Okay. Here's the deal. The post below was meant as my April Fool's misdirect, but it's not funny. I just don't have time to be funny today.

BTW, Jim still thinks I sent him the Dilbert cartoon (which i did not). Someone should fess up, because Jim's calling me now and trying to get me to take responsibility for it.

I know I should post today, but something I would rather not talk about has occurred, and I don't really have time nor the patience.

It turns out I just really do not like Bleu Cheese. I just was unable to eat my lunch which had bleu cheese on it. Then the waiter never came back so I could find a peaceful resolution. All in all, a bad lunchtime experience.

New case for my brother?

THis shall launch my new feature: Thanks, Science!

New study about Man's Best Friend.

So, if you want a good idea of what your blogger here looks like when seen with the wife:

Oh, and in case you missed it here... Warner Bros. is making a new Batman movie. And, as such... here's the new Batmobile. The guys from ELF are gonna hate it, but it's a cool movie prop at any rate.

I had heard that part of the idea behind the new movie was that Batman was using technology that looked like usable technology... not suspending his plane from the top of the cave and driving around with cars with huge, pointless fins. While I was secretly hoping for the classic 1940'-50's era Batmobile in one form or another, this Batmobile gets the League of Melbotis seal of approval.

REEVES STARS IN SCANNER
BY DF NEWS

Keanu Reeves will star in A Scanner Darkly, based on a Philip K. Dick novel, for Warner Independent Pictures, Variety reported. Richard Linklater (School of Rock) is in talks to direct, the trade paper reported. George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh's Section 8 will produce.

A Scanner Darkly will employ the same technology Linklater used in Waking Life: It will be shot live-action, then animated, the trade paper reported.

The story takes place in the future, where undercover agents change their faces along with their identities. Reeves plays one such officer, and his liberal ingestion of the drug Substance D causes him to develop a split personality, the trade paper reported.

Now the news source is not one I know to be reliable or unreliable as it's really a comics collectibles outlet. However, they have no real reason to make this up, so I'll take it that this idea is, at least, being batted around. Now I dug this book big time. Very good book. And I don't think too many bad thoughts about Kneau. I'm much more concerned about Linklater who is not my favorite director (although he is also the only director I ever met, and he's done more for Austin film than any herd of bespectacled film nerds could ever hope to achieve). Well, you know what? Life is full of surprises. Maybe this will turn out great.

Note to my brother who seems to mostly keep up with me these days by reading this blog.

1) Star Trek 1 rules. God bless AMC for running it continually for the past week.

2) We are going to see Hellboy when you are here in a week. Keep your shorts on. Tell Wilson he can take Mandy or something. We are going to see Hellboy. That's your penance for the XXX debacle of Auguts 2002.

Now back to you other Leaguers.

1) jamie doesn't like the Stooges. Not the band. The three guys who poke each other in the eye. How can you not find that funny?

2) People now want to take my albums off my hands. I am plan to begin describing things in my house I no longer want and turn The League into a sort of virtual garage sale without turning this into e-bay.

3) I have this old lawnmower rusting behind the house. It probably still works, but I bought an electric mower. Boy... it sure would be great if I could get rid of it...

4) Hellboy. This critic on CNN freaking loved this movie. Wow. The trailers look like MIB III, so I was skeptical, but now I want to see this movie.

Truthfully, I never read the Mignola written/ drawn comic despite my enjoyment of some of his work for DC (hurray Cosmic Odyssey!) I have, I think, one or two issues, but I just never really picked it up. But, holy moley... this is a good review. I am in.

I guess I could have guessed. I like ROn Perlman, and the director (del Toro) did Blade II, which I enjoyed. In fact, I remember turning to Jason, my brother, after Blade II and saying "wow. That was the most like a comic turned to screen as I've ever seen!" And here we are. So I will be seeing Hellboy. Maybe they'll get that del Toro chap to direct Superman.

I can dream, can't I?

check out Superman, Seinfeld and Lauer over at the NBC site.

Click here for video

Check it out. My Jimmy Olsen like photographic skills landed my work in Wired.com.

Actually, I took these while working on a video for the School. And I only took the two of the guy in the wheelchair (who is freaking hilarious, i might add).

So go check out Wired and see what research we're up to at my employing university. And I'm glad they showed Panch. Panch kicks ass, even if he does introduce me as my boss from time to time.

I never buy new albums. By that, I mean, I rarely buy albums from new bands with which I have heard very little, but, based upon the strength of their single, I will try the whole album.

Twice in the past three weeks I have done this. And twice, I have been f**ked.

After reading Maxwell's post on the Yeah Yeah Yeah's (which in no way really endorsed the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and after having had heard the single a few times, and after having noticed the album was $8.99 at Target last time I was there, I decided to pick up the record.

Not good. While it does do what I kept telling Jamie (this sounds like something I would have listend to in high school!), it does not necessarily do it in a good way. I was actually reminded of the "They Eat Their Own" debacle of 1989/ 1990. I purchased it on the strength of the song "Like a Drug", which was catchy. The rest of the album... not so much. And I am sure I had paid at least $8.99 for that album as well. At any rate, just download that single you keep hearing from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. it's still a good tune. It just happens to not sound too much like anything else on the record.

(And let me stop here and now and ask how many folks returned the Smash Mouth album in 1996? I know you did, because I was the one at the record store who had to explain to you that we are not responsible for your musical choices, so if you bought it and didn't like it, that's your problem. Yes, i know the entire rest of the album in pretty much stupid LA-metal, but I hoped you knew that before dropping $16.99.)

I can't really tell you what to do if you had high hopes for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Really, most of the record sounds like the kind of stuff you used to occasionally hear coming out of clubs on 6th street that you would wisely pass on by.

The other album I bought because Amazon.com kept telling me to. "Buy the Strokes, fool!" Amazon.com challenged. "Okay," I answered, "That single is okay. But I'm buying it at Best Buy and cutting you out of the deal!" "Bastard!" Amazon replied.

The Strokes is really pretty boring. I listend to it once at home, once on my way into work, and then lost it under the seat of my car where it will remain collecting dust and car lint until I clean my car again.

THis happens about once every year, and it puts me off buying any new music for a while. The worst part is, I normally wouldn't have picked up either record, assuming their approval by major retailers was enough of a warning sign. But sometimes you ignore that little voice in your head and say "hey, this could be fun!" And then you get f**ked. So, you know, listen to the voices in your head, I guess.

I can say I've enjoyed both of The Walkmen's records. They might be worth checking out. I notice on their website they seem to be opening for The Strokes in a few US cities. Interesting choice since my feeling was that both the Strokes and The Walkmen had a similar vibe, only The Walkmen do it so much better.

Fuck it. I'm going to go buy some Engelbert Humperdink and Chuck Mangione.

Sadly, I have denied myself Jim's TIVO clarion call and so I will miss Superman v. Lauer tomorrow morning.

From Newsarama.com

The day after the shorts went live at www.americanexpress.com/jerry , the Jerry Seinfeld/Superman friendship is slated to get a boost thanks to NBC’s Today show.

According to the show’s website, excerpts from the two Internet shorts are due to be shown, while NBC is currently airing promos for tomorrow’s show featuring Superman himself as an on-air guest.

Reportedly, the Superman/Seinfeld segment will be shown in the 8:00 – 8:30 am half hour slot.

If anyone sees this, let me know how Superman does as a guest.

All new web-isodes of Jerry Seinfeld and Superman! Sure, it's an American Express ad, but it's still pretty good.

Click to view. And get Flash if you don't have it. Flash the media tool, not the super-fast super hero.

I am in no way snickering at this story or these people. The story just has such a shadow of Andrea Yates, also a Texas mother/ murderer, it's very odd.

Jamie asked me yesterday "is it just me, or is the whole fo'shizzle thing already going away?"

I suggested that, perhaps, we were late on this one to begin with, and like with most trends, since we are no longer 19-24, we will be the last to hear about it. Most likely, we agreed, we had caught the fo'shizzle on it's way out.

I seem to remember the Fo'Shizzle a few years ago, but it's a vague memory, and I can't really tie it to anything. That, and the folks in our respective offices are unlikely to employ the shizzle in casual conversation, so the shizzle has not received a lot of reinforcement.

Like any fad, it's going to have a life cycle. You do not hear people dropping "jive turkey" or "turkey" anymore (a phrase my parents outlawed in my house when I was young, which I found confusing). I still pepper my own speech with the phraseology of my upbringing. "Dude" and "man" still punctuate about half my sentences. "Totally", "rad", "schweeet!", "whoa" and a few choice others pop up. But around the office, my speech pattern is significantly different than what it was when I began here. Upon my arrival, I was used to the casual atmosphere prevelant at UT. The F-Bomb is certainly not welcome. Unless I really, really need to make a point.

In other news, Jamie's birthday went more or less as planned. I felt bad that Wagner had so little to do here, but there is so little to do here. Or, at least, we're in such a rut, we don't really seek out a lot of what there is to do, and are therefore ignorant of what Phoenix has to offer.

All in all, it was nice, and it was good to see Wagner. She went Vegan some time back, and that made some of our dining choices more challenging than others, but all in all, not too difficult to deal with.

I bought two pictures at the Tempe art fair this weekend. Both pics were camp/retro stuff by this California artist. Anyway, I saw the guy's stuff on Friday when I was out and about looking for Churros at the art fair, and I picked up a print of a painting he had done of Siegel-era Superman. I thought Jamie would love the stuff, and so I was insistent on bringing her back on Saturday.

Jamie is a tough one to figure out. THe only two pictures she's ever gotten excited over were 1) a print of an orange squid, and 2) a map of Middle-Earth. I'm not really clear on what, exactly, Jamie is looking for, but it wasn't what De la Nuez had to offer. She kind of nodded and said "that's nice." And then started looking around for almonds.

We aren't always going to jive, but we've been together for 8.5 years, and I still have trouble figuring out what makes her tick. Then again, it could have something to do with Jamie's seeming desire to undecorate, or, rather, to keep more of a spartan look to things. I've often written that off to laziness, but the reality is, Jamie prefers an ascetic sort of thing, and I prefer more of a jumble of stuff on my walls, floors, ceiling, etc... She's patient, she is.

I just saw myself on video, and, somehow, I am even fatter.

ewwwwwwwww

By the way, the factors which will almost draw me out to the theater are as follows. The likelihood of the named factor influencing my attendance is listed in descending order:

1) Robots
2) Superheroes
3) Gorillas
4) Giant Monsters
5) Spaceships
6) Nudity

And just as an addition, the three laws of robotics are not the nice little taglines given in the trailer.

Asimov wrote:

The three laws of Robotics:
1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm
2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I just saw part of a trailer for "I, Robot", the new Will Smith movie for this summer.

As a middle-schooler, I read a few Asimov books, and I re-read "I, Robot" at least once. It's actually a collection of short stories, more or less, following the evolution of robots in human society. It's incredibly dry science fiction with virtually nothing in the way of action. It's almost all people and robots standing around talking.

So I was kind of wondering what the new movie was about when they cast Will Smith, because if the book has a main character, it's really a woman who is an expert in Robo-Psychology (which is a complicated thing, and I would read the book if I were you...) But I saw a few seconds from the trailer and it is not exactly what I remember.

While the movie does look exciting, and I seem to vaguely remember a scene somewhat like the robot interrogation sequence, it's not I, Robot. I think. it's been a decade or so since I read the book. At best, it looks as if they took a very short story and expanded it into the world's biggest class action law suit. I know they were trying to avoid remaking Bicentennial Man, and that should be applauded. If nothing else, the new movie inspires me to re-read I, Robot AND to see the movie for comparison (because robots will always get me into the theaters. I saw Lost in Space twice, even though I hated it the first time).

You can view the trailer for I, Robot here.

You can buy the book here.

I wonder if the producers read Caves of Steel, because that would actually make a cool movie.

There was actually a great story (and maybe it was in I, Robot) about a robot telling his robopsychologist about a dream he had in which he was wearing sungod robes and telling somebody "let my people go!"