I am very busy today at work, but a couple of things:

1) I was thinking about the Japanese invention I mentioned yesterday which allows you to translate a dog or cat's noises into "speech" by analyzing the tone and then giving a pre-recorded verbal cue. Well, nice idea, but they need to reverse engineer the device so that I can talk back to my pets. Otherwise, the damn thing isn't going to really be of much use.

2) People looking for Ann Coulter nude continue to pour in. I'll do a final tally this weekend, but I think I had somewhere in the neighborhood of four or five people yesterday.

3) Sci-Fi Channel has been re-running episodes of an early 90's Discovery Channel program entitled Beyond Bizarre (not to be confused with "Beyond Belief", which is anything but...). Beyond Bizarre is a sort of Ripley's Believe it or Not! with an even slimmer budget.

Beyond Bizarre must not ever have had much popularity. I remember seeing the show in a drunken stupor when I was 18 and being mystified by some rocks which reportedly move on their own during the night, but I had kind of forgotten about the show the way the rest of the world must have. When you Google search for info on the show, you get bupkis, although you can buy the series on VHS.

Beyond Bizarre is done in quasi-documentary style and chronicles strange and unexplainable phenomena as well as people doing goofy stuff. Most of the strange phenomena are generally explainable with a little logic applied (although the producers of Beyond Bizarre give no siggestion that logic could ever play into these events). They explore strange monuments like Native American Mound Builder artifacts and pyramids. My favorite was an episode which explored "vampires," or bored goth kids who cut each other and drank one another's blood. Not only unsanitary, but generally a big sign that mommy didn't love you.

At any rate, I think at long last, I have found my calling. The show is hosted by this guy, Jay Robinson, whom I believe once played Dr. Shrinker on the Kroft Superstars. The early 90's delivered him to us as a man now clearly bent upon making himself into the prototype for Landau's Lugosi in Ed Wood. At any rate, Jay gets to wear all black, stand in a darkened studio with leftover Universal Monster Movie props and a fog machine while being only slightly creepy. He introduces the program and segues between segments with spooky aplomb. I am not yet old enough to have this job, nor am I likely to abuse enough drugs nor smoke enough cigarettes to have the sort of Crypty Keeper like countenance and vibrato which the job requires.

Ahhh... to dream the impossible dream.

4) A few years ago (circa 1996) some friends of friends shot and edited a movie entitled The Schedule. The film was not really received anywhere excpet for The Dobie off UT's campus. Nonetheless, it was a noble effort, and as I understand it, just never landed a distribution deal. Judging from the less than stellar 3 of 10 stars it has on IMDB, it must not have been a fan favorite.

But the premise is not dissimilar to Showtime's new program Dead Like Me. Both center around recently departed souls being recruited by the powers that be to act as agents of the Grim Reaper and collect dead folks' souls or something.

Anyway, aspiring attorneys may wish to contact the producers of The Schedule and see if they can't get a chunk of Showtime's coffers.

I need to go get lunch, but, my friends, this is what I am dealing with:

Home > Local Forecast for Tempe, AZ (85287)

112°F
Mostly Cloudy Feels Like
107°F (<---this is a damn lie. It feels like my eyes are boiling out of the sockets.)

UV Index: 9 High
Dew Point: 45°F
Humidity: 11%
Visibility: Unlimited
Pressure: 29.82 inches and falling
Wind: Variable at 6 mph

I may starve to death. Please send Ho-Ho's.

Cancer Free until 2083!

Normally I try not to drift toward potty humor, but...

Although I am not sure he'll want to be credited with this one, Randy sent me this link. Thank you, Australian Scientists, for giving me a reason to get that subscription which Jamie has so long denied me. Plain brown wrappers, I eagerly await your arrival.

Here's an interesting device.

You know, both Mel and Jeff are noisy animals. I think that they have deciphered that noise tends to get our attention, and thus, they make noise. The cat is especially bothersome when he decides at 6:30am on Saturdays that we have slept long enough and yowls at the bedroom door. But one has to wonder, what is my dog saying?

he's saying "Hey!" that's what dogs are saying when they bark. They may be saying "Hey, I'm at the door," or "Hey, there's a dog outside the window" or even "Hey, give me a treat," but all they are saying is "Hey!"

It's my assumption that this is also what the cat is saying, but it's hard to say. As chatty as Mel is, Jeff tends to just sit in the center of the room and yowl in existential despair. I like to think that if I invest in this little box, it will decipher's Jeff's great unease with the world and give me greater insight into what it is that troubles him so. Will he be proclaiming that "God is dead and all is a meaningless void!" or will he be whining for his fish kippers? All I know is that in order to find out, I have to drop $75.

I'm still getting hits trickling in from people looking for nude pics of Ann Coulter. I think I had one or two yesterday and one today. Well, done, America.

A LITTLE HUMPDAY PICK-ME UP

Here's something I wouldn't encourage people to do.

VIVA LANCE!!!!

As a former Austinite, I get excited about bicycles once a year during the Tour de France. Austin's own Lance Armstrong is going for victory number 5 in this most grueling of human tests. While I think riding a bicycle for a living is as silly as walking for a living, I still get really jazzed about this guy.

Whether he actually wins or not on this go-round, Lance is an amazing athlete, and he also, apparently drives a Subaru. But Lance is also the brains or at least the mouthpiece for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Lance had a nasty bout with cancer many years ago and he came through it with flying colors, and he's always used his prominence as the World's foremost cyclist to promote awareness of cancer research and to promote the US Postal Service.

So hurrah, Lance, and best of luck.

Welcome back RHPT

Randy has blogged once more! He's returned to the world of navel gazing and spouting off of partially founded opinions. Welcome back, mi amigo. Es bueno.

I could not tell you why, but this post on JimD's blog is absolutely hysterical. Maybe you have to have been following Jim's blog for a while to find it funny, but I had to share.

I just got my paycheck, and immediately checked it to see how the tax cut was supposed to effect me. I was especially curious after the flap occuring around RHPT.com's post from a few weeks ago about his tax cut. Randy had noted a $20 increase.

I noted a loss of $1.20. C'est la vie.

My beautiful wife Jamie has taken it upon herself to learn the guitar. I am quite pleased with her choice as she has chosen a hobby which does not require me to lose any square footage in our house, nor does it require me to pay out for the feeding and maintenance of a hoofed mammal. Previously, Jamie has been a voracious reader, and avid taunter of the cat. Now she is cursing like a sailor while trying to learn how to tune her Alvarez.

I am not musically inclined. I played piano for a year when I was 7. For two years in middle school I played the Tuba, but found it was only adding to the malaise of being labeled "nerd boy" by much of my middle school. I have no ear for music, and it was all too late that I realized what a neat trick for picking up girls a guitar can be.

At any rate, I wish Jamie the best of luck in her new endeavor. We are truly rocking out to such hits as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "Jingle Bells".

ANN COULTER NUDE!!!!

Well, I got my first hit from someone looking for pics of Ann Coulter in her birthday suit. On 7/14/2003 at 2:07:37 PM logged the first of what I hope to be many such inquiries. I posted at 1:13pm on Friday, so that'll give you an idea how long it took.

Congratulations America. You made it thru the weekend without anyone resorting to this.

He may have been dead for a century, but having watched this performance, I think Beyonce's dancing is something Grant would have firmly supported.

God speaks to each of us in different ways. TO some of us, He calms us in our moments of turmoil. Others He calls to duty. To Deion Sanders He has spoken and asked him to be really, really cheap and kind of bizarre.

I took an animation class in the final year that the University of Texas at Austin offered a non-digital animation selection. The course taught me quite a bit about film making beyond the boundaries of animation, but it also taught me a Zen-like patience that previously eluded me. You see, animation has traditionally been captured one frame at a time. There are, in traditional film, 24 frames in a single second of film. In order to create the illusion of motion on a large screen, in a single second, 24 images have ticked by. It's called Persistence of Vision.

This means that for every second of an animated film that you watch, 24 times a crew has replaced the image you are currently seeing with the next image in an exacted order. The next image is a minor and minute change, but absolutely essential to the illusion of "realistic" motion. In addition to this, these images must synchronize lip movements in a way that not only matches the audio track (usually of someone speaking), but also must match the shapes our lips create when pronoucning certain consonant noises and vowel sounds that we each intuitively recognize.

Also, timing must be determined for the length of a movement, a realistic bounce must be put into a walk cycle, and one must know exactly how many frames are funniest from an anvil entering a fram to crushing Elmer Fudd (13 frames). Each background must be drawn in detail for these animated characters to dance across. Each time an angle changes, a new background must also be produced. During filiming, each frame is documented as to which "cell" has been shot, how far the camera has been tilted, zoomed, panned, etc... and stored for later retrieval in case something goes wrong and you must do it all over again.

The process is meticulous, it is obsessive and the end results are all too infrequently the ones that the film makers were hoping for. But the two months I spent drawing each cell of a 2 minute animation (which had no beginning, middle or end to it) was possibly the most rewarding portion of my entire film school career. For two months, each night I had to draw the same characters over and over and over in slight changes in positioning, with the slightest alteration in form and movement. I cheated in the end and used photographs for my backgrounds, and I certainly had no desire to attempt dialogue. But i did it. Totally on my own, I created and drew two minutes of character animation. The beats flowed more or less how I wanted them to, and I forgave myself the sliding motion in the walk cycle, because it was STILL a walk cycle.

For two months, I was viewing the world at 24fps. I could see each move I made in the most minute detail. I counted parts of a second from a glass falling to it striking to the shards ceasing their bouncing. I watched not just how long my hands moved, but how they moved, and I watched people's eyes in detail, because how long was too long for one of my own two cartoon creations to look upon one another?

At the screening, no one knew what we had done in that class. Our animation was described as crude and unsubtle. Or it wasn't "funny." My classmates who had shown so little interest in the course from day one did lazy little projects with charcoal and paper. "I did mine all in one night!" one guy bragged to me. I just nodded. The audinece liked his charcoal smudge better than my "traditional" animations. Fair enough. "But you just dissolved between existing drawings..." "You could have done that." And I agreed.

The next year there was no animation course taught, and when it was reborn, it was a modern digital animation course, more interested on effects and generating titles for other folks' student films. And I'm sure they all worked really hard. But they didn't do anything. The computer did it.

I tried digital and couldn't get into it. It was too cold and the rules of engagement had changed. You plotted what you wanted and walked away from the computer to let it render. Gone were the mad evenings spent leaning over a light table tracing one frame from the previous, gone was the midnight to 4:00am slot on the Oxberry. Gone was the chance to try some new madness as your mind explored the mysteries of what makes up a second, and seeing what you could press yourself to do. They were creating new worlds without worrying about how the world they lived in worked. How does sand fall? You don't watch sand, you find a plug-in online. How does someone run? Don't watch them... find a walk cycle in a user-group and accelerate. If you're lucky, it'll add some jiggle to her breasts.

I miss the old tools. Those things used to work. They could be beautiful and wonderful, and nothing... not one shot for even one one moment was ever taken for granted. Everything was plotted and planned and dreamt of. Each hand which went into the projects found their own way to add something unique, something the artists could perform at especially well. They couldn't always improvise, but they could add touches, flourishes that only a mind at an easel will dream up after drawing the same face too many times.

This was supposed to be about why I wasn't a fan of the new MTV produced Spider-Man cartoon, but I think I'll save that for later, or I'll leave you to seek it out and draw your own inferences. I'm going to go track down my old film school reeel and have a good laugh. That cartoon is just god awful, but it's mine.

PIRATES!!!!

Arrgghh, mateys! I saw Pirates of the Caribbean just now! Shiver me timbers, it was worth me $5.50, says I.

Jerry

Thanks, Randy, for the link on Jerry Springer's Senate run. Please see the attached link in the sidebar to the left. Jerry is a man of the people. And is he really so different from Kay Bailey Hutchison?

Social Experiment:

How many hits will I get if I add the phrase: Ann Coulter nude naked ?

I'll keep you posted.

BTW, my job has now assigned me a Blackberry. I was already not too excited about the idea of being followed everywhere by an electronic leash, but I just realized... it's hissing at me. It's making weird little electronic hissing noises...

The Escapist

If you didn't read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, you should have. It's written by Michael Chabon, and eventually won The Pulitzer Prize. It's the story of immigrant artist/ magician/ escape artist Joe Kavalier and his American cousin (Clay) who become comic artists in pre-WWII America.

It's about a hell of a lot more than that, and, as I found from watching the History Channel's documentary about Superhero comic books, quite a few of the story's plotpoints are lifted from actual events in the history of the comics biz. With Superman squarely at the forefront of the comics revolution, Kavalier and Clay create The Escapist. He's in the tradition of Doc Savage, or possibly The Shadow, but armed with a magical golden key, he's not just an amazing escape artist, he's there to help others escape tyrrany. I leave it to you to read the novel.

At any rate, this winter, Dark Horse comics is going to begin publishing comics based around The Escapist's exploits as described in the novel. The suggestion is that the comics will be done in classic Golden Age style. I very much look forward to seeing what Dark Horse is able to accomplish.

Spidey Cartoon

Hey, Leaguers...

The 3D animated Spider-Man cartoon is debuting tonight on MTV.

Some of the best animation of the past 10 years has appeared on MTV (the oddly plotless Aeon Flux and the equally challenging The Maxx), so look to see what Marvel studios has cooked up for this show. It's based equally on comics and the movie from what I can tell. I think tonight's villain is Electro.

As I will frequently complain, I live in the sticks. It's not just that the people of Arizona act like illiterate savages or Canadians from time to time, it's that I live less than a mile from two substantial dairy farms. It smells like cow flop and is generally really ugly. But you're always welcome to come visit.

Anyway, CNN posted this story on the ridiculous town of Gilbert, Arizona today. Apparently, it's the fastest gowing city in the US of A. While my mailing address is Chandler, and my work address is Tempe, I do live almost directly on the border of Chandler (which is listed as being #4 in the top 5 fastest growing cities, I am told) and Gilbert.

I was delighted to see Joe's Bar BQ as the pictured locale which is supposed to represent Gilbert's otherwise smalltown pastiche. This is horsehockey. Gilbert, like everywhere else in the Valley of the Sun, is nothing but a horribly ugly sprawl of cookie cutter houses and strip shopping centers which all feature one of three grocery chains (Basha's, Fry's or maybe an Albertson's), and has a place to do nails, and a Water & Ice store. There's no real industry in these communities. I think it's mostly people just selling stuff to one another.

It's funny, because this place is miserably hot, has no industry, no water or other natural resources, nor any real culture to speak of. I have no idea why I am here, but we're all coming here in the end, it appears.

Those of you who follow The League may have gleaned that I watch an unhealthy amount of television and read only children's books. In that vein, like the rest of you mindless cretins, I was locked into watching America Idol this Spring, a show that, in retrospect, is really pretty awful. Anyway, The Smoking Gun has a great post today about crazy letters people sent to the Federal Communications Commission regarding perceived tampering in the results of American Idol.

It's only in the cold light of hindsight that I realize that I hated all of the contestants on that show, but because it was always on in my livingroom, I HAD to pick who I liked best. And her name was Trenyce.

I really hate this show. It's really boring and lame, but because I love my wife and because of the layout of our suburban bungalow, I pretty much can't get away from it all three nights it's on every week. But it's good to see it's getting somebody all fired up.

One of my favorite parts of American Beauty is when Lester Burnham speechifies upon how great it was to be 18 and flip burgers and have random sex all summer long. Yep, life was easier before taxes, loans and house payments, and there's no small part of everyone who wishes they could go back to a point where straightening their room and keeping socks off the floor were life's biggest worries.

But let's be honest, it's great because it was a long time ago, and it's fun to remember that stuff, but it's not exactly a high benchmark for achievement. High school is a fairly stupid place where you get herded around and have to go see a "tardy lady" if you're late. You can't even just call in sick, you have to have a doctor or parent verify you were sick, and if you run in a hallway, you can wind up in something called "detention." It's a really stupid place to be and it has nothing to do with college, let alone an actual professional life. But not everyone seems to think so...

Last night I stumbled upon a new syndicated program utilizing the grim tools of Jenny Jones and BLind Date and possibly any stalker movie you might have seen. The show is called Classmates (sponsored by, apparently, Classmates.com), and it's a reality show wherein two people are asked to see one another for the first time since college or high school.

Sounds harmless enough, but the two reunions I witnessed last night reminded me of why I am foregoing the Klein Oak Class of '93 reunion which is to be held later this summer. Here's a hint, kids: If high school was THAT great that you MUST return to those golden years by way of rekindling a relationship (on television, no less) which has been petrifying for around 10 years, it's time to re-examine your current lifestyle. I don't really remember high school all that well anymore, and playing Memory with name tags and what could only be vaguely embarassing details could only end in tears.

When the show works, I guess as much as it's GOING to work, it kind of makes you sad. Last night's episode ended with two people who hadn't seen one another in 9 years GETTING ENGAGED within an hour of seeing each other. That's not sweet. That's creepy and wrong. It wasn't just one person who felt the need to go running back to a time when things were easier, it was two people desperately running from the lives they've created. Or it was really sweet. Ah, i dunno. I was hoping to see someone confront a bully, so maybe if I tune in tonight, i'll get to see that. Of course, I know if I ever get called, it's going to be some random person I don't remember wanting to get back at me for cutting in line at the snack machines, so I need to be prepared.

Here's hint #2 from your old Uncle Ry: If a syndicated television program calls you and tells you somebody wants to surprise you on television, do not go. Instead, alert the police. It's probably a better, safer alternative. I've watched my fair share Springer, and now with Classmates, I am fairly certain it can only end in disaster. Do you really want to know somebody has been thinking about you (and only you) for so long that they've recruited a TV show to track you down? That's not romantic. Kids, that's stalking. So, if you're thinking of using the show to finally tell Mary Sue or Todd or whomever about your crush, I implore you to reconsider. It's better to imagine what could be than to look like a jerk on syndicated television.

onto me

Are my parents on to me? Have they, indeed, found the League of Melbotis web log? It's not that there's confidential information on my site. There's a strange item in my sitemeter. Somebody found the site from rr.com looking only for "Melbotis."

My parents love my dog and my wife as much or more than they love me, so anything centering around Melbotis would have to be fairly attractive to them. I have to assume that when my traitorous brother vacationed with my folks in San Diego last week, he might have spilled the beans and given them a place to keep tabs on me and the dog.

Mom, Dad... I am on to you.

Jim has complained that I have not blogged today. I will ignore Jim's low frequency in blogging, and instead, turn you toward these wonderful pieces by Miguel Calderon. THese are the paintings which appeared in Eli's home in The Royal Tenenbaums.

Jim's brief mention on Andrew Sullivan's blog landed him with around 12,500 hits or something last time I checked (he totals in approaching 15,000 as of now). This will forever skew his Sitemeter averages, but it also brings up an interesting point about blogging.

Jim didn't say anything in his article that wasn't true, nor did he really say anything inflamatory or even pass judgement on Ann Coulter. So the reaction he got was pretty venemous.

This, folks, is why I don't have a "Comments" section on my page. I have an e-mail address, and everyone is entitled to their opinion, and you're free to contact me about anything at any time. But I also don't want The League to become a place where people get to publicly lambast me or my dog. Especially with the kind of juvenile rantings reserved for online "talkback" areas and E! television.

Anyway, the troubling part is wanting to lash back at people acting all crazy and irrational, but what are you really going to say to change their minds? I enjoy a little political debate; it keeps you honest and keeps the old gears freshly oiled. Hence, you may notice Jimbo and I will take potshots at one another from time to time, and occasionally there are e-mails which go back and forth for quite a while (he hates puppies and grandmas! I simply will not let it stand!). But if you can't try to be logical or at least reasonable about sentiment, then it's not worth it. Nobody ever changed anybody's mind by screaming at them.

On the other side of tall of this, with 12,000+ hits today, he only got, really, two or three really negative comments, which means he probably had a lot of readers who enjoyed what he had to say. Blogging. it's like MAGIC!

Mel and I have started doing walkies at 5:00am. It's the only time we can go. It's 111 degrees during the days here now. Stupid desert.

Today Jim D. es muy popular. Jim's review of Ann Coulter's Univ. of Michigan Law Review was cited on Andrew Sullivan's blog/ web site and overnight, Dedman's popularity has soared. It's my personal ambition to run Jim for office one day, as long as I get to be the man behind the man and enjoy the kickbacks and hookers which will inevitably fall into our laps, so I am personally delighted when Jim gets attention of this sort.

His hits are pushing around 9000, and I would bet he hits 10,000 in the foreseeable future. Jim didn't exactly eviscerate Ann Coulter (nor was that his goal), but reviewed her review of some SCOTUS hoo-hah. Most of Jim's post was over my head as I have a serious learning diasability which causes me to tune out anything not involving capes or robots. I think, from Jim's desc. that Coulter's review meant that you shouldn't share your porn collection with minors. Well, hellloooooo internet. Had only you been there for me at age 14. Stupid Circle K clerk.

Ann Coulter's cult of personality is a truly bizarre thing. She says things which are totally crazy, and there is a segment of the population which is buying into her brand of fascism. Note the Comments which follow Jim's posting and see what I mean.

Anyone can get a following no matter how ridiculous they are.

Coulter is the kind of boogeyman we ridicule in movies and television. These sort of folks are usually the source of a trememndous amount of comeuppance in fiction, but as history will detail, usually end holding office. The tough question is: how much do you just ignore Coluter and hope she goes away, and how much do you watch your own back? Her latest book, the one getting all the press, is called "Treason" which basically states that anyone not in line with Coulter's view of a hyper-conservative America is treasonous. Yo-kay. We're all entitled to our opinion and 1st Amendment rights. But Treason is an executable offense. Does Ann Coulter want anybody not agreeing with her to be executed? They have a name for that sort of arrangement.

I haven't read Treason or Slander, and I don't really plan to. I'm pretty sure I got the gist of what she's after in a few minutes on CNN and Fox News. Short of calling Coulter bat-shit crazy, one has to wonder... It's one thing to have a single nutjob running about quite literally lionizing Sen. McCarthy, it's quite another to be able to make a mint off of selling books in which this is a major topic of discussion. Clearly my gauge for what the book reading American public wants to believe in is horribly miscalibrated. What is living in the American zeitgeist that drives us at one another with such vitriol?

I would suggest you read up on Coulter as much as possible instead of assuming anyone that blonde and skinny couldn't be all bad. She's a creepy, creepy person.

eye see

well, my eye went back to normal, and within moments, I got me a migraine. Apparently the effect I was having in my left eye was the oft described pre-migraine lights folks sometimes see. The headache is mostly gone now. But I have to admit to being a little proud of myself for treating it with three Tylenol and crawling under my desk and falling asleep for nearly an hour. Thank you, George Constanza. You are truly a beacon of hope unto us all.

Oh, and thank you, Randy for forwarding this to me.

blind

I think i went blind in my left eye about half an hour ago. While I am looking forward to wearing an eye patch a la Nick Fury, the whole lack of depth perception thing is making me woozy.

sweeeet

T3 y mas

I went and saw Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines this weekend. I've seen almost every Arnie movie in the theater since the late-80's, and I was duped into heading off to this one as well. Jim D's review of the movie is very accurate, and I would turn you to his comments for further reading. My only additional comment is that I honestly felt, as I wandered out of the theater and into 110+ Arizona heat, that I had just spent two hours watching somebody else play a really cool video game. It looks great, it has lots of action, and between mammoth action sequences, they tie the story together with something passing for a narrative. Maybe the PS2 game for this is really, really good?

I love Arnie. I really do. If I were an "actor", i would hope that I could have the keen business sense Arnie has employed throughout his career. Foregoing art for commerce, Arnie has brought us some fabulous entertainment we'll be enjoying on TBS for the next 30-50 years.

But one thing distracted me throughout T3. Claire Danes. Ms. Danes isn't bad in this movie. No, what was really distracting is that despite the fact I haven't seen Ms. Danes in anything in going on four or five years... me likey me some Claire Danes. Instead of going nuts with adrenaline whenever bullets and plasma beams were whizzing around the screen, I was busily envisioning scenarios in which Ms. Danes and I were splitting a bottle of the bubbly, sitting upon a fur rug before a crackling fire. I was dashingly witty and she was gazing upon me adoringly, imploring me to leave Mrs. Steans. I was also wearing a great smoking jackets and very comfy slippers in this fantasy, and a pipe was employed as well. Look, you have your dreams, I'll have mine.

This weekend also saw the appearance of the first new batch of episodes of Cartoon Network's Justice League. For those of you who may have seen the first batch of episodes which debuted somewhere around over a year and half ago, "season 2" promises to be truer to the comic source material and just a better all-around TV show.

The new episodes featured Brainiac as a central villain, working in connection with Darkseid of Kirby's 4th World/ New Gods series. Yup. I was geeking out so hard, I think I was alarming Jamie. "Ooooohhh, the Forever People!" is not something you want to just blurt out after being totally silent for half an hour.

Now if they would just focus on Mr. Miracle, I'd be happy.

BTW, I read Enemy Ace: War in Heaven over the weekend. If you're not into superheroes and are looking for a great comic read, this may be for you. It follows WWI fighter pilot Hans Von Hammer as he is coerced into flying for the Luftwaffe. Great art and attention to detail, as well as being well written. Enemy Ace: War Idyll is also worth your time. It's beautifully painted and tells a great story about Von Hammer in his twilight years.

Tomorrow I return to work, God help me.

Happy 5th of July

Today we should celebrate the hangover our founding fathers surely were suffering thru in Philadelphia on July 5th, 1776. Today, I am fairly certain there are plenty of folks experiencing empathy pains.

We took Mel out to the fireworks last night, which entailed us driving about a mile and parking the Forester on the side of the road, popping the tailgate and watching the Chandler, AZ fireworks from across a few miles of open field/ reclaimed desert. While the Chandler fireworks are about what you'd expect from a bedroom community's low property tax, one cool thing about living in the middle of a horrible stinking desert is that you can see really, really far. So in addition to the Chandler fireworks, we could see those in Mesa, Queen Creek, Tempe, Gilbert and a few other places I couldn't quite place. Es bueno.

Jim D. sent me an absolutely ridiculously large poster celebrating Marvel Comics circa 1988. It's truly a great gift and everything I said in the post below is a lie and I never meant a word of any of it. I hope to take a picture of the poster, because mere words would not do it justice. Even a 1000 words.

Jim's attack on Randy today was worth reading. The point of Randy's post was that for all the money that will not be redistributed via government programs, people will have virtually nothing to show for it in their personal bank accounts and spending. The implied message in Randy's original post was that the addition of $20 means little to the individual when the point of taxation is that we can do more together than we can separately. Believing that you are investing an amount as small as $20.00 a month per person, when that amount ads up to millions every month, is not an irrational thing to believe.

The flummoxing 80's and the failure of Voodoo economics then was a trial run. We were supposed to know better now. Ignoring the last fifteen years of economic wisdom, the "fashionable" thing for conservatives to chime in with is that folks should be wisely investing their money in the stock market or be buying something to stimulate the economy. It's a nice idea, but most market watchers are suggesting people steer clear of the market right now. The trick is, most Americans don't earn enough that they can risk losing money in the stock maket given current trends. Turning $20 a month into $10 the next is not a winning proposition. You might as well suggest taking it down to the local casino and bet everything on black. I suppose that would stimulate the economy, too.

On top of this, a majority of economists are agreed that the tax cuts are not going to do much of anything to stimulate the economy (anyone remember their $300 from last year?).

Jim's stance seems to be that trusting the government to repurpose funding for anything from defense to child welfare does not occur. He seems to believe that "the government redistribut(es) income from one taxpayer to the next." This negates healthcare, medicare, roadworks, defense and all of those things voters care about at election time. It also covers such critical things as police sponsorship, federal and local prisons, FEMA, higher education, and the FDA. Jim also suggests that we are willing to pay taxes out of guilt. I'm not sure why we're not supposed to feel "lingering guilt about poverty and hunger" when we live in a wealthy nation, but clearly Dedman feels this is something to be ridiculed.

If taxes are so high that they are no longer needed to pay for worthy causes, why are there currently so many charities? Yes, there are options for donating to charities, which people occasionally do. In addition, Jim is suggesting Randy will not donate this money to a worthy cause, which he might well do. Jim never bothered to check Randy for a response on this, nor disclose what he, himself, gives every year before waving the finger of doubt. The point is being aware that most people do NOT actually give to private group charities. Not enough, anyway. Nor is there evidence that people would give more if they had more free cash to spend.

Anecdotally, The University of Texas sponsors the Hearts of Texas Campaign which draws money from your paycheck before taxes so that these funds may go to charities. Fully over a hundred people show up for the breakfast every year which kicks off the campaign, and generally fewer than a dozen participate. And this program asks that you not even write a check every month. I suppose everyone wants a free breakfast.

Believing in such institutions as public education, road works and basic healthcare are not sentimental fancies. But even these things are something we force ourselves to trim back by willfully reducing expenditures on them, and then refusing to find blame in ourselves. In fact, we set up our spending on schools to PUNISH poorly performing schools economically by dispersing funds to schools which are already excelling. So by removing resources, we're clearly enhancing the learning environment?

But going by the law of inverse proportions: If we can somehow reduce government to no taxation (which we did prior to Lincoln instituing a personal income tax) our government should be humming along nicely. Which would leave nothing but corporate income taxes. Which are being reduced now, too.

vacation

I'm in day 3 of my "vacation". I took off work this week and am trying to enjoy the simple pleasures of staying at home. In order to better celebrate this, I am going to take a shower and go to work for a few hours today. HURRAY!

1000 hits sell-a-bration!

Hey. I hit 1000 hits today. WHOO-HOO!!!

imagine fireworks in this space ----> <-----

Quite a few months ago, Jamie and I decided we would be getting Melbotis a little friend so that his hours wherein Jamie and I are not at home would not just be spent with Jeff the Cat. Dogs are a social animal, and we were doing our best to appreciate that.

So, we’d done our reading and considered our options, and we decided to explore two options this weekend. PetsMart hosts adoption fairs every weekend in our area, and we have a fairly standard animal shelter up near campus in Tempe.

Our first stop was at PetsMart where we noticed, right off the bat, that there were no dogs to adopt. Apparently their current MO is to put photos online, and you select your dog based on a picture and an interview with the Adoption staff. Less than a minute into the interview, it became abundantly clear that being a dual income family with no children is, apparently, no place for a dog. I wasn’t really sure what went wrong, but the adoption agent got the same look on her face my high school guidance counselor got when I told her I was planning to major in communications. Short of saying, “fuck this,” I let it slide and we decided we would have better luck at the animal shelter.

If you are considering going to an animal shelter to adopt a pet, keep one thing in mind: It is going to be one of the most sentimentally heart-breaking things you can do short of having to select a child. There are rows and rows of animals in small cement cages, and they have nothing better to do than to stare at you through chain link.

We saw three dogs and settled on a little black and white border collie who had a very sweet disposition and warmed up to us immediately without jumping or biting. We had picked a winner. She was to be spayed and receive a battery of shots on Monday morning, and in the afternoon, I was picking her up.

Sunday we voyaged to PetsMart and picked up a “crate” for potty training and easy animal storage for the first few weeks of night time sleeping arrangements. I took a few days off work to be here for adjustments, etc… We even ran into the animal shelter volunteer while we were in the store, and we double checked with her that we were doing the right things and that we weren’t going to scar the little dog right out of the gate.

Monday morning I received a phone call from the animal shelter telling me that our dog had green mucus coming out of her nose, which would indicate either kennel cough or distemper. I was told that they could not diagnose which one it was, and that distemper was a neurological disease which is fatal and highly contagious. And, by the way, it’s your dog, so what do you want to do? The options did not include the shelter keeping her for observation.

So before I ever even got her home, I had to tell some anonymous lady over the phone to put my dog down.

Next, I was told I could get a refund or exchange, which seemed callous, but I wanted a shot at saving some little dog, even if not the one we had selected. And I had to call jamie and tell her what happened.

So yesterday afternoon Jamie and I were wandering through the kennels again, but it just wasn’t working. It’s tough picking out a dog when you’re not even sure if the dog you thought you were spending the next ten years or so with has been put down.

We returned home from the animal shelter, utterly exhausted over this stupid little dog, and the answering machine was blinking. It was the PetsMart based animal rescue group. They left a message telling us that they didn’t feel we were home enough and they didn’t really have any dogs right now which matched our schedule.

I tried again at the animal shelter this morning, and it wasn’t any better. I also found out that distemper gets pretty bad out here during the summer, and many, many dogs at the shelter contract the disease. No matter which dog we might select, we run a risk of exposing Mel and Jeff to Parvo or distemper.

I would never suggest that people not visit their animal shelter to select a dog, especially when puppy farms are selling dogs for hundreds of dollars. Those dogs at the shelter need a home as much or more than any thoroughbred. Right now, I’m just not sure I can give a home to one of those other dogs. And I am not posting any of this to keep anyone reading from adopting a dog from a shelter. That is not what this is about, and I think that's the worst thing you could take away from all of this. You run risks in losing anyone you want to get attached to, and I don't think Jamie and I really knew how much we wanted this little dog until we couldn't have her anymore.

Mel is sweetly oblivious to all of this. All he knows is that there is an empty metal kennel in the living room and a couple of bowls sitting empty inside. And I know I’m really, really lucky to have a great dog who I hope I treat better than people who let their dogs wind up in tiny cement cells.

We’ll fold up the kennel tomorrow, and we’ll try the shelter again in the future, but right now, we’re still saying good-bye to the dog who never got the chance to come home with us.

Bye-bye, little doggy. Bye-bye.

message in a bottle

The past few days have seemed longer than an ordinary weekend, and I hope to be able to blog tomorrow evening and fill you in a little more on the hows and whys. Nothing traumatic has happened, and nothing particularly crazy has happened.

Over the weekend I received two packages. One package broke down all sense of the digital and physical realm for me as RHPT.com sent me, completely unannounced, a comic book from the Death of Superman series in very, very good condition. gracias, Randy! Which book? I cannot say! This book is wrapped in a white, mylar collector's sleeve. Breaking the sleeve would render the comic suddenly worthless. So for now, I must speculate. I plan to track down the number and cover of this comic in the next few days and weeks.



I have most certainly READ this comic as I have Trade Paperbacks of the whole life and death of Superman run, but there's no cover to clue me in to what is what.

Patrotism met consumerism met my mother's strange gift-giving habits on Friday. I returned home from work and some friendly co-worker oriented boozing to find a white box on my stoop. Please understand that my mum is a good person. She's really terrific, and as much as she loves me, puppies and this grand Republic, sometimes her excitememnt gets the best of her. And so, this weekend, I received two beach towels.





Now the point here is, look... I love my country, and I love my mother. And I love puppies and kitties, too. And I even like going to the beach. But the upswell in patriotic grandiosity does not necessarily mean I want to mix all of these things together. Is this kind of tacky, or is it an act against our nation? Would such a scene cause Ann Coulter to point to me, my mother, or these packs of whiskers and noses as treasonous? What effect would this have upon mi mum if they passed an amendment saying you could not deface the flag? Could we both get in trouble for shipping tasteless towels interstate? Only the future will tell.

Oh, by the way, this is the most fun this country has had since the Jim Crow laws were removed... An AMENDMENT!!!! Not a law, not a writ, not Pat Robertson barking to himself on the 700 Club... A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT forbidding two people from openly acknowledging their love. I love my country, but some days I am amazed at what we do.

guilt

I have nothing to write about today. Sorry. I do suggest you take part of the most important legislation ever devised and go on over to the Federal Trade Commission's web-site. They've instituted the government's plan to create "do not call" list for telemarketers.

I suggest that if you're looking for a good read today, you try your local paper.

In the meantime, here is a poem:

Like a graceful porpoise
I FLY!

Blogging article

RHPT.com sent me this link: All that is said herein is true. Except for having lots of readers. Randy, Jamie, Jim... your attention is appreciated.

www.hotchubbyboy.com

UPDATE!!!!

You can now link to this blog by clicking on www.hotchubbyboy.com

RHPT.com was nice enough (either that or he has evil, evil plans in the works) to assign this link to The League. What will this mean for The League? I don't know. Keep tuning in to watch the slow dissolution of my site into one celebrating my nakedness.

Toys That Should Not Be

Just when you think there's nothing to navel gaze about...

Toys That Should Not Be is a segment dedicated to toys which I find on an Action Figure website. I don't just collect comics ad infinitum, I also likes me the Superman and Batman toys. And I like to make fun of other people for having similar interests.

What you may not know is that there are a LOT of toys produced for the adult collector these days. In other words, I ASSUME that these are going to adults, and that they are being collected and not played with. But I may be wrong. But TTSNB is more of a Zen thing which requires an example more than an explanation. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present you with Perfect Body Figures from a company called, I think, Cy-Girls.

You know, I have often fantasized about women with 8 points of articulation and weird, poofy hair. Karate chop fingers and grotesquely hinged knee joints are a big turn on. I think it should have been a clue to these doll makers that something was hooribly wrong when these figures were unable to stand upright due to their curiously oversized heads and bosoms. It should have also been a clue to these doll makers that something was wrong when they started making dolls to have sexual fantasies about. But I digress and pass judgement.

In addition to these anonymous, mis-shapen lovelies, there are more than one line of figures portraying Adult Superstars (I think one is called Adult Superstars) which portrays porn stars as tiny six inch figures. Freud would be going apeshit over all of this, to be sure. For example, here is Jenna Jameson. Word on the street is that laser scan of the actual porn star is done to get these figures "accurate".

The article about 6 inch Jenna is tucked into the main page right between an article on a Friday the 13th Jason Doll and a Harry Potter Dueling Malfoy toy. A little something for everyone.

I feel compelled to also point out that Batman and Superman, themselves, have some kinky new toys out. Here's Peeping Tom Batman and Sex Dungeon Superman.

Facism is bad.

Happy Birthday RHPT

Happy Birthday, Randy. And don't worry so much about the endless futility of existence. Unless you plan to have 100s of children to begin to disseminate your chromosomes throughout the gene pool, your legacy will probably be that of most people. My suggestion: donate sperm and donate often. The more you donate sperm, the more offspring you will have and the more likelihood you will have of the RHPT genome determining the course of human evolution.

This option may be cold comfort as you turn 27, but it does give you plenty of exposure to pornography and will ensure that in 100 generations, we'll all have a little Randy in us.

Some interesting links

A look at the comic convention scene (something I haven't seen since I was but a wee lad going to hotel ballrooms all over Austin, Texas. My mother is a saint for driving me. She never complained, not once.)


A site recommended to me by Jeff C. Shoemaker. It's a fairly good read, I think, but the usual insanity inherent in sites dedicated to comics froths over. When I read reviews of Superman which slip into personal anecdotes about Superman replacing one's estranged Dad, I decide that some objectivity has been lost and I'm not sure I want to add this into the links section of The League.

And Jim sent me this link for a job at Los Alamos. If you read between the lines it becomes pretty clear that the job is to be a spin doctor at a nuclear laboratory. "Uh... Dr. Banner is recovering just fine... just fine..."

Tinman and The Falcon

During my late-college/ post-college years I was pretty good friends with some guys in a band in Austin. Wow. Who isn't? Well, summer of 2000 these guys picked up and decided to move to Seattle so the band could slowly disintegrate in a more hospitable climate. I doubt anyone from Austin would remember the band, but they got good notices while it lasted and they did some seriously overly-indulgent space/ prog rock under the name Maximum Coherence During Flying.



We were all kind of into sci-fi and pulp and comics and whatnot, and so it was a year or two after their flight to the Pacific Northwest that I got a call from Bryan Manzo, guitarist/ saxophonist/ composer for MaxCo who had come upon an idea. He was going to work with Michael (My) Young to write a rock opera, and I was going to draw a series of comic books that would illustrate the story.

You kids who don't follow comics don't know this, but getting into the comics industry is about as easy and much fun as getting your head out from the bannister rails. Even compared to film and television, comics is cut-throat crazy competitive. Virtually every 20+ who reads comics wants to get into the field, and I am no different. But drawing comics is really, really time intensive. Let alone also inking the pages. Especially when you've doodled a lot but never really done anything that formal before.

But the problem was, there was no music and no story, just some characters and a title: A Spy Named Lonely.

So I had four characters who were supposed to be pulpy as pulp can get: The Tin-Man (a robot), the Falcon (a private eye), Lonely (a beautiful spy), and Dr. Archibald Nemesis (a despotic tyrant). I drew some pre-lims and sent them up to Seattle where I pretty much got the thumbs-up, and was told to do some more pre-lims based on a paragraph of notes, and wait for the music. So I waited. And waited. And waited. And about a year later, Bryan caught me with some weird, weird information.

Bryan's girlfriend somehow knew someone who knew Karen Berger. Karen Berger is the editor supreme of Vertigo comics. She's the woman who launched 10 years of mind-altering insanity within the prickly confines of DC Comics, a feat thought almost unimaginable until Hellblazer, Shade, Sandman and Swamp Thing proved comics could do a lot more than leap over tall buildings is a single bound. We had until August to get a package together.

And so suddenly I was drawing. I had an MP3 Bryan and My had sent me and it was February and everything was cool. I would do ten or twelve pages, we would show them penciled and inked and be able to say "AND THERE'S A FULL ALBUM THAT GOES WITH THIS!!!"

So in March, after six or seven months of experiencing the post dot.bomb blues, Jamie landed a job in Phoenix. And then I got the call from Bryan. "Oh, my God, dude. My girlfriend's friend is flying down to Australia to meet the guys who did the Matrix and she wants to bring a portfolio and pitch them Tinman and Falcon."

"The Wachowskis?"

"Yeah. She thinks they'd love it."

"This is dumb. You guys need a better artist."

"No way. We have to have it in two weeks."

"I still haven't heard the music or read a real synopsis."

"Oh."

So, I drew what I could. And in this same time, my wife was packing her belongings and moving to Phoenix where I was to be joining her June 1, 2002. Needless to say, I was distracted. That, and I did have a job. And a house to pack. But I drew. And I kissed Jamie good-bye.

And then the record showed up as a couple of burned CDs that were only partially mixed, and alone in my cardboard enclosed house, I listened to it, and I realized I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 17 drawings to do, ink, scan and send in within a few days. Plus a job. But at least I liked the music. So I sat down and finished I can't remember how many drawings in a much shorter span than I was comfortable with. But I scanned the drawings and sent them to Seattle.



And then Yoko stepped in. Bryan's girlfriend called me at work and told me that she didn't like the look of the Tin-Man, that she wanted something more like Robocop and could I redo everything, please? In three days. I said there was no way (and this wasn't just pride, there were serious time issues involved). She refused to relent, and then it occurred to me that neither Bryan nor My had requested the changes, and I didn't know this chick, and she had called me five times in two days. So I quit.

Well, several frantic phone calls later and I was back on board and the girlfriend was booted, but it was made clear she was glad I was far, far away. But we got what we needed, and off went the package and we never heard from anyone about it ever again.

The Karen Berger thing fizzled too, as Bryan and girl started having difficulties.

And one day the Tinman and Falcon web-site surfaced using almost none of the new art, and just the prelim sketches I knocked out in about two hours. I complained loudly, but the damage was done. My had spent several days on the animated intro, and he was not going to redo it. I could empathize.

But then, one night at 2:30am, My popped up on my AIM. "Hey dude. Brad Pitt digs T&F."

Apparently Bryan's newest lady friend was a former assistant to Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, and they had remained chummy. So she sent them the Tinman and Falcon web-site.

But that was it. I did a handful of drawings, totaling around 11 or 12 for the series. None of them were ever posted, even after I sent some nice scans and forwarded them on to Seattle. But maybe it's just as well. As much as I loved working on the drawings, the rock opera was running around 80 minutes and WAS ONLY THE FIRST ACT. God knows how long this could have gone on.

But, the site is still up! So, I invite all of you to visit the site, listen to some of the tunes, and read the back story on the site. It was a lot of fun and would probably still be going on if Bryan and My hadn't joined an 80's electro-pop quartet that eats up most of their time. But, ah, fame is so fleeting. Brad, why didn't you call us? We could have made millions, bro! At least I didn't get a second mortgage on my house to make a documentary nobody is ever going to want to see. It just cost time and money for markers and pencils.

I ask that you understand that these were never intended to be final versions of the drawings on the T&F site, but I guess My liked them... these were rough, rough prelims. Hopefully one of you will convince them to post the finished works they do have in their possession. But I encourage everyone to click on "Music" and listen to the album. It's free and it's easy to do. And, yes, it is supposed to be this cheesy.

Ladies and Gentlemen... I give you Tinman and The Falcon. Be afraid. be very afraid.

Fredrick Wertham was a psychiatrist who had worked at Bellevue Mental Hospital and had spent years studying patients with anti-social characteristics when he published "Seduction of the Innocent." The book caused a massive amount of hysteria, leading to discussions in the US Congress over the corrupting influence of comics on children, and led both directly and indirectly to the strange beast that the comic industry has become today. You'll note that even in the review I've linked to, the reviewer doesn't seem to think Wertham was all that far off base despite 50 years of evidence have proven him wrong.

I don't usually read "Unlearned Hand", but lawyer and comic philanthropist Jim D. forwarded me a posting from this legal site regarding a strange law that is on the books in California regarding EC Comics style horror comics.

My comments appear there as well as Jim D.'s.

I do suggest you take a look at this link to read up on an example of what can happen when good intentions lead to mass hysteria. Even within the comments, someone chooses to take a shot at the broadside of the barn and criticizes the merits of comics as literature. Sigh. Who Watches the Watchmen?

A bright spot of my week, in addition to seeing the Hulk, was the 2 hour special called Superheroes Unmasked on the History Channel. The show focuses on superhero comics and the people who made them. It looks at cultural relevance, both as an influence on pop culture, and how contemporary issues define the genre. Luminaries such as Dennis O'Neil, Steranko, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Paul Levitz and Michael Chabon participate in the discussion. While very little in the interviews was new to me, it was great to see some of these guys for the first time on video (for me, anyway).

The show does make no small potatos of Wertham's influence and how, even today, the industry is fighting against public perception issues caused by the hysteria. Check it out. It's a lot of fun. And it made me want to seek out as much 60's era Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD as I can find. And they did talk about King Kirby, but not enough, for my liking.

This was a clip from an e-mail conversation i had with Jim yesterday. He suggested I post it.

I am actually beginning to get a sneaking suspicion that I am a liberal. it's okay. Labels make me nervous, that's all. I am very conservative about some things, though. For instance, I refuse to use zippers and I wear buckles on my shoes and I think any girl who doesn't cover her ankles in public is a dirty, dirty harlot.

Someone posted this blog to the Hulk page on the IMDB sites. The League is suddenly popular. No longer are random visitors coming in looking for various naked celebrities. I have seen a marked increase in visits whenever I mention a celebrity. Most recent examples include Ron Perlman and Marcia Gay Harden.

I hope no one is getting their rocks off to this site, because that would upset Melbotis greatly. He wants to be respected for his mind, not just his body.

One thing I really dig about the Superman Homepage is that site coordinator Steve Younis has managed to get Superman Editor Supreme Eddie Berganza to participate. Once every month or so, Eddie responds to a few letters. Every month I send in something, just because. Well, this month my letter was picked, so I am Super excited! They no longer publish letter columns in the back of comics, so this is pretty much the equivalent.

to read my question, click here

Jim asked that I post my tale of how I tried, in my own way, to pull a Cool Hand Luke with the Univ. of Texas Police a few years ago when I was given a $20 parking citation. Well, the story isn't very good, but this story reminded me of the event.

Anyhoo, I received a ticket that, by all rights, I should have received as I had parked in a lot I had no permit for. At the time I was making less than $20K a year working for UT, and paying over $100 for a C-permit which DID NOT guarantee me a parking spot seemed steep. Anyway, I had to be at work and nobody was in the lot as it was winter break. Also, until the day before the UTPD had publicly stated they were not patrolling these lots, so anyone could park there.

SO... I parked there and I was easy pickings as one of maybe two dozen cars in the lot. Ticket was $20.00.

So I wrote a letter and refused to pay, pointing out there was no UT Jail (more on that later). Some grouch at the office wrote back a very nasty letter and told me that refusal to pay was going to mess SOMETHING up for me, but I can't remember what. I think I was going to get a warrant from the Austin PD as UT hands over it's tickets after a few months.

So I wrote a check for $19.99.

This illicited a negative response from the UTPD, but the idea was that they would spend all that time and money trying to collect on a single penny, and if you know UT collections, the actual sum has nothing to do with what they're trying to accomplish. No, the miserable wretches want you to know they own your ass.

They wrote me another nasty letter telling me that I owed a penny. I wrote them back and told them I thought I had paid a fair amount and I would genuinely appreciate it if they would quit harassing me. I also pointed out that even with metered mail, they were now losing money pursuing this. THey wrote me back saying that I owed a penny, and would I please pay.

Luckily, mi hermano es un attorney. It was at this point that I wrote them a letter and told them I paid what I thought fair, but if they wanted to pursue the $0.01, my attorney was happy to go to court. I left a name and phone number at which he could be reached (his boss's office). It was at this point that the $0.01 disappeared from my record.

It turns out there IS a UT jail. They have a cell or two somewhere on campus to hold folks drunk on campus, etc... I had no idea. One of my friends girlfriends got tossed in for a crime I'd rather not detail here.

UT also later ticketed me for parking at the conference center despite the fact I was at a conference at the center. The conversation I had on the phone with the troglodyte in collections was like a scene out of Catch-22.

"But I was at a conference!"
"UT employees cannot park in the lot."
"But people attending conferences park there."
"Yes."
"And I paid to attend."
"Ok."
"So I parked there."
"UT employees cannot park in the lot."
"But I was at a conference at the conference center."
"Did you have your UT parking permit tag in your window?"
"yes."
"THen you cannot park in the lot."
"So if I had taken my tag off, they would have left me alone?"
"Yes."
"That doesn't make sense."
"You left your tag in the window. UT employees are not to park in the lot."
"Why?"
"Because UT employees are forbidden from parking in the lot."
"I wasn't abusing the policy. I was legitimately at a conference. I have receipts I can FAX you."
"So you were at a conference at the center?"
"YES!"
"UT employees aren't supposed to park there."
Eventually I used the ultimate threat of asking to speak with her supervisor, so instead of that she reduced my ticket to a warning, which sent me off on a whole string of obscenities. "It wasn't illegal!"
"Sir, i am doing you a favor!"
But sometimes you pick your battles, and so I let that one go and paid nothing.

By the way. I saw the Hulk this weekend. Definitely not a movie for everybody, but I really, really liked it.

RRRRAAAGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

much ballyhooed frog toy. It has been replaced by an unpictured toy I have named "Dan."



Box of comics I found when I returned home on Friday.



small sampling of what was in the box.

OK. First and foremost...

Randy has posted citing that I took exception to his eyebrows. Not so. As a pudgy man, it is my duty to ensure that all feel good about themselves as they are. Randy, while I have never seen you, and have no inkling as to your appearance, I know that you are a beautiful person inside and out. So beautiful, in fact, that I am a bit jealous and it makes me think poorly of myself.

Jim Dedman kicks ass.

No matter what bickering may go on about such important issues as Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead, Jim is not innately evil, he just acts that way.

Friday I returned from work and some minor boozing to discover a package for me. Jim Dedman has sent 27 lbs. of comics and various other sundries.

Jim's collection appears to be from the mid and late 80's, an era which I remember very, very fondly as much of what he sent me reflects the same era in which I got serious about collecting comics.

It's difficult to draw a profile of Jim from this collection. But one thing Jim seemed really interested in was The Crossover mini-series. The Cross-over mini-series was a great invention of the medium and allowed characters from 2 books to interact without interrupting the flow of the regular series. Neither character was forced to take a back seat, and there were often very good artists on these comics. So, you could see, say, Captain America and The Thing duke it out with Mysterio, or Spider-Ham enjoy a sandwhich with Mr. Fantastic. I really dug issue #1 of X-Men vs. Avengers when I was a kid, but was never able to locate the rest of the series... well guess what. Jim did. And now Jim's desire to rid himself of his childhood will fill in a blank spot in my psyche.

Other notables include: Star Wars final issue. Inidana Jones #1. Silver Surfer #1. Spider-Man gang war and some Batman: Lonely Place of Dying. All great stuff.

I think my arrangement with Jim is that the comics are to be preserved with mylar bags and acid-free boards, and boxed and categorized for posterity. It was very clear that nothing was to be sold or made a profit on. No problem. I am way to lazy to sell anything.

Anyway, Jim is a great guy, and I can't say enough about how great it is to have received this. I have photos which I will post later today...

Oh, for the love of Mike.

Insert your own nightmare scenario here. ------>

Once again I missed the annual Superman Festival in Metropolis, Illinois. One day I will attend, one day when Jamie has no idea what I'm up to, I will go. Anyway, here are some photos of this celebration which I did not get to go to. I'm not bitter. It's not like Noel Neill was there or anything... And how cool is this? Harrah's designed their local casino to look like The Hall of Justice...

RHPT has joined in the swirling ranks disgusted with my attack of Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. It's now time I reconsider the issue, so this weekend I plan to hole up in my subterranean bunker in classic Cheney style, get a tub of Frito's bean dip, some blue corn chips, and a 6 pack of red soda and watch DTMTBD. And I will enjoy it, dammit.

RHPT would have you believe that I claimed DTMTBD is the worst movie ever. Not so. I simply stated that in years to come, when we're standing around in rags, hoping our Ape Masters are not listening to us speak whistfully of the past... thru bleary, mud encrusted eyes we will look back and try to figure out where it all went wrong... and we will know it was with the release of Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. or when it ran on HBO all summer. I'm not sure which release window is really responsible.

I have to join Dedman in defending our useless film degrees from UT Austin. I also have a useless degree in history, but defending that would just be shameful. I have a degree in film from UT RTF, and therefore, I simply must have better taste in movie than all of you useless mongrels who flock to the theaters to stuff your gullets with "popping corn" and "Diet Coca-Cola" and gleefully squirm your way thru the latest Renee Zellwegger claptrap. Clearly, you must rely upon ME to tell you what is a good movie and what is not. Best movie ever? Godzilla 2000.

Look, it's pretty clear Randy is going thru some difficult times with the house and eyebrows thing, and he needs to work off some steam. If he really, really needs to believe DTMTBD is a great movie, vaya con dios.

One of the great things about being a manager is that people have to listen to you. Even when you're not discussing work. And when I'm not discussing work, I have very little else to talk about aside from Melbotis, comics and pornography. I can't talk about porn all that often at work, and Melbotis doesn't do much to speak of, so I often find convoluted ways to drag the conversation kicking and screaming back to comics.

It strikes me that trivia I obtained in my youth about staples of the superhero comic book medium is not common knowledge. For example, during a discussion about earthquakes I abused my authority and used the opening to leap into an explanation of the ending of Superman I. I was also able to sneak in the counter-revolution/ time-travel sequence as well. (yesterday i made an attempt at explaining Crisis on Infinite Earths, but after 20 years, I'm not sure I understand Crisis, so it didn't go so well...)



At any rate... I have come to realize that most people recognize Spider-Man, Batman, the Hulk, Superman and Wonder Woman, but most people don't really know much about them. Which is okay. But the other day one of my co-workers said about the Hulk movie, "and did you see him throwing around a tank?! Whatever..." Indicating that essentially many, many people think of the Hulk as a green pro-wrestler. While this is an interesting idea, too, I assure you, the Hulk throws tanks very, very far.

It's not necessary going into The Hulk or Superman to understand that the Hulk can lift and throw tanks, or is so light but so strong, he can propel himself for miles at a time with a single leap. It's not necessary to know this, but I imagine it helps. Hopefully the story of the Hulk movie will explain all of this, but I know that there will still be a large portion of the public who will see the trailers and still say "did you see him throw a tank? whatever..." This may be the same population which sees trailers for Alex & Emma and wonders if they ever find love with one another... but that is not for me to judge.

I hope this movie is okay. I also hope Marvel stops making movies now before we all get stuck with a Dr. Strange movie we're all going to regret.

John Mellencamp came to pop music prominence in the early 80's with the release of Uh-huh (1983) and American Fool (1982). Hits included Authority Song and Pink Houses and Jack and Diane.

My brother has never been much of one for birthdays, and so in 1986, I opened a solitary present from Jason on what had to be my 11th birthday. 1985's hit Scarecrow. Another birthday meant another John Mellencamp album. To the best of my recollection it was either American Fool or a greatest hits collection. 1988 brought me The Lonesome Jubilee.

That was pretty much it, as far as I can remember. That was the end of the John Mellencamp birthday era, when every year I would open a single present, and every year, it would be yet another John Mellencamp record. The peculiar thing is that I don't really like John Mellencamp, and neither does he. I don't dislike Mellencamp, and like a sport, I gave the tapes a whirl, but Mellencamp is not so much my style.

Jason's birthday apathy is well documented in the Steans Family oral history, and, in fact, from 1991 to 1996, it's safe to say nobody actually received a birthday present from him.

One dark day in the mid 90's I asked him "why Mellencamp?"

He didn't remember.

"You DON'T like Mellencamp?"

"No. He's fine, I guess."

"You had Mellencamp records."

"You gave those to me."

"I did?"

"Yes."

"I'll be damned. So you don't like John Mellencamp?"

"He's fine, but I never was really a big fan."

And he had a good long laugh at my expense.

As he emerged from Law School, birthday presents reappeared, and eventually, they even showed some knowledge of other's preferences.

Yesterday I opened a final and belated (by 2 months) birthday present from Jason. Thanks, man.

Jim D. has gone on the defensive. After yesterday's well-deserved pot shot at the modern movie business, Jim is now trying to fill your cottony brains with the notion that Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead is not as bad as it first appears. Clearly, Jim is a sick, sick man. I have posted my response and comments on his site and see no reason for you lazy bastards not to click over and read Jim's site today.

I had a telephone conference with Intel people in Malaysia, Singapore and God-knows where else at 7:20 this morning. I hate phone conferences. It's like delivering a presentation to a rock that occasionally asks a question.

Melbotis Update

Two weeks ago when we took Mel in for a shave and a haircut (two bits!), we then detoured him thru the PetsMart to select a new toy. Last night, in an act of animal aggression and over-sized puppy hyper-activity, Mel completely tore apart his toy frog. Hopefully I can get photos up soon. That's what $6.98 and a little teasing will get you. Now I have to find him a new toy with far, far fewer seams.

We are looking at adopting another dog in July. I hope he realizes this behavior is only accpetable with fluffy frog toys.

I feel inclined to blog, but nothing of significance has occured within the past 48 hours. But other folks have blogged, and blogged well. I would point you to the blog of Crazy Jim D. He's blogged an enormous amount recently. He blogged recently about cameras on campus at the Univ. of Texas.

Well, Jim, once again you've inspired me. I've declared my shower a public place (as is my constitutionally guaranteed right, I am sure), installed a camera, and will soon be posting images of myself in the raw on this site. You may mistake me for a bald panda, but I assure you, that's me.

The site's name will be changing to www.hotchubbyboy.com. I will also be charging a $20 monthly membership fee to the site. Looking forward to all of you joining!

Also, Jim rants about how bad movies have become. But, my friends, I have seen the movie so vapid, so insidiously awful, that it may actually been the point at which the Shining Light of American Culture finally Jumped the Shark. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead.

I like bad movies. I have Big Trouble in Little China on DVD. But this movie surpasses funny bad and heads straight for depressing. If this is what American culture has to offer, I will spend my days grovelling in the streets of Myanmar.

The 80's brought us a common theme to comedy: a complete lack of motivation for any character to act in any sane way in order to advance the nauseatingly convoluted plot. This isn't just limited to Michael J. Fox movies and anything with Kirk Cameron in it. Usually, at least those guys were chasing some tail. No, these movies had characters acting in ways which make my 2nd grade Christmas pageant look like a Tony winner. THis movie makes so little sense, has characters acting with such little regard with care to themselves or others, that each twist and turn drives the viewer inches closer to the abyss. Truly, truly, truly, this may be the single dumbest piece of shit ever devised. I advise you to see it for yourself before we throw stones at American Pie.

GO SPURS!!!

I'm a little sad the Admiral is going, but bon voyage to you, sir! The NBA will be a poorer place for your retirement.

I also watched a good chunk of Bare-Assed Fine Arts Majors, this evening. It was an intriguing show, especially the sections which included Alec Baldwin introducing different branches on the cladiogram. If ANYONE is clearly a leading authority on human evolution, it must be a Baldwin. One may trace humanity from slithering gastropod to homo-Sapien just by looking at the Baldwin brothers.

This weekend I bagged and boarded comics, put them in their proper boxes and once again noted "I own many, many comics. Perhaps too many?" Really, I have a run of Uncanny X-Men from 168-312, and I'm never going to read it again. This is at least a recognizable title I am proud to have in my collection, but I also have crates of early DC-Vertigo titles, single issues of Avengers and tons of black and whites from whenever my inability to collect indie titles weighs upon my soul.

But here's the deal... the archivist in me (which is an ever exapnding portion of my being) wants more. I want them all. Given a million dollars and no parental supervision, I would build a Fortress of Solitude which would allow me to house an infinite number of comics at below room temperature, in low humidity, and still allow me access to the Lois Lane pimp bed from Superman 2.

Here is my review of last week's Adventures of Superman by Joe Casey: It was crappy. If you're looking to read Superman, do not start here. For the love of God, do not start here.

We spent all weekend looking for a coffee table. Our living room has no coffeetable to speak of, and so our coffee is forced to float suspended in mid-air. This was the 3rd or 4th weekend we'd spent looking, and I am happy to say that at the last store we looked, at the 11th hour, Jamie finally found a coffee table which she believes will fill the nagging void in our non-existsent feng-shui. Like everything in our lives, the table is dual purpose. Our kitchen is our family room (all too true), our living room is our dining room, and our bedroom is our bathroom. Our architect was a madman. At any rate, the table is also an enormous clock. In 6 weeks (or sooner! they tell us) the table/ clock wil descend into our lives and be an uncomfortable novelty piece which will pursue us until the end of time. (oh, hey.. a pun!)

Anyway, sorry I've been away. It's been a busy week. Next week looks just as grim. Hopefully I will post more.

Normally I don't post something like this, because it's kind of the equivalent of sending out a spam. But this is pretty funny.

Man, this week has been very busy at work. I have a non-descript academic staff job at a semi-major University here in Arizona. But like many American Universities, we are trying to now make a buck by selling classes online. We're trying to sell degree programs to tech firms like Intel, Motorola... places like that. (I just typed "like" as "liek" five times in a row...) Anyway, everyday this week we're meeting with someone, and I have to do my little sales pitch. It's so goofy, I don't even really want to get into it. But, it's been keeping me busy, busy. But mostly I end up sitting there drinking coffee and saying words like "online delivery" and "anytime, anywhere". Occasionally I get to say, "we can do that." And that's kind of the extent of my end of the conversation.

But today, as I meet with Intel folks, I will be thinking about this:

Source The Hollywood Reporter:

The Transformers -- the ever-morphing Hasbro toy line introduced in the mid-1980s that has gone on to spawn comic books, multiple television series and an animated feature -- are being prepped to change shape again, this time into stars of the big screen. Angry Films topper Don Murphy (whose next film is 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen') and writer-producer Tom DeSanto ('X-Men' and 'X2: X-Men United') have teamed to produce a feature-length, live-action movie based on the popular brand. The duo are expected to shop the project to studios shortly, and DeSanto said they have already received interest from a handful of directors hoping to get involved in the project. DeSanto is currently working on a story treatment for the project before he and Murphy hire a screenwriter to adapt it for the big screen.

We'll blow it up! God damn us all to hell!



But, with any luck, it will all resolve with some sweet monkey-lovin'!

Already my week is off to a questionable start... NBC has announced "V" will be returning to network TV. Will they re-employ Robert Englund?

someone has finally delivered upon the promise of pro-wrestling after all of these years... http://kaiju.com/

The PigDog lurks...



Well, Mel got his bath and summer clipping. He looks a bit like a PigDog now. Unfortunately you can't see how skinny the tail is when trimmed. It looks like an afterthought. He's very tired. I think the 4 hours at the groomers took a lot out of the guy. He should be able to cope with this lovely Arizona weather a lot better now.

I fully support NASA, but how much more crap are we going to keep lobbing at Mars until something doesn't crash and burn? We're treating that planet like a target at the City Carnival.

Rick Perry must be afraid other dudes peek at his pee-pee when he goes to the bathroom.

I don't really get homophobia. It's a bizarre paranoia. Why someone would want to legislate who you may or may not want to have sex with isn't just stupid, it's fucking hilarious. I mean, can you REALLY imagine getting so bunged up that two people are kissing or having sex or what-have-you, that you spend the time to write up a law stopping it? Or ask people to allow tax dollars to be spent prosecuting for the act? How sad and pathetic do you have to be?

I always go with the theory that all of these laws are paranoia stemming from the same source: straight folks are afraid of the moment of awkwardness if they were ever hit on by a gay person. In order to avoid having to turn someone down or have to spend a few awkward moments explaining why they don't find someone else attractive, they would rather toil in our legislature putting restrictions on the lives of others that they would never accept for themselves.

There's nothing about being gay that hurts anybody else (disappointed wannabe-grandmothers excepted), so why do we bother with laws about this? Surely, surely, surely there are better ways our legislators and governors could be spending their time than trying to discredit the love between two people. If this law were passed forcing interracial marriages to be discredited in Texas, it most certainly could never stand.

In this era where every jack-ass who owns a bumper has adorned it with a sticker declaring they're Proud to be an American, folks might want to consider what freedoms they are completely willing to take away from others, those who might be their neighbors, friends, co-workers, siblings or parents.

****update*****

Ashcroft fears for his wee-wee's sake as well! But he's fucking crazy, so we knew that.

Back in 1999, Simpsons alum Brad Bird directed the phenomenal Iron Giant over at Warner Bros. I'm not sure how or why the best animated movie of the past several years has gotten pushed to the wayside in favor of films like Rugrats in Paris, but it happened. Iron Giant was and is a terrific movie, and I suggest you rent it (and NOT just for the many Superman references).

Pixar knows something good when it sees it (and surely recognized Bird managed to make a movie at the very LEAST equal to the Toy Story movies) and had to have known that Bird posed a Clear and Present Danger should Warner Bros. get their act together. But this is America, and so rather than pull a Dr. Doom and have him killed, Pixar pulled a Lex Luthor and simply bought him off. Which is good. Bird now stands to have a chance at getting real backing not just during production, but as part of marketing. Good for him.

This is the trailer for Bird's Pixar debut, a movie about a Superhero family known as THE INCREDIBLES. View the trailer here.

Jim suggested I blog upon this astounding item which appeared on ebay. I'm going to keep this short, as I really do encourage you to read the description to see for yourself what the seller is up to. Anyway, if ghosts and goblins, do, in fact exist, is it better to send them UPS or Postal Service?

Heroes and Villains

I watched the AFI thing the other day, and, According to Jim, somebody suggested that I, your humble blogger, write about it. Well, it was really long and kind of boring. I was deeply impressed that the AFI selected Atticus Finch as the best/ most important hero of the past 100 years of cinema.

But is Hannibal Lecter the greatest villain? Maybe the best played in many minds, but I find it curious that we're able to point to a hero who is able to stand up for justice against insurmountable odds and at the potential cost of alienating not just him, but his whole family, and then select a villain who is pretty much the boogie man. True enough, there are vicious predatory killers in our midst, but if we're selecting a hero based upon a moral fiber we'd like to find within ourselves, are we really afraid of finding a cannibalistic englishman dwelling in our psyche? (btw, I find Brian Cox's portrayal of Lecter at least as spooky as Hopkins). I suppose Lecter was chosen because he is, clearly, no longer "human", but a monster. He's something tangible and, ultimately, defeatable.

The threat Atticus faces is not Bob Ewell. It's a jury and a system which he knows he can't beat, but it's worth trying. It's interesting we can't point to ourselves in that jury box as villains, but I guess that's always kind of difficult.