On today's show, side-show personalities and the people who love them.

This is topic that is near and dear to my heart, so I may get a little carried away here. You've been forewarned.

So my family is far from the "conventional" family, if there is such a thing. By "conventional" I guess I mean the Hollywood family. Since I've never actually met a "conventional" family, it's all I have a basis for.

So my family has had a bevy of issues. My mom was server her whole life and has a history of gambling problems, and my dad is a cynic asshole who has created his own world with its own rules that he believes and lives by. Sprinkle in a bit of domestic abuse, and you have a rough idea of my family life growing up.

My mom is a dreamer. She always has been. It seems to be one of the few things that gets her by in life. Shit might get bad, but if she can dream, then there's hope. She's the kind of person that dreams of winning the lottery and buying a house that the whole family can live in. She dreams of big Thanksgiving dinners, and huge Christmas family get-togethers. Big events out of story books where the entire family gathers up and has a great time. All great in theory, but they rarely work out in the real world. She's a great person, when you get her on her own. Without all the issues my dad brings to the table. Though she's not without her faults. She grew up kind of a gypsy, moving around constantly, rarely staying in the same place for very long. She had my eldest brother when she was very young and worked 2 or 3 jobs to help keep them afloat. I came into the picture about 15 years after the fact (and to a different father), but that didn't change matters. She loves her children, and she's been a fantastic grandmother. Better than I could have ever hoped for. She treats her granddaughters equally, and loves them as if they were her own children. In my case, I have a daughter that is half Asian, and obviously so, yet still my mom shows no difference between her and my brothers daughter. That means tons to me. I love her even more knowing that there's absolutely no racial qualms with her. All of her grandchildren are her grandchildren. Plain and simple.

My dad, the cynic, has believed for a long time that his life is doomed. It's pretty obvious to those around him that his life as a child was spent primarily alone. He didn't get a lot of attention as a child and that has caused problems in his adult life. He gets jealous of his children (and grandchildren) for the attention they receive from his wife, and he acts like a child when he doesn't get what he wants. He truly believes that she loves everyone more than she loves him. It's sad really. Here you have a highly intelligent, humorous guy, who breaks down to toddler-like behavior when things don't go his way. Even though his wife has put up with mountains of his bullshit, and countless years of put-downs and insults, he still thinks she doesn't love him.

At this point, who can blame her?

I spend a lot of time around the two of them, and my mom has never stopped trying. Even though it's obvious that my dad is completely hopeless, she keeps trying. That's dedication. My dad talks a never ending river of shit to my mom because of some things that happened in the past. Yet my mom never brings up how he hit and abused her, constantly degrades and demeans her, or how I stopped him from hitting her with a goddamned chair when I was young.

It's utter and complete bullshit for him to think that after all this time, and all the shit he's done to her, for her to stick around and stand by his side, that it wasn't done out of love. People don't stand through all that bullshit just to see how things turn out.

This brings us (in a very abridged route) to tonight. I went over to my parents house to have a sort of "family movie night". I tried to ignore the comments from my dad like "Women never love the men they sleep with. They'll love their children, but they don't love men.", and other ridiculous stand-ins for what he believes his current situation to be. I tried to look past the obvious tension between him and my mother, but it's hard when it's literally palpable.

After the movies, we went out for a very awkward slice of pie. I went, trying to be a mediator. The very same reason I had chosen to come over for a movie night in the first place. Things got really weird, but not out of control. Then they dropped me off at home.

Fast forward to about 2 in the morning.

My mom calls me asking if I could come with her to get a hotel room. I don't know what transpired between the two of them, but it doesn't really matter. My mom needed my help, so I had to step up. So here I sit, in the casino hotel room trying to keep my mom in one piece. I suspect if my mom hadn't called me, I may have gotten a very disturbing phone call in the morning, and I'm too young to bury my mom.

I've told her that I won't let her go home without me. She won't go back to him to figure things out without me there. I need to be there to "keep the peace". I've stood toe-to-toe with my dad before, and I'll do it again. But before where I did it with words, this time I'll do it by force, if necessary. I don't want it to come to that, but I'm no longer afraid of that man. I'm older now, and all I see is a misbehaving child that needs a whoopin' to set him straight. Talking just doesn't seem to do the trick.

Ah, roommates.

For 8 years I've been more or less "on my own". Not once however, have I had a place all to myself. Even knowing that having roommates is a goddamned nightmare, I've never made the transition to a solitary living arrangement. Now, I have a kid, so I'll never TRULY be alone, but I'm sure most of you out there know where I'm coming from. It's one thing to clean up a mess my 4 y/o daughter makes, and a totally different thing to be cleaning up after an adult male and/or female.

I entered into my current arrangement due to desperation. I was a 24 y/o stuck back at home with my parents, and I was in an all around shitty position. Most of it due to a huge breakup (more on that later), but partially because of an overall lack of drive. So being 24, with a 4 y/o daughter, I jumped at the chance to have "my own" place again.

One of my few remaining best friends from high school had come back into town, and he was in a relatively similar position. He and his girlfriend of 10 years were stuck at his parents house, and were unable to make a move on their own. Collectively, we decided we should pool together our resources and get a place. Now, I know the first rule of roommates (or it should be, if there is such a thing) is to NOT Room with good friends. Living with someone you are friends with complicates things on levels that shouldn't be approached. Regardless of how much time you spend together, you don't know what living with them will be like until you do it. And usually, this turns out horribly. But I did it anyway, and thus begins my nightmare.

Now to start things off, though he's one of my best friends, the two of us are vastly different. First of all, he thinks me to be some sort of genius because I know words like 'myriad' or 'malcontented'. Words that anyone with a high school education should know, yet when I use them, he stares at me blankly like I'm a goddamned alien. Secondly, our thoughts on art and movies differ vastly. For example, he was über excited to go see the new Transformers movie. A movie which I had absolutely no interest in seeing. He paid my way in, and where I saw a movie with a completely vapid story line, and a flat out horrible movie in a myriad(!) of ways . . . He thought it was a fantastic action flick and couldn't fathom why I thought it was a gigantic piece of shit. He also thinks Bungee and Halo 3 are like the best things ever. All of these things and more have caused problems in the roommate situation.

The next biggest problem we've had is the food situation. Now, I'm of the mind that when I buy groceries, I'm buying them for the household, not myself. Their philosophy however, is the opposite. Which would be fine, except they embrace my ideologies and eat all my shit, while holding strong to theirs and making sure I don't eat their stuff. There's something severely wrong with this picture. If you don't want me eating stuff that you buy, that's fine. But you can't turn around and eat my shit and think things are going to be o.k.

I'd also like to point out that having a note board of some kind is a terrible idea. It sounds like a great idea, until it actually gets put to proper use. Notes will always be read with a condescending tone. Whether it's meant as such or not. Something as simple as; 'Hey, could you take out the trash?' Transforms from a simple question, to a statement about how you never take out the trash or some other retarded bullshit. And this happens with everything. When you start getting fed up with your living situation, and your living partners, you start reading into things that may or may not be there. This causes things to escalate out of control, and before you know it, you're hating your one-time best friend.

I've decided that I'm going to try and take something good out of this situation. I'll take it as another learning experience, and get out as soon as I can. Hopefully getting my own place(proper this time) and maybe I'll escape with enough time to salvage something of this friendship when I'm done.

The move to Blu-Ray.

Being a bit of a techie, I find myself always trying to stay on the cutting edge. So it seems strange to me that until just recently, I haven't even thought about the upgrade to Blu-Ray.

I've had a 1080p capable TV for at least a year now. I have HD programming, and I use it as an alternate display for my monitor. But why haven't I thought about Blu-Ray? The thought of replacing my DVD collection is certainly something I've been dreading. But I think the biggest reason is that until just recently, Blu-Ray players have been a bit out of my price range.hpwever, with the recent PS3 price drop, and players all around dropping in price, the everyday consumer has a much greater chance of picking one up. But what exactly inspired me to write up this blog post?

My parents(of all people) just picked up a Samsung Blu-Ray player from our local Wal-Mart for about $220. They decided on this particular model because it came with a bevy of additional features. Not only can it play your standard fare of Blu-Ray flicks, but you can synch it up with your Netflix or Blockbuster instant watch queues, Pandora internet radio stations, and you can even browse and watch Youtube videos.

Now I've been using the Netflix instant watch feature on my 360 for some time now, and it's definitely something I can't go without. The Pandora function is almost a system seller on its own though, IMO. Those of you reading this who don't know what Pandora is(I suspect that's a small percentage, but you never know), I suggest you head over to www.pandora.com and check it out. The people behind Pandora have broken down the bands and songs you love into key elements such as "complex acoustical harmonies", "minor key tonality", etc and it uses those to recommend and play other bands and songs with similar elements that it thinks you might like. You can give these songs a thumbs up or down to help fine tune the station, and after a bit tweaking, you end up with a station that plays tons of music you love. Having all that easily accessible on your home stereo setup is a fantastic idea. But I'm straying off topic.

So they picked up this new Blu-Ray player, and a single movie to give the system its new test run. The re-mastered edition of Blade Runner. Now I knew the re-mastered edition had been cut specifically for a Blu-Ray release, but honestly, I didn't think that it would be a great movie to test the visual improvements that Blu-Ray has to offer. I mean, the movie was made in '82. Far before HD cameras and the like were used for filming. I figured something along the lines of 300 would be a much better test.

Holy fuck was I wrong.

This movie looks fucking incredible. I was absolutely blown away. The visual quality is so good, the only thing that reminds you it was made in the '80's is the old computer systems they use. 10 minutes into the movie I had decided that I need to make the move to Blu-Ray.

Now after seeing a couple of Blu-Ray flicks, I can tell you that the quality isn't always so stunning. However, even the so-so movies make the transition more than worth it. My only debate now is: pick up the rad Samsung player my parents did, or drop the extra $100 for the new slim PS3? With God of War 3 on the horizon? I might just go with the PS3.

Testing post.

Every blog has to have one. This is mine. I'm only going to be posting this blog from my new Sidekick via a program called Blog Warrior. It seemed interesting, so I figured "there are thousands of others blogs full of opinions no one cares about, why not have one for myself"? So here it is. I don't know what I'll be "blogging"(I'm really not fond of that term) about, or how often yet, but we'll see how it goes. Test post, over and out!