Round-Up for Tuesday

Baseball

Here in the 11th inning, this UT/ LSU baseball matchup is going to give me a heart attack. And so I will die and not see UT actually lose the game.

Houston

I am in a hotel room in Houston watching this game. If I have a heart attack, nobody will notice until 8:00 AM tomorrow when my boss looks for me at breakfast.

This is an okay hotel. The air conditioner was set to "Put Him in Carbonite" when I walked in.

I have an odd affection for Houston. I sort of love it, but know that I would have found life in the many sprawling suburbs of Houston not to my taste. But I doubt I'd have swung a salary befitting living "inside the loop". Also, Austin has plenty of humidity already, thanks. And I'm a sucker for elevation in my landscape (although the gulf plains make it easy to find downtown). However, for getting a bad rap due to existing within the borders of Texas, Houston is a deeply diverse city ethnically, culturally, socio-economically and probably some other category. Its home to considerable museums, theater districts, universities, professional sports, hospitals and more. The money Houston seems to be able to generate has gone back into the place in a way that gives it much to offer.

I am unsure if the air of new-money goofiness has left many parts of Houston, if the rednecks who were a part of my natural habitat in high school still roam free, and if the obvious and crippling poverty is still ignored as folks fly by on I-45. But if sociologists want to study America at its most American, I say not to head to the heartland, but see the 2 dimensional map of Houston as a cross section of the sausage that makes up our great nation.

UT lost

Dammit. Still, I am not entirely surprised.

Hairline

I have become convinced that my hairline is receding apace. Whether this is true or not, I am not yet sure. I blame the last haircut I received for its inhospitable awkwardness which has led to the uncertainty and confusion.

Ah, well. Me and my head had a good run. Now to look like a Klingon with my bumpy cranium.

League Christmas Special

I am giving serious thought to writing and shooting a 5 - 10 minute Christmas special for this year. I will need guest stars, so let me know if you want to be in it. I will need to pen a very special League Christmas tune.

We will probably need to shoot in November to make this work.

Also, I hope to force Jamie into an elf costume for the entire special.

Monday Round-Up

Steanso off to London

Jason and my folks are headed for London for several days this week, leaving me and Jamie (and my aunt and uncle, presumably) as the State-side Steanseses. I am not sure what Jason will do in London, but we've seen "An American Werewolf in London" and suspect that it will end poorly.

The Bros. Steans have not been Europe-side before, so let us hope Jason finds a lot to do. He's also going to Paris for a day or two, so I have my fingers crossed he will wind up in some Da Vinci Code-esque adventure (only they better be asking for analysis of BSG-related clues if they hope to get anywhere).

I'm off to Houston

For about 18 hours. So don't get too excited. And, no, I won't have time to see any Houston-area Leaguers. Sorry.

We're headed to the University of Houston for Tuesday, which should be fun.

Bug

On Friday night we were lucky enough to have Bug and her husband Scott in town. I've known Bug (aka: Erica S.) since high school, where we shared a GPA and class ranking. I came very close to attending college with Erica, but wound up at UT, of course. Jamie was roommates and suite mates during her time in college, and we've all stayed in touch.

A few years ago, Erica married her man-friend, Scott, who I personally think is a cool guy. Together, they put together Isaac, their kid born around the time of Hurricane Ike. Who we had the privilege of meeting before heading out.

Anyhow, it's always fun seeing old friends. So, old friends, where are you guys? Its always a good excuse to go out for dinner for us.

Comic Organization Continues

I've got most of the last year's worth of comics bagged and boarded. Next weekend I'll spend time entering them into comicpriceguide.com.

The past three years, I've quit bagging and boarding everything. Hence, I have a stack of comics which I'm looking to get rid of. In many cases, these aren't even bad comics. They're just comics that I'm not going to keep. Some are duplicates I accidentally picked up (I had that problem upon occasion when I tried my experiment in monthly ordering from an online source). So, if you want free comics, e-mail me.

What this really confirms is that I need to make a conscious effort to move to trades for some of my stuff. Unfortunately, this is just as DC is adding back-up features to many titles (I'm looking at you, Bat-comics). But for some ancillary stuff, I'll probably move to trades. I just don't really know what to do with the floppies, and I'm not sure people actually want them if I don't.

There's probably a message in there somewhere to me and the industry, but there you are.

Father's Day

I spent Saturday evening with my folks, my uncle and cousin, Jamie's folks, and some family friends. Today I had brunch with Jamie's folks here at the house. I really need to learn to sit at the table without playing with Lucy the whole time. Nobody needs that.

My cousin is working her way through an adoption, and by Tuesday I should no longer be the youngest member of my family. That's a little weird, but a welcome change. And I'm very happy for cousin Sue.

More details on that soon.

Happy Father's Day to The Admiral and DocDik. You guys are the tops!

Prepare your insulin

Raccoon kits living in a Pepsi machine.

Young Raccoons Saved from Pepsi Machine @ Yahoo! Video

Happy Father's Day to The Admiral

The Admiral did not find me in a rocket and raise me. Nor did he launch me into space (though I strongly suspect the thought crossed his mind from time to time).

But like Jonathan Kent, The Admiral (with no small assist from the KareBear) did his best to instill in a young League some sort of moral compass. While I think he would have frowned upon my adoption of a cape and sky-blue tights an an outfit of choice, like Pa Kent from the movies and books, The Admiral's role as a father was a bit more involved than occasionally peering over the top of his newspaper or teaching us how to throw a baseball (which he did as well, with mixed results). We were lucky to have parents who saw our challenges as teaching opportunities, and who asked us to reach our own conclusions as we forged ahead.

I don't want to go on too long and get sappy and boring, and some of this is deeply personal. But I consider myself fortunate every day to have had the balance of parents that I could not have been luckier to have had, had I been flung across space to touch down in a field and be picked up by Glen Ford.

The Old Man is a good guy, and I can only hope to do him proud. So on Father's day, I salute thee, Admiral.

Re-Directs/ Sunny/ Jon&Kate

Comic Oddity

So, Funny Papers was a comic shop that was in Dobie Mall, on the South West edge of campus. It had been there since I was in high school, and changed hands at least four times I knew of. Thanks to its approximation to several places I worked, I had been a customer for years, but as it was, bottom line, not as good a shop as Austin Books, I quit shopping at Funny Papers and switched to the less-convenient-from-work-or-home Austin Books.

I noticed about a month ago that the doors had been locked on Funny Papers buy the property management company. Last I checked, the stock for the store was still in there. As Austin has always struggled to have shops that could last (except for Capstone and Austin Books), and at least three other shops had closed since I moved here in '06, I was sad to see it go.

But... I checked the URL for their old website (which was pretty awful) to see if they'd made note of what was going on, or alerting their customers to some sort of gameplan. Instead, the www.funnypapers.com re-directs directly to NSA.gov.

www.funnypapers.com

That's an interesting re-direct.

Shouldn't "Sunny" Be Back on Soon?

Leaguers may know I'm a fan of the FX Network program, "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". And it seems like a good, long while since Season 4 ended (with a performance of a musical of "Day Man/ Night Man"). And while I already have a foul-mouthed, skinny blond at home, it is time for another round of Sweet Dee.

I wouldn't Tivo the show for your kids, but its good stuff.

The internet tells me that it'll be coming back in September.

Not for the kiddies:

I know you see three shirtless dudes here, but do not let that fool you.

Jon minus Kate Plus Joint Custody

Shocking nobody, Jon and Kate of reality TV show "Jon and Kate Plus Eight" sound like they're heading for divorce in a much more than speculative way. Here.

While indeed morbidly fascinating to watch, its not fun to write about. But if you've seen the show of late (which has taken to inserting special celebrity guest stars to distract from the fact that Jon and Kate have no interest in communicating), this should be no surprise.

May Jon find his stripper and head for Tahiti, and Kate get... whatever. Mostly, I will be curious to see the follow up in "People" in 2020, updating us on whatever happened to these people.

I think they have contracts with TLC that go for another two seasons. I have no doubt TLC will be holding everyone to those contracts as its sort of untapped territory for television.

Aunt Joann

I did not grow up knowing my aunt Joann terribly well. My paternal grandmother's sister, she lived in Mesa, Arizona, which was pretty far away when I was a kid. However, she came to visit when I was in college, and Jamie and I were thrilled that she was able to join us in Austin when when we got married.

And, of course, when we moved to Arizona, she lived only about 30 minutes away. We spent a few holidays with her, would go visit on weekend, stuff like that.

Unfortunately, Joann developed Alzheimer's while we lived there. I assisted my Uncle Kirk (Joann's son) in getting her squared away in a retirement complex, set up her care, etc... I have to give Joann props. She probably had signs of Alzheimer's for a while, but she was incredibly sharp, and most likely was covering for quite a while to keep folks from realizing she was forgetting things, etc...

My aunt Joann passed this week. I found out today while at the conference. While I was only able to know her for a short while before she began having trouble with her memory, and as much as I enjoyed spending time with her even after she began having problems, I'll miss her.

I'm at a conference/ Tank Girl/ Twitter

I should mention, I was at a conference here in Austin today, will be so tomorrow until quite late, and then again on Thursday. My usual blogging and comment section maintenance is going to be less than perfect.

Also wanted to say: Tank Girl is a deeply flawed movie. I'm trying to watch it on cable, but it's pretty bad. Comic folk and Hollywood could learn some lessons regarding what not to do with Tank Girl. So much potential, and it sort of sputters around like they had no idea what they really wanted out of the movie while they were making it. Add in a layer of early-90's sheen, and TV-style directing, and it feels not entirely unlike one of its contemporaries in the Pauly Shore wacky-movie genre.

I find it odd that I often hear folks defending the movie. It may be that I felt Lori Petty's reading of the titular character mistook blaring every line in the same cadence for sassiness. Plus, the kangaroo dudes just don't work. I don't care what was in the comic.

Oh God, Malcolm McDowell... did you ever have any shame?

On Twitter

A week ago The League posted one word in a post about things that drive you nuts on the internet. I dropped one word: Twitter

Its unlikely I'll do so again. Friends and Leaguers know that I don't use the application for my personal use, preferring Facebook as my personal poison. Also, blogs, e-mail, etc...

I think we basically hit a point at which the folks who are enthusiastic about Twitter and those of us who are less so were just sort of squawking uselessly at one another. We clearly use, used or would use the technology in different ways, and do not share the same perspective on how we engage in the communication cycle. Different technologies are going to expose these things in different ways.

The bottom line is that we are in a world where instant communication is possible on a massive scale, and in the hands of anyone with an e-mail account, a username and password. As NTT would point out, that's an incredibly important thing in events like the Iranian election or a natural or other disaster.

I confess that it is deeply hypocritical to walk away from Twitter for the reasons I did when I maintain a personal weblog. And I honestly feel that, if Facebook Twitterfeeds are any indication, that we've passed through the goofier stages of people figuring out what to do with Twitter and not just informing you of every time they have a meal, hit the head, what-have-you...

For all the good it can provide, Twitter has a ways to go, and people will need to be very careful in how they use it once it becomes part of expected types of communication. We all need phone lines, and they're also good for passing emergency information, etc... but if the phone rings off the hook from telemarketers, we taken them off the hook. Heck, I confess that even if the phone rang all evening from friends and family, I'd keep it off the hook.

And that's where I am with Twitter right now.

I don't expect this will come remotely close to closing the book on Twitter in the comments section or at this blog or elsewhere. But I'm shelving the topic for a while.

We are, of course, all over Facebook. We're in the middle of working on incorporating Twitter into our professional life, and, in fact watched part of a panel of archivists discussing how the Tweets from Iran would be preserved for future generations (using the near complete loss of record of how Tiananmen Square played out.

I think it also raises some questions regarding expectations of one another not just in ownership of devices that can handle and manage these modes of communication from a financial standpoint, but the fact that we're now so attached to our devices that instant messaging at all times from any direction doesn't seem unreasonable to many. That may be overstating it a bit, but I'm not sure its by much, whether you're spending time managing your communication or not (and it is, in my personal and professional experience, a tough thing to explain that most people prefer their tools do this for them. They do not wish to spend their time monkeying with and tweaking their tools).

So that's that.

I gotta go to bed.