two minor things:

1) Blogger.com, who hosts The League, is going to have some presence at the upcoming SXSW multimedia monkey-fest in Austin, Texas. Sounds like they're going to be at one of The League's former default destinations, Club DeVille, down on Red River.

they say: Mess with Texas Some of us Blogger folks are going to SXSW and to kick things up a notch we're serving up free drinks and t-shirts Monday evening from 6:30-8:00 on March 15th over at Club De Ville in Austin, TX. We provide beer and schwag to our users because we care.

So if you're in town, go get some free shit for The League.

2) The League just saw it's candidate of choice on cable. No, not on CNBC or Fox News or even on Nickelodeon. The Reverend Al Sharpton apparently makes a cameo in the Ryder/ Sandler vehicle, Mr. Deeds.

Home again, home again, jiggity jog.

Kudos to Continental Airlines for not losing my luggage and being relatively on time for both flights over the weekend.

All in all, the weekend was very nice. Kicked it old school on Saturday with the main family unit plus Cousin Sue and "Hopalong" Cassidy.

Sunday, it was down to me and Mum and Pop. Pop and I went and saw Hidalgo at the Woodlands megaplex theater. I'm not really sure what to say about the movie except that it was pretty much you'd expect, and my instructors from film school would have had a field day dissecting the movie. From a non-narrative strategies point of view, I liked how the movie insisted on inserting an evil "Brad"-type character with a better horse. You know, in the end, Sheik Brad will certainly get his comeuppance. We Americans are EXPERTS at doling out comeuppances. But, if you're willing to overlook some questionable thematic issues, and you want to watch a guy ride from screen left to screen right for an hour or so, have I got the movie for you.

I make it sound like I hate the movie. I really didn't. It was kind of a half-baked adventure movie, and after Club Dread, it seemed ingenious.

Anyway, me am home. Melbotis was only half-way happy to see me. It's very warm out all of a sudden, and Mel was revelling in the sun.

I'm still at Mom and Dad's. All is well. Dad thought he lost his wallet at the convenience store where we each bought a soda. Those nice people still had it.

I need to buy batteries before I get to the airport. I didn't have any in my walkman when I got on the plane. Luckily, everyone was very quiet for the duration.

Nathan Cone is an amazing human being, radio personality and musician. He's also a major film nerd.

Nathan has posted the League's review of Comic Book: The Movie to the TPR website. Look for the film icon when you scroll down the site. The link is in the middle of the page, and the review is in there.

I fly out shortly, but I am watching Sesame Street right now. And Cookie Monster has declared "Me am glutton, not liar!"

Cookie Monster, me know the feeling.

Because there's a special tidbit for Jamie if reads through to the end.

I'm not sure if Maxwell took my post of yesterday to mean that I believed she was navel gazing. On the contrary.

I am in awe, truthfully. Maxwell may be two, three years younger than myself (what is it Laura? I'm fuzzy on the details.), but she's in NYC, making a go of it as actor/ director/ creative professional. And she appears to be in a stable marriage as well.

There's a narrow window, even for the stout hearted, in these professions. Narrow windows of opportunity, of time between college and realizing the temp job is now your real job, of getting knocked up and having kids and going back out to the suburbs. Narrow windows in which we look back and say "How did I get here?" (Thanks, David Byrne).

But she's out there. She's actually walking the streets of NYC and trying to get from being the little blonde girl in the black sweater who used to bum rides home after Drama Club meetings, to being a name that passes on the lips of folks talking about putting shows on Broadway. She's somewhere between halfway there and a million miles from the passing fancy of most high school drama kids. And she's working at it, too. She's not some producer's daughter, and she's not some indie actor's model girlfriend in a walk on role. Step by step. Bit by bit.

I wonder how that happened? We were in the same program. I remember the folks around her age from that group (anyone else remember Trucker?). Something in that dusty, yawning maw of a stage made her want to try it in college. And even those bastards in UT drama didn't break her or make her throw up her hands and give Psychology 301 a shot (and from what I hear, it's the goal of the program to shatter the undergrads, but not to build them back up again).

So yesterday I catalogued a little. And I tried to pinpoint, because there was a point at which we were all churning out screenplays, and we all had ideas for stories, and we could see them in our mind's eye from beginning to end. Some of us went so far as to cast the projects, dreamed of composers and the gracious things we'd say when they mentioned our genius in print. But that's not how it works. Not most of the time.

Maxwell's right. Read her posting. She is electric. She has to be, or she'd be back in Spring, Texas wondering whether it was Chili's or Arby's tonight for dinner. Or maybe she'd still hanging out in Austin, wondering why that Third Coast thing hasn't taken off quite yet (but maybe next year...!).

So i get to do something. I get to lean on Maxwell and I get to tell her: Hey, Maxwell. A lot of us didn't even start to give ourselves a chance to be stars of stage and screen, or rock gods or poets or writers or whatever the hell we were supposed to be. So it's up to you, kid. We don't even care if you ever get your name in lights, but you don't get to quit. Not yet. You just remember that as things come to pass, and those lights start to lose their luster, you got all of us pulling for you. Go out there and do it. We all know you're electric.