Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on pc

I got the Vice City version of the Grand Theft Auto video games. This thing is so fun. You can do virtually anything, it’s so sweet. Your character’s name is Tommy Vercetti, voiced by actor Ray Liotta. His mission is to take over the Miami-like Vice City. The setting is in the 80’s, and they do a good job at perpetuating that image. When you drive around there is a ton of 80’s music to listen to. The missions are really fun and if you don’t feel like doing any of them, you can just wreak havoc around town, or create your own missions. I got a lot of cheat codes from Gamesages.com, and now I can do almost anything. I can change the weather, create low gravity, make cars and even tanks appear out of thin air. I can start a city-wide riot, or make the girls chase me. I can make all the cars explode, or turn them all pink or black. There is so much variety that each gaming session is unique. There are helicopters and even a single engine plane that you can fly. There are also three different kinds of sweet motorcycles. You have a ton of different guns for shooting the bad and good guys alike. It is so easy to spend hours playing and not even realize how much time has passed. Anybody who likes video games would really love this one. I’ve spent quite a bit of time playing it.

Billiards For Family Fun

Get the whole family involved in playing billiards and see how much fun you can have. I always loved the family reunions that were at a house with a pool table. All of my cousins, uncles, and aunts would grab the pool cues and shoot for hours. It was the center of attention for our family reunions.

Now it doesn’t take much to have all of this fun and maybe you could host the next family reunion for your relatives? The room is the important part for getting a new pool table. It’s best when you have a full room you can devote to the table or a basement to stick it in. Be sure you check around the edges of the table and make sure you can bring your stick back, before deciding on your final position of the table in your room. I have shot on many tables that a post or a wall would cause us to shoot in an unorthodox manner. If you have only one place that’s like that and it’s your only choice to put your table at, then just set it up there. Some of your best memories will come from that area where you have to jack-up your stick or shoot from your normal form. Each time you bring a new person to shoot at your table, it will be a laugh waiting to happen when they have to face that post or wall for the first time!

If you have the room and your table, just buy a few cheap pool cues for your guests and you can buy 1 really nice one for yourself to play with. A set of balls and get a few pieces of chalk, so your family and guests can cue up their sticks and your all set for a fun time around the table!

Billiards isn’t just a game for a crowd or two people either. It’s a great way to pass the time and you can play against yourself or maybe work on some trick shots you can show your friends and family, for when they do decide to come around.

Burn notice

I’ve been watching “Burn Notice” and I love it. It’s only been on for a little over a month and I’m already addicted. The main character is Michael Westen, played by Jeffrey Donovan, is a spy who gets burned, meaning fired, by his employers the U.S. government. He gets dumped in Miami where his mother, best friend, and girlfriend live. Sam, played by Bruce Campbell of “Evil Dead” fame, is the alcoholic, ex-spy best friend who still has connections in the espionage underworld. He drinks like a fish, but still gets the job done. Michael is trying to find out who burned him, and I think that Sam is going to play a big part in helping him get the information that he needs. Michael’s girlfriend Fiona, played by Gabrielle Anwar, is an ex-IRA soldier who loves to break out the guns as much as possible. She is constantly kicking somebody’s butt, often it is Michael’s. Sharon Gless of “Cagney and Lacey” plays Michael’s mother, who is always getting into his business and love life. Michael is pretty much broke since getting burned left him with no bank account, or job references. Now he has to do freelance jobs using his spy background. Each episode he shows how to manipulate people, tricks of the trade, and he gets a little closer to finding out who burned him. This is one show that I’m going to have to see through to the very end.

Rob Zombie movies

I got “The Devil’s Rejects” on DVD a while back. It is one of my favorite movies of all time. The dialogue is hillarious and quite disturbing at times. There is also the overwhelming seventies feel to it. Anyone alive back then knows how dirty the seventies were. Rob certainly captured that essence in this movie. “The Devil’s Rejects” is a sequel to the movie “House of 1000 Corpses”. “House” doesn’t quite have the same seventies feel. It has more of a grotesque feel to it. “Rejects” kicks in hard from the very beginning with an insane shootout with the police, where the family dons steel plates on their faces and bodies as bullet-proof shields. It was really intense. R.J., the older brother gets killed and his mom, Mother Firefly, gets arrested while Otis and Baby escape and join up with their father Captain Spalding, the psychotic clown. All their names are aliases from Marx Brothers movies. The most disturbing scene is when Otis and Baby take the traveling country band “Banjo and Sullivan” hostage. The physical abuse pales in comparison to the verbal abuse that Otis lashes out. The soundtrack is truly awesome. Rob includes songs like “Midnight rider”, “Fooled around and fell in love”, and “Free Bird” which strangely set a foul mood. Everytime I hear these songs now, they have a different meaning for me. “Free Bird” is the song for, I guess what you would call, the second climax. It makes you feel sad for the sadistic killers. Overall “The Devil’s Rejects” is a movie for the ages, that is if you like that sort of thing. It rates up there with “A Clockwork Orange”, and “Natural Born Killers”. I don’t recommend that children watch it. There are some pretty rough moments in there. Moms and dads however, will remember it for years to come.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Spoiler alert!!! The seventh and final book in the “Harry Potter” series was phenomenal. I couldn’t believe the way that it ended, but I’ll get to that in a bit. J.K. Rowling really outdid herself on the final book. I’ve listened to all seven books on tape several times and love them all. I couldn’t wait to see what happened in the final book, just because I wanted to see if any of my predictions came true. I don’t think that any of them did. I thought that when Dumbledore was killed in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” by professor Snape, that Dumbledore was really Wormtail using polyjuice potion because of the damaged right hand. In “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” Lord Voldemort gave Wormtail a magical right hand to replace the one that Wormtail himself cut off in order to give the dark lord a body. I also thought that Harry would end up Headmaster at Hogwarts school. It didn’t happen. The journey in this book is full of adventure, of course being the last in the series, it should be. There were so many questions to be answered in order to wrap the whole thing up, like why did Dumbledore trust Snape? What and where were all the horcruxes? How can Harry destroy them once he does find them? Turns out that objects with destructive power with no real magical remedies is what destroys them. The basilisk’s fang that destroyed Riddle’s diary contained venom with only one cure, phoenix tears. Another horcrux ended up being Marvolo’s ring which was destroyed by Dumbledore, leaving a horrible curse upon him. The others were Hufflepuff’s locket, Ravenclaw’s Lost Diadem, Nagini the snake, and surprisingly enough, Harry himself. At the end of the book I was astounded at Snape’s memories. Dumbledore trusted Snape because of his love for Lily Evans, later Lily Potter, Harry’s mom. Once Voldemort would not spare her life, Snape went to Dumbledore for help. Ever since that day, Snape acted as a double-agent protecting Harry and working towards the downfall of the dark lord. In the epilogue, nineteen years after the downfall of Voldemort, the book tells of Harry married to Ginny Weasley and one of their children is named Albus Severus Potter. It was quite the surprise. I left out a lot of other surprises so as not to spoil everything. Overall the entire tale is excellent and should be read by everyone who likes epic stories.

The Dark Tower Comics from Marvel

The final issue is finally out. Stephen King’s “The Gunslinger Born” from Marvel comics wrapped up it’s seventh issue which concludes the “Dark Tower” comic series. The comic is adapted from the seven novels by the best-selling author. I have read all seven more than once and the comics stay true to the books. Peter David does a great job in telling the story and has captured “the low speech” quite well. In the first issue it showed a few notes from Stephen King on how best to capture this alternate way of speech. The illustrations by Jae Lee and Richard Isanove are beautiful. It’s good to finally see the face of some of my favorite characters. Roland of Gilead definately looks different than I imagined him. In the books he is described as looking a bit like Clint Eastwood, but that is when he is an older man. The comics tell the story of his younger trials where he becomes a gunslinger, which is kind of like a knight in a world that has “moved on”. There are also side stories that weren’t in the books that are very interesting. One is the origins of “Charyou tree”, which tells of the burning sacrifices of townspeople in order to bring in a good harvest. Another is a tale of “Maerlin’s Mirror”, which is about an ancient mirror that gets broken and the shards fly throughout the worlds, bringing magick to those who come in contact with them. The comic is set in the time that is most touched upon in “Wizard and Glass”, the fourth in the “Dark Tower” novels. I must say that as soon as I finished the last issue, there was a satified smile on my face, not only because the story was great, but also because on the last page it tells of a new five part series, also from the “Dark Tower”, called “The Long Road Home”, that comes out in February 2008. I can’t wait.