Who gives a fuck about an Oxford Comma

Parabéns, Matthew!

July 20th had come 'round once again and we all know what that means...a birthday at the Rowe Residence! Let's all start singing the Happy Birthday song together as we bring in the lighted cake and set it down in front of Matthew. Have a great day, Matt, and don't eat too much cake (or, eat it all!) and milk up the attention as much as possible as you deserve it!

Batman.

I think I just lost the will to live.

A Weekend Wedding (Anniversary) Wonderland!

So, Little Cros has left us for the Rock! However, Friday and Saturday were filled with many good times! We ate crepes for breakfast, had pub food with old friends (Tom's old friends), and Italian cusine to celebrate the one year wedding anniversary of the Johnsons (officially tomorrow, the 14th). Many walks were had, more laughs, and some tears. A heavy metal history marathon, an Indian buffet, furniture and wallet shopping, a midnight visit to Cloverfield, and a 5:30am Sunday send off! A fabulous weekend overall. Some pictures to remember the good times follow. Opa!

In other Movie/Janes news...

Remember that Viking/Alien movie I was in? Well, the trailer has finally been released.



First thoughts.

1) Though I'm dissapointed that my lovely face didn't make it into the trailer, it's still nice to see the viking ship I rowed makes an appearance (you can see it at 1:07)....which means they didn't cut out my "scenes" entirely.

2)Special effects look decent...it's hard to say, but the alien doesn't look as "real" as I was hoping ...especially since the effects team behind Lord of the Rings was in charge of it. But since we only see glimpses of it, it's too early to pass judgement. Scenery/cinematography looks awesome though...nice atmosphere.

3)Jon Hurt is amazing as always. But there's too much of that young viking and not enough of Ron "Hellboy" Pearlman, if you ask me.

4)Predator meets Braveheart meets Beowulf? Sounds about right...I still can't decide if it's going to be any good or not! I'll have to wait until I see the whole thing....but STILL no release date!!

Man, it'd be sweet if they showed this during the Dark Knight previews....too much awesomeness in one night, I might explode!!!

Edit: After watching it for the 200th time, I am now officially frigging excited as fuck.

So most of us will be in town soon...

I got in off the ferry last thursday and getting myself settled away. I hear Tom's back on the 13th, and I believe Jill will be arriving shortly thereafter? I have no idea when/if Luke and Nina are going to be in town for the summer. Same goes for Phil/Sue. Jacob's a no-show, so screw him. Unless I missed someone, which I probably have, everybody else is currently in St. John's.

So the question is, when are we going to see The Dark Knight? I bought my ticket already...in the form of a 10-dollar theatre voucher obtained inside a special Batman Begins DVD set. All I need is a date to use it. Oh yeah, it also came with a 128mb flash card with special content related to the new movie, as well as loads of preview content on the DVD itself...but I can't decide if I should watch any of it, lest I lessen the awesomeness of seeing the actual movie for the first time - which is going to be pretty friggin' awesome.

Movie opens on the 16th...tickets on sale yet?

Those Spanish Days

Those Spanish Days

Hola amigos. I have just returned to Albania from a 10 day tour d’España. I flew to Barcelona and spent almost a full week seeing the sites and taking part in some fiestas before flying South and traveling around the country. It was a trip filled with excitement, and a few mournful days… You see, I was out of contact during the first three days of my travels. When I finally had the opportunity of checking my email, I had the misfortune of finding out that my grandmother (on Dad’s side, from Princeton) had passed away a few days prior. By the time I found out it was too late to make it home for the funeral. Although this was terribly sad news, it was in someway nice to hear that she was finally at peace (having been sick, off and on for years). My family assured me that she wouldn’t have wanted me to miss my trip, and encouraged me to enjoy my time in Spain and try and not let it put a damper on my adventure. Although this seemed impossible at the time, I ended up having a great trip, one I soon won’t forget.

RIP- Nan Prince… You’ll be greatly missed.

Here’s a little detail on my time in Spain in case any of you are interested. Enjoy!

My first night there was pretty sweet as there was a huge festival going on called “La Nit de la Foc” or Night of Fire. It’s a celebration that occurs each summer solstice in Spain, and basically consists of everyone getting firecrackers and fireworks and setting them off absolutely everywhere. The beach is the centre of this event, and there were thousands and thousands of people there. Walking around the city it sounded like it was a war zone. Bangs and explosions could be heard echoing from every street, alleyway and rooftop. At this point I was traveling alone so it wasn’t as fun as it could have been (most people were hammered at the beach).

But the solo travels only lasted another day or so, because Evangeline dropped into town. Originally we were only going to hang out in Barcelona together, but we ended up speding the remainder of the trip together. Which was great. Traveling alone is okay, but it’s just not as much fun when you don’t have someone to talk with.

So anyways, Barcelona is a beautiful city (I can’t remember who of you guys have been there, if any) but it’s a great spot. We were staying in a hostel that was right off of La Rambla (the main street) right in the Gothic sector. So most things were within walking distance. (Park Guell was sweet, but Sagrada de Familia was unreal).

The city is also known for being pretty safe (as in no violence), but it does have an extremely bad pickpocketing problem. I was lucky enough to not have had anything stolen, but I did have two guys try. One of which was while I was in crowd buying a ticket for the metro. Evangeline noticed and grabbed his hand. The other was late at night while I was walking down La Rambla. He pretended to start playing soccer with me (which I had been told was one of their strategies) and I actually caught his hand in my pocket. Oh, and Evangeline was swarmed by a bunch of kids that somehow managed to get her wallet out of her purse (we’re still not sure how). Luckily she didn’t have any cash so they just dropped it and took off.

Crime aside, Evangeline got sick for a few days (strep throat), which put a bit of a damper on everything for a few days. So that was too bad, but it only lasted for a little while in Barcelona and we ended up enjoying the remainder of the trip.

Ok, this is turning into an extremely long post, I’ll switch to point form and say where I was and what was sweet in each place:

-Cadiz: the oldest continuously inhabited city in Western Europe. We were here the night
that Spain won the Euro Cup. Everyone went crazy all night long.

-Ronda: one of the most scenic places I’ve ever been. Really beautiful. The town was built on the side of a huge gorge, and there are a series of old bridges built across. It also houses the oldest bullring in Spain, and was also the home of both Ernest Hemmingway and Orson Welles . Welles’ ashes are scattered in a town under a well.

-From Ronda we took a day trip out to see these nearby caves. The caves themselves were amazing, but the highlight of the lantern guided tour was the cave paintings. Some of which were dated to 30 000 years old! It was sweet. Oh and there were some bats in there too, which was obviously wicked. (On the topic of bats, anybody getting excited yet or what? Less than two weeks away.)

-Gibraltar: Gibraltar was wicked. As I’m sure most of you know, it’s a British colony. It was really refreshing being somewhere where I could actually read signs and everyone spoke English, never realized that it had been so long. Anyways, the rock (as they call it… trying to rip off our name, lousy bastards) is beautiful. We got a cable car to the top, where you can see the straight of Gibraltar and Morocco! That was pretty exciting because it was my first glimpse of Africa. There’s another cave system on the hill, which was pretty amazing, as well as a series of tunnels used during the great siege and WWII. It’s been said that it is the best defense system anywhere ever. Oh, and there are monkeys all over the place up there (only monkeys in Europe), which was cool. Monkeys are funny.

-Malaga: I only spent the night here before flying back to Barcelona, but the tiny bit that I saw looked really nice.

And so that’s pretty much it. There are still tons of stories, but those are better told in the presence of friends and ale. Oh yeah, my luggage is stuck in the Barcelona airport, so I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. Evangeline is going to be going through there at some point, so hopefully I can get her to send it to me.

When does everybody come home for the summer? How long are y’all staying? I doubt I’ll be back in time to see any of you, but we should all plan a trip in the fall. Maybe we can all meet up in New York or Toronto?

Adiós!

p.s. My camera cable is in Barcelona, so I can't post pictures for a while yet. I'll let you know when I make either a flickr or facebook album.

Christmas (Goat) in July

Okay...

So I know I haven't posted in a while. But before I can continue I must point out a shocking discovery I made whilst perusing the hud archives. There have been NO posts which include the pictures of the second annual yule goat burning! I don't know how I ended up in the huddle archives, but I'm glad I discovered this.

So whoever has pictures they better hurry up and post em!

I am disgusted frankly. If you check the update that Mr. Hinch Diggedy did for the 06 burn you'll be equally shocked that one of at least equal quality (if not an even better report) does not exist for the 07 Jule Bock Burn.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Nina!

Our lovely Nina is somewhere in the world enjoying her birthday today and so we, the Huddlers, shall wish her many happy returns in our own way. Nina, have a safe flight home (whenever it is you're returning) and enjoy your special day! There's a card a la Johnsons on its way. Have your cake and eat it too!

Happy Canada Day!

Make sure you take a holiday no matter which country you're in, or at least get drunk at work. What countries are people in these days anyway? Don't forget Memorial Day (this is also a good example of the pitfalls of wikipedia). If you're in a country that would have been taken over by the Germans let them know about it. If you're in a country that was allied with the Germans punch somebody in the face. Either way, have fun and stay safe.