Saturday, March 11, 2006

Possible Hiatus! Get your Mellie Noms in!

Hey, Leaguers! Here's my schedule for the next week:

Tonight, my in-laws are here.
Tomorrow, my parents are here.
Wednesday, I think everybody leaves.
Wednesday night, Doug and K arrive
And, I assume, they're leaving at some point.

So, anyhoo, I just realized my time spent in the wild world of blogging will probably be nil for about a week.

You guys are on your own.

In the meantime, send in your Mellie noms. If you're Steanso and you thought it was okay to send in one word answers, try again.

We'll be back as events warrant. In the meantime, go over to Nanostalgia.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Report From K-ZOO, MI
I know you were wondering how our man in Kalamazoo is doing. Arden is, apparently, big into citrus. Which is good. That's calcium for his growing bones.


Arden and an unknown companion enjoy half of a grapefruit

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Orson Welles: Dark Knight Detective

Check it out. Shoemaker sends an article from a few years ago by comic scribe Mark (Ultimates) Millar.

I knew that American icon Orson Welles had once portrayed "The Shadow" on a radio show, but I wasn't aware that at one point Welles had been in development on a "Batman" movie.

Read more here.

This sounds totally amazing, if true. I'd never heard this before, and I've seen no evidence any other place. But, what the hell... I choose to believe it because it sounds pretty kick-ass.
Shall we to Ostrich Fest?

It's the 18th Annual Ostrich Fest here in Chandler, AZ this weekend. Completely unrelated, I've got both Jamie's folks en route, but the Admiral and KareBear shall be here on Saturday. That's a lot of parents by anybody's count.

So, realizing I shall have to entertain a lot of grown-ups, I am wondering, do I take them to the Ostrich Festival? After all

Friday night's entertainment is... JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS (and you know what, Leaguers..? I DO love rock 'n roll).

Saturday: The Village People and The Little River Band.

Sunday: CHARO!!!! Yes, Charo shall be gracing our fair little hamlet with her oversized... uh, personality. Huzzah! It's Charo.

Who knows what mysteries await us this weekend? I really, really have to think of someway to entertain the parents before The Moms get into some kind of knife fight or parenting stand-off.

I dunno. I'm considering taking the four of them out to the desert and letting them try out the whole survivalist thing.
Former Beatle to save monkeys in Chandler?

Dolph sends this article.

I, for one, would like to think no monkeys will be injured in the making of this suburb.

Look, what am i supposed to say? I like people jabbing monkeys? I don't want bigger and better medicines approved and distributed?

This is a pickle, people. A pickle.

Now, I'm actually pretty anti-animal testing for cosmetic products. I see no reason to shove makeup in a bunny's eye at this late stage to see if it will be a problem. Have you SEEN the make-up aisle at Target? You can't get that many different colors of red if you spent all day mixing paint at Home Depot. We're done. No new lipstick colors.

Anyhow, I'll be curious to see how this pans out. I'm really excited about the prospect of running into Sir Paul at the grocery.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

The Year of Superman

Hey, at League of Melbotis, every year is the year of Superman. But at Warner Bros. they've gone ahead and made it official for 2006.

Check out the new website

The site features a great montage of clips from various incarnations of Superman in film and in the movies as well as information of the upcoming film "Superman Returns" and all of the DVD sets coming out.

The League has a lot of catching up to do.
Power Girl

Somebody put together a Power Girl fan film. You can watch it here.


These guys need a much better editor, or better coverage or a better sense of timing or something. The video itself isn't all that great, but for those of us who've long found Power Girl charming, the video is kind of funny.

If nothing else, you get to see what Power Girl would look like in real life. Extra kudos to the actress playing Karen for:

a) wearing the Power Girl costume and not looking embarassed
b) wearing the costume in what looks like several inches of snow (if you skip tot he end)

Extra points to the video for including Beetle and Booster, and, I assume, Black Canary.

I hadn't thought much about it before, but the recent Power Girl run in JSA: Classified pitches Kara as a good character to be spun off into her own movie or TV series. Well, maybe not the story, but the attitude is right. She's very girl-friendly as the "I'm really, really good at being a super-hero, but in everything else I do, I am a complete wreck." And boys would lihke her because she wears tights and she's bullet proof.


Anyhoo, hurray for Power Girl for getting a fan movie made, even if the creators needed to spend more time in post production.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Godspeed, Dana.

Dana Reeve, wife of actor and activist Christopher Reeve, has died of lung cancer.

Read more here.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Race From the Oscars

You can read my amazingly insightful commentary on the Oscars here.
Birthday Madness

Here's a link to Steanso's blog. See KareBear and The Admiral in action as my mother gets hosed, arms herself with a sword and dons a large hat.

Go now.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Weekending, March 5th.

This weekend marked my mother's big birthday. Jamie and I did not attend as my folks and Jamie's folks will be here next week. I hope her birthday was a good one.

Friday night we headed out to Mesa, just north of Chandler to see a band at a coffee house. Asleep in the Sea rocked most of the coffee house. But, because this is PHX, the show was cut short. Cheba Hut, a local stoner-themed sandwich shop chain was next door. Apparently the rocking and rolling was disturbing the patrons of the coffee shop, so there were exasperated sandwich shop and coffee shop employees causing a fuss during the brief set. And I thought the whole thing about being a stoner was that you were supposed to be mellow... You stoners sit on a throne of lies.

For whatever reason I was wearing my Superman shirt at the show, and was approached by a very, very drunk gentleman who explained that he was a wizard, mumbled something about his wife, daughter and the Mormon Church, something about "the seventeenth is big (bleep) day", then did some tai-chi. I suddenly remembered why I used to like going out.

A short while later, a middle-aged lady and her teen-aged son came by and the nice lady engaged me in a conversation about Superman comic books. Apparently she's been collecting since the early 60's and has vast runs of several series. I was quite jealous.

Still, once the band was done they turned on ugly overhead lights which is sort of the universal sign in a nightspot for "get out". It was only 9:10ish. On a Friday night. At a coffeeshop.

For those of you who like to tell The League that he needs to find the good out here in the desert, please understand that there is a pattern we've picked up here. Fun cannot last past the hour of 9:00pm.

So we ended up at The Village Inn near our house, a place I only like to go to when I'm feeling sort of Marge, and I had a bowl of soup and tried hard not to think too much about the alt-rock guys running the coffee shop being pissy about rocking too loud and too late into the night.

The freezer in our old fridge gave up the ghost some time ago. This week it started to smell badly. So badly, in fact, that the smell went out into the fridge as well, contaminating food that was not vaccuum-sealed. So we went and got the new fridge. Peabo, my friend, I never made it to Home Depot. Sears was running the same deal as Home Depot and Jamie had identified the fridge of her dreams.

Ice maker with ice holder in the door (more freezer space). Crushed ice or cubed. Pur water filtration system for both water and ice. Clear plastic shelving. Moveable shelves... Yes, it was a middle-class consumer's dream.

The guys showed up literally five minutes before the end of their 10:30 to 12:30 window. They took out the old fridge (leaving the filter in our front yard, I might add), brought in the new fridge which was not the correct fridge, removed the wrong fridge, wheeled in the new fridge, connectyed it and then broke the water main into our house, elaving us without water. Pretty cool. So we called Sun Devil Plumbers and Carl not only fixed the problem, but put a new valve on our main that had a swing arm valve rather than a stem. Hurray!

I did not tip the delivery guys who ended up setting me back more than $100. They did tell me "that's a million to one, that happening." Well, lucky me. I should have played the Lotto this week.

I also watched "Smokey and the Bandit" this weekend. I hadn't seen it since I was very little. Almost all of Jackie Gleason's lines were overdubbed, so I don't know if he was cursing or making racial epithets or what. I am not clear as to what the point of the movie was, but it's a flashback to a part of American culture that seems to have fallen by the wayside. At least it doesn't exist in any tangible form in AZ.

Tonight are the Academy Awards. Jamie will watch. I will be organizing comics. The League cares not for fancy dresses. He also saw only a smattering of the nominated movies and thinks it's silly to give awards to movies and actors. At least we think it's silly when movies like Gosford Park which were not very interesting, or original and were made-up as the movie went along win for "Best Screenplay".

But, we know you people love the Awards shows, so go to town on your Oscars. We do not hold it against you.