Finished watching Colonial House (which still kicks the pants off of Survivor any day), and enjoyed it. It wasn't as good as Frontier House, but it was still top notch. I need to go back and watch some earlier episodes I recorded but didn't watch yet. I don't know what happened to at least two cast members as they disappeared during episodes I recorded while Jamie was in the hospital.

I also watched the final performance of American Idol yesterday. I didn't watch the show much this season, but I can say that I thought that the winner (Fantasia?) had one of the strongest performances I'd seen since Tamyra Gray was unjustly voted off Season 1. (Kelly "Pie-Faced Geek" Clarkson? Please.) Anyway, who knows if she'll actually become a legitimate recording artist on her own (I am slowly counting down Clay Aiken's 15 minutes... and the memory of Ruben Studdard already seems so dim...), but it'd be cool if she did.

Got the new stereo. Hurray. It has many buttons and features I do not understand, which is making it difficult for me to equalize the stereo's output. And I don't like sitting in an idle car sucking in Carbon Monoxide while I adjust the stereo settings until the stereo sounds at least as good as stereos which do not provide any options.

Mel is fat and happy, although he dropped a P-Bomb on the carpet Tuesday night. Bad dog. Poor Jamie gets home much earlier than me, so she always has to clean up after him when he seeks revenge for being neglected.

Terrified of my wrath when I found out what that smell was as I entered the house, Mel once again cowered in the bathtub. I guess that's his "safe place".

Superman 205 by Azzarello and Lee was released yesterday. I now know this is going to be a sllloooowww series. But that's okay. Action Comics is moving almost too fast for my taste, and Adventures of Superman is at a more traditional Superman pace. There's got to be room for many styles, I think.

My guess is that most comic readers who seek non-stop violence in comics are going to either not pick up on (or roundly dismiss as being too heavy handed) the sort of nuanced writing Azzarello is shooting for. Very little fighting here, but the story is saying something unique about Superman's place in the world that DC just doesn't usually touch on, although it often skirts around the issue. Really, not since the amazing Paul Dini/ Alex Ross oversized holiday graphic novel "Peace on Earth", has it been so clear how Superman can be used as both character and metaphor to demonstrate how any person of power struggles on a daily basis as they impose their will upon others.

Due to the story, Superman is definitely being portrayed as an alien, and as we learn more about the circumstances of the story, we see why he is losing touch with his humanity (or perhaps becoming all the closer to it as he experiences abject failure...). There are some legitimate theoretical issues tossed around about how Superman must view himself, others and the world as a whole that are usually glossed over in most 22 page Superman comics.

I will be curious to see how this storyline progresses. I know other Superman fans who want nothing but action, action, action (he came out of Action Comics, after all) will find the story preachy and too boring. But they're not keeping their eyes on the long-term possibilities for the series, and I, for one, am enjoying seeing how this unfolds.

Thanks to Jim for this link.

PC Boombox.

THANKS, SCIENCE!!!

Just when I thought Face/Off was a kind of silly movie with a bizarre premise, some doctors in Kentucky are trying to make the Woo feature a grim, grim reality.

One wonders, with cloning technology ever increasing and now the ability to transplant your face, a world full of walking Darkman sequels can't be far behind.

Here's the article from CNN.com

***Special thanks to Randy for pointing out I never added the link***

HURRAY!!!

Tom is back from Poland!

Something goofy happened yesterday at The League. Something went weird with blogger.com and it resulted in a lack of access to this URL with a www prefix. Anyway, they fixed it and all should be right with the world.

Last night Jamie went to the gym with me, albeit in a largely observational capacity. On the way home, she was quiet for a minute, and then she said: I think you're using your machine backwards.
"Backwards?," I replied.
"Everyone else is going the other direction."
By this she means that I may well be back-pedaling on the elliptical machine which I spent, last night, 35 minutes on. Which was a few miles.
"What do you mean?"
"You know how you're going around in little ellipses? Everyone else's machine is going the other way."
THis made me pause. "Sometimes my knees lock up on the thing. Like my leg is popping backward."
"I'm just saying," she shrugged.
So it may be that I am BACKPEDALING for up to 45 minutes at a time. Which is kind of awesome when you think about it. It means if I went to the track, I'd be huffing it backward around the track, or walking backward down block after block. And while the idea appeals to me, I probably should be running forward since the elliptical machine is my machine of choice.

In other news: Get the warranty.

Yesterday I went to Best Buy to get a new stereo to replace my old stereo which had gone kablooey and tried to eat my copy of the Walkmen's "Bows + Arrows".

It turns out that the prices on car stereos have dropped through the floor in the two years between purchase and total chaos of the Jensen. The high dollar item for cars is now an in-dash DVD player with Liquid Crystal Display (which slides out). As ludicrous (and, if I may say, DANGEROUS) as this sounds, it is, in fact, what Best Buy is now pushing. I assume the CD players are some sort of loss-leader for speakers, installation, etc... at this point.

The bottom line is that (for NOTHING) I got a really nice Panasonic (the second most expensive model I saw) and it was STILL $20 cheaper than the crapular Jensen I bought two years ago. It doesn't get installed until tonight, but I was so giddy while I was checking out that I think I spooked the girl at the register. I guess they're more used to angry people in the returns department.

Today I am truly an Even Steven. But since I trust nothing, I also bought the 4-year Warranty on this new stereo, just in case.

And this shall put Reed into a tailspin from which he may not recover...

But will all 500 of their albums, bootlegs, official concert albums and recordings of them sleeping, snoring, washing their cars, etc... be enough for the Phish legions?

No. No, it will not.

From the FBI:

"Behind the clown nose, however, this man appears to have been supporting an industry that trades in the exploitation of children."

Further negating my desire to go to the circus, and reinforcing every desire I ever had to punch clowns in the head, this article appeared on CNN.com this afternoon.

Next we're going to find out the elephants are running a meth lab out of their trailer. Or the human cannonball is going to get lodged in the barrel to diastrous results. I just can't bear it.