I was recording Colonial House on the DVR last night and something went horribly wrong.

The DVR didn't stop recording. it just kept going and going and going.

THis morning it was recording Body Electric, a workout show I used to watch when I only had three channels and just wasn't up for the morning news while eating my Grape Nuts. Body ELectric was followed immediately by The Boobah Zone. Having seen the Boobah Zone before, this viewing confirmed one thing: THe purpose of Boobah Zone is to get kids interested in the wonders of psychedelics at an early age.

If you thought Tinki Winki and Co. were kind of trippy, these guys are like Cheech and Chong to the Boobah Zone's Timothy Leary. Holy frijoles, my friends. This is one show to melt your gourd.

Nonetheless, I could NOT stop the Boobah Zone from recording. I couldn't call up the menu to stop it from recording. And pressing stop didn't work. "Hey," said Jamie. "The menu said the thing is almost out of space."

Which meant the DVR had been recording since 8:00pm last night.

I eventually just pulled the plug on the thing, and it seemed to right itself after a reboot. Sadly, there was no sign of the recorded 11 hours of PBS. And if there's one thing I know from college, PBS shows some really interesting junk at about 3:00am. I once watched a whole documentary about Cicadas and an episode of Reading Rainbow in the wee, wee hours.

Sadly, I lost my recorded Colonial House, but that was okay. I ended up watching most of it, anyway, while it recorded.

On another electronics note: My car stereo went on the fritz once again two weeks ago. My warranty still in effect, the Best Buy guy called me yesterday and told me the cost of repairs was greater than a new setereo, so he invited me in to select a new stereo.

It appears all stereos for cars are now XM ready and are cheaper than when I bought one a CD player just two years ago. I am lookign forward to getting a car stereo, because with my commute, I've had to develop a second personality to entertain me while I'm on the road.

Oh, yeah...

Looks like a civilian space port is being considered in California.

I am tired today.

I had to get up early to go get blood taken at the lab near the hospital so they can measure both the purines in my blood and to measure my cholesterol. Last time I had my cholesterol checked, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to eat before the test. Consequently, my blood indicated I was fine on two of my cholesterols and on my third, I was pretty much a goner. This may yet be the case, but you never know. In my defense, since that test I've been eating less Crisco straight out of the tub.

No doubt, I will report a Lipitor prescription in the near future.

I also found out on Friday (yes, even with Jamie in the hospital I went to my own doctor's appointment) that I have been taking my medication incorrectly and have been taking painkillers for the past several months believeing they were a necessary anti-inflammatory. Which they kind of are, but it's a "take as needed" kind of medication, not "twice a day with the other pill," as I believed (and how the bottle read).

As Denby would put it, I've essentially been "hopped up on goofballs." But not really.

I did wake up feeling achey this morning and was trying to figure out what that was all about, and near as I can figure, all my neurons and what not are properly firing again and telling me about every little ache I have for the first time since August. That went away within an hour, but now I just feel tired. Which is probably more to do with my exciting weekend. I also need better coffee.

I need to get a PMA (positive mental attitude) or today is going to stink.

I kind of want to go to the circus when it arrives in town in a few weeks, but I'm torn. I am aware that some circuses do not treat their animals terribly well, but Ringling Bros. goes way out of their way to make it clear that their animals are not trained through abuse, etc...

I have no idea if either side is actually correct. I assume the truth is somewhere in between, and Ringling Bros. isn't exactly some tent set up in Wal-Mart parking lot. They have a serious reputation to maintain.

But another strike against the circus is that I kind of don't like clowns. There's always that. I mean, I HATE mimes, but I just kind of dislike clowns. I think the mean clowns in Dumbo must have had a profound effect upon me as a child or something.

And then you read something like this, and all those death-defying stunts don't seem so death defying.

But I haven't been to the circus since I was in 7th grade, and I don't count Cirque du Soliel as a real circus. Until i see an elephant wearing a pink hat, it just ain't a circus. And let's face it, thanks to our entertainment-saturated society, the circus is a disappearing art form here in the US. I'd liek to go and see the circus again just to get a good idea of what it's all about again.

What to do... what to do...

I am happy to say Jamie is home from the hospital and feeling fairly well. We had a little scare there. She was supposed to go in for a minor sort of thing (in our medical universe) and ended up spending the weekend fighting a nasty infection which she had prior to arriving but had gone under the radar. The initial prognosis was not a good one, but after a few tests we got all squared away and were able to get Jamie treated with some antibiotics and whatnot.

Anyway, we're home now and only slightly worse for wear. Thanks to those who sent e-mails and positive vibes.

Upon our arrival home, we got to watch our DVR'd copy of Smallville's Season Finale. Hurray! That ruled. I think they just introduced the Phantom Zone. If you don't know what that is, well, it's a sort of...zone... kind of on a phantom plane... that, uh... well, it's a good place to put dudes like Zod when they get out of hand.

Make sure your TiVo's etc... are ready. Next week is the finale of Justice League on Cartoon Network before it is relaunched as Justice League Unlimited. Look for it around 7:00 next Saturday evening. Given my hip lifestyle, no doubt I'll be home to watch it.

Sorry guys. I've been quiet as Jamie's been in the hospital yet again. She's doing much, much better and I hope to get her home by Saturday afternoon.

It's a grim story on this one, but suffice it to say, the really bad part is past and what we thought might be wrong wasn't the case. Which is a GOOD thing. Her mom is here. I'm trying to get work done from home before I go to the hospital.

Adios.

I am SOOOOOOO going to buy this comic.

I am very busy. Sorry the blogs have been short in coming.

In the meantime, enjoy any of the links off to the left below League archives.

Also, here's the new Supergirl:

Update on our friend in Odessa.

thanks to Jim for the update.

THANKS, SCIENCE!!!

and thank you even more, Odessa ISD.

as per a discussion we had here a few months ago... regarding why you don't want to post your picture online.

My health

My heatlh has been an issue of late as work stress increases and less and less time has been spent doing much in the way of physical activity.

At one point, in the not so distant past, I was an avid practitioner of TaeKwonDo. In these days I could spar (essentially fist fighting) for an hour at a time, getting moderately ehausted somewhere near the end. I was doing hundreds of push-ups every week (on my fingertips no less) and tons of crunches. About three years ago, that all went to hell and I just quit.

The reasons for quitting are varied, and not terribly interesting, but I basically was not ready to give up the rest of my life in order to meet the expectations of black belts within the TKD organization to which I belonged (essentially giivng up most weekends and evenings to teach, run tournaments, etc...).

As of two weeks ago, i joined a gym, and it's been revelation as to what three years of watching cartoons and B-movies will do to your physique and general health. I had a fitness assessment (of which I take some stock, but do not acept as Bible's truth for a few reasons) which suggested I had the relative phyciality of the average 38 year old. "With a few years work," the physical trainer guy told me, "You could be your own relative age." Essentially, if I totally bust ass, I stand a good chance of being 32 when I'm 32. Whoo-hoo.

Now I can only take the charts so seriously, mostly because I still recall the incident in high school health class in which I was actually off the height weight scale so far it suggested I was morbidly obese. And at this time, I was actually pretty damn skinny. I don't know if my bones are made out of concrete or what, but I've always weighed a ton for my actual physique. Getting pudgy has only made the issue amplified.

Nonetheless, I am taking the issue very seriously as I don't want to be dead. Not yet, anyway. Maybe at some point in the future, but not this year. The simple fact is that my family has a small history of heart disease, but a large one with diabetes. I need to start working on myself ASAP in order to avoid these two traps. So I am now working out as often as possible for as long as possible, and I've got a hell of alot of work to do. So bear with me as I occasionally post progress, etc...

Rationator Mirus points to an interesting story on the first "succesful" civilian space flight. Check it out.

Congratulations to Jeffrey Alan "Peabo" Peek. My pal just got hitched up on Saturday to Adriana, a girl whose standards in selecting a husband must be astonishingly low.

Jeff and I met up in 4th grade when I first moved to Austin. He was in my class and he lived down the street from me. Our buddyship was largely based around Jeff coming up with dangerous ideas and me trying to talk him down (like trying to catch rattlesnakes using my shirt for a net...).

We lived together for a year in college, went our separate roommate ways, but have always kept in touch. Jeff went off to law school in San Antonio, and has been practicing on and off in the greater Austin area (aside froma 6 month stint in Mexico). His job brought him into Adriana's realm about a year ago, and the two of them must have really hit it off as they became like peanut butter and jelly overnight.

Peabo got married on Saturday down in Old Mexico. Due to a number of limiting factors, I was unable to attend. However, Jeff's pop (PK Peek) sent along some digital photos, one of which I share below.

Congratulations, Peabo and Mrs. Peabo. Up, up and away.

I know this opinion isn't going to be popular, but can't we take a vote on euthanizing Courtney Love?

Does anybody really need Courtney Love? Isn't she really the world's most famous junkie? Has anybody ever bought a Hole record? Aren't you kind of ashamed you did? And there's that whole possibility that she maybe might have killed her husband to ensure eternal fame and fortune. And there's the very real possibility she should not be allowed within a kilometer of her own child.

Anyway, just an idea. Discuss.

Will anyone listen to The League? Probably not.

But for your viewing pleasure, PBS is airing it's own reality programming in the form of "Colonial House".

Like Manor House, Frontier House, 1900 House, 1940's House and, I think, a few before it... Colonial House is an experiment to see how a mix of modern folks do when placed into a recreation of past ways of living. Training is provided, and the participants are not asked to pretend that they're actually in the preceeding time-frame. They are asked to dress, eat, and work as if they were in the sampled time frame.

The show is run by historians and other experts, and it appears this series will take the same format as "Frontier House" and place three households into the mix.

Nobody can win. This is not a competition against each other, but rather a competition against modern expectations versus past expectations.

If the previous series are any indication, it should be well worth tuning in for. Tonight's episode is 2 hours, so it might be worth recording.

Margot Kidder rocks out...

For the official site, go here.

This weekend the marketing media blitz began for Shrek 2 (the movie) as well as all of the Shrek cross-promotional tie-ins. From video games to soap to Sierra Mist to who know's what else, Shrek is busily hawking a multitude of products using either the real voices of the actors or some very qualified sound-alikes (this is done quite a bit. In fact, Tom Hanks' brother makes some money as Tom's sound alike for things like Toy STory video games, etc...).

I wasn't a huge fan of the original Shrek. We saw it late in the game (maybe a month after it came out), and NOTHING could have lived up to the media hype and the word of mouth hype we went through before seeing the movie. I'm not saying the movie was bad... I just wasn't as blown away as the rest of the world wanted me to be.

Well, there's nothing like whoring yourself to ensure a profit, and it's something much easier to do in the animated world than actually getting, say, DeNiro to sell potato chips. At any rate, given I'm seeing actual commercials for the movie and ads for the cross-promotion once a commercial break EVERY commercial break, I have already been overly saturated in Shrekness. Which is okay. It could have been Garfield.

I have a question regarding our situation in Iraq... and it's not politically charged... I just want to know:

Where are the Iraqis getting all of those guns?

Seriously.

In all of these pictures, the Iraqis are armed, and not just with little hunting rifles and pistols. These guys have RPG's and shoulder mounted rocket launchers and other things you can't even find in Texas. And if these guys always had these weapons, why didn't they use them before to shoot at Saddam?

What's the story?

If anyone has any answers, please fill me in.

I now know nobody reads this blog. Or at least the folks who read it can't do math any better than people who write it.

600/12 = 50. Not 5.

So caught up in proving Van Helsing was a stupid movie was I, that my math was off by a factor of 10. Yes, I have two college degrees. Shut up.

At any rate:
1 victim per month
12 months in a year
12 victims per year
5 years
60 victims in 5 years

or, as they said, 1 or 2 people
1.5 victims per month
12 months per year
18 victims per year
5 years
90 victims in 5 years

that's still a hell of a lot of people, especially if my actual estimate of the number of residents (150) is closer than the number I suggested it might be. Enough to make me begin considering listing my house with Century 21.

"Selling the house, are you, Ivan?"
"Yeah, me and Dolores put her up yesterday."
"Gettin' a wee bit scared of the vampires?"
"No... no... just part of the charm of your cold, frigid valley with no visible means of support."
"You like the castles?"
"Well, yes, but only that incredibly good looking girl in the tight trousers lives there, and nobody else ever gets to go in."
"Ah, well, we'll miss you digging for turnips with us."
"Best of luck."
"Yeah, well, plant some garlic, too, for God's sake."
"Oh, right... good idea."

At any rate, those aren't good numbers either way. Especially when you figure it's 19th century Eastern-Europe where life expectancy was probably around 40 or so.

Maybe the Transylvanians just breed like rabbits.

I forgot the biggest dumb thing about Van Helsing.

I was going to say it's a spoiler, but it's not.

Van Helsing is more or less there to save a village of people from being plagued by Dracula. Okay, maybe not exactly (you can judge for yourself for a mere $5.50 at matinee), but if he kills Dracula, that's it, right? The people can be happy again...

Except these incredibly stupid people live in a narrow valley tucked between mountains which is prone to attacks by Vampires. Flying vampires.

So, okay... you don't want to leave your homeland even after 400+ years of vampire attacks (I think I could learn to be flexible and go somewhere with just, say, El Chubacabra). Even in Transylvania, you can still move to a more advantageous position, like, up on a hill. Or underground. Or build, say, a roof over the town. I'm not positive, but I am betting that you would start dreaming up anti-vampire defenses pretty quickly.

Keep in mind, not a clove of garlic or a crucifix is ever really seen in this town.

And the population of the town appeared to be maybe 600 people on the outside. And I think I'm being nice here, because, really, it looked liek the village had maybe 150 extras in it... tops. The villagers state that Dracula and his ladies pluck off 1 or 2 people a month, and that's acceptable. People, I know I'm no PhD in math, but those are NOT good numbers. Your village would be wiped out in 5 years with 600 people at one a month.

And who the hell wants to be the last dude standing around as the target?

Anyway, not necessarily a plot point, but it kind of was... and it made the movie all the dumber.

Yesterday, not so much after work as much as when i was done working, another guy from my office and I went to see Van Helsing. THis was not even done so much in spite of Jim D's review of the movie, but because of it. All Steans men share a common gene regarding movies. We like bad movies. It's true. And when we hear someone pronounce a movie as awful, it isn't enough to take their word for it: We have to see that stinking pile of poo for ourselves. And it didn't hurt that I had nothing better to do at work yesterday and there's a theater literally less than a block from my office I'd never been to before.

Was Van Helsing as bad as people say? Sure, I guess. Like most big budget, bloated, ridiculous summer movies, the very premise of the story made not a lick of sense. None. Not a bit. If I were in college mode and drunk and watching this movie I would have assumed the booze went to my brain and had erased crucial bits which the byzantine plot most likely tossed at me, but MGD had washed away. Not so here.

SPOILER WARNING:

Just to get it out of the way: Why the hell hadn't Dracula dedicated his endless undead life to killing all werewolves if that was the only thing can defeat him? We know he can turn them into people again, so why is he bothering with making vampire babies until he knows he's utterly undefeatable? And another thing... If the only way to go to Castle Dracula was through that stupid map, why wasn't the place a ghost-town? THey say something about wings or something... but was the castle a physical place? Where was the castle? How were the oompa-loompas flying around to get to this castle? How did the heroes get back at the end when the story made it clear the door locked up tight behind them? Why wasn't that chick's body totally rotting by the time they found the ocean? Why did the end look like a greeting card?

END SPOILERS

The sets, the costuming, etc... were all very lavishly and expensively done. In fact, the completely useless "ball room scene" was enough to make the set-designers for Cirque de Soleil green with envy.

The CG was mostly well done, and I would guess we'll never know how much stuff in the movie we'll take for granted that was actually a hard-won victory for some 3D modeller out there... but in a lot of places where it counts, the CG just wasn't very good.

And I've read a lot of bitching about the guy who played Dracula... look... I've seen Dracula with Lugosi. He's about as subtle as a Sherman tank. I think i know where this guy was coming from in his portrayal, and while it wasn't super-duper... please show me a guy who DIDN'T play a hokey version of Dracula.

One of my biggest complaints (and I'd been forewarned) was, why so much swinging? I swear there was more swinging in this than in Spider-Man. People were continually hurling around on ropes and cables to a tremendous effect which usually accomplished next to nothing.

The script was awful, and Van Helsing looked somewhat ridiculous in that hat. And the three Dracula brides were... awful. Yes, awful is the word I was looking for. But I TOTALLY dug Dracula's oompa-loompas. I'm going to make all my student workers dress like those dudes in the future.

But this was a super hero movie, hands down. Sure, it used the monsters from a few decent Universal monster movies, but it was pretty much a movie about a superhero going up against a mad scientist with a nefarious plot. And if you had any doubt, the gymnastics and wire-tricks should be enough to convince you of the true purpose.

Coppola tried to revive the Monster/ Horror movie genre (dead since the 50's, really) in the 90's. Dracula was, I hear, somewhat close to the book. Frankenstein was an odd mix of the book, movie and whatever the hell Branagh was up to. Both were fairly emotionless studies of getting through the paces of the stories and to get A list actors into monster movies. I think the end results of both movies are questionable. I've seen stage plays of both subjects that rocked the pants off of these movies.

I'm not sure the 1930's Universal monster movies of Dracula or Frankenstein were ever REALLY scary. I've read Ray Bradbury's account of seeing Frankenstein as a kid, and how he hid behind his seat. Maybe it's possible. But there's a purity of unsullied story-telling that goes along with those movies. They take a world with things that Van helsing is sorely lacking in (like, say, gravity), and add a feature into it our world that is utterly unnerving. The monsters worked (if they ever worked) because they remind us how frail and fragile we really are.

Van Helsing takes the world, removes all rules (including those of gravity and how much damage the human frame can really take), and then adds bizarre feature after bizarre feature until the canvas, as a whole, has lost any sense of meaning. How can you be afraid of the werewolf when your hero might, say, hop over the top of the werewolf while eating a hoagie at any given moment?

On an infinte number of levels, Van Helsing is a faiulre. It's not enough that it pays homage to the original source material. That's a nice effort, but... The creators seem to have utterly failed to grasp why the source material worked the first time while whoring it out to earn some sort of Monster Movie street cred (yes, Mr. Sommers... we all saw the burning windmill. Good for you.).

I'll probably watch this movie again at some point, because I'll always watch Batman and Robin over and over, even though I don't like it. It's a bit like watching an incredibly slow car crash, or maybe a train derailment over 2 hours or so.

In the meantime, I await the arrival of my movie monster box set.

So what's going on at The League?

Jamie's company is based in Oletha, Kansas (a suburb of Kansas City), and every year the folks in Kansas have a fun activity, such as going to the Kansas equivalent of Six Flags or going to a Royals game. But since Jamie's satellite office is out here in Arizona, they just don't do anything most of the time. To try and make up for this lack of fun, the Kansas office ordered the Tempe office to find something and go do it.

So Saturday we went to the Out of Africa Wildlife Park. Not much to say about it except that it was actually more interesting than the Phoenix Zoo in a lot of ways, although a much more humble affair. It's also interesting to be in a place where all that stands between you and a 600 pound tiger is a chain link fence. The key is not to piss off the tigers.

Sunday we went to see Urinetown which was being performed on campus as part of the traveling Broadway series. I thoroughly enjoyed the show, and I think other folks would like it (how can you not like a musical with songs like "Freedom, Runaway!" celebrating the need to run away when confronted by your oppressors). Not everybody liked it. We went to a matinee of the play and, as Arizona is crawling with retirees, we were surrounded by the elderly. At intermission the dudes in the men's room were vocal about their confusion. Apparently post-modernism has not yet hit the Matlock crowd, but, hey... That's okay.

The truth is, unfortunately, I will not remember the show as much for the script or the songs as much as the crowd. On Jamie's right sat a blind woman who was getting an Al Michaels play-by-play of the proceedings, and to my left sat an elderly couple who had rented headsets to better hear the show as they were both deaf. Consequently, I heard the entire show as an echo through the old people's headsets. To add to the fun, the headsets were making one of their hearing aids whistle out of control, which, apparently, neither of them seemed to notice for the entire 2.5 hour duration of the show. I don't know if you've ever heard a hearing-aid whistle from feedback or from running low on batteries, but it's absolutely horrible and intended to get the wearer to immediately remove the device.

But I'm a nice guy and so I just decided "hey, they're old. This show can't be cheap for them, either... I can live through it." But, then, of course, they started talking to each other, too. Loudly of course, because not only were they deaf, they had on those headsets and squealing hearing aids.

Finally another old guy, who had no need to have respect for old people, turned around and said "WILL YOU TWO BE QUIET?!!!!" I now love that anonymous old man in front of me and two seats down.

Before the final note of the final song, my darlings stood up and bolted for the exit, eager to beat other folks out of the parking lot and to the Early Bird Special at Denny's, I'd guess. Consequently, they missed the end of the show, more or less.

The moral of the lesson: No more matinee shows in Retirementville, USA.

Hi Denby!

It appears The League is 75% good and 25% evil.

thanks to Randy (who has gone 100% blogicidal) for the link.

Molly Writes:

Dear Melbotis,

Are we alone in the universe?

Molly

p.s. Why don't you have comments?

Dear Molly,

Me have waited until now to answer Molly question since Molly went off to see Elephunts in land where it often rainy. And Mel not mean Houston.

Mel have deep belief that every living creature is made of same cosmic dust which resulted from big bang, and that all nature and creation nothing more than embodiment of energy resulting from whatever came before big bang. Some energy stay put and be like, say, sofa. Other energy become moving thing, like, say... cat. But in end, we are all made of protons and neutrons and quarks. But because we are all made of solid matter, we (sofa or cat) are all cosmically connected having come from result of big bang.

Mel think this mean you might want to avoid anti-matter so that universe does not collapse in on itself.

But then Mel see thing like stupid neighbor dog hanging over fence going barkbarkbark, and Mel know he can share cosmic connection and neighbor dog still is jerk.

Mel also know that in morning, people jangle keys and put on silly clothes and look for cell phone and go to work. And then Mel fall into pit of despair as people leave Mel all alone. But you know what? People always come home again, and then Mel know the universe is not black pit of meaningless despair. If people not come home, then Mel poop on carpet.

Sometime people ask Mel, "Hey, Mel... why no comments on page?" Mel only response is that League of Melbotis is no democracy. If you want thought published to site, send letter to Mel, and Mel is happy to remove four-letter names assigned to Ryan and then post letter.

Have good day, Molly. Hope you liked India.

Fast times at Hero High.

Check it out!

My friends Jeff is off to Mexico to get married tomorrow.

I am now deeply regretting my decision to not attend the ceremonies. Ah, well. C'est la vie.

Superman Update

Much ado about Superman today.

An article appeared in Time's online version basically stating that Superman needs to be updated. They fail to mention how that could be successfully accomplished, and, instead, name the shotgun approach DC is currently taking. In other words, throw as many versions at the wall as possible and see what sticks.

Bad idea.

Either a property resonates or doesn't resonate, but making Superman all things to all people essentially makes him nothing but a corporate schill. And as a trademarked symbol, he's going to have to play that role. BUT... my problem with the article is that they spend a lot of time hashing out why Superman isn't cool (and a lot of their assumptions left me wondering), but never point out why he is cool. Or ever was cool. It's an unwinnable debate which has been tossed around since the mid-80's, and the article's author seems to be highly frazzled by having to write the article at all.

I kind of wonder what brought it on. It sounds as if the AOL/Time Warner/ DC Comics corporate uber-minds decided Superman needed some attention, but the editors didn't care what spin they got... as long as they got some sort of coverage.

As far as Superman's Team-Based exploits, Justice League's Series Finale will air May 29th. Set your TiVo now. The series will re-launch in the Fall under the name Justice League Unlimited and guest-star a bevy of DC heroes. (I like the "Unlimited" name. It's more accurate than JL America, which seems silly since J'onn J'onzz is Martian, Aquaman is King of Atlantis, Wonder Woman is Princess of Themyscira, etc... etc...).

And according to the Superman Homepage:

Seinfeld and Superman to Air on NBC
With Friends now history, NBC is looking to another Must-See legend to re-energize its Thursday night lineup. According to Variety, on May 20th - the final Thursday of May sweeps - the network will air The Adventures of Seinfeld & Superman, a special based on Jerry Seinfeld's current American Express Web series.

They changed blogger

It's chaois here at the League. They changed blogger... it looks great.

I just ran into a former pal from high school, Charlie Pollock.

Charlie was in the class of '91 and I was in the class of '93, so I only hung out with him for a short while as we did a play together. Well, Leaguers, Charlie went on to broadway stardom and is now in the touring group for Urinetown.

Anyway, I was just telling my co-worker over lunch that I was going to see Urinetown on Sunday. On our way back, Charlie strolled by on his way to see a movie at the theater near my office. Weird world, huh?

It's been ten years, but it was good to see the guy. And i guess I'm going to see him again on Sunday. Only he'll be on stage this time. But, dammit! I was his understudy in our UIL production of A Midsummer Night's Dream! (Don't worry, I'm prepared to step in for him if anything goes wrong on this production, too.)

Let it be known that I, along with millions of others, watched the final episode of Friends.

I haven't really watched the show in two or three years, and my viewing has been sporadic during that entire time. And while it's not my favorite show (It's no MXC), one can certainly see how the show surpasses... oh... about 80% of the sitcoms out there. So, sure... there's nothing wrong with people liking it.

BUT (and there's always a but), in the first ten minutes, I was ready to turn off the finale for the same reason I turned off the show for the past several years. I get a weird, embarrassed feeling for David Schwimmer whenever I watch that show. Something about him or his character just drives me up the wall. I can't put my finger on it, but it's there. That, and Matthew Perry was much funnier when he was on uppers.

Most bizarre was that Friends, once again, had big emotional scenes using their airport sets. Man, those guys get an amazing amount of mileage out of the terminal sets they built for, I think, Season 2. People are always jetting off, or coming back on jets, and somehow, the airport has to be the place where they say their good-byes or "I love you's" or whatever.

Anyway, no big deal. The show is over, and I got through it without being constantly told how it had changed all of western civilization. THis is unlike the finale of Sex and the City (which I watched for, I think, 1/2 of a season in 2001), whose finale had entertainment journalists beating their breasts and wailing at the moon for a full month ahead of time.

In the next two years, we have several meltdowns to look forward to as the cast of Friends moves on to "movie stardom" and to try to get new projects off the ground. Several series are sure to follow on NBC, and if the past is any indication, they should all be outstanding successes. Ah... how we all enjoyed The Jason Alexander Show, Watching Ellie, and The Michael Richards Show. Good luck, guys!

After reporting on my friend, Jeff's progress on his wedding, Nordstrom posted this chilling tale of cross-border romance and the sea of red-tape which is keeping two people apart.

I am also reminded of another true life romance I was somewhat aware of back in Austin where a guy I knew fell in love with an American girl, but discovered all too late that legal issues would keep them from being together in the US, and so she ended up moving to Mexico. She had to give up a good paying job and say good-bye to family and friends in order to be with her new love.

Lately things have been sort of crappy. I don't know what the story is, but it feels as if I'm getting metaphorically kicked in the crotch quite a bit lately, and it's starting to make me edgy. Really. I'm getting really sick of it.


on the Tetsuo scale, I think I'm about right here right now...

It doesn't help that about three months ago i realized I probably am stuck in Arizona for the rest of my life as I have no clear means of ever returning to Texas, let alone Austin. And that's depressing as hell. I have a good paying job, and so does Jamie. I may not like my job, but it pays better than digging ditches, and it keeps me out of the broiling sun during the Arizona summer.

But even my job has turned from a job where I handled interesting multimedia projects into a job where I babysit faculty day in and day out as they whine about classroom space. it's chimp work and should be a minor, minor part of my job. Instead, it's turned into at least 25 hours a week of what I do.

I got my job threatened last week by one guy, another faculty called me at 4:30 yesterday to tell me he was unhappy about something we'd previously agreed upon, and he was going to pull his class from our program, effectively neutralizing the program (because he doesn't want to walk an extra quarter-mile to teach class two days a week).

My boss is asking me to create roll-away carts to create online multimedia, which seems like a splendid idea. Only I've done this before. It's a huge hassle, isn't worth the cost of what it takes to employ such a set-up, and the final product is usually pretty cheesy. In general, it's a terrible idea, and something only an engineer would dream up. No self-respecting video jock would create such a set-up as they would inherently recognize the flaws in such a set-up. Unfortunately, the video world is now run on the advice of engineers with toys more often than people who actually know a little about production work. Bleah.

There are a host of other, smaller and more annoying issues, but it seems that's all I deal with anymore. It's been a long time since I got up for work and actually was at least impassive about going. Lately it's been feeling like a real chore. And life's too short for that.

It's insane. it's 8:30 AM, and it's already a shitty day.

When you assume...

So I'd been loosely following the development of Cryptic Studios/ NC Soft's new release "City of Heroes", a massive multiplayer video game which one can play online. The basic gist is: you create a superhero and send them out into a massive virtual environment to fight crime. Sounds right up my alley.

Except I am not a gamer. Nor am I, despite my credentials, really much of a computer guy.

So I spent a good chunk of change on the game and pre-ordered it. It finally showed up at my house last night. I loaded it, all looked good.... until I realized I didn't have a good enough graphics card or even a good enough processor to play the game. In my computer I bought in December. And I have a laptop, so it's not like I can readily change out either item.

In order to even set-up the game, I had to get a subscription to the service which would allow me to play.

So:

1) I can't return the game to Best Buy because I already opened it (that's their policy in Black and White)
2) I'm not sure if when I cancelled my subscription to the service if I am getting refunded for the 6 months I was too be billed for, and may be billed for 6 months instead of the two hours it took for me to decide to forego trying to make this work and just try to sell the copy of the game.

As I mentioned, I am not computer savvy. And I know there's a snickering army of Melvins out there saying "Snort! How did he think he could play a game on an Inspiron! Snort! He might as well have been using a Apple IIe! Hynuck hynuck!"

Cinco de Mayo!!!!

It's not about just boozing it up any more than that's what the 4th of July is about north of the border. But it's also not really officially Mexican Independence Day. So what is it?

Read here and here.

It's 1st Amendment Morning today at the League.

We don't need hooded government goons in this fair land of ours. We have CEO's with bottom line's and whatnot to worry about.

Michael Moore's new flick (sure to be boo'd by the right and overly lauded by the left) is being blocked from distribution by Disney head, Michael Eisner. Apparently, he just noticed that this Michael Moore chap, who one of his little subsidiaries works with, is a bit of a rabble rouser. He's effectively blocking release of Moore's new un-surprisingly anti-Bush documentary as he doesn't feel Disney should be entering into a political debate. Here's the story.

thanks to Nathan and Randy for pointing me to the story.

In more colorful news, the euphemism "getting your salad tossed" entered my universe late Sunday night, has popped up numerous times since then. I first heard it on, show of shows, MTV's Wildboyz. I wrote it off then, but it was yesterday, whilst browsing The Smoking Gun that I read up on Howard Stern and Jimmy Kimmel's attempts to get Oprah fined by the FCC. Apparently, Oprah had a show (pre-Janet Jackson's nipple) which was a "frank" discussion about sex. In which they bantied about terms like "tossing the salad".

Taking exception to being singled out by the FCC, Stern has been encouraging his listeners to write into the FCC to complain about the Winfrey program. ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, always one for anything potty-humored, has joined in the charge. Read about it here.

I encourage you to read the letters to the FCC. They're pretty funny. And the truth is, Stern has a point.

If anyone can locate Louis Black's anti-FCC rampage from The Daily Show from a month ago, let me know. (It's never easy explaining to your wife you know exactly what "Hot Carl" means.)

I just screwed up. Badly.

My friend, Jeff, sent out a group e-mail telling everyone that he CAN go to Mexico for his wedding. So delighted was I, that I replied to him an e-mail, said some nice things, and whatnot.

But I accidentally hit "reply to all", which means I sent nice things out to a hundred people.

Oops.

I've known Jeff since I was 10, and this is surely less embarrassing than dozens of other things I've done in that time, but I did the equivalent of having a conversation with him in a crowded room while leaving a microphone on.

Ugh. It's hard to shake the creepy crawlies after you've done something like that.

I sent a Recall in Outlook, but I can only guess about how well that is going to work.

I am so embarrassed, my head hurts.

Thanks, Science!

Turns out owning a hybrid car could cause you some additional giref if you're in a car wreck.

ZAP!!!!

I am very excited about the upcoming models of hybrid car. I love the Forester, but with it's tiny tank and my weekly mileage, if I don't fill up every Monday, it can spell trouble.

Can Jim D. and Randy meet the challenge set before them?

Loyal Leaguers may recall that a month or so ago I challenged Jim and Randy to:

1) see Garfield: The Movie in the theater

2) write a full review of the movie for use on both of their sites and The League

The League is willing to fully fund the price of 1 ticket, a large popcorn and a soda of their choice for each participant. Girlfriends, kindly grandmothers, and random children chosen off the street must pay their own way. The League is not a charity.

So will they accept the challenge, or be all cowardly and stuff...? June 11th, we'll know for sure.

Ahhhhh... Hippie Hollow... my earliest memories of living in Austin (around age 10) include a conversation with a girl telling me how she drifted past Hippie Hollow in her family boat, and how a dude was hanging out naked on the rocks.

"It's a nude beach," she said.
"And he was naked."
"Yes. it was so gross."
"And you knew it was a nude beach."
"Yeah, it's Hippie Hollow."
"Why in God's name did your parents go by Hippie Hollow so slowly if they knew it was a nude beach?"
"Those people are freaks."
"That apparently your family likes to take long, lingering glances at."
"No way. We were just drifting by."
"Uh-huh."
"We were!"
"Slow enough to look at the nude people."
"You're a freak."
"I see."

Being married to me, my beautiful wife, Jamie, has to suffer through a lot. She's grown accustomed to a lot of the capes and superhero nonsense, and she's even embraced small bits of it (but I still can't get her to pick out a comic on her own if she ever winds up at the comic shop with me). Lately, the thing has been my school work for my grad class which has decimated the past several weekends as I slog through a project which I am not particularly fond of.

Gold star to her for putting up with me while she has to do all the real work around the house.

On another front, she was delighted to see pictures of Christian Bale in his batsuit. Apparently, the former Newsies star is the sort of dude Jamie likes to see in a pointy-eared cowl. So we both get something out of the new Batman movie, I guess.

I joined a gym this weekend. God help me. I need to go tonight or I am never going to make this work.

My friend Jeff Peek is having trouble with the US Immigration department. Jeff is marrying a lovely girl name of Adriana from Guadalajara. Apparently, the immigration services jacked up some paperwork, and now she may not be able to go to Mexico for the wedding without risking her immigration status. Sounds pretty awful from what he said, and being that Jeff is one of my oldest pals, I am really down hearing about it. They'll still get married, but the actual wedding and all that they have already put money down for is in serious jeopardy. Due to numerous factors, i was not going to the wedding in Mexico. Ugh. Poor guy.

And on a very different note... one of the biggest personal scandals to hit comics since Dave Sim declared women to be the root of all evil, anti-war activist/ comic artist Micah Wright was found out to NOT be an Army Ranger as he'd frequently asserted. Wright had published one book and was due to publish another book of retooled porpaganda posters driving toward anti-war sentiment. For years, he had always used the bulletproof defense that he was a former Army Ranger who had turned anti-war during the invasion of Panama. That is, until his lack of Ranger training, etc... was uncovered by the Washington Post.

Still, Wright asserts it was a "joke" and a "hoax", instead of admitting he's a big old liar.

Scandals liek this don't hit comics very often, but when they do... well, let's just say Wright isn't going to be working in comics again. He managed to embarass not just himself, but his publishers, editors and everyone else who ever believed him.

Reviews of movies I watched this weekend (God bless you, little DVR!).

20 Millions Miles to Earth

Ever since I was a little kid and had a book called "Movie Monsters!", I'd wanted to see this flick. It sounded really, really cool what with space ships and monsters. I'm always one for the vintage sci-fi and stuff.

But, as Randy lamented, the things we dug as kids don't always pan out to be as great as we thought they were.

It's the 50's, and our brave astronauts crash in the ocean outside Sicily while returning from Venus. The craft is absolutely enormous and very cool, until it disappears in the sea. A weird cowboy/ Italian kid who looks exactly liek Steve-o from MTV's Wildboyz discovers a big tube filled with some sort of egg in it. The cowboy/Italian/Steve-o sells the egg to a local doctor for the price of a Texas Cowboy hat.



Meanwhile, our alarmingly lantern jawed astronaut/ hero puts down his female doctor which makes her fall in love with him. (Note to self: always treat women like 2nd class citizens, and they will adore you) The female doctor is the neice or something of the doctor who got the egg. The egg hatches and out pops a monster from Venus.

Side note: everyone on board the rocket but the lantern jawed astronaut died of a mysterious venutian virus. THis is never mentioned again despite the fact a huge, venutian monster is running around the countryside contaminating god knows what.

Overnight the monster grows at an exponential rate (despite not being fed or watered or anything). The astronaut and the US space agency realize the egg is missing and go try to find it. Apparently the astronauts saw a lot of the things on the surface of Venus and learned only one thing: THe monsters can be harmed by electricity.

Wow.

I guess we're to understand they flew all the way to Venus to figure out how to torture the native life.

And here's the important thing: the astronaut hero guy says that the monsters are only aggressive if provoked. And then the astronaut proceeds to poke the monster with a stick. Seriously. he finds a 20 foot pole and begins poking at the damn thing.

The monster retaliates by killing an Italian farmer. This leads them to believe the monster is dangerous, so they capture it, only to let it grow REALLY large. So, of course, the monster escapes. It runs into an elephant (they're keeping him at the zoo), has a pretty convincing fight with the elephant.

Knowing the monster is only aggressive if provoked, the military attacks it with bazookas, causing all kinds of havoc in the streets of Rome. Eventually, the thing falls off the Roman Collosseum and dies. The end

Proving that people are dumb as rocks, this movie asserts that, despite the fact the monster was our responsibility, we should kill it for, you know, trying to get out and about. Yet, this movie is still a bit of a sci-fi classic. Ray Harryhausen provided the special FX, and they're really, really good. But the questions one could raise about the game plan for containing this beast... anyway, the movie is pretty much the third act of King Kong stretched out to two hours.

I also saw Bridge on the River Kwai, which was infinitely better.

And Arnie learns politics is a cruel, cruel bitch

Teen Movies. There are a heck of a lot of them out these days, aren't there? And just when I thought "Not Another Teen Movie" heralded the end of the latest spate of them, I was very, very wrong.

As long as there are teenagers who believe media targeted at them is shiny and brand new and wholly original to the universe as it enters their experience, a dozen or so of these flicks are getting cranked out a year. And the funny thing is, the critics spend a lot of time justifying these movies instead of simply writing them off. But the review always has the haunting quality of a 16 year old girl whose parent simply don't understand her...

The review of the teen movie always goes something like:

Being a teenager is hard. Every high school is the same. There are cliques. The cafeteria blah blah blah. We all hated it, right? Right? This movie is about a girl who is sad because she is not popular in the cafeteria. Something magical happens to make her popular but then she does not like herself. This thing tests her identity about who she wants to be, and she decides to be who she was at the beginning of the movie and the bitchy girls get their comeuppance. This movie wasn't very good, but it had a few funny jokes. Breakfast Club is good. In spite of all the shit I put on other, better movies, I liked this movie. The End.

You know what?

If you really thought that life would be great if you ditched your friends, it means you're an idiot and kind of a horrible person. Seriously. You don't deserve the fairy tale story where you learn to accept your friends. You were probably a jerk then and, more than likely, you're a jerk now.

And, kids... High school is easy. High schoolers don't really work and they live the dream lives of the characters on Friends where you pretty much pal around with your buddies all day, and then go pal around with your buddies some more, and nobody is ever at work or worrying about a mortgage or anything. This is why my favorite high school movie may well be "American Beauty".

Of course, I came into my high school as a sophomore, so maybe I missed the day freshman year we were given "A TV Viewer's Guide to Your High School". And thanks to TV and movies, I remember thinking high school was going to be this horrible place where I was going to have to win ski competitions and dance-offs to impress girls. Really, the worst thing about high school is that you have to go see a lady in the principals' office when you are "tardy", even if it's because you dared to use the bathroom between classes.

I suspect movies and TV are written by people who always secretly wanted to be IN some crowd they thought would make boring high school more interesting, instead of watching these other folks from afar like the characters always do on these shows. Which pretty much means two things to me:

1) the writers may have dedicated their whole lives to feeling superior to Jessica Schwartz once and for all, and their whole professional life is some sad revenge fantasy
2) The critics need the same visceral indication and are still getting it from these movies at age 40

With movie after movie coming out like this, clearly it's reaching the intended audience (whether the decision is to go with the hot, rich prince, or whether to go back to hanging out with your admittedly lame friends you had in Act 1).

My high school movie would be painful and boring to watch as the great drama unfolded as my dad and I debated whether mowing the lawn early or late on Saturday was a better idea. Or the drama of the bad haircut. Or the story of the time the pump took a really long time at the Chevron. Or the saga of the really bad pair of Bugle Boys. Or the time I jumped off my roof into the pool. If we wanted to get really exciting, we could investigate the mystery of why we never had any damn soda in the house unless guests came to visit. Hollywood, I am ready to sell any of these ideas.

In the history of weird decisions, this was one of the weirdest in broadcasting I can think of.

NPR said "adios" today to Bob Edwards as the voice of my morning commute.

I'm still not sure what prompted Edward's ouster, but I am betting whatever we were told about wanting to skew younger is hogwash. I bet Edwards and Montagne got into a knife-fight in the parking lot.

And.... first look at Christian Bale as Batman.

Apparently some a-holes in some a-hole hate group managed to get top billing when you Google for "Jew." Google has posted an apology if this is what you find while searching, but has stated they cannot change the findings without compromising the validity of their process. Or something.

Apparently, as a web-publisher guy, I can help a bit by linking to this site. If enough people link to it, and I say Jew on my website, it may help derail the hate group. I have no idea if this will work or help or not, but you have to try, right? So, here I link to the definition of Jew.

Some ABC affiliate stations now refuse to play tonight's upcoming Nightline installment featuring the names and photographs of the soldiers who have died in Iraq.

Says Koppel, "I didn't expect that. I thought it would get attention, but did I think it would become so controversial, did I think that people would feel the need to question the patriotism of those who are putting it on the air? Did I think that it would descend to the depths of some people suggesting we were doing this because the networks are going into a sweeps period when ratings become important? You start to wonder after a while. I've been doing 'Nightline' for over 24 years, I've been at ABC for 41 years, if that's really the impression I've left with people then I have failed in such a colossal way that I can't even begin to consider the consequences of it."

Last night when I was going to bed, I turned off the light and then turned on a flashlight to try and be funny and surprise Jamie. No go on surprising Jamie.

However, Mel (who likes to sleep by the foot of our bed) suddenly began scrambling around, terrified out of his mind by the flashlight.

My dog is afraid of flashlights.

Melbotis + flashlight =

ba-KAWK!!!!

Hurray! Travis Mays returns to UT!

I used to think this guy was the bee's knees.

Folks trickling in from Jim D's site: I welcome you and apologize in advance.

I also apologize for all the type-o's. My mum's a teacher, and she'd be sad if she thought you believed I cannot spell.

For those of you who don't know Jim, I went to college with Jim D. This is a photograph of Jim in his swankier college days.

Superman #204 hit the stands yesterday, and I can't encourage Loyal Leaguers enough to get on board Superman with this issue.

Holy cats.

I had been very excited by the previews DC had posted on their website, but the preview doesn't actually show what's in #204. Sure, the dialogue is the same for the first two pages, but it's actually different art. It's a greater establishing shot. I'm kind of curious to know what happened and if the art will turn up again... But who cares. Superman #204 rocked my socks off in a way the other two (very nicely done) relaunches have failed to do.



Brian Azzarello is better known for his crime-fiction, and the story will be the largest "whodunit?" in comics in a long time. Indeed, while Superman was lending a hand to Kyle Rayner Green Lantern a million miles from home, something happened back on Earth. Superman returned to discover that about 1 million people were missing. Just gone. Among the missing was Lois Lane, intrepid reporter for The Daily Planet and wife to Superman.

Anyway, the story has almost no action. It's a huge prelude of things to come. But the art is phenomenal, and the writing is excellent.

You can wait 18 months for the collection to be released, or you can jump on-board now. I know what I'd do.

Speaking of Green Lanterns... Looks like Hal Jordan will officially be DC's boy in green once again. I like John Stewart, myself... But that's mostly based on only the cartoon of Justice League and a brief run called Cosmic Odyssey and a few good issues of Joe Kelley's JLA. We'll see what happens.

An old co-worker of mine was just accepted to the Cannes Film Festival...

Karen Skloss and I worked together at the Instructional Media Lab (now the FIC) at the University of Texas. She was lead editor and cinematographer on a few of our projects while I was there. I knew she had talent, but I am ashamed to now admit we got into a row or two over editing decisions. Clearly, she is now more in the right than I. Karen, wherever you are, I am sorry i wanted that pan shot cut.

Karen is an A+ kind of person, and I am thrilled to hear about her success.

Irony of ironies... Karen is not a grad student in the RTF department. She's a Fine Arts grad.

UT RTF let's one more slip away....

Further proof that we are two nations separated by a common language... just read the headline my friends.

The article is very interesting, too. Thanks to my wife for the link.

Today is the 4th Anniversary of my wedding to Jamie McBride Steans.

We got married on a lovely Friday afternoon in South Austin under the watchful eye of many of our friends and loved ones and some random friends of my parents. Jamie was amazingly lovely, and the whole thing mostly went off without a hitch.

Here's to four great years of me being the luckiest guy on earth.

Everyone wants to be naked and famous.

I got a post-card in my mail-slot at work today for some sort of drama camp being held at my employing university. It looks like it's for middle-school or high-school aged kids, and is designed to aloow them to try out their acting chops in an environment other than the annual Christmas Pageant (I, myself, am a three-time veteran narrator of the Christmas Pageant. I was not allowed to narrate anymore after I flubbed the phrase "Prince of Peace" during the horrid production of "The Christmas Alphabet". There are a lot of letters after P, and X wasn't even included, so it wasn't much of a play. But I sure saw those angry stares from the parents when I screwed up "Prince of Peace". Which made me start laughing. Which made my brother start laughing. Which made Todd start laughing. Which didn't help with the angry stares. And I thought Christmas was supposed to be merry...).

At any rate, the post card shows about five kids of varying ethnicities pulled from some pay-per-photo website. They might be singing. They might be yelling. I can't tell. I kind of don't like kids, so I didn't pay too much attention. What caught my eye was the phrase, "Where every child is a star!" Parents: That is physically impossible. Not every child is a star. The world if full of us chorus type people. And if your kid stinks, your kid stinks. furthermore, Parents: just because your kid is an obnoxious lout, doesn't make them the next Katherine Hepburn. Trust me. And, no... there's no such thing as precociousness. It's almost invariably obnoxiousness through the filter of parent's doting eyes. And then it becomes obnoxiousness which receives positive reinforcement, making it all the worse for the chorus kids.

Can little kids be good actors? Sure. I guess. And so can chimps and dogs. Even Dolphins can act, if you've seen Flipper.

But the point is, not EVERY child is going to be a star. A lot of kids will go to camp and end up way back in the chorus, or play "shopkeep #5" in an atrocious rendition of Hello, Dolly! (I am actually reminded of a former co-worker of mine who told me her 5th grade class performed MacBeth. I said "God, that must have been awful for your parents!" and she said "No, we were really good." To which I said "You were 10. Whether you knew it or not, the best you could do is memorize your lines." To which she insisted "well, we were in the gifted class." To which I said "Weren't we all. It sounds like a freaking nightmare. I pity your parents." To which she said "Well, kids at my school were probably smarter than at your school. This was in Philadelphia." Which pretty much went against everything I ever knew about Philadelphia, but I let it drop.)

Now there's nothing wrong with kids doing drama, or adults doing drama. And I don't want that confusion to play out here. But the point is: iWhere Every Child Is a Star!

Which got me thinking about Reality TV. It's fairly easy to see the connection and if you see where I'm going, stop reading now. Reality TV is the long-awaited dream of all of us untalented chorus people. It's the final resting place of the morbidly un-cast to be famous for being famous, to let dignity and due process fly to the wind. It casts off any preconceptions about skill, or working for years before getting a break, or having talent. It's your chance to fulfill the highschool popularity contest of being universally known and loved just for existing.

But, like everything else, this stardom is fleeting. Just the length of the season of the show, and then someone even nutsier comes along on a show you never heard of before. But by then you've got an agent, you've ditched your girlfriend and moved to LA to have a go at making it in the movies (which, honestly... you know jack-shit about...). You get a role in a commercial playing a pre-scripted version of yourself (who is kind of an ass, but it's hyperbole for TV, right...?) and then... VH1 calls to ask you about how bitter you are because you're not in the next Spielberg picture the way you hoped... and can they put you on camera to talk about it? Well, says you agent, it would be good for your exposure (which is limited to the local bar right now). So, yeah, go ahead. 15% of blood money is better than 15% of nothing.

And forget about the kids who go to LA and are starring in movies like "The Sopornos 18" a year or two of bad decision making after their arrival. Or the sea of people who don't happen to have fathers and mothers who can get them a job... Or the demeaning role of "chubby girl #2" or the best story they have is that it turns out Alan Thicke can be a real moody bastard on set...

We want our kids to be famous. We want them to be known and harassed and stalked and photographed and adored... screw it if their only skill is showing their teeth when they smile...

And if they do become a star, they decide you abused them and sue you for all you've got once they turn twenty-one and meet a coke-head stripper looking for a handout. Hell, if the story is horrific enough, you can get on VH1 and talk about with out without a 15% representation fee. And, hey... that makes you semi-famous, right..?

it now appears that there are at least two images circulating through the internet of Iraqi children posing with a jolly US soldier, all of them giving the camera the Fonze.



The League suspects these formerly oppressed miscreants have no deep love for The League.

Stir up controversy in your own home!

I have to admit a fondness for MTV's globe-trotting "nature" program Wildboyz.

While I am sure that the good folks at PETA probably flip out at the very notion of putting an animal on camera without a signed consent form, the folks at PETA should really give the show a second-look... because the primary attraction of Wildboyz is getting to see grown men mauled by wild animals.

Steve-O and Chris Pontius from MTV's gleefully brain-dead Jackass have taken the show on the road, and decided to involve the peoples and animals from across the world. No longer content just to ride grocery carts downhill into a brick wall, Chris and Steve-O swim with man-eating sharks, get bit by toucans and get zapped by electric eels. Really, the show is an investigation into all of the aggressive tactics of animals you've heard about, but never got a chance to witness at the zoo. Luckily, Chris is not above poking a jaguar to see if it IS the dealiest cat alive.

Granted, Wildboyz is deeply rooted in the scatological (and here, my PETA friends, you may quit reading before you bust an artery). Steve-o is pee'd and pooped upon by elephants, and Chris might use his thong as the location where he's concealing feed for a guinea hen. And, of course, the male nudity. Neither Chris nor Steve-O will wear much more than a thong, given the chance. In some cases (like when they jumped in the water with a Great White Shark) they've had on even less.

Have I learned anything from Wildboyz? I have learned that Chris and Steve-O should be dead about fifty times over, but somehow live on, with all of their fingers, toes, ears and eyes intact. I also have learned that undomesticated animals WILL in fact attack you in pretty much the worst ways imaginable (see last nights episode with the Sloth Bear incident), and your crew will stand off camera and laugh as you get really messed up.

The amazing part of the spectacle is that Chris and Steve-O go back again and again. It wasn't enough when they dressed up as two parts to a zebra and ran across a veldt in front of hungry lions, only to be mauled. No, next episode they plan to test the stories surrounding the electric eel by standing in runnign water and grabbing electric eels.

I won't watch The Swan, but, God help me, I will watch these two guys get beat up by every creature on the planet.

Suddenly I'm a tremendous fan of NASCAR.


click on pic for a larger image from over at Superman Homepage

Seems Hot Wheels is sponsoring some races. I guess I need to be on the lookout for Justice League themed Hot Wheels cars. And all this after today when, while at Target, I picked up what Jamie called "Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Green Lantern".

All I know is I want to ride in whichever car Wonder Woman is getting in.

I am hoping Mel will soon have a buddy.

Yesterday when i got home there was a bit of commotion in the backyard. I went out to check on my flowers (which, given the state of the yard, are kind of wildflowers), and I heard my next door neighbor chatting with my katty-korner neighbor over the fence.

Still, I figured I wasn't going to stick my nose into their business. Eventually, I did, in fact, stick my nose into their business because, Leaguers, that's what The League excels at. My next door neighbor, Eric, is about 7' tall. He's really, really a great guy... he just happens to be able to see me all the time over the fence. Eric, perhaps due to his stature, is a big fan of Great Danes. Hence, he has a very sweet puppy named Lacy who is somewhat larger than Jamie. Jamie really likes Lacy, but Lacy is a very shy dog and only rarely says "hello". She ALWAYS looks alarmed when i wave to her over the fence.

Lacy has a boy dog over. Apparently Lacy is being bred, which is kind of exciting. Eric and Annette really take care of their dog, and they're big dog people who know all the different details of raising one and all the details about the breed etc... However, two dogs + cinderblock fence + excitement = some blocks fell out of the fence. Whoops. It appears Lacy and her beau took a few blocks out while saying hello to the neighbor kids.

Eric was telling me what was going on, and expalinging he was breeding Lacy, and I blurted out, "If it goes okay, we want a puppy." Jamie was not in earshot, so I quickly said, "Jamie can be convinced. Let me try."

So when Jamie came back to the fence to look over and see the boy doggy, I quickly said it again. "If it goes okay, we want a puppy. Right, sweetie?" She kind of looked nervous. "They're so big..." (seriously, even at 116 pounds, they dwarf my buddy Mel). "No big deal!" I answered. "You'll love it!"

Eric looked concerned about our eager acceptance. "We don't know what color they'll be. Tehy could be either fawn or brindle."

Jamie shrugged. "No big deal. We just like the doggies."

So we may, maybe, maybe, might be getting a Great Dane puppy.

Obviously I don't know the former Arizona Cardinal who fell in Afghanistan. I learned that he played ball and received his degree from my employing University.

“Pat Tillman was an outstanding ASU graduate who understood that we are in a global war, and he volunteered to be part of that,” said ASU President Michael Crow. “He fully understood the risks, yet he went to defend his country, and he gave up his life. Pat was an extraordinary young man who brought credit to us all.”

Flags are flying at half-staff throughout the university and the state. As plans unfold for special remembrances of Tillman at ASU, an announcement will be made. Crow and the university community send their thoughts and prayers to Tillman’s family and friends throughout the country.

Just noticed the name of this show. A few Leaguers may find this amusing.

You know, after one long night at Club De Ville, I had a similar experience.

So, upon viewing the trailer for New York Minute, Jamie turned to look at me and said:

You know, Eugene Levy is turning into the Samuel L. Jackson of comedy.

She couldn't be more right.

I used to work with Sheldon at UT.

He let me play around the nuclear reactor and he used to buy me lunch at Mother's. An all around square-G, and I guarantee you, he's not happy about all this.

oh, my virgin ears...

I am quite a-twitter that this is going to be in our national archives forever and ever and ever. And I would have loved to have been in the meeting where it was decided what could and couldn't be said.

"How about the c-bomb?"
"Oh, that's on the list."
"Fart-knocker..?"
"Get real, man."
"Well, we have to put fuck on the list, because my mom STILL has conniptions if she sees Eddie Murphy on TV. Even after The Nutty Professor..."
"Oh, fuck is definitely a-number-one on the list."
"Shit?"
"After 10:00, it's not a big deal."
"How is crap different from shit?"
"Man, shit is waaaaaayyyyy worse than crap."
"How so?"
"It just is."
"Okay, put shit on the list. We'll take it off later if we change our minds."
"Piss?"
"You've got to be shitting me."
"No. I think we need to add piss."
"How about pee-pee. Can we still say pee-pee?"
"Absolutely. Pee-pee is endearing. Piss means, you know... it's bad and stuff. Babies pee-pee. They don't piss."
"Asshole is on."
"Oh, man, yeah."
"Butthole."
"You just don't get it, do you..?"

THanks to Randy for this tidbit:

Batman and Robin in the UK?

I suppose it's much easier to emulate Batman than Superman if you're going to go ahead and do the whole cape thing. It would be far less impressive to just see Superman jogging off after, say, opening a jar of pickles for you. Forget about trying to do Green Lantern or The Atom.

I almost forgot.

So I'm having lunch with this group from work and a woman I used to work with from another team, and we're talking about the local eateries, and I mention... "hey, yeah, I try not to go to [large chain corporate restaurant] too often. I'm just burned out on it."
"I won't go to [large chain corporate restaurant] either," says Michelle.
"Burned out?"
"No."
"Sick of their food?"
"No. I'll tell you when we finish eating."
So i assume it's a barf story, or a story about something she found in someone's plate, or something fun like that.
"No," she says. "My husband went to the bathroom, and he came back white as a sheet. And I asked him what the problem was. And he said he found a dead guy in the bathroom."
"A what?"
"A dead guy. Apparently the guy had shot himself in the head just before my husband walked in. So he saw.. you know..."
"Oh my God."
"Yeah."
"So we had to sit there while they pretended to help the dead guy, who was pretty much dead... and then we watched him get carried out on a gurney."
"You have to wonder," my co-worker said, "How he got the cat in there."
We all stared at her quizzically.
"It wasn't a cat," Octavio offered. "It was a guy."
"Oh, well, that makes more sense," she nodded. "I thought you said it was a cat in the bathroom, and I couldn't figure out how you would get a cat into a [large chain corporate restaurant]."
"And so we're walking out the door," Michelle continued. "And the hostess is still asking How was everything?, and the other hostess is, like Shut Up! They're the ones who found the guy in the bathroom!"
"So, did you ever find out what had happened?"
"No," Michelle shrugged. "He had been drinking at the bar a while, and then my husband found him."

So, Leaguers, a little morbid thought for the next time you're feeling like heading down to your corner [large chain corporate restaurant].

and because I have not yet said it: There, but for the Grace of God, go I....

In response to my post below regarding the guy who loves Tron, Nathan C. of San Antonio has offered the following:

"Wednesday morning, after allowing it to dry overnight, I tried it on to see what problems needed fixing: "

As in: "TRON warriors were never this pudgy?"
As in: "I'm still not as cool as Flynn. What's wrong?"
As in: "my head/Master Control Program?"
As in: "I still can't get that orange on the kitchen table to disappear by shooting it with my keychain laser pointer?"
As in: "I still seem to wipeout on my motorcycle every time I try one of those 90 degree turns. Need to work on the suspension."

Check out this ad. I'm totally going to start growing kids of myself so I can harvest them for parts later.

Actually, the website is a fake-ad for the new movie Godsend starring DeNiro. Apparently a number of people who have actually lost their children have found the site while trying to work through their grief, and the site isn't doing them any favors. The web-site doesn't really indicate it's a plant and advertising gimmick for a movie. A strange, weird world we live in. I mean, we actually live in an era where science fiction is blurring with fact. (No, I do not know enough about cloning to know where we actually are right now with cloning a human, but the experiments in the Garage of Solitude are going well.)

It's always a little horrific to see Hollywood try to grapple with new technology or ideas. Anybody else remember the movies The Net or Hackers? A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing and usually makes for a very silly movie about seven years after the fact. Godsend, in particular, looks to be Pet Semetary meets The Sixth Day. And if that one-two combo doesn't do it for you, I can't imagine what would.

I'll be curious to see if the ad changes.

If I could browbeat all of the Leaguers into changing one behavior, it would be to get them to step into a comic shop just once this year. You don't even need to spend any money, but get an idea of the wacky world of comic nuttiness. Breath in the warm, stale air of the local comic shop and be amazed at the nonsense inherent therein.

Somehow, I finally broke Randy. I'm not sure if he ever actually bought anything, but he went back inside. From there, the infiltration begins.

Speaking of comics... (which I occasionally do...)

Superman has officially relaunched with new creative teams for the next year. To get an idea of what you might expect, I suggest you take a look at the website DC has created for those of you curious to see what is going on in Metropolis these days. They've provided very nice PDF sneak peeks.

Here is the preview for Superman #204 coming out in two weeks.

Just when i was feeling a little low about what kind of geek I've willingly become, some things brighten your day. This guy's enthusiasm is contagious.

thanks to Jamie for the link.

I should never go to Vegas.

My first trip to Vegas was, at that point, the furthest west I had ever travelled, my first time in a desert, and my first work related trip. I was travelling with Michael "The My" Young and Derek "G-rated fun" Lee, my co-workers from the multimedia shop we'd set up at the University of Texas.

It was strange enough seeing the hotels from the plane and then from the tarmac... like tiny little sets built out in the middle of nowhere for some post-apocolyptic envisioning of the world, or maybe Brainiac's playground after he's miniaturized city after city. But then you draw closer, and you realize that was just a trick of the light, a matter of perspective. Each hotel is a city unto itself. Your brain lied to you, simply because it had never seen anything like it, and couldn't process the insanity.

We checked into Circus-Circus (actually... funny story... somehow Circus Circus did not have us listed as guests despite the fact we were holding reservation confirmations in our hands. These were the early days of online hotel reservations, kids...). Jamie's family was in Vegas for some reason at the same time. So while we were sorting our mess out, there's Dick and Judy waving to me from across the very crowded lobby.

One's first view of The Strip is overwhelming, but inconsequential to my point here. My point here is that I should never go to Vegas.

Because after several days in Vegas of wandering the NAB showroom and sitting through hours of presentations and visiting the Coca-Cola museum and all that good stuff, one morning I woke up, took a shower, put on my socks and turned on the TV while Michael "The My" Young brushed his teeth.

"Jesus," I said. "Some kids just opened up with a bag of guns at their high school out in Colorado."
"Where?"
"Columbine?"
"Oh," said The My. "That's where I grew up."

We watched the TV for a while, not saying much. We went down to a cafe and got some eggs, and didn't really talk. And that was that. My hadn't gone to school at Columbine High School, and he didn't know the kids... but, still.

And if you've been reading here for a while, you may remember that my second trip to Vegas began on September 9th, 2001 and ended a few days later when planes started flying again, and everybody was painfully polite to one another.

So, yeah... I shouldn't ever go back to Vegas.

Jim informs me that the Hellmouth is not in Sunnyvale. It is in Sunnydale. Which would explain why there are so few vampires here in Sunnyvale. Instead, we're plagued by CHUDs.

It's been several years now since I watched Buffy, but as the Buffy-geek community often interbreeds with the comic geek community, I can't help but keep tabs.

Chandler is making an effort to be Sunnyvale for a day. I'm almost tempted to go down to the library and see what's going on.

Not much to report from Melbotis HQ. Slow weekend, not much happening. Beautiful weather. Etc...

I'm skipping the Punisher movie. For those of you who don't know, The Punisher is a Marvel character from the mid-70's who was originally a Spider-Man villain, and later became an anti-hero. He was cut from the same cloth as some Bronson movies (think the Death Wish series... in which you get to see Jeff Goldblum playing a "tough.) The Punisher's popularity soared in the mid-80's in the era of "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" action movies, and killing everyone in your path seemed like the most direct way to resolve a conflict.



Now, this may be surprising, but watching a dude in black pants kill every human being who crosses his path gets a bit stale after a while. So the Punisher's popularity waned in the early 90's.

Around 2000 The Punisher was relaunched as a dark, dark comedy about a guy out to kill everybody who ever committed a crime, and the very silly ways people try to stop him (not to mention a police force who secretly roots for him to take out the scumbags). It starred insane roid-infested Russian assassins, goofy nebbish cops and a slew of other characters trying to make sense of The Punisher's quest for vengeance.

My understanding is that the new movie uses these characters while refusing to be a comedy. Which is an odd choice, but I'm no genius of a producer. Furthermore, for reasons probably related to budgeting, the Punisher has moved from the "anything can happen" shadows of New York's underbelly to the tropical clime of Tampa, Florida, where one can, presumably, soak up the ocean air while acting as an unstoppable killing machine.

The truth is, we've all already seen this movie. There's no point to it if they weren't going to do something new (which is also why the black comedy series worked so well). After Commando, what the hell is there? Commando is the template for the video game action movie. You move up and up, collecting weapons until you fight the big boss. One could point to bruce Lee movies as pre-dating the concept, and I imagine they'd be right, but those movies had a certain grace and panache utterly lacking in testosterone bonanza's exemplified by Commando.

I don't really love Commando the way I did when I was 13, but it's brutal simplicity must have really struck a chord with people, because they've remade that movie a few hundred times over since it was released. As an interesting side-note, Jeph Loeb, one of my favorite comic writers, is also responsible for Commando.

Speaking of comics... Did anybody else see this week's epsidoe of Simpsons (entitled My Big Fat Geek Wedding)? Truly, a day of shame in the Steans household.

See, if these were the kind ads the candidates actually ran, I would finally get excited about the election.

My posts will not post.

Having utterly failed to capitalize on my birthday this past Monday as a source for blogger fodder, I will now do what I generally do not like to do.

I am going to just use somebody else's words and hope for the best. Unfortunately, I cannot determine who wrote the song.


Streets Of Laredo

As I walked out on the streets of Laredo.
As I walked out on Laredo one day,
I spied a poor cowboy wrapped in white linen,
Wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay.

"I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy."
These words he did say as I boldly walked by.
"Come an' sit down beside me an' hear my sad story.
"I'm shot in the breast an' I know I must die."

"It was once in the saddle, I used to go dashing.
"Once in the saddle, I used to go gay.
"First to the card-house and then down to Rose's.
"But I'm shot in the breast and I'm dying today."

"Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin.
"Six dance-hall maidens to bear up my pall.
"Throw bunches of roses all over my coffin.
"Roses to deaden the clods as they fall."

"Then beat the drum slowly, play the Fife lowly.
"Play the dead march as you carry me along.
"Take me to the green valley, lay the sod o'er me,
"I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong."

"Then go write a letter to my grey-haired mother,
"An' tell her the cowboy that she loved has gone.
"But please not one word of the man who had killed me.
"Don't mention his name and his name will pass on."

When thus he had spoken, the hot sun was setting.
The streets of Laredo grew cold as the clay.
We took the young cowboy down to the green valley,
And there stands his marker, we made, to this day.

We beat the drum slowly and played the Fife lowly,
Played the dead march as we carried him along.
Down in the green valley, laid the sod o'er him.
He was a young cowboy and he said he'd done wrong.

If you brush your teeth and get your sleep and live a good, clean life, eventually your dreams can come true.

So my coworker comes in and goes "So you're going with Jeff to Mexico to see that Virtual University?"
and I said "What?"
And she looked at me and then tottered off, saying "Let me run this by him."
Sometimes I have no idea what's going on around here, but apparently I'm going to Mexico.

And I didn't even know I'd been to Australia...

and it's not even a Red Rider bb-gun.

Score another victory for Dedman. Kind of.

No, I didn't get TiVo, although I know that would be Dedman's wish. Instead, Cox Communications, the uber-glomerate available here in Phoenix, now makes video recording possible through their cable boxes. Last night Jamie went on a mission and picked up our new cable box with DVR enhancement.

I'm still futzing with it to learn how to properly use it, but I did enter in some of my favorite shows, and I managed to practice recording with Justice League and Chapelle's Show last night.

Link to Maxwell's page where she reprints a comedian talking about Bill Hicks.

It's been a while since I thought about Bill Hicks. It may be time to seek out his CDs once again.

At first I thought my car stereo was haunted, which would seem odd, as nobody ever died using my car stereo.

Inexplicably, the volume would turn down to "0", and then refuse to turn up again. Well, it's not haunted... the "down volume" button has broken and now, going over a bump is enough to convince the stereo I have my finger pressed on the button.

"You just need a new face plate," Octavio told me as I bemoaned my dilemma. Ah HAAAA!!!!

But my stereo is a Jensen, and when I went to Jensen.com (the URL my stereo flashes at me each time I turn it off), it appears that Jensen Audio is no longer in business. I am screwed.

For want of an 1/8th of an inch of plastic, I will probably end up having to buy a new stereo.

here is the data we took of Mel's path part-way around the park. GPS is a fantastic thing.

THe weekend went well.

Jason came in around 4:00, and despite a last minute bit of confusion about which flight and airline he might be on, Jamie found him and brought him over to the office. He greeted everyone, and then we headed down the sidewalk to Grilled Expedition where we holed up and had soem drinks and food (it was 6:30 his time when we got there and he'd foregone lunch). Caught Hellboy later that evening, and then went to sleep very late for my Friday standards.

Woke up at 8:00 to let out Mel, and Jason was already up (it being 10:00am his time), so I figured we should get up. Got breakfast, went and bought everyone a new pair of sunglasses, then drove out to the Apache Trail. Not so far down the Apache Trail, Jason admitted maybe the mixture of breakfast and the Lemonade he was drinking was not a good combo, and with nothing really to gain by traversing the whole trail, we truned around and headed back. Stopped at Goldfield where we realized the ghostown now offers very little but weird knick-knacks, and a tour none of us really felt like taking. Drove on home where all of us fell asleep for about an hour and a half. We woke up, went and got some dinner at Abuelo's, then returned home where we watched Zoolander for the first time. THen stayed up watching the Teen Titans/ Star Wars: Clone Wars marathon on Cartoon Network.

Sunday woke up, went and got breakfast, returned home. Collected dog, took Mel to park, strapped GPS to Mel and collected data as he ran around park. Looking forward to seeing data from that debacle. Came home, watched Tenacious D video, took Jason for lunch and then off to airport.

I went to bed at 10:20 last night, very, very tired, and I'm not sure why I was so tired.

Few things of note:

Jason got me two very interesting albums. One is by The Shins, who had been recommended to me by a friend in Seattle. The other was by Wilco, who I have always enjoyed, I just never picked up their records.

Perhaps the oddest gift came in the mail on Friday. Jim and Randy pooled thier resources and picked me out a gift. Indeed, I am now the proud owner of the Saved By the Bell Seasons 1 & 2 gift-set. I haven't gotten in to the videos yet, but I shall. While, technically, the first Season of the show was NOT called Saved by the Bell, I believe the original episodes of Good Morning, Miss Bliss are included in the package as Season 1. This is Saved by the Bell prior to the change-up of casts which brought us Jessie Spano and Kelly Kapowski as well as Slater. Originally the series was intended to be a vehicle for Hayley Mills, but at some point, Mills decided not to continue with the series, and the show about a teacher and her class (a la Head of the Class) became a show about the students and their bumbling Principal.

It is also true that as a high schooler I watched the show mostly because of Jessie Spano, which originally ruled out the Miss Bliss episodes. But I became morbidly fascinated with a show which was to showcase a well-known talent but was successfully cannibalized when Ms. Mills left the program (not since The Hogan Family....).

Anyway, here's to Jim and Randy, my own Zack and Screech.