By Eddy

It s the beginning of September and it seems to me most people are thinking that with the end of summer it is also the end of the grilling season.   As far as I am concerned, the grilling season is finally getting into full gear.  Once the oppressive heat of the summer is over, the outdoors once again becomes a inviting place to hang out with friends and family.  Even here in New England, grilling can go quite deep into the end of the year (Now the grill serves as a source of warmth as well as a place to cook, it is multitasking at its best).  Not to mention, this is the best time for sports, with football (both college and Pro) getting in gear, baseball reaching the playoff stage and basketball soon to start.

One of the biggest problems with grilling is that some of the foods cooked aren’t the best for you.  A ton of red meat (yummy!) hotdogs, sausages, bratwurst, etc. can lead to a lifetime of high cholesterol heart disease…so I am told.  As a response I have been trying to grill more vegetables (especially corn) and ratchet up the healthy quotient.  Unfortunately, though my intentions are good, I am also basting these veggies in oil or butter. So, when we were introduced to I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! Not too long ago, I was able to have the veggies and that butter taste too without the calories or the fat.

When I grill I have been using the new spray bottle, which works perfect for spaying ears of corn before they hit the grill. D is pretty adamant about me watching what I eat and trying to keep things as healthy as possible, as such she instituted the no butter rule.  So when I use the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! Spray I get the best of both worlds and what I call the “Husband’s Delight”, the feeling of breaking the rules without actually breaking any, whoo hoo!  It also helps that I can use the spray instead of ruining sticks of butter or margarine by rubbing the corn or vegetables’ against them.

So to encourage you all to keep the grills out for a couple of months longer and to eat a bit more healthy while doing it we are doing a special I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! Grilling Giveaway!

We will be giving away the following:

• A nice set of grilling utensils that come in their own carrying pouch
• A bottle of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! Spay
• A grilling basket (Great for veggies!)
• A set of grilling recipes inspired from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! Grilling Giveaway

Giveaway

To enter our giveaway let us know your favorite grilling recipe or story!

This contest is available only to U.S. residents

Contest ends September 30, 2010, 9pm. Other ways to win?

• follow DancingHotdogs rss feed
• follow @dancinghotdogs on twitter (leave a comment)
• follow @rosadancing on twitter (leave a comment)
• follow @ICBINotButter on twitter (leave a comment)
• Tweet “I want to WIN the I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter Grill Set with @dancinghotdogs & @ICBINotButter http://snurl.com/11v64l “
• Blog about the contest (post link in comment)
• Join our fanclub on facebook

PLEASE DON’T FORGET TO LEAVE A COMMENT ON THIS POST IF tweet or are a new or current follower.

Disclaimer:  We received a similar set of grilling items and utensils as the prize we are giving away.  As always, anything given or received had absolutely no influence on our words and opinions.

By Eddy

Guilty pleasures come in many forms.  No one can really say why we enjoy our guilty pleasure, but we can readily agree on one thing, guilty pleasures are things that we would rather keep to ourselves rather than share with the rest of the world such as guys who where clogs or watching children’s shows like iCarly or being big fans of Bring It On: All or Nothing   Not that I can judge anyone myself, since I have my fair share. 

One such guilty pleasure that I will reveal right now is our family’s obsession with the show So You Think You Can Dance.  Ever since we caught the show in its 3^rd season, we have been DVRing it ever since.  It gotten to a point that even Babyboy busts out a couple of moves, it is also directly responsible for his penchant to drop on all fours and attempt to break dance whenever there is music. 

Of course, the natural leap from TV dancing is to movie dancing (???), however it happened, D and I found ourselves watching the Step Up series.  While I can honestly say that I wasn’t a fan, I did enjoy some of the dance scenes and that is basically the best thing I can say about them.  Which leads us to Step Up 3D .

Step Up 3D is probably best served just by being a show case for dancing.  As for story and overall film it goes over like two left feet.  The story is pretty much "we have to win this competition to save our home" kind of thing which countless movies have done and redone to death, (Rick Malambri, Sharni Vinson).  Though it does a decent job at the beginning credits of showing the impact of dance and how it has affected the lives of the movies characters.  Since I presume many of them were telling their own true story instead of reading off some script it comes off as one of the more genuine parts of the movie.

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By Eddy

Yeah, I know it’s been almost a month since Comic Con ended, but we saved the best for last. Our Final installment of our Comic Con experience brings us to one of our favorite video game developers, Namco Bandai. This year, they certainly had a great line up available for us to try out.

Dragonball  Z: Raging Blast 2

The first being one of my favorite shows from college, Dragon Ball Z.  D can attest that my friends and I wasted many hours watching these shows from Japan.  DBZ has also carved itself a nice little niche in the video game world.  Their latest offering is Dragon Ball Z: Raging Blast 2 . Including 90 different playable character you can literally be any and every character from the series, which means classic battles can be recreated at will.  On top of that, with new updated graphics on the PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as a smooth battle system that is definitely an improvement over the last game.

At Comic Con, I got the opportunity to talk with one of the producers of the game.  We talked about the impact that DBZ has had, and how this new game improves over the games of the past.   He pointed out that the camera tracking the action has improved and follows the fighting much more accurately and smoothly, keeping both fighters in the frame at the same time.  On top of it all the original Japanese voice actors are in the game blurring the line between where the game starts and the show begins.  The only downside is that about 80% of the cast of character won’t be very fun to play with unless you are truly a hardcore fan.  For a more casual gamer, it might be hit or miss when picking a fighter, but overall it looked and played great.  Dragon Ball Z: Raging Blast 2 will be available in late 2010 on both Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Enslaved

This is Namco Bandai foray in to the action adventure genre. Taking place in a post apocalyptic America, full of ruined cities overflowing with trees and jungles, we follow the escape of Trip and Monkey from a mysterious slave ship taking them out West.  Trip, a female tech genius, modifies the head bands originally used to enslave them to the ship-owners to trap Monkey so that he will help lead her to safety.  Players are put in the control of Monkey, who must ensure that Trip survives as well as he, using his various martial arts and MMA moves.  The games make use this relationship to create a strategic element to the game, players must now weigh weather direct conflict with the bad guys is the right option depending on how well you can protect Trip as well as forcing you to use team work to overcome various obstacles.  The thing that has me really excited is that Enslaved was developed by the same creators of Heavenly Sword , which for those who are familiar with video games was both a commercial and critical success.

It usually takes me some time to warm up to games and their controls.  I am definitely not a quick learner when it comes to pushing the right buttons and figuring out the functionality, but once I do I can be sucked in quickly.  So when I demoed Enslaved , it took a bit of coaching from the PR person for me to pick up the basics, especially the teamwork controls, but even running around the environment blindly as I did kicking robot body was a satisfying experience.     Enslaved comes out on October 8^th for both PS3 and Xbox 360.

Splatterhouse

No, this is definitely not your older brother’s Splatterhouse .  In fact, at first glance you would be hard press to find anything similar other than the premise.  Far from the 2D horror that started in 1988 and spawned a number of sequels, the new Splatterhouse takes us back to the beginning but with a new updated 3D point of view.  Hardcore fans should not fret though, all the bloody fantastic action will happen but on a more graphic and visual level, rivers of blood flow as you fight your way through the movie.  Obviously, playing a character that is transformed into a beefed up super hulk in a Jason Mask isn’t going to lead to a game about picking daisies in a field, well unless those daisies are demons and you get tear them apart in your bare hands.  In addition to the aforementioned hands are meat cleavers, two by fours as well as other objects of mayhem.

When I say a preview it was as if the elevator doors in The Shining had just opened up.  Suffice it to say that the main color of the game was red and it didn’t change much from that point on.  Other updates on the classic include actual fighting combos that can be performed with new moves being unlocked as you collect more blood (yes I just said that).  I am going to venture to say that this game is not for those who faint at the sight of blood, those with heart conditions nor children or pregnant women. Sign me up!! Splatterhouse comes out this fall for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

By Eddy

If it were 1988, it is likely that The Expendables would have been a ridiculously huge hit…I mean Avatar huge!  With stars like Sylvester Stallone, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the latter two only making cameos, the movie already would have been guaranteed to top the box office.  Add on top of that Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li rounded out by tough looking men like Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Steve Austin and you would have all the makings of something pretty special.

Unfortunately, for us and them it is 22 year later.  Most of the afore mentioned actors are now or soon will be past their prime, but that is what The Expendables is all about: these guys have reached their Lt. Murtagh point or the “I’m too old for this sh*t” stage of their career both in reality and in the film and we get to see how they handle it, which is to say watch them take out their sadness by decapitating some nameless Latin soldier. But even in their twilight these guys still have the goods to kick butt and that is what they do throughout this movie in spades.

Written and directed by Sly Stallone, The Expendables follows this crew as they are contracted to assassinate a military dictator on some foreign island; already an old and mostly tired group they all must also deal with what the job has taken from them throughout the years.  So we substitute the Russians of the 1980’s for some Latin country and then age the heroes 25 years, add in a sprinkling of the a rogue CIA agent take out any possibility of nudity and presto! We have about every other action movie from 1990 to 2010. Not that original huh? I guess Sly is going to have to wait until The Expendables 2 to get that screen writing Oscar. Let’s face it he hasn’t had a true writing credit to his name since the 80s so we really can’t blame him from not advancing that much since then. 

Let’s face the facts, this movie isn’t really very deep, so much so that you might find yourself trying to stifle the laughter even at the most “dramatic” moments the film tries to manufacture (Yes, Mickey tear ducts do work and he sheds a tear and Stallone passes a kidney stone…or cries, at this point I am not sure which). If you are like me you will find yourself smiling at all the hero poses and the timely one liners flying around the battlefield more than the bullets.  But, it is all these little things, the crappy dialogue, the bad acting, the unlimited ammunition (its almost a tenant in most of these movies that all the good guys have some little bullet fairy feeding them ammo without end), the senseless plot and violence that lend it an air of familiarity, Like coming home after years of being away.

Not to say that the more modern era of action movies wasn’t represented.  (more…)

By Divina

I am the family amateur photographer.  I am always trying to document every special moment. So much so that Babyboy is a terrible ham and has been trained to the point he gives a big smile and says "cheese" whenever I pull out the camera. This is a fact!

So when I got to try out the latest Fujifilm camera I flipped.  Especially when this new camera claims that "Fujifilm’s First ‘Four-Proof’ Digital Camera Is Perfect for Your Family Adventures."

The only problem with Babyboy being accustomed to having pictures taken of him is that now he "wants his turn, please."  How can you say no to that!

Luckily, this camera is two year old proof. You can drop it, freeze it, cover in dirt and it still works! Seriously!

This is my first time using a Fujifilm camera so I was nervous to try out the extreme measures they described like its waterproof up to 10 feet, shockproof up to 3 feet and freezeproof up to 14°F but for you my loyal readers I will do it.

• In it went into the hands of a two year old, shockproof check!
• In it went into a sink filled with water , waterproof check!
• In the freezer, freezeproof check!

Phew! And it still works! The final pictures also came perfectly. 

Check out all the pictures from all the posts since Blogher Take One , yup they were all taken with this little wonder camera. (more…)

By Eddy

The great thing about video games is that you actually take part in the story and not just sit on the sidelines as a bystander.  The great potential of video games based on movies, is that you are transported to the very scenes and moments in the movie and are able to participate.  Unfortunately, due to amount of time movies are in theatres and in the public’s consciousness it leaves very little time to develop a well made video game for everyone to play.  Considering the number of movie based video games there are out there, it would not be a stretch to say that there are an handful that are actually good.

The thing that Toy Story 3 has going for it, was the fact that the video game was in development for 2 years before the game was released, which is practically a lifetime. As a result, we are left with a game that has some surprising depth to it and is fun for adults as well as kids.  Be forewarned, do not play the game if you haven’t seen the movie, as it follows the story of the movie exactly, on the other hand if you loved the movie, then you are likely going to love the game, as it puts you in all the major scenes and moments in the movie.

There are two modes in the game, Story and Sandbox. 

Story modes gives you the ability to play as either Buzz, Jesse or Woody and you progress through the game completing missions ranging from the beginning action scene to the events at the Day Care.  Each character has their own strengths such as Buzz being able to throw objects farther or Woody being able to use his string to swing to places the other characters can’t.  Due to this each character brings a new dimension to the game, as objectives and missions can only be obtained with certain characters. (more…)

By Eddy

With such a large event at Comic Con , one would think that it would be easy to write about.  The problem is with so many different things going on all the time it is difficult to focus on just one thing.  Even veteran Comic Con visitors can sometime get swept away in the mayhem.  Luckily for me, one thing was able to grab my attention immediately and hold it for more than 2 minutes (no it wasn’t the hundreds of girls dressed in skimpy outfits) it was Spiderman. 

Yes I am a dork, but don’t feel bad for D, I am slowly bringing her over to the Geek-side.  I am pretty sure the high school version of D would have made fun of her mercilessly by now.

Anyways, Activision is coming out with a new Spiderman game: Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions .  The thing that makes this unique, other than being the first Spiderman on the new generation of game consoles, is that you get to play as four different Spiderman.  Each one at one point or another was a comic book series.   Activision has been getting everyone in a frenzy slowly revealing each new dimension one at a time spread out through the year. 

Before Comic Con they had already revealed three of the four Spiderman Dimensions. 

The first being the Amazing Spiderman, which is the most known spiderman, the one that started it all. 

Next, was the Cinema Nior Spiderman, which is similar to more of a 1930’s Detective movie. 

The third was Spiderman 2099, which as the title implies is a future version of Spiderman from…yes you guessed it-2099.  

At Comic Con, they finally revealed the final iteration of Spiderman:  Ultimate Spiderman, which was the new rebooted Spiderman for a new generation of comic book readers. (more…)

By Divina

Eddy and I are happy to report we are having a baby! I can’t believe Babyboy is going to be a big brother.

This is the first picture we took of our little baby who is now a little man.

January 6, 2011 is the big date! I am 17 weeks pregnant and the nausea and some other symptoms of the first trimester are still not going away BUT WE ARE SO HAPPY!

Babyboy is two years old and Eddy and I always wanted to have our children closer in age instead of the five plus age difference between our siblings.

Hopefully, the lessons we learned from the past two years will help for this next baby (though we doubt it) and not freaking out over every little thing (me!) but we are definitely ready for the new challenge and Babyboy is ready for a new little brother or sister.

As our family grows, so will Dancing Hotdogs.com.

We will be starting Dancing Hotdogs Family where we will cover more pregnancy and family oriented products and services. 

Don’t worry Dancing Hotdogs.com will still bring you the latest in entertainment and technology.

The Future looks so so bright!

By Eddy

It isn’t often that a movie literally has me at the edge of my seat the way that Inception definitely had me.  Many have already compared it to the Matrix in the sense of how it blurs the line between what is real and what isn’t and much like the Matrix we learn that the answer is all in our minds.  As long as we believe it is real then that is what it is.

Inception ’s plot has gotten enough play in the media that I doubt that there is anyone that doesn’t more or less know what occurs in the film.  But for those few of you that remain in the dark, I will relate a bit of the plot.

Leo DiCaprio and the rest of his crew are thieves, nothing special so far…it is the manner at which they steal that is the mindbender.  They are experts at breaking into people’s mind and stealing information all from the constructs of their victim’s dreams.  They are able bring the marks into their own dreams and manipulate the world in order to infiltrate and break into their most guarded secrets.  Yet it is the opposite that Leo’s team is hired to accomplished, Inception, which is putting an idea in the mind of another, an act that is thought impossible.

Yet as easy it is to give you a basic overview of the plot, the actual story is very complex and possibly difficult to follow if you aren’t paying close attention.  It is this focus that made Inception feel much faster than the two and a half hour running time.  If you don’t want to be lost, you actually have to work when watching this film.  This isn’t summer popcorn fluff, but I promise you if you get into the movie, you will paid off with an experience that for me rivaled the feeling that I felt when I left the first Matrix .  I was left with a feeling of wonder, but more importantly my brain was buzzing, almost as if my imagination had a received a steroids injection.  (more…)

By Eddy

I think that I might be a bit misogynistic. 

Well at least when it comes to action movies.  For some reason I just can’t get into an action movie when the lead is a girl.  I am not sure why, it’s not like I don’t like to see girls in action movie (this might have to do with the increased possibility of nudity from said girl). Its just when the crap hits the fan, the women (I probably shouldn’t say “girls”) just looks fake.  They don’t really look like they can get the job done.  Maybe it feels like they lose a bit of their femininity put in the action situation (or maybe pampered Hollywood actresses just can’t be bad asses), maybe I fancy myself a prince charming and expect women to always be the damsel in distress  and not the other way around.  Don’t get me wrong, there are definite exceptions like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, but in general it ends up feeling more like the Charlie’s Angels movies.

Which brings me to Salt , for the most part Angelina Jolie has also bucked the trend regarding the action woman.  Taking out the campy Tomb Raider films out of the equation, films like Wanted and Mr. and Mrs. Smith , she seems to exude the right type of kick your butt energy

(Disclaimer: I am an unabashed Jolie Fan, D calls her my girlfriend, which I disagree with…I probably could not take care of that many kids).  In Salt , I think that she more than holds her own.

Overall, Salt is a decent action movie even with my already stated misogyny. Jolie plays Salt a CIA agent who is accused of being a Russian spy and is subsequently chased by the U.S. Government before she is able to perpetrate some act of terrorism. 

Think of this movie as a cross between the action of the Jason Bourne movies and a mid 80s Tom Clancy novel. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t pull enough from each of these sources to truly rise above being a decent action movie.  It doesn’t really have the grit nor the international flair of a Bourne movie, nor does the intricacy and intrigue reach even close enough to that of a Tom Clancy novel or film. (more…)