The Ranting Jamaican

I HATE HATE HATE 3D Movies

December 27th, 2010

So today we had planned to see Megamind since it FINALLY came out in Hong Kong on December 23rd, my birthday. We looked at the times and there was a showing a 9:10 and it was not in 3D! So we woke up this morning, fearing that we would miss it we looked up the times to find that online it showed the movie as being in Cantonese. I can’t complain about that, I’m in Hong Kong. So then we went over to the AMC website, yes there are AMC theaters in Hong Kong, only to find out that AMC only had 3D versions of Megamind. So I just said forget it.

I HATE 3D movies. I have to be really bored and desperate to want to see a 3D movie. First of all I really don’t think it adds anything positive to the movie experience. I think the only time where I thought “this is not totally stupid” was when there was some dust floating around on screen after that huge tree got bombed to oblivion in Avatar. The dust actually seemed like it was in my face. This, although somewhat interesting, is quite a stupid thing to add to a movie since nobody wants to think there is a crap load of dust in their face. Second, on my California Drivers License it says “RSTR:CORR LENS,” which means I need glasses. This means that I look like one hell of an idiot wearing 3D glasses on top of my real glasses. Yes I could wear contacts but I hate those too, they make my eyes all dry. Third, when I wear the 3D glasses I get this weird indescribably odd feeling in the middle of my forehead. An hour and a half of this gets mighty annoying (over 2 hours for avatar).

But the biggest reason why I hate 3D movies is because it is just another way to get more money out of movie goers while adding very little, if anything, to the experience. In most of the 3D movies that I have seen, very few of the scenes would have even benefitted from the “3D” effect. So really, in the US you are adding $5 on top of your already expensive movie ticket to put on some stupid looking glasses and see some minor 3D effect on a few action scenes out of the 2 hours of that particular movie experience.

This, in my humble opinion, is just wrong.

So anyways, back to Megamind, now I will not be seeing this movie in the theaters because it will probably be out of the theaters by the time I get back to the US in January. So now I have to wait until it is out on Netflix or something. gah, how stupid is that? I can only hope that there are more people like me doing the same thing and that by “voting” with our dollars we will be able to stop this 3D fad in it tracks.

Edit (10 minutes later): I am now bored, desperate, and heading to watch 3D Megamind… Fmylife…

Tags: 3D, I hate 3d movies, Magamind, Netflix
Posted in Gripes, just wrong, Movies | No Comments »

My 27th Birthday Days

December 24th, 2010

December 23rd is my birthday. The 23rd of December was raining buckets all day long here in Thailand. Since the weather was so crappy and I still had 15 hours of my birthday left in California on the 24th of December in here, I decided to appropriate Christmas Eve as my birthday as well.

Anyways since it was raining, I thought it would be a good idea for the Ranting Jamaican to go to Kingston Jamaica …… the restaurant. This restaurant just happened to be across the street from our hotel (The Lamoon Lamai Residence). Here’s a picture of the bar, yes that is a Jamaican themed bar/restaurnat in Thailand!

Their Jerk Chicken Wings really sucked, but their Thai food was good. I ordered fried rice and pad thai in addition to my Jerk Chicken Wings. Later on that night Crystal and I went back to Kingston for drinks. This was really all that happened on day 1 of my birthday. Crappy I know but what can I say it was raining all day. Anyways it’s always great to spend quality time with Crystal so it’s all good. Usually I would get extremely drunk on my birthday but walking is dangerous enough in Thailand so I don’t feel the need to add both drunkenness and slippery sidewalks to the obstacles.

Day 2 started out pretty early we got a “taxi” to the Bophut Big Buddha Pier at about 8:45 AM. The reason why the taxi is in quotes is because it was really a pick-up truck with benches in the back. From the pier we took a ferry over to Koh Phangan and then a Taxi to Mae Haad where we went snorkeling. It was a really great trip and it was a great activity for my birthday. There was a sand bar between Mae Haad and Koh Ma, which is where people go snorkeling. I think when we were there it was high tide so the sand bar was less than a foot underwater in some places and in others was up to 4 feet underwater. So it was possible to wade across to Koh Ma fairly easily. In that last picture you can see people walking across the sandbar towards Koh Ma.

On the way back from Koh Phangan we got a nice view of the sunset. This is one of the pictures of our serene view that was such a great end of my second birthday day of my 27th birthday.

Merry Christmas my friends!

Tags: Koh Ma, Koh Phangan, Mae Haad, snorkeling, Thailand
Posted in Thailand, Travel | No Comments »

Koh Phangan Full Moon Festival 2010 what a crazy night!

December 21st, 2010

The Full Moon festival was an intense night of partying on the beach. This party, supposedly the original, was located at Haad Rin on Koh Phangan. Koh Phangan is a 20 minute speedboat ride from Koh Samui. For us this party was quite intense, Crystal and I are not really hardcore partiers so for some people this may have been a little mild. But perhaps the thing that I loved the most about it is the near total disregard for personal safety. I think that there may be some sort of pyromaniac gene that some of these people here have. Check out the pictures below. (sorry it was very low light and I am not a particularly good photographer)

So these are some fire twirlers, also known as fire dancers or fire spinners, these guys are pretty cool, they are all amateur performers that come out just to show off their skills. These guys are cool but sort of unsafe since people will literally stand 3 feet away from them to watch them. Drunk people are not very concerned about their safety. And as you can see in one of the pictures there are crazy sparks and crap flying off of his fire stick (is that what it’s called?). On our trip to Koh Phi Phi crystal was sure that she almost died when an amateur fire dancer threw his burning stick/baton into the air and it almost hit us. This concern would be magnified here to say the least, but a lot of things that are dangerous are REALLY fun and this was definitely fun to watch.

For more pyrotechnics look at the pictures below!

Yes, you are correct, that is a burning jump rope that the owners of a bar encouraged drunk (and people who are intoxicated from other substances) to try to jump over as many times as they can. As you can imagine many people did not even make it once and walking around I saw quite a few people with bandages, probably from getting burned by this rope. Luckily Haad Rin has a large selection of 24 hour clinics where injured drunk people can get all kinds of service at any time. Many, many people were taking advantage of these services.

Did I mention the alcohol? check out these pictures

Along the alleys in the town and on the beach there were many places selling buckets of alcohol (they cost anywhere from 200 to 500 baht, $8 to $15 USD). As you can see in the first two pictures you buy the bucket and it comes with a smallish bottle of hard liquor and a soda of your choice. You then make your mixed drink IN the bucket and walk along the beach drinking out of said bucket.

By the time you reach the flaming jump rope you are ready to make your drunken skipping rope attempt and then afterwards you can drunkenly stagger to one of the many 24 hour clinics. There was actually one less then 50 feet from the flaming rope.

Once done at the clinic you will have started to sober up so you then have to get another bucket of alcohol and continue to stroll down the beach. Once you reach the flaming hoop you are drunk enough to make an attempt there, except this time your burns are covered by bandages, which are probably flammable. Enjoy! Fun to watch not to do or maybe your so drunk that it is fun? I dunno.

The other two pictures are our buckets. I got a long island iced tea and Crystal got a Pina Colada. We chose to enjoy our buckets at the bar overlooking the flaming jump rope so that I could take wonderful those pictures and share them with you.

There was also lots of food there, good food to!

This is a banana pancake from Mr. K Restaurant. It was REALLY good

This is a picture of the selection from one of the many food stalls in one of the alleys. The food looks really really good here too. You can get one plate for 50 Baht (~1.60 USD).

Overall I had lots of fun walking around the full moon festival. But I think the festival is more for single people who are on the hunt, if you know what I mean. I did see a few couples like Crystal and I roving around but the crowd seemed to be overwhelmingly made up of extremely drunk single guys and girls. It made people watching from the second floor of that bar very interesting.

When we left at 2:00am people were still streaming in to go to the party. From the schedules of the speedboats it seems like the party goes until 7AM. I know that I do not have the endurance to be drunk that long but for those that do, this is the party for you. You should probably go next year! They do have other Full Moon festivals throughout the year but I think this one is the biggest one since it is so close to New Years.

Oh I almost forgot to mention, there is a nominal entrance fee to get into the town from the speedboats. It is 100 baht (~3 USD). But included in the fee is a really nice re-useable wristband. In the US this band would probably cost about $3 dollars. So really you have to just buy the souvenir to get in.

Here are some random last pictures from the full moon festival!