predators press screening, I went to a screening for Despicable Me. Try having a 3D animated family film and a movie about people being skinned alive by aliens floating around in your head at the same time! Despicable Me was the opposite of Predators in terms of plot, but was very similar in terms of being enjoyable.

In the tradition of Shrek, Universal’s Despicable Me is a film for kids, that’s also fun for adults. The Pixar-like 3D animation wows children and the cast list alone is enough to get adults excited. When I saw the first trailer for the film, seeing Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, and Kristen Wiig all listed together made me mark my calendar for the release date.

Read the rest on Trashwire.com at http://trashwire.com/2010/07/11/despicable-me-fun-in-3d

I’m going to have reviews for Inception, Salt and Dinner for Schmucks coming soon on trashwire this month.

Also, definitely follow @trashwire on Twitter because I’m headed to the famed San Diego Comic Con next weekend and I’ll be tweeting live about everything I see.

I’ve been in the market for an eReader ever since I got into the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris. I saw the full box set of the books available at bookstores, but it cost about $80 and that was just more than I was willing to spend. On top of that, I really wanted to read a few other books that were only available in $30 hardcover form. After thinking about the price of buying books and the space they’d take up in my tiny condo, I decided it might be time to invest in an eBook reader.

Naturally, I turned to my twitter friends for advice. When you’ve got 1,500 potential votes, it’s easy to pick a clear winner. Almost everyone advised me to get a Kindle. I got tweets from very satisfied Kindle users and even a brief endorsement from my Dad. Still, I had heard good thinks about the Barnes & Noble Nook and wanted to check it out.

I’d read about the eBook reader, which features a small iPhone-like touch screen, on Gizmodo, where they’d given it a very positive review. Having done my research on several other sites, I decided to go down to Barnes & Noble to see for myself. One of the biggest benefits of the Nook is that you can actually go to the store and try it out or get tech support. I went up to the counter where they had a Nook on display and began navigating the menus on the touch screen and clicking through pages on some of the sample books. I was impressed. I was really impressed. The navigation was great, perfect for someone whose iPhone was almost glued to her hand. I loved being able to view the covers of books before I bought them and being able to read sample chapters before you decided to purchase a book. I had heard that eInk screens had slow response time that made reading an annoying activity, but I was pleasantly surprised at how fast the “pages” could turn and how quickly the screen was able to change from the text of a book to the main navigation screen. The Nook also offered GoogleBooks, which meant several titles available for free, and you could customize it with your own screensavers and home page images as well as load it with your music. The books were affordable and the Nook featured 3G and wi-fi and didn’t start at $500 like some other handheld devices (*cough* iPad *cough*).

The coolest feature, though, was all the Barnes & Noble perks. You could get special deals or even free eBooks when you used your Nook in any Barnes & Noble store. You could read any eBook free for up to an hour in the store too. I must say, I was also really impressed with the idea of in-person support in case something ever went wrong.

I went home and looked up the Kindle a bit more, having narrowed it down to those two candidates. The Kindle seemed nice, maybe even great, but I just couldn’t get over the fact that it had a real keyboard as opposed to a touch screen. A physical keyboard can’t change, a touch screen can gain added features with every software update.

I bought the Nook and started reading. I’m happy to say, I absolutely love it! I’ve probably been reading more in the last few weeks than I ever did in school. After burning through the first five books in my beloved Southern Vampire Series, I’m excited to keep using my Nook and get more cheap eBooks to read in the future.