Best Movie Quotes

Originally, I was going to include the movies associated with each quote, but then I thought it would be more fun to have you guess where I got them from. Bonus points to whoever can guess the most. Only one quite per movie. Also, they aren't listed in any particular order.


1. I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!

2. You know what the worst part is? I’m not even supposed to be here today!

3. To my big brother George, the richest man in town.

4. Madness! Madness!

5. Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

6. I am your father.

7. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

8. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

9. I hope that their first child be a masculine child.

10. I’m sorry, Dave, I’ m afraid I can’t do that.

11. I did not hit her. It’s not true. It’s bullshit! I did not hit her! I did not! Oh, hi Mark.

12. I am a golden god!

13. It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.

14. A boy’s best friend is his mother.

15. There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops, or greasers. You are all equally worthless in my eyes.

16. I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

17. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

18. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

19. Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!

20. Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good an’ they die out. But we keep a’comin’. We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out; they can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, ‘cause we’re the people.

21. You’ll shoot your eye out.

22. I’ll have what she’s having.

23. Do you expect me to talk? No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.

24. The stuff dreams are made of.

25. I fart in your general direction.

26. Cream? No, thank you, I take it black, like my men.

27. All right Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.

28. Funny how? I mean, funny like I’m a clown? I amuse you?

29. Hey, don’t knock masturbation. Its sex with someone I love.

30. Again we are defeated. The winners are those farmers. Not us.

31. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like victory.

32. Mungo just pawn in game of life.

33. What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.

34. Plastics.

35. How much more black could this be? And the answer is none, none more black.

36. You’re a very nosy fellow, kitty cat. You know what happens to nosy fellows? They lose their noses.

37. If you have to shoot… shoot. Don’t talk.

38. I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!

39. My own. My precious.

40. You don’t understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it.

41. Are you gonna bark all day little doggie, or are you gonna bite?

42. Well, nobody’s perfect.

43. I’ma get medieval on your ass.

44. God damn you Walter! You fuckin’ asshole! Everything’s a fuckin’ travesty with you, man! And what was all that shit about Vietnam? What the fuck had anything got to do with Vietnam? What the fuck are you talking about?

45. I would have followed you my brother, my captain, my king.

46. There should be enough. Enough for what? The journey home.

47. You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?

48. Old brother left hand, left hand he's a fighting, and it looks like love's a goner. But wait a minute! Hot dog, love's a winning! Yessirree! It's love that's won, and old left hand hate is down for the count!

49. "Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to discover that he had been transformed into a giant cockroach." Nah, it's too good.

50. That was God laughing at me. Through that obscene giggle.

51. I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is never get involved in a land war in Asia - but only slightly less well-known is this: Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha….

2012 Oscars

The Oscars were last weekend and beforehand I picked out, as usual, my opinions on who would win and my predictions on who would actually win. Here is that list along with the results and a bit of commentary.

Best Picture
Should Win: The Artist
Will Win: The Artist
Did Win: The Artist
The most important Oscar went to my favorite movie of the year so I am pleased. Though I do remain disappointed that Drive wasn't even nominated.

Best Director
Should Win: Michael Hazanavicius
Will Win: Alexander Payne
Did Win: Michael Hazanavicius
I was pleasantly surprised at this. I knew Scorcese would never win and I was pessimistic that the Academy wouldn't recognize Hazanavicius which is why I predicted Payne.


Best Actor
Should Win: Jean Dujardin
Will Win: Jean Dujardin
Did Win: Jean Dujardin
All I can say is why wasn't Ryan Gosling nominated for Drive?

Best Actress
Should Win: anyone but Meryl Streep
Will Win: Viola Davis
Did Win: Meryl Streep
I was among those who Meryl Streep addressed at the beginning of her acceptance speech. It's really hard to stay mad at that woman.

Best Supporting Actor
Should Win: Christopher Plummer because he’s Canadian
Will Win: I dunno. Nick Nolte?
Did Win: Christopher Plummer
I knew Jonah Hill didn't stand a chance and I figured it would go to one of the old timers, but which one it would be was more difficult to call. In the end, Plummer had the best acceptance speech of the night.

Best Supporting Actress
Should Win: Berenice Bejo
Will Win: Berenice Bejo
Did Win: Octavia Spencer
I probably should have had this one, but for some reason I thought it was Viola Davis who had all the buzz and not Spencer. Oh well.

Best Original Screenplay
Should Win: The Artist
Will Win: The Artist
Did Win: Midnight in Paris
I found this result to be rather disappointing. That is all.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Should Win: The Descendants
Will Win: Hugo
Did Win: The Descendants
I find it interesting that neither of what I considered to be the top contenders for Best Picture (The Artist and Hugo) won for screenplay.

Best Documentary
Should Win: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Will Win: Hell and Back Again
Did Win: Undefeated
And now we enter into the world of random guesses based mostly on the title of the movies.

Best Foreign Film
Should Win: Monsieur Lazhar
Will Win: Footnote
Did Win: A Separation
I dropped the ball on this won. If I had noticed that A Separation was also nominated for screenplay then I probably would have called it.

Best Animated Feature
Should Win: Rango
Will Win: One of the foreign ones
Did Win: Rango
I don't really have anything to add here.

Best Original Score
Should Win: The Artist
Will Win: The Artist
Did Win: The Artist
If it didn't go to The Artist, I would have been pissed.

Best Original Song
Should Win: Man or Muppet
Will Win: Man or Muppet
Did Win: Man or Muppet
Bret McKenzie is awesome.

Best Cinematography
Should Win: The Artist
Will Win: Hugo
Did Win: Hugo
I guess I can accept that Hugo had nice cinematography.

Best Live Short
Should Win: Tuba Atlantic
Will Win: Time Freak
Did Win: The Shore
Based on the clips they played when they listed the nominees, The Shore looked to be the most boring.

Best Animated Short
Should Win: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Will Win: Dimanche
Did Win: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Looks like a nice short.

Best Documentary Short
Should Win: God is the Bigger Elvis
Will Win: The Barber of Birmingham
Did Win: Saving Face
I haven't seen any of the movies in this category.

Best Costumes
Should Win: The Artist
Will Win: The Artist
Did Win: The Artist
People in the 20's/30's sure were snappy dressers. And had sweet mustaches.

Best Makeup
Should Win: Harry Potter
Will Win: Harry Potter
Did Win: The Iron Lady
Ok. Sure. Why not.

Best Art Direction
Should Win: The Artist
Will Win: Hugo
Did Win: Hugo
I find it slightly humorous that a movie called "The Artist" didn't win for Art Direction.

Best Special Effects
Should Win: Planet of the Apes
Will Win: Harry Potter
Did Win: Hugo
I highly expected them to give the Harry Potter phenomenon at least some recognition now that its basically over. I was wrong.

Best Film Editing
Should Win: The Artist
Will Win: The Artist
Did Win: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Of all the wins on Oscar night, this one was the most random.

Best Sound Editing
Should Win: Drive
Will Win: Hugo
Did Win: Hugo
It is my great displeasure to say that this is the only category Drive was nominated in.

Best Sound Mixing
Should Win: Moneyball
Will Win: Hugo
Did Win: Hugo
Every other year they tell us the difference between sound editing and sound mixing and I always forget within 5 minutes. It doesn't really matter anyway since if a movie wins in one category it almost always wins in the other.

Board Game Taglines

I play a lot of board games, but rarely do I pay much attention to what’s on the box. However, after taking a closer look I discovered that quite a bit of effort went into the design of these boxes. After taking an even closer look, I realized that none of this effort went into coming up with a catchy tagline for the games. Below are some of my favorites.

Reminiscing – The game for people over thirty.

I never thought anyone would make a game designed specifically to remind people how old they are, but here’s proof to the contrary. I have to give props to the tagline for conveying the intended demographic to any potential buyers and scaring away anybody who is young and/or cool. From what I can tell, it’s just a simple trivia game that focuses on pop culture and history, but I still refuse to play it on principle.

Quiddler – For the fun of words.

If you think words are fun, then congratulations, you’re a social outcast! That being said, I don’t have anything against words or proper spelling. It’s just that I don’t exactly link them with good times either. I blame Scrabble for that mostly. Quiddler is actually an alright game surprisingly, though it does drag on a bit when every person spends twenty minutes trying to spell the best possible word(s). That’s about when Catchphrase starts to look like an attractive prospect.

Kings and Things – A fantasy board game with everything.

That tagline might seem innocuous at first, but that’s only because I left out the massive list of every unit in the game that follows that statement. Nothing says “this game will eat hours of your life away and confuse everyone involved” like a giant wall of text before you even open the rulebook. The game doesn’t even live up to its tagline seeing as how kobolds are conspicuously absent. Then again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Kobolds fucking suck.

Titan – The monster slugathon fanstasy wargame.

This tagline makes the game sound like an epic fun time where you’re just throwing dragons and shit at one another while laughing maniacally. Sadly, we have all been misled. This game has the most convoluted set of rules I’ve yet encountered and takes an absurdly long time to play. My friends and I tried it once and spent the whole time wandering around the board deliberately avoiding one another because we were too afraid to start a battle and have to deal with all the confusion that entails. I’m pretty sure Apples to Apples gets more aggressive than that game.

Zombies!!! – This one’s a no-brainer!

Hahaha! That’s hilarious! Because it’s a game about zombies and zombies eat brains! Hahaha! I get it! I don’t even know why I included this one on the list!

Stock Ticker – An exciting stock trading game for ages 9 to adults.

The words “exciting” and “stock trading” should never appear in the same sentence together. It’s a contradiction in terms and nobody will be fooled by it. And holy shit, are they actually suggesting we force 9 year-olds to play this game? What would they have to do to deserve that punishment? It could be worse I suppose. It could be Monopoly.

Theories – It’s a game.

Wow! Yes! Absolutely! I see nothing wrong with this. Whoever came up with this is a genius. I can see how that meeting went down right now:

Executive: Alright everybody, we’re not leaving this room until we have a tagline for this new game, what’s it called?

Employee 1: Theories.

Executive: Right! Theories! So what have you guys got?

Employee 1: Um…

Employee 2: Er….

Employee 3: I… got nothing.

Executive: Come on people! Think! What can you tell me about Theories?

Employee 1: Um…

Employee 2: Er…

Employee 3: It’s a… game…

Executive: Perfect! Brilliant! I love it! Well that was a great brainstorming session everyone. I think it’s time we took a well deserved cocaine break.

Guillotine – The revolutionary card game where you win by getting a head.

Some context: in this game you play an executioner during the French Revolution trying to collect the heads of various nobles. Armed with that knowledge and looking back at that tagline you just know that whoever came up with that pun-filled sentence still giggles to himself every night before he goes to bed. I like puns as much as the next guy, which is to say that I get tired of one after the second time somebody repeats it with a stupid grin on their face. With two puns in one only means I get tired of it twice as fast.

Bonus points to whoever comes up with a clever tagline for their favorite board game.

Skyrim

I’ve been playing a lot of Skyrim lately and as most of you probably know it has been receiving rave reviews from pretty much everybody. Although this game is good, great even, and has many fine points I’m going to instead quibble over all the minor details that moderately irritate me.

Gold is Meaningless

It is so easy to accumulate wealth in this game that it makes me wonder how any of the NPCs in Skyrim can possibly be poor. I have so much money that I’ve pretty much stopped looting dungeons and if I can throw money at a problem to make it go away then I’ll be sure to do it, because I actually don’t know what else to do with it. The only other thing I use it for is to buy arrows from vendors so I can sell more loot to them (what little I bother to take). On that note, I find it annoying that vendors have a limited amount of money. The Elder Scrolls is about the only RPG series I can think of where merchants run out of gold which is just another reason to never loot unless you want to travel to every shop in the province so you sell all your crap. Now when I find a valuable magical sword worth thousands of dollars I think to myself, “this is more hassle than its worth” and just leave it lying there.

Dragon Fights Get Old after a While

The first few times you fight a dragon it’s pretty tense and exciting, but once you figure out how to take care of them it quickly becomes repetitive and annoying. For the most part, fighting a dragon follows this pattern: hide from its fire, shoot it with an arrow, it flies into the air, wait for it to land, rinse and repeat. For what is supposed to be an epic experience, a surprising amount of dragon fights is spent doing nothing. I’ve gotten rather tired of fighting them now so whenever one appears over the countryside to harass me, I either ignore it and continue on my merry way, or if that fails then reload from the nearest save and go do something else.

Buggy Quests

I currently have four quests in my journal that are impossible for me to hand in, and five quest items that I have no way to dispose of. It clutters up space in my log and inventory and even though it has no effect on gameplay (other than some of the quest items weighing me down), it still bothers me for some reason. It’s just one of those things that you expect would have been fixed before release.

Sneaking is Weird

I always make a sneaky character in Elder Scrolls games and it’s often a somewhat overpowered mechanic that let’s you to get one-hit kills without any risk to your own body. Skyrim seems to have struck a weird balance where it is either obscenely powerful or sort of useless. My sneak is high enough that I can actually land on top of a person’s head and they still won’t notice me. But once I shoot an arrow at that person and kill him instantly, then suddenly all of his friends in a five mile radius will know exactly where I am and come running. And that’s why invisibility is great.

The Circle of Crafting

There are three crafting skills in Skyrim: alchemy, enchanting, and smithing. If you put your mind to it then you can combine the three to make absurdly powerful weapons and armor. First make a potion to buff your enchanting, then enchanting an item to buff alchemy, then wear that item and make another, stronger potion to buff enchanting. Do this back and forth until you reach the desired level of overpoweredness. Then enchant as much apparel as you can to buff smithing and make a potion of smithing. Put on the apparel and drink the potion then create a bow that does insane amounts of damage. Congratulations, you beat Skyrim.

Magic Horses

I don’t really dislike how horses can climb up even the steepest mountains with ease. In fact, I find it incredibly useful seeing as how my character can barely climb up a hill, but that doesn’t stop it from being rather strange and a little bit glitchy. Of course, though getting up is easy, getting the horse down the mountain will almost certainly spell death for the poor creature who all of a sudden can’t find his footing. Strangely, my character has no problem at all climbing down mountains, so now I’ve developed a strategy where I take my horse to the top, dismount, climb down the other side, then meet up with him again when I map travel. It’s very convenient.

Laughable Traps

One thing the developers put into their dungeons in what I’m assuming was an attempt to make them more challenging were a variety of booby traps. This includes tumbling boulders, swinging axes, fire floors, and poison darts. I don’t give a shit about any of them and will sometimes deliberately stand in them just for laughs. They do a pitiful amount of damage. If I see that a chest or door is trapped, I say “fuck it” and open it anyway because the worst that will happen is absolutely nothing.

Fetch Quests

I remember when I played Oblivion, being impressed by the amount of what I thought were original and exciting quests. I remember stealing an Elder Scroll, going inside a painting, slowly murdering all the guests at a party, and making it rain burning dogs and loving every minute of it. Although Skyrim definitely has many more quests, there are very few that stick out in my mind. The majority of them boil down to “go to x dungeon and bring back y item,” though some will have you kill a guy instead. Some people will simply send you to deliver an item to a guy next door, which though easy money is kind of insulting to the value of my character. So far the only quests that really impressed me are the daedric ones, but I still need to play through the main storyline so I’m hopeful that this may change.

Bonus points to whoever describes their favorite bug in a video game.

BGC Membership

Since I got bored of waiting for Daniel to make an official website to do this, I just decided to put it up here. Enjoy.

Name: Tristan Harris Rank: President Stance on Friendship: Loves

Tristan possesses a startling natural intelligence, but makes up for it by having almost no ambition whatsoever, and is consequently going nowhere. For this reason we gave him the presidency so he feels like his life has meaning. That and because he has all the board games. In fact, that’s about the only reason why he ever gets invited out to anything as he’s kind of an asshole in almost every other regard. If he didn’t own the games (or somebody else also had them) then there’d be no reason for him to leave his house, and he’d just spend all free time alone playing TF2.

Name: Joanna Chan Rank: Lord Commander of the Night's Watch

Stance on Friendship: Loves

Our newly appointed Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, Joanna, has done a stellar job doing the job of the vice-president/treasurer and is essentially second-in-command. Originally, we just made up the position because is sounded cool and it didn't come with any  real duties, responsibilities, or privileges. Since then, Joanna has proven adept at organizing pizza parties and bringing juice so we have expanded her role. Joanna spends most of her time being friendly, treating fiction as though it’s real life, and secretly plotting to steal the presidency. She also doesn’t like it when you walk on carpets with your shoes on, so be sure to do that all the time when she’s around.

Name: Joyce Ngu Rank: Treasurer Stance on Friendship: Loves

Sometimes we like to play a drinking game in the club where we try to think of something Joyce isn’t afraid of. If she’s afraid of it then you have to drink. If she’s not afraid of it then everybody else has to drink. So far, the latter situation has yet to occur. Things we have learned that scare her includes, but is not limited to: thunder, rain, zombies, being the center of attention, things pertaining to sex, and the critically acclaimed film, The Descendants. With the help of her friends however, Joyce is slowly conquering her fears and we’re hopeful that one day soon she’ll be able to leave her bedroom.

Name: Zach Cochrane Rank: Secretary Stance on Friendship: Loves

If you want to get anything done in the club, Zach is the guy you should talk to. He sends out the emails, books the rooms, reserves TVs, and handles the grant money. Despite his aptitude for the practical things in life, Zach is surprisingly clueless when it comes to street smarts. For the longest time he thought 4/20 was a gang and his knowledge of sexual terminology and euphemisms is hilariously low. This coupled with his crippling inability to form his sentences properly has led to some pretty fantastic quotes which you can learn all about when you come to the club.

Name: Michelle Tran Rank: Vice-President Stance on Friendship: Hates

You might not want to say this to her face, but Michelle is a bit of a hipster. She’ll never admit it, but all of the evidence points to her being if not a hipster, then the closest thing to a hipster currently in BGC. She has a fondness for clothing from or to do with 80’s, has been known to make finger mustaches, and has attended a music festival in the hipster capital of BC (also the capital of BC), Victoria. And this is just scraping the surface of all the evidence we’ve accumulated over the years. Her other hobbies include bailing on friends and then lying about it, sacrificing her life to League of Legends, and being tired/half-dead most of the time.

Name: Brendan Lee Rank: Assistant to the Regional Manager Stance on Friendship: Hates

Brendan is one of our most devoted members who attends almost all of our meetings and events, and is always up for playing video games with you outside of the club. Despite this, Brendan hates you and everybody and everything with a passion (except for Dominion). He yells and swears at everything, and the only tone of voice he knows is bitchy. I think we’re all still technically friends with him, because he deigns to hang out with us, though he makes me wonder how he treats those he dislikes. On an unrelated note, he has a fascination with guns so it’s probably best to stay on his good side.

Name: Damian Craig Rank: External Relations Officer Stance on Friendship: Loves

There are few who can claim to be as kingly or as tall as Damian. He’s appeared in our student newspaper on three separate occasions and doesn’t even go to SFU. He can pull off both a kilt and a bowtie and receive nothing but compliments. He worked at Disneyworld as a lifeguard and saved the lives of half-wit children on a daily basis. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that Damian is a pretty cool guy. His only real fault is his terrible taste in movies. In his opinion, Juno sucks and Sex Drive is awesome. I guess it just goes to show that nobody’s perfect.

Name: Dana Robelle Rank: Official Photographer Stance on Friendship:Loves

There are two things that Dana likes: taking pictures and shoes/feet. Whenever she takes a picture of shoes or feet… well let’s just say it makes her happy. When Dana’s around you can be sure that she’s taking pictures or recording almost everything with her camera regardless of how uninteresting it may be. If you’re hiding from the mob or some other organization, then I’d advise you to stay well away from her. Speaking from personal experience, it’s also a bad idea to say embarrassing or incriminating things in her presence.

Name: Eddy Ha Rank: Member? Stance on Friendship: Hates

BGC members discount the existence of Eddy Ha and consider him to be a combination of folklore, misidentification and hoax, rather than a living person in part because nobody has seen him in such a long time, or in fact has any recollection of his existence beyond a few blurry photographs. A few members such as Michelle Tran and Aleck Pham, have expressed interest and belief in the creature, with Pham expressing the opinion that evidence collected of alleged Eddy Ha encounters warrants further evaluation and testing. Eddy Ha remains one of the more famous examples of an imaginary person, and an enduring legend.

Name: David Stocks Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Indifferent

David is American, but more importantly, David has a majestic beard. Those are really the only two things you really need to know about David, but there are other things about him that you may find interesting about him. He likes to match up his shoes and socks in fun ways. He often really gets into board games and will yell at you if you start making retarded moves. He also has a very unique laugh. But mostly the beard.

Name: Justin Chow Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Hates

When Justin is in the room the usage of the word “penis” and its synonyms increases by at least 500%. His vocabulary is pretty much limited to those words and laughter which led us all to believe that he was mentally handicapped. Because we’re a rather insensitive bunch, we gave him a hard time for his retardation and so he moved all the way to Penticton to be as far away from us as possible (also for co-op). Since then, it’s certainly been a lot quieter at BGC. At times we wish he’d come back, but then one time he did, took a sip of beer, and lost even that little ability he had to control himself. It was a memorable night, but also deeply humiliating for all involved.

Name: Lily Sung Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Hates

Now I’m not saying Lily is the most twisted and depraved of all our members, but behind that bright smile lurks something… darker. She is almost always peppy and upbeat especially when faced with images of death, gore, and blood. Her eyes are pregnant with malice and to look into them is to see the true face of despair. Her mere presence fills one with forebodings of doom that cannot be shaken. Whatever her plans for the future are, they can only mean total darkness for all mankind. None of us are safe!

Name: Aleck Pham Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Indifferent

Aleck is the life of the party and everybody enjoys his company, but sadly he doesn’t really care about any of us. Sure, he’ll make an appearance and tell a few jokes, but then he has to move on to some other party at some other inferior club. He’s like that boyfriend who you know has other girls on the side, but you stick with him anyway, latch onto him even, and relish any attention he gives you. For his part, he knows you’ll always be there for him when he needs you so he doesn’t feel the need to treat you special. Meanwhile, the BGC cries itself to sleep every night wishing he were there to cuddle with.

Name: Kerry Woodrow Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Loves

I would normally spend time making fun of Kerry here and poking fun at his weaknesses, but I won’t for two reasons. Firstly, because Kerry is the DM for my D&D group and can thus do horrible things to my character, and secondly, because Kerry is such a swell guy who is as perfect as a human being can get. Yep, that Kerry such is cool. We should all go to Gamedeals right now, buy up everything they have in stock, and say that Kerry sent us. Please give me a better battleaxe.

Name: Himmy Choy Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Indifferent

Nobody asked who the strange man was in the blue scrubs and the paper mask when he first showed up to one of our meetings. Nobody questioned why he pranced around like a lunatic chanting in a high pitched voice. When he revealed his name to be Himmy nobody inquired as to what kind of name is that. And certainly nobody demanded to know why he was a carrying a bloody knife around with him. Since that fateful day Himmy appears fairly consistently to taunt us and play Dominion, and has even claimed one of our members for his own. She did not put up much resistance.

Name: Mike Fournier Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Loves

Mike’s primary function in the BGC is to tell us about good restaurants in the area we can eat at after we’re done playing games. Normally he leads us to good eats, but on occasion we also end up at a place like Mexican Chicken Hof. To be fair, it was an experience albeit in the same way that explosive diarrhea is an experience, but it makes for a good story to tell nonetheless. But for every one of those we get ten peanut butter pies so Mike still comes out on top in the end.

Name: Morgan Fells Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Indifferent

Morgan has a board game collection which I am fairly certain exceeds even my own. Every week he shows up with something new and fun to play and we always look forward to his arrival. I think he’s just happy to have somebody to play all his games with besides his wife which is probably the main reason why he comes. As you may have garnered from the fact that he has a wife, Morgan is one of our oldest members and as such we generally refer to him as "The Decrepit One” and you should all do likewise. He LOVES it.

Name: Tin Ma Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Indifferent

If you like your men surly, nerdy, and potentially mentally disturbed then you’ll love Tin who is all of that and more. He comes with all the bells and whistles including muttering under his breath and uncontrollable fits of rage. As an added bonus if you ever get tired of him the way he is then just liquor him up a bit and he’ll magically transform into his complete opposite right before your very eyes. Tin is quite a catch ladies and supplies are limited so order now before it’s too late!

Name: Tian Hu Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Indifferent

What Tian lacks in thoughtfulness and intelligence he more than makes up for in being unnecessarily loud. There are countless stories of how Tian fails epically at the games we play, but my favourite has to be the time he scored zero points in Dominion and there is talk that he may have exaggerated his score. To put that in perspective, you start Dominion with three points. Then there was the memorable game of Werewolves where he didn’t clue in that all the werewolves were girls even though it was pretty much stated outright. Regardless of what game Tian is losing at, you can be certain that you’ll wish you had earplugs.

Name: Arthur Strongbody Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Loves

You’ll be hard-pressed to find somebody friendlier than Arthur. I don’t think I’ve heard him say one bad thing about anybody or even swear. He’s just an all-around nice guy. Consequently, he doesn’t come around to BGC that often because we’re all horrible, horrible people who strive to corrupt to your soul. One day we shall claim him for our demon king. He cannot escape our grasp forever. Until then, run and hide Arthur. Run and hide, but know that we’ll come for you when you least expect it.

Name: Andrew Jatzkowski Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Hates

When you first meet Andrew you’ll probably think he’s a fairly decent person, but know this: it is all lies. He is guilty of the crime of breaking the sacred covenant of Secret Santa. The only way to atone for such a heinous transgression is to bring food to BGC at some point for all to share. Until that day I name him beast and will say no more!

Name: Marcus Carreira Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Loves

Marcus is one of those people who will appear when you least expect them to and he's not even a stalker. Walking around New Westminster: Marcus is there. Going to the grocery store: Marcus is there. Sitting in your bedroom: Marcus is there. Thankfully, Marcus also appears when you do expect him to (such as at BGC and BGC related events) and will play games intelligently which is a lot more than most of the people on this list can say.

Name: Jonathan Doyle Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Loves

Jon, or Baby Doyle as we like to call him, being the youngest member in BGC is inconveniently under the drinking age. On the bright side, he is also the future of the BGC as the current executive grows older/closer to graduating. On second thought that's more of a dark side so let's forget what I just said and pretend that the real world doesn't exist.

Name: Cherie Shea Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Hates

Cherie is our most marginalized member in that every photograph she is in she is standing off to one side and is never at the center. We're not entirely certain why this is. Perhaps it is due to the bias of our official photographer. My theory is that Cherie prefers to watch from the sidelines, biding her time, waiting until we are most complacent before striking. I am terrified of her.

Name: Aries Li Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Indifferent

Rather than talking about how Aries is as a person I want to talk about how he looks like an old, angry, Asian dad in that photo. You can tell he's berating the other players over the importance of wheat to a strong colony or some other such point. A lot of it is in his scrunched up face, but the real kicker is the single, outraged finger waggling in the air. He commands everyone's attention except Kevin who, as per usual, doesn't give a shit.



Name: Rob Tan Rank: Member Stance on Friendship: Indifferent

This is pretty much the only photographic evidence I could find that Rob ever attended a BGC meeting and he's not even looking at the camera and the focus is on Damian (as is required by law). Despite this lack of picture proof, I know that Rob shows up frequently and I cannot help but admire his skill at dodging Dana's camera. I'm not sure how he does it, but I'm going to assume its some sort of black magic.

Name: Taylor Laan Rank: Ex-Treasurer Stance on Friendship: Hates

Taylor was our treasurer for the first 5 semesters or so of BGC, yet the only work he ever did in that capacity was to occasionally threaten to embezzle money. The fact that he’s retained this position for two and a half years is a sign of just how apathetic we are as a club. I’m pretty sure he’s been carried this far on his smile alone. He won’t hesitate to backstab you in a game, but then he’ll grin at you and you’ll forget why you were mad at him in the first place. He'll appear all happy and friendly on the outside, but don't be fooled; on the inside he is secretly plotting your gruesome death.

Name: Jenerika Csanyi Rank: Ex-VP/Member Stance on Friendship: Indifferent

Jennifer and Erika (or Jenerika as we affectionately call them) are identical twins. One of them was our vice-president, but we’re still not certain which it is. Despite their physical similarities, their personalities are almost exactly the same. They’re both unapologetic weeaboos, share the same little quirks (like putting question marks at the end of sentences that aren’t questions?), and like facial hair. The only real difference is that one of them hates friendship and the other one loves it. Together they cancel out and are indifferent.

Name: Kevin Rey Rank: Ex-VP Stance on Friendship: Hates

I’ve known Kevin for many years and I think it’s safe to say that no one shall ever surpass him in creativity for coming up with excuses to ditch his friends. Some of his more notable reasons include: eating dinner with his parents, band camp, bible camp, regattas, having a girlfriend, saxophone shopping, and “I was going to come over but then after dinner we ended up at Maddie’s house, you know Maddie right? Anyway we went there and we were having a good time and talking and stuff and you know what guys? You know what guys? I am really tired.” I think that last one succinctly summarizes both his hatred of friendship and his roundabout way of accomplishing nothing. Kevin is a special person and I’m glad to count him amoung my friends.

Name: Daniel Bowes Rank: Ex-VP Stance on Friendship: Hates

The above photo is no mistake. Daniel is a bucket of chicken grease and dirty napkins. No matter what he does or how hard he tries, Daniel always manages to ruin everything. My goal in life is to be best man at Daniel’s wedding just so I can tell the assembled family and friends what a horrible person he is. If that fails then I hope to outlive him so I can give the eulogy at his funeral. I’m not going to explain why’s he’s the worst. He knows why, and all that matters is that you don’t give him any respect.

My Top 10 Posts

On this New Year’s Eve I write my 101st post and since New Years is in general a time for looking back, and because this is a milestone of sorts for me, I thought I’d take a look back at my 10 favourite posts. I’ll start with the oldest and work my way up towards the most recent and perhaps we’ll get a few laughs along the way as we recall my brilliant writing.

January 30th, 2010 – The Room
I would be much remiss if I didn’t begin with the first post I ever wrote which I believe still holds up to this day. It was a fun and funny way to review of a movie that I don’t think can be critiqued in any conventional manner. Interestingly enough, I think it remains the longest post I ever wrote, though Honk Kong Story may be longer.

March 13th, 2010 – Ms New Booty
I kind of feel bad about extensively making fun of some woman on the internet I’ve never met, but it was pretty funny. In some small way she changed my outlook on the world. I spent quite some time on her videos and my friends and I still have plenty of inside jokes relating to it, but when I all was said and done I realized that I was sick of watching people fail at being talented. It is for this reason that I have not seen the entirety of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” and I am grateful. Also, sadly the link provided in the post no longer works, and I’m too lazy to find a new one. That’s probably for the best actually.

April 13th, 2010 – An Average Day in Maple Ridge
I’ve written many fictionalized stories about my friends, but this one stands out as the funniest and most entertaining. Even though clearly none of my friends behave so ridiculously in real life and my hometown isn’t quite as bad as I make it out to be, there is still a kernel of truth to the story which is makes it that much more enjoyable.

June 24th, 2010 – How to Be a Geek
It’s very difficult to categorize what makes a geek, and in some way I think everybody is geeky, but I think this post did a good job of outlining what makes the geekiest geek possible. It was great fun to conceive and to write, and I think makes for a pleasant read. Looking back, I’m proud to see that I have increased my geek status since I last played it as I have now gotten into D&D, dressed up as the Sniper in public, and expanded my knowledge on comic books. Still need to fulfill my manga quota however.

September 23rd, 2010 – Why Transformers is a Terrible Movie
For a blog that was originally created with the intention of exclusively writing movie reviews, I don’t really talk about movies all that often. Of the handful that I have done, this one turned out the best I think. I believe it accomplishes what it sets out to do in the title (demonstrate why Transformers sucks) and does so in a way that makes for an interesting read while looking at the bigger picture of growing trends in Hollywood.

October 18th, 2010 – The Playstation Move
Fiddling around with the Playstation Move was one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever done. Even though the Move is clearly a gimmick, I still regard that day as quality time spent with friends. Looking back on it and re-reading this post still makes me giggle as I picture that penis plane in my head with that dreadful little creature riding it. Although I hope to never have to suffer through the Move ever again, I still remember this fondly.


November 23rd, 2010 – Rules I Live By
Every now and then I do a post about myself which is normally ends up being either self-deprecating or self-aggrandizing and never a very accurate representation of myself or how I see myself. This one strikes a bit of a balance between the two extremes and is fairly truthful to how I am. I also find it to be quite humourous as I pick apart my own little quirks and shortcomings while not necessarily saying that they need to be fixed.

February 14th, 2011 – Valentine’s Day
I put a surprising amount of thought and preparation into this post, making a video and writing a sonnet specifically for a holiday that I don’t care about at all. I think the end result was relatively creative compared to most of what I do, and put a fun, devious little twist on traditional romantic gifts. Also, any excuse to remind you all of my creepy teddy bear voice is a good excuse.

June 16th, 2011 – The Vancouver Riots
The title for this piece is a bit misleading as what I wrote ended up being far more accurate than I originally intended. It was a crazy day and writing out my experiences and putting them in order helped me put it all into perspective and understand what it was I saw. The riot and my recording of it was somewhat cathartic for me, and for that reason I rank it amoung one of my best and most important posts.

December 17th, 2011 – Japanese Children’s Show Segment
There are very few posts I can think of that I enjoyed researching more than this one. Watching countless videos of a disorganized group of toddlers run around, fall over, and fail to perform a simple dance gave me more delight than it probably should have. It reminded me of going to my sister’s figure skating events. All anybody cared about or wanted to see were the little kids who could barely stay upright skate from one end of the ice to the other and then back again. All of them would fall over at some point, and at least one would only make it halfway. The occasion was as joyous as it was adorable. I also greatly enjoyed writing the article and coming up with I think is colourful imagery.

I was thinking of putting this post you’re reading right now in here as one of my favourites, but I figured there was enough pretentious bullshit on this blog as it is. Instead I’ll leave you with my hopes that you’ll continue to bear with me and my ramblings in the year to come (I don’t just write all this for me you know), and that I’ll post with greater consistency (perhaps that should be my New Years resolution). Have a good one.

Bonus points to whoever links to their own favourite post of mine.

The Room Revisited

Fun fact: this is my one hundredth post and in honour of the occasion I thought it might be fun to revisit the subject matter of my first real post, and the reason for my creation of this blog in the first place, The Room. Now by this point I am sure you’re all well aware of why this movie fails hilariously and most of you have already seen it (perhaps several times) so I won’t waste time re-describing everything that happens. Instead I’ll focus on the cult and mythos that surrounds the film and my opinions on it.

When I wrote that post way back at the beginning of 2010 I had only seen it once and invented a drinking game based on my initial impressions. Since then I have seen it countless more times, twice in a theatre filled with a screaming, spoon-throwing audience (an experience I recommend you all try even if you’ve already seen the movie, trust me when I say it’s better). Now it’s been over a year since I’ve seen it last, but will see it shortly with a group of friends that is yet to be exposed to it. I expect they’ll find it stupendously horrendous like everybody else. For my part, I’m sure I’ll laugh along with them, but I’ll have something beyond the terrible script, acting, and set design to be shaking my head at; the fact that Tommy Wiseau has managed to build a successful career off of failure.

When his movie started to become popular with audiences and word of its awfulness began to spread, Wiseau saw that people weren’t watching it for the drama and tragedy as he originally intended, but rather so they could laugh at his terrible film and mock his ineptness. A man of dignity may have halted all screenings of his film and crept away in shame, but Wiseau went a different route. He embraced the derision; he laughed along with everybody else laughing at him and pretended that this was his intention the whole time. And you know what? It worked for him. The popularity of him and The Room continue to increase, and by this point I’m sure he’s made quite a bit of money off of it. He’s turned his image of comical failure to his advantage and now stars in his own webseries, The Tommy Wi-Show, where he comically fails at video games, and the short film, The House that Drips Blood on Alex, where he comically fails at acting. It’s blatantly clear that he’s self-aware now. He’s like that weird little kid on the playground that nobody talks to or interacts with until that one day when he falls in dog shit. Everybody starts laughing at him and, desperate for any sort of attention or interaction, he laughs with them and starts piling more dog shit on himself shouting, “You love me! You really love me!” until it stops being funny and just becomes sad. Though I don’t think it’s quite reached that point yet, it’s definitely getting there. And even when it does get to that point, Wiseau will still have the millions he got from all the people who paid to see his shitty movie and he’ll have the last laugh with the joke on us.

In many ways I think Tommy Wiseau is emblematic of our culture, the man of our age you might say. We live in a world of Failblogs, Jersey Shores, and Rebecca Blacks where people with no discernible talent inexplicably find themselves in the limelight, dance their little monkey dance, and scream and tug at one another’s hair for a second longer in the public eye before finally fading into oblivion. And we eat it all up, laugh at their feeble movements, and throw nickels and dimes at their feet until we forget about them and move on to the next sideshow. Tommy Wiseau understands this system and has perfected his own method to exploit it. By not getting too big too fast he doesn’t burn out after a week. Instead he stays on the peripheral and slowly works his way towards the center, milking us for every dollar he can get while drawing it out as long as possible. In this regard he is a genius and a true visionary. But in a more accurate regard he’s a silly man with a silly accent who stumbled into popularity, thought, “Hey! I like money!” and just rolled with it.

Similar to how I’ve come to feel about Harry Potter, I find that I’ve become a shade more pessimistic regarding The Room. The original innocence and excitement I went in with when I saw it for the first time has now disappeared. This leaves me with one profound question: what ever happened to Denny?

Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what happened to Denny.