King of New York

Christopher George Latore Wallace, AKA Biggie Smalls, the Notorious B.I.G., Big Poppa, Frank White, the King of New York.

If you don't know who this is, you should get your life reassessed. He was only the greatest rapper of all time. Greatest lyricist, best flow, best rhymes, best delivery, just the greatest of all time, or GOAT as you might see him referred to as.

Biggie was born in 1972, right in the heart of Brooklyn, NY. He had the stereotypical childhood and early years of every rapper, his dad left him to be raised by his mom, dropped out of school at an early age even though he excelled at school, he was a natural at poetry and public speaking. Well maybe not the stereotypical life of EVERY rapper, I doubt some of them these days even know how to read... After he dropped out of school, he joined the crack game and would rap with all of his friends on street corners. Eventually he got caught by the cops and sent to a penitentiary, all the money he collected from dealing drugs, was used for bail.

A few years later, he got discovered by the infamous P. Diddy, who signed him to Bad Boy Records, where Biggie started working on his debut album, Ready to Die.. This album was released in 1994, and it was a HIT. It went 4x Platinum, which is a very, very big deal if you don't know. It featured many classics including, "Big Poppa", "Juicy", and "Warning." This album was received extremely positively by the rest of the world, and it instantly set new scales for rappers. Immediately, rappers started quoting his genius lines in their own songs, featuring him in songs, and lots more got jealous and started feuds with him.

Which brings us to the next important event in Biggie's life, his ridiculous, pointless beef with none other than his lifelong friend, Tupac Shakur. Supposedly the beef (this is just another word for feud)started when Tupac accused Biggie of being involved in the robbery of 'Pac's jewelry, if you don't know, rappers really value their "bling". Tupac then started to make really insane, outrageous diss songs toward Biggie, and the notorious East vs. West beef started, that ultimately led to the death of both of these legends. Biggie did not openly say anything about Tupac, instead he would use his metaphorical, subliminal style of rap to attack Tupac. Many say this was "cowardly" on his part, but in many interviews Biggie stated that he didn't want to increase this beef between the east and west coasts. Which was sincere, because he had enough lyrical skill to grind Tupac into dust if he wanted to, and everyone knows it.

In 1997, Biggie released his second, and last, studio album, Life After Death. This album was a lot different than his first one, which had a more light hearted, funny theme to it. Life After Death was darker, more serious, and dealt with much more serious topics. He rapped about many things that dealt with mafioso stories of his past, robberies he's committed, and he also released several titles that were all subliminal diss songs toward other rappers that quite frankly, shut them up. A good example of a song like this is "Kick in the Door." Biggie had a paranoia problem, by the time he released Life After Death, he pretty much thought that the world was out to get him. He released very dark titles such as, "You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Kills You", and "My Downfall." But even though these songs showed that he was suffering from lots of problems in his life, they failed to do anything else but show this man's lyrical ability and profound rapping skill that remains unmatched.

Snow Sucks

I haven't read the comments, but I'm almost positive that this happened in Iowa, if not Cedar Rapids. Snow sucks. I hate it, I hate it with a passion. Yesterday I went out to get the mail and I slipped and fell on my butt like five times. It took me like three minutes to drive up my driveway, my car was at about 6000 rpm, but I was going about four or five miles an hour. I honestly think that we shouldn't have school during the winter at all. Its ridiculous, all it does is cost everyone accidents, higher heating bills, and the happiness that gets sucked out as quickly as the day passes by. I can't think of anything worse than waking up when its pitch black, going to school, and by the time you leave you school, its already pitch black again. What the hell? I mean seriously... December, January, February, if we don't get school off, then we should at least get half days.

Snow also makes everyone have to stay inside. There is nothing more inviting to become a lazy bum and play video games all day and gain enormous amounts of weight and heart problems than staying inside all day. By the time winter is over, we look like those people in that one tall tale, Paul Bunyan or whatever its called. When there is this really really long winter and after its over everyone comes out of their houses with really long beards and such. That's how I feel at least. I don't like the cold at all. Its so uninviting, so depressing, so sickly. I would pay really good money for an opportunity to move to a place where its nice most of the year. Florida, Cali, Texas, whatever. I can't imagine what it would feel like to just throw a light coat over myself in mid December. I don't think those people really understand the blessing they have.

Snow Days

I thought that in celebration of the first snowday of the year, I would write an entry solely on snowdays.

Snowdays are a peculiar phenomenon. They are everyone a young student could wish for. Random, unannounced, intermittent days off from school that sometimes do nothing less than save ones life. All too many times, some poor soul has been spared getting ruthlessly ravaged by a math or science test, due to a snowday, like myself today. All too often, has a snowday revitalized someone, helping them get back on track, get back on their feet, so they can brave school the next day. All too often, my friends, has a snowday been coupled with a weekend, or better yet, a break, and gave people a little more time before they had to go back to school after prolonged periods of not being there.

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say, if I go to sleep at night thinking that there will be a snowday, but I'm not sure, its the worst pain that a person can experience. That nagging in the back of my head saying that when I wake up tomorrow its going to be sunny, and school will carry on as usual. That feeling that sucks all the hope out of me, that forces me to do my homework even though I'm aware that I might not need it done for the next day. And then, there is that defining moment, the climax of this whole story... when I wake up early at around five in the morning, and pray to God that there is no school and check to see if there is school or not. I either get a happy, elated, ecstatic feeling course through me, or a get a stone plummet to the bottom of the my stomach and get slapped in the face by the harsh reality that I do have school.

Assuming that we do get a snowday, and we finish said snowday, and start approaching night, many feelings start to sink in. Feelings that are associated with leaving a nice place, the first day of school, and that post- big party feeling. Like that's it... all that I looked forward to is gone. That was the big snowday. Damn did that fly by. Bittersweet, as I like to call it. And then the harsher reality hits you that you have to make it up at the end of the year, unless you're a senior, unlike myself.

Transporter 3

Over Thanksgiving Break, I went with a large crowd of avid Audi and Mercedes fans to go watch the long expected movie, Transporter 3. I haven't seen the first two installments in this series... so I kind of had no clue what was going on, but overall I'd consider this movie decent. If you're a brainless zombie that experiences pleasure in watching senseless action and morbidly unrealistic stunts performed by some hothead. If you are of that category, than you would consider this movie decent. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

From the very beginning, I could tell that this movie was one of those movies that has lots and lots of action, but the story is just a little piece at the side that no one really cares about. So they make up for that fault buy having even more action sequences. The "story" that I was able to squeeze out of this one hour and forty- five minutes is as follows: Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is a "transporter" whose job is to... um... transport the kind of hot female Ukrainian, Valentina back to her father after she was kidnapped due to some business issues regarding some environmental issues (bad ass right?) And along the way he encounters random big tough guys followed by an entourage of several more tough guys who all engage in combat with Frank in a one by one basis and all get, owned, if you will by his crazy martial arts skills.

Valentina has the most peculiar personality. At first she's acting like a lost little five year old girl that's trying to act all spoiled and doesn't want to give the guy whose supposed to save her any information. Slowly though, more specifically after she watches Frank beat some ten fifteen people with his bare hands and his suit's tie... she starts to loosen up a bit. She starts opening up to Frank, and then she completely flips into some horny, high, playful girl that wants to forget all about the mission of saving her life and have some fun with Frank. All of this is going on while Frank is dodging bullets, trucks, and an array of other obstacles on the road in his beastly Audi A8.

Than some more action happens, his car sinks in a lake and he pulls it out using the air from his tires, he drives said car onto a moving train and kills all of the bad guys. The End.

After writing this, I realized that I liked this a lot less than what I thought I did... lol.

Blackberry Storm

Hey, I just got this phone yesterday, and I thought I should write a review over it, considering I have lots of mixed feelings about this phone, and many people are anxious to hear about this new gadget.

My first impressions on this phone, way back when, when I saw the ad listed on the side of a web page, my first reactions were that this would be another one of the seemingly endless iPhone competitors that would never make it in today's market. I soon started noticing more and more ads, and realized this was serious business and that Verizon was giving this phone a little more attention than what it gave to other phones. This was all way before release mind you. So I started researching this phone, trying to find any people who had gotten their hands on this phone before it was released and figure out what they had to say about it.

Most of the testers whose articles I read, all had the same problems with the phone. Problems, that to my dismay, were still around when I purchased this phone, making me wonder why they even released phones early to get tested if all of the issues that were complained about were still evident... The biggest issue that testers complained about, was the slow response time of this phone. Something that has been making me want to snap this phone in half at times. Compared to the iPhone, I will try to not compare this to the iPhone as much as I can... but I must in this situation, anyway... compared to the iPhone, which will adjust the screen almost instantaneously when you tilt it, its about five times as slow. Loading times are also very painful, it takes about three minutes just to start the phone if you have it off. Another issue that I found with this phone, quite similar to the other deficiency, was just the lack of smoothness that's found in certain phones that I do not wish to name... When scrolling down the main menu, all of the little boxes of applications take their dandy little time until they finally fly off of the screen. I remember an incident that occurred to me almost half an hour after I first opened my phone, I was trying to set a background image, I can't stand looking at that red check that Verizon uses as their logo, and the phone just froze. I mean I couldn't do anything whatsoever to fix it, so I just wrenched the battery out of the back and just turned it on again. Now, I don't think these are problems that can be considered any less than major, considering it was doing this right off the bat.

Now, after saying all of these nasty things, you might think that I totally hate this phone, that's untrue. I actually really like it, I appreciate its sleekness, its extremely professional look, I actually like the way it looks more than the iPho... yeah you get the picture. I like how it comes with many features that one would consider extraneous, including an external eight gigabyte memory stick, built in GPS, built in Instant Messenger, and lots of other perks that I myself haven't even discovered yet. Not to mention the extremely fast internet that you can access virtually anywhere, including Kennedy High School... I will admit, Verizon has an extremely sophisticated broadband network...

Hopefully, as time goes on, if I still have this phone, and it hasn't broken, been stolen, lost, etc., I'd like to keep everyone updated on anymore news that I can find out about this phone.

Halo vs. Call of Duty Cont...

I'd like to post some montages of various players showing off their Halo/ CoD skills. I would also like to point out that you should pay close attention to what I said in the post beneath this one. If you haven't read it, read it because I don't feel like rehashing all what I just said LOL.

Call of Duty 4 Sniping skills:


Look at how often he changes the clips he is showing, mainly because he is dieing more often to due basic game mechanics. Also pay attention to the maps and how they are made to be give lots of coverage and places to hide for other players.

Halo 3 Sniping skills: (I chose to show you another sniping video in order to limit variables in this debate)


Notice the vehicles, and also notice the fact that there is no difference in view when you scope other than the obvious fact that you zoom in more. What I mean to say is, there is no breathing that might make the sniper move up and down slightly. These are just two random videos I picked out for you guys to see, I tried to limit the bias as much as I could, I have seen both videos, and these players are all very skillful at what they do. Great CoD players are great gamers in general, likewise with great Halo players. Claiming that one game is better than the other just insults those who value both games, like me and the rest of the mature gaming community.

Halo vs. Call of Duty

I decided to take a break from blogging about movies for a while, primarily because I'm not getting any views and also because there have been some interesting conversations I've been having with various people about comparing different video games.
Halo vs. Call of Duty... so many people have thought about this, so many people have just formulated their biased opinion on this subject without much thought, and when you confront these people, they claim that they know what they're talking about. It's really quite frustrating.
I'll try not to give my biased opinion on the subject as much as I can, but if I start seeming to bash a certain side, please excuse me.
Many people say say Halo was a victim to commercialism, that it was one of those games that was famous for being famous. Many others also think that Call of Duty only got its glory because of the fact that it was released after Halo and people started getting sick of Halo so they just started playing Call of Duty. All of those are superficial reasons that distract from the true problem here. Call of Duty, while it has lots of similarities to the Halos, is a fundamentally different game. Fundamentally different game. You can't compare them, you can't compare them because they are first person shooters. That's like comparing apples to oranges because they are fruits, as cliche and lame as that sounds, its the brutal truth.
I've had people come up to me and tell me that Call of Duty is much better because there aren't any vehicles, or that the physics are more realistic. I've had people insist that the reason Halo was better than CoD was because its harder to kill someone in a one on one format in Halo, therefore there is more skill required to compete as an individual. Let me break it down for everyone here, CoD is primarily a team- based shooter, with less emphasis on the individual and more on accomplishing the task at hand. You do this through careful planning and coordination with your teammates using terrain, and things like "air raids" to your advantage. Halo has less focus on team play, seeing as how you can only host sixteen players in a server, and it is considerably harder to kill someone. In CoD, if you get ambushed, there is a 99.99% you will die. It has nothing to do with the skill level of both players. It just is like that. In Halo, fights can last several seconds. Weapons are all the same, there is no ways in which to upgrade weapons or upgrade your character in anyway as opposed to CoD.