Long-form

Long-form blog posts and editorials. Topics cover both personal and the world at large. 

One last chance - 10 things I think

10 THINGS I THINK

1. I’m not the lease excited about the prospects of a third Spider-Man origin story within the last 15 years. I understand the franchise is starting afresh within the Marvel universe, but can’t they just skip all the getting bit by a spider business and get on with fleshing out new stories?

Sadly, people are no doubt still going to come out in droves to see the forthcoming Spider-Man movie, even if it means seeing Uncle Ben get murdered for the third time.

2. Bravo to the lovely and talented Taylor Swift in standing up to the great Apple empire. Her open letter to the Cupertino tech giant made Apple reverse course, and will now pay artists for streamed songs on their forthcoming Apple Music platform during the free three-month trial period.

Now if only she can get Apple to finally make a Macbook Air with a retina display (no, the MacBook is far from being that).

3. Dietrich Mateschitz is a sore loser. When Mercedes was struggling all those years, they had the integrity to keep their mouth shut, their heads down, and got on with the program. Red Bull F1 is hurting mightily right now; publically stating your discontent with the sport and throwing your engine supplier Renault under the biggest bus ever is not going to change a damn thing. What does it say about your brand/team when the top boss comes off as such a crybaby?

4. Pride Week is always a special time here in San Francisco. I wish plenty of happiness to those who are reveling in the annual celebration. I on the other hand will be trying my best to avoid the downtown gridlock that is bound to occur during this weekend.

5. I have no words for the church shooting that happened last week in Charleston, South Carolina. Jon Stewart’s soliloquy on The Daily Show the day after best captures how I feel: people in power aren’t going to do jack shit about this terror. Nothing's going change, and that’s the ultimate tragedy in my view.

6. A woman should not displace Alexander Hamilton the 10-dollar bill. Rather, a woman should go on the 20-dollar bill in place of Andrew Jackson. Isn’t it bad enough that Hamilton got killed in a duel at the hands of Aaron Burr?

7. More than a week later and I am still in massive disbelief that Final Fantasy VII is finally getting remade for the Playstation 4 system. If you thought the wait for the announcement was lengthy and excruciating, the wait for the game’s release will be unimaginably more so. But heck, another three to four years of wait is peanuts after the incessant begging for the remake for over a decade.

8. I recently setup my GoPro Hero 4 as a dash-cam in my car, using a GoPro-branded suction cup mount. While the main purpose of a dash-cam is to have a visual recording in the event of an accident (to prove innocence or otherwise), a side benefit is that I get to review footage of the myriad of crazy drivers I encounter on the road on a daily basis. I might even throw some footage on here if it’s egregiously terrible or hilariously funny, likely both at the same time.

Now I'm just waiting for that meteor, airplane, and or a crazy Russian.

9. If your song features Fetty Wap then said song is utterly ruined.

10. I always get tremendous amounts of grass-is-greener syndrome during the summer months, because the European continent has got all the cool and awesome automotive events. Back in may it was the 24 hours of Nurburgring, last week was Le Mans, and now coming up this weekend is the Goodwood Festival of Speed. I’ve had endless dreams about living in the EU, and traversing the its fine road networks to attend all these automotive events. The views are often spectacular as well, from what I gather.

Then again, being an automotive enthusiast in California isn’t so bad. We’ve got a few marquee events here as well, one of which is the Rolex Monterey Motorsport Reunion in mid-August, which I’m most anticipating making the trip out to Laguna Seca. 

It's another wolf bite - 10 things I think

10 THINGS I THINK

1. I hope you guys voted yesterday, because if you didn't, you don't get to complain about all the wrongs in our government, local or federal. Voting is our civic duty, and a right that many have died fighting for. It doesn't take an enormous amount of time: an hour or so with the election guidebook is all it took for me. 

2. Go get Taylor Swift's latest album if you haven't, because it's absolutely brilliant. It's futile to resist the musical charm of that statuesque porcelain doll from Nashville: SNL did a sketch about that. 

3. I'm immensely excited for Christopher Nolan's latest epic, Interstellar. In an industry where digital have just about taken over, Nolan is one of the few directors who are sticking with the grand old tradition of film. Best of all, he utilizes 70mm IMAX, a medium so incredibly high in quality that contemporary digital formats can't even come remotely close to matching.

Oh right, the movie has probably got an intricate and thought-provoking story as well - as you'd expect from a Nolan production. 

4. The stock summer performance tires that came with my STI are already close to their end-of-life - and I've only done about 17,000 miles! I guess the tire's tremendous grip has it's trade-offs. Well, nobody said sports cars were inexpensive to own. Michelin Pilot Super Sports, here I come. 

5. The San Francisco Giants's run of three championships in five years is simply unbelievable, especially for a fan of the team like myself that have trudged through the very lean times. Winning the first one in 2010 was already a sweet dream come true, and now the third trophy? Simply madness. 

I'm going to cherish the Giants' recent success to the best I can, because we all understand the possibility that it may never happen again in our lifetimes. 

6. The Furious 7 and Avengers 2 teaser trailers got me yelling to the screen shut up and take my money. The 2015 summer movie season is shaping up to be legendary. 

7. The stereotype of Asians always taking photographs of their food before eating is absolutely true. This past weekend I was at a Japanese restaurant sat next to a table full of young twenty-something Asians. When their food arrived to the table, the lot of them spent the next 10 minutes or so getting just the right perspective to capture. It's a little embarrassing, if I'm honest. 

8. I'm going to put in a request to the powers at be for Marvels Agents of Shield to put on much, much more of Barbara Morse aka Mockingbird. The actress that plays her, Adrianne Palicki, is a total goddess. Please, sir, I want some more

9. It's been scientifically proven by yours truly that BMW drivers are the biggest cocks driving on our roads. The past month have saw my car almost ran into by one these lowlifes three freaking times. I absolutely love the brand, but you'd be hard pressed to find me behind the wheel of a BMW badged car any time soon. 

10. This:

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