It is summer time which means lots of time for random conversation. For some reason people always ask the magical question about pinpointing one favorite movie. And answering it is no easy task. No walk in the park.

But I’ve finally got an answer for you so stop asking!

Are you ready?

It has to be Field of Dreams.

Field of Dreams is a movie about my favorite game and it is a father and son story that never seems to get old.

What about you?

When Apple first mentioned their upgrade I stood by my beliefs that this thing was too restricted. After all, who am I to sell my soul to AT&T? I’ve gotta stay true to T-Mobile.

Hearing about Android a few months ago helped, but being in New York City last week did not.

There were iPhones every where. And hundreds of people waiting in line to get their new phones activated in stores. God forbid someone try to unlock the 3G iPhone! [GASP]

Lifehacker had a good article the other day about why you should stay away from the iPhone, so that helped. But it really is the best phone out today. I’ve gotta be patient though…I know that Google won’t stand for this restricted phone.

In the back of my mind I’ve got to remember that Apple is the only company that a year ago could release a touchscreen super phone without 3G connection, without GPS, without a video camera, and without the ability to send picture messages and still sell tons of them to their loyal fan base.

They have earned that reputation, but I don’t want a crippled phone, I want everything it is capable of doing.

In my moments of weakness I have merely gone to the Apple website, then quickly read up on Android. I haven’t waited in line at an Apple store at 7 a.m. And I won’t.

Have you?

This review does contain spoilers!

The DARK Knight

Batman really is a dark super hero. I’ll be honest I don’t know a lot about the character or about the whole comic book scene in general. But I felt that compared to most superhero action movies The Dark Knight lived up to its name.

Batman is a hero, but he takes the fall for Gotham City. I think my feelings about the Batman character are summed up perfectly at the end of the movie when Batman keeps Harvey’s secret away from the public and takes the blame. He is the hero Gotham needs and that is not always a glamorous role.

I also felt that Heith Ledger’s Joker was far darker than any other villian in the Batman movies. A lot of people in the theatre were laughing at some of his lines but I could not get myself to do that. It was dark, and felt laughing at it was too much.

Why so serious?

You can’t see this movie and not judge the Joker, a crazy villian who has no real identity and who has no real plan. The Joker says this in the movie, that he is a dog chasing a car, once he catches once he doesn’t know what to do.

While most of the villians he is working with are after money the Joker does not care about these things at all, he is simply doing what he does to create chaos.

Who really knows the cause of his scars on his face. The Joker goes into three different scenarios about how it happened. All of which added to the darkness of insanity of this villian.

His plans always seemed to work out because he had nothing to care about. No one attached to him, and his chaotic schemes seemed to work in his favor, even if it meant getting caught by the police. If you’re looking for twists you can just watch the scenes with the Joker because they were around every corner with his role.

Harvey = Two Face

Wow! I did not see that coming. Clearly I don’t know anything about Batman because my friends all knew it. Harvey was such a strong District Attorney for Gotham City, and a guy that I felt like could work with Batman. I had no idea that he would become Two Face in this movie.

While it was quite a twist to add to the second of the new series of movies, I was kind of disappointed at Two Face’s short lived role in the films. I really think that Harvey could have been a whole new film but I won’t question it because I enjoyed how he fit into The Dark Knight.

Giving The Dark Knight a grade

This is tough because I was all over the place with this movie. Christian Bale’s Batman voice drove me crazy the entire time, but I thought the action was fantastic, no crazy CGI stuff here. Harvey and the Joker were fantastic villians so I would have to say:

95% A - If you haven’t seen it yet, its the hit of the 2008 summer

People have had tickets to the midnight showing of this movie for over a week here in Maryland. I just bought tickets for a 12:30 am show on Fandango for it last night.

A lot of theatres have planned to show this movie in most if not all of their screens. That is what the theatre I’m going to is doing. Another theatre is playing this movie all night, with showings at 3 and 6 am!

I saw Batman Begins and thought it was decent, a lot of people thought it was way more amazing than I thought it was. It reminded me a lot of the mystique that 300 received, I feel like they’re both good flicks but had a lot of hype.

The Dark Knight also has a lot of people going just to see Heath Ledger as the Joker. I have to be honest his character does look intriguing. I know a lot of people are claiming it to be his best performance. Many blame the darkness of his character for his death, which I personally think is a stretch. Either way it will be worth watching to see the new Joker.

High Definition Trailer for ‘The Dark Knight’

So are you going to see the box office hit of the summer tonight at midnight?

See you there.

• READ! - I started reading a great book about Jim Palmer and Earl Weaver over my vacation in North Carolina. It is an awesome read, but I’m just a bad book reader. I want to finish it soon and I have a few other books I would like to read before I go back to school.
• Modify my car - So far I have tinted the windows and added an antenna and a German plate to my 04 Passat. I’ve got lots of ideas of what is next, I just need to financially be able to do make them all happen. There is a VW Show in York, PA on August 2nd that I plan to attend and a huge show on September 28 in Ocean City that I would like to go to.
• Save some cash - This might conflict with my second goal, but I would like to put away some money for the school year. So far I have been pretty good about saving, I just need to continue it.
• Learn to cook - When I first moved into my apartment I ate horribly, because I had never cooked a decent meal in my life. It was frozen burritos and canned foods for quite some time. It drove me crazy. So I have been learning to cook a few little things as I go and I hope to keep that going. I make pretty good chicken quesadillas, chicken tacos, and have even baked cookies. I don’t expect to be an expert, I just want to have a good foundation of meals for the next school year.
• Keep zamwi moving - I have a lot of goals for this blog. It took a bit of time off but I want to make sure that does not happen anymore. I would like to do more video work on the site, because that is where the internet is moving and an area that I love. I want to try and post good information as well as keeping my friends who are all over the world updated with what is going on in my life.
• Document - I bought a Flip camera about a month ago just for fun. I have been carrying it with me everywhere and it has become a part of my day. I want to film some of the exciting parts of my life and share them right here.
• Take advantage of every free second - I stay up late and sleep in, but I want to make sure that any free time I have I take advantage of. So far I’ve been to North Carolina, New York City, Washington D.C., and Hershey Park twice. I’d say I’m off to a good start.

So that’s where I am. I’ll check back at the end of August to see how I did.

What do you want to do with the rest of your summer?

I just can’t turn away from the All Star Game though. Now its tied in the bottom of the 14th 3-3 and the Orioles George Sherrill has pitched 2 1/3 scoreless innings, which is crazy for a closer. (MVP ?)

I’d love to see the A.L. win, but my 10 hours of sleep in the past 2 days is really starting to catch up to me.

By the way my ast day of break is tomorrow, I think I’m going to take it easy…but I’ll get back to you for sure for confirmation.

Update: The AL just won 4-3.

Major League Basebal had stuff all over the city, two story buses full of screaming fans were pretty common. Naturally, I hit Time Square and a few of the shops on Fifth Avenue.

My view of Time Square - July 14, 2008

I could not believe that wait for the new iPhone at Apple’s legendary cube store. There must have been 300 people waiting outside to buy and activate the 3G iPhone. Crazy.

I also took an NBC tour, which I have been wanting to do since my first trip to New York. I got to see the Saturday Night Live Studio, a few control rooms, and Brian Williams set for the NBC Nightly News. Very big studios, lots of nice equipment.

I decided to continue my break tomorrow with another trip to Hershey Park. As always you can catch me on twitter throughout the day!

That means that I have 3 (yes 3) days off of work. I plan on taking full advantage of these days. I have had vacation earlier this year, but besides that trip this will be my longest break from work until September 30. In fact I have only 7 days off after the All Star Break.

I was in Hershey Park the other day, but tomorrow I begin with New York City, where I plan on hitting the typical tourist spots. I definitely want to do an NBC tour this time around at the big apple.

I’ll be texting updates to twitter all day, so stay tuned for day one of the All Star Break.

At the beach I starter reading Palmer and Weaver: Together we were Eleven foot Nine, being a huge Orioles fan I like to take a look back at their history, with the stories of their best manager and best pitcher.

- SaveTheInternet.com

I’m not anti-green, I just think that this whole thing gets really really hyped.

I don’t know how I feel about global warming. True, not true. Seems pretty normal to me. I’ve heard both sides, that we go through warmer and colder trends, or that we’re going to melt this earth in 10 years. I don’t know.

I still think global warming was a good way for people to remember Al Gore again. He’s made a lot of money off the topic. Now he’s got us by the balls with a theory (yup I said it), and suddenly all the hippies are rising.

But Earth day. Right, earth day?

Everyone is trying to be so green and friendly, we’re still paying 4 bucks a gallon for gas in our 10 MPG Suburbans (God bless America), and if we really wanted cars that were more environmentally friendly then we would have had them long ago. I’m not talking about hybrids, maybe a biofueled car, or even solar (yeah the sun).

Hybrids aren’t for men first of all, and only the rich drive them. They’re a joke, and the hybrid SUVs get less MPGs than my 04 V Dub.

Anyway…

If our government was truly concerned about it they would have “green” cars, but they don’t mind us constantly running to the pump.

I really don’t think people care. Take my school for example. I walked into the fine Newell Dining Hall here at Towson University and was informed that for Earth Day Towson was asking students not use use trays to put your food on, only plates. This bewildered me. So no trays….

Save the earth.

Right…

I guess it saves water for not having to clean them? I don’t know. But part of no trays meant that students ate smaller meals. Which I suppose meant that we were wasting less. We had to scrape our plates into this disgusting tub of food to measure how much we wasted and the school is going to weigh the garbage over a series of weeks.

Sounds great right?

Think about it though. Is this saving the earth, or saving more money for my money grubbing school? You walk in, don’t use a tray, which means Towson doesn’t have to hire someone to clean that tray, we eat less because of the tray meaning that Towson saves money on food, we scrape off the plates, saving Towson more time and money. But after we were done, we had to put our plates on a tray to put them in the dish washing room.

Where is the earth in all this? Probably looking around as confused as I am.

I don’t get it.

I’m not saying stop trying to save the planet, I’m saying stop and look around at how much you’re really doing.

Honestly its the hippies who are concerned about earth. The same people that will go out and spend 5 bucks a pack on cigarettes, which are great for the environment I’m sure. They’re going to make me feel back because I use a tray? Nope.

I think I’ll keep my gas powered car, my dinner tray, and my normal routine. I’m gonna drive around needlessly and maybe burn some plastic here or there. You, let me know when you have a real plan for saving this planet. If it even needs the help to begin with.