Review: Hell Ride

Hell Ride,

Written by, directed and starring Larry Bishop

The premise: In the world of biker gangs, 'bad blood' doesn't even begin to describe the hatred that exists between the The Victors and The Six-Six-Sixers. The Sixers are moving in on Victor territory, infiltrating their gang, and brutally slaughtering their members.
Pistolero, the “Pres” of the Victors has only a few fellow gang-members he truly trusts, and The Sixers have him outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and outclassed, or so they think.

Hell Ride, a tale of vengeance, moves from one violently brutal moment to the next in a non-stop bath of blood. For people who like a simple plot, with a few twists here and there, and tons of action, you have to see Hell Ride.

A friend lent me this movie over the weekend, and I haven't seen anything like this where I was blown away by it for hours afterwards in a long time.

I'll face the facts though, this isn't a movie everyone is going to enjoy.

The plot? It's Thin.

Is it over-the-top violent? Hell yes.

Is this a movie you should hide from children? Absolutely.

If you don't like Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez style action and violence, then you're not going to like this movie.

Overall:

8/10

The Pros: It had action, it had a great cast, it had scenes whose violence left me cringing, it had some light comedy here and there, it had a plot that left me totally satisfied with its outcome, and by the time the credits had rolled I was completely blown away.

The Cons: Some of the dialogue was uninspired, and sometimes things happened that left me a little confused. It's going to need a re-watch before I return it (which I plan on taking my sweet time doing). Also, the epic struggle that the film built towards fell a little flat. Good, but flat.

So quit watching terrible action movies with no plot and see Hell Ride. Do it. Now.

Thanksgiving Approaches

Every now and then I voice a commercial which is just embarrassing, even for me.

My station gives away Turkeys for Thanksgiving, (which is coming right up October 11th) and we have some contest called “Turkey Lurkey.” For two years now I've been the voice of Turkey Lurkey himself, due to my experience in raising turkeys. I have keen synergy and understanding as to what a turkey thinks about...


So to you I present the Blackman's Turkey Lurkey Promo, as produced and voiced-in-part by Tom Laird.

Eat Them Wings

Photos Courtesy of Steve Suk

I don't have a whole lot of photo evidence to back this up, but Team Big Country is through to the finals of the wing eating competition. Last Wednesday we came in second on qualifying night, and they pushed us through because we're likable I guess.


The contest this year, as I said in my last blog, is about speed, not endurance. Last year, 40 wings was what a single competitor had to eat to win the contest. That maybe doesn't sound like all that much, but after 30, you really start to drag.

With teams of four eating at 100 wings (that's only 25 a person) this throws the doors of victory wide open. But the rules on cleaning the bones need to be more stringent. Our team did a fine job of stripping the meat off the bones and leaving little behind. Some of the competitors however...well let's just say some feathers may be ruffled over this issue.

This is the destruction wrought by our team

We were bested by Shannon George, my nemesis from last year, and some football players. I feel a rivalry coming on, and if Shannon wasn't the god damned nicest person I've ever competed against I'd be angrier than I am right now.

In the end though, the contest is all for the United Way. But I really want that belt. I mean I'm willing to do unlawful things to people to get it. It's like chasing the dragon...

I almost have it this time! I know I can get it!

Happy Birthday to Me!

It's my birthday today! Being that it's Monday however I'm not really celebrating today. I actually have to deliver magazines after work today. But luckily, I took the day to party properly on Saturday!

My friend's birthday was last Tuesday, so we had a joint party that included these sweet invites

Yes, I know potatoes is spelled wrong. I realized immediately after I wrote it down.

Because it was my party, I decided dress however the F I felt,

which happen to mean I was dressed in my Han Solo costume from last Halloween.

We deep fried a turkey,

It was a little scary, all that scalding hot oil and stuff...

but it was the most amazing turkey I have ever eaten in my life. Seriously. It was phenomenal. We're going to fry another one later this week.

Then we had cake and drank way too much beer.


Overall, great birthday party! Thanks to all the well-wishers and everyone who came!

To those who didn't, you missed out on beer-pong, hottubbing, and turkey. Now how do you feel about yourself?

You could have tired yourself out like these two boys. Just imagine how much fun they had!

Dirty Heads - Stand Tall

A Legacy Reborn

Last year around this time, I lost a chicken wing eating championship. The challenge was 40 wings, as fast as you could eat them, and I placed second, approximately half a wing and thirty seconds behind a giant football player.


I didn't take home the Battle of the Bone Belt.


But guess what's back? And this time, it's a whole new game...


Instead of last year's format where one eater representing a group would show down with 6 or 7 other people, we're on teams of 4, and collectively have to eat 100 wings the fastest.

That's 25 wings a head, and if we eat at the rate of 2-4 wings a minute we can do this no problem. Personally, I ate 60 wings somewhere between 20-25 minutes. Admittedly, I spewed after that, but I also put down 40 in just over ten minutes. So 25? Piece of cake!

The problem though, is that 25 wings is a pretty standard amount. Anyone could eat that many. So the key isn't quantity here, it's speed. Pure and simple speed.

It's go time! I think all the other radio stations and the newspaper are competing this year, not on the same day of course, so I'm hoping more than a few of them qualify to go head to head in the finals September 29th so we can go mano a mano.

We go for qualifiers next Wednesday, September 15th, and that leaves less than a week to get prepped. There's more than just a championship belt on the line here though; this is going to prove once and for all, who the real eating champions of Grande Prairie are. We all know it's Big Country 93.1, but that's not what some sore losers over at other stations would have you believe.

Boom. Battle of the Bone 2010 just got real...

Can you take the heat?

Hammelltime Breakdown

Usually when Blogger releases some fancy new gimmick or tool I just ignore it because I like the painfully simple, clean, and easy to read layout of Hammelltime.

It works for Craig's List, why not me?

But this week they released a neat-o statistics page! Now I can see what articles people are looking at, what time of the day, and where they're from!

It's a stalker's dream tool I tells ya.

Anyway, I was playing around with it and some of the things people are looking at, where they come from, and what articles are most popular are really surprising. Here's just a sample of what I found:

The top ten countries people are reading from:

As you can tell, almost 2/3rds are from Canada. Which is really to be expected, but coming in at #3 is the Netherlands?

In that case:

Daar Nederland! Ik hoor uw vis is lekkere dingen, ik zou graag willen kloof mijzelf op sommige ergens.

Also from around the world, almost half of the people who visit Hammelltime are using Internet Explorer.

I would like to use this time to direct you to here:

Firefox and Chrome

Download and install one or other, let's turn these statistics around. Just because IE comes installed on your computer, doesn't mean you have to use it.

Here's what traffic Google is directing to my blog. Some of it I think makes sense, but I'm a little embarrassed that the #3 top search is , and a couple of others are specifically about an entry on my shoes making a squishy noise when I walk in them.

To give you an updater on that story, I quit caring that my shoes made that noise, and threw them out.

Some of where the traffic comes from is pretty neat too. Most of it is from blogger itself, but there's a couple neat ones.

The Absurd Intellectual linked to me in an article that was about the Russian numbers station UVB-76 (which has had more mysterious broadcast in August than ever before) Wilco's album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot after an old roommate of mine (you can read her poetry here) referred him to me. It's ironic because I'm not a big Wilco fan. At all.

Oh, and if you Google "Slush Cup" three pictures of mine including one of me mostly nekkid come up on page one.

Finally, and here's the most inexplicable one:

Top Pages

Three articles, most of which have a minimal amount of comments, are the most popular of all time. Well, over the past month and a half or so.

Talking to Dennis Quaid must be a misleading title that attracts attention, because that article is about how I liked the movie Frequency.

As for #3, I didn't know that the Axe shower tool was such a popular item that people would actually research it before its purchase. Seriously. It's a crappy loofah.

In summary, Axe and Dennis Quaid owe me money.

You guys can pony up whenever you like. I do accept doubloons as payments.

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart - JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound (Wilco cover)