Jim has, as promised, submitted his entries to the 2004 Mellies. Good for Jim. He's not the rat that the rest of you are who have not yet submiited a nomination of any kind. Some of you are rattier than others, especially people whose names rhyme with "dandy."

Thanks to Jim. I was wondering how long it would take before Fillmore showed up on the list of Presidents we just don't know enough about. I was disappointed to see Jim doesn't see the crystalline beauty in a democratic process where Al Sharpton can even manage to get his name on a ballot. I weep for Jim sometimes.

If Maxwell really loves me (and I know she does), she will rush down to Midtown Comics at Grand Central and get Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka and Judd Winick to sign me some comics. If you can only get one, get Geoff to sign an issue of "The Flash" for me. If two, then get Rucka to sign the newer issues of Adventures of Superman. I am aware that seems to run counterintuitive, but I really like Johns' work on Flash and JSA.

GEOFF JOHNS, GREG RUCKA & JUDD WINICK
Signing at Midtown Comics Grand Central
(very first signing at the new store!)
Thursday, June 24th from 5pm-7pm

Judd Winick, by the way, is the dorky cartoonist from the LA Season of The Real World (just before the show turned into 21 Year Old Hanky Panky Fest). It was the one with Pablo and Puck, I think. Judd now works for Marvel and DC. He's currently working on some Batman comics.

I forgot to mention my 1.2 seconds of fame.

Last Halloween, a household down the street from us participated in TLC's daily show about straightening up your junk entitled: Clean Sweep.

Clean Sweep basically has a host who is this blonde with a pretty bad eye-job (seriously, if she didn't have eye-work done, I'm Winston Churchill), a carpenter and a "professional organizer."

Embodying why the rest of the world hates the US, the people living in these houses have just accumulated too much stuff and delight in THAT being their biggest problem. Golf balls. Cabbage Patch kids. There's actually a common theme of too many toys for kids ages 1-4.

And, basically, these people dwell in heaps of items bought and never used. But they don't have the heart to toss away the stuff, nor the sense of mind to drive it to Salvation Army.

So they bring a lady in who basically throws away their stuff and gives them shelves. That's it. It's totally dumb.

Anyway, part of the show entails people having a garage sale in which they sell their used junk, and so Jamie and I wandered down the street to see the garage sale. I was pretty sure if I involved Mel we'd get some screen time, but even as I was signing the release papers so I could be on TV scrounging through these people's leftover plastic and moldy books, I got a sort of sinking feeling. I knew I was never going to buy enough of this useless crap to make it on TV for any length of time, and Mel was pretty much unwelcome.

At any rate, I bought what I think is a rare novelization fo the first Star Wars movie, and Jamie bought some lamp we threw away about a week after we brought it home. But we never did see the show. Until Tuesday night. I watched for forty minutes, and then, all too briefly, you can hear someone yell "Wanna buy a lamp?" And I turn and look at the lamp, as if to say "Are you serious?" Jamie is in the background of the shot looking on, and Mel is sort of waddling through the bottom of the shot. The total shot lasts about 1.5 seconds. If that.

So that's it. My brush with fame. C'est la vie.

It'll be interesting in a few years when they finally take me down, how Access Hollywood or somebody is going to locate that one second of footage and keep replaying it in slow motion to demonstrate my evil.

Who should be Superman in the next movie?

It's a question which plagues Super-nerds like myself. I, of course, open the floor and the comments section to any and all opinions. I liked Reeve and Reeves. Very different, but both great.

MSNBC asks the same question.

Tom Welling is probably my pick, if we can't get the greatest American alive, Dennis Haysbert.

So I ask Loyal Leaguers... who would look good in a blue unitard to you?

Apparently Lollapalooza 2004 has been cancelled.

I can't say I'm suprised.

I did have a very cool mother who let her two sons hop in their one son's barely functioning car and make an odd journey from Houston to Austin to Dallas, all in one day, so we could go to the first Lollapalooza. The line-up was pretty good, and a nice yardmarker for what was the music of the day.

Butthole Surfers
Rollins Band
Fishbone
Ice-T
Siouxsie and the Banshees
Jane's Addiction

And I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody. But this was before the festival had all the different stages and took up a land mass the size of Rhode Island. I went for the next few years, but became progressively less interested in the bands. I was never an Alice in Chains kind of guy, and by the time Metallica was headlining... I mean, please... Of course, I think that meant I missed Devo.

But I did get to see acts I would have otherwise missed. Front 242. Jesus and Mary Chain. Nick Cave. Other fun stuff.

And I most certainly would have gone to this year's show but for a few items.

1) It's insanely hot here in the summer, and I do not want to stand outside all day.
2) Jamie doesn't care about most of the acts, and wouldn't be that interested.
3) I couldn't figure out who from Phoenix would go with me, if not Jamie
4) I'm old

I am. I'm old. I have shit to do. I mean, I want to make time to go goof off for a day and see some great acts from my angry youth, but a whole day?

Anyway, I'm sorry to hear this got cancelled, but I do find it funny they basically said "yeah, once they're older than 23, they kind of don't like standing out in the heat all day."

If you're not watching Joe Schmo on Spike! TV, you're probably missing the most fun reality show on TV right now. They're only on episode 2 as of last night, so you have plenty of time to catch up. And believe me, it's not so complicated that you're not going to be able to follow.

Turns out my student worker, Scott "Scoot"/"Scotty", was once in a student improv group with "Eleanor" from the show. He didn't say much about her, except "it's weird, because she's not like that." Lord, I hope not.

Next week, The League is taking a much deserved rest and heading for Minnesota, land of 10 bajillion lakes. If you want to find us, we'll be here.

I don't really fish. I've only fished four or five times in my life. And I don't eat meat if I can help it, so I don't know that I'll be doing much fishing. But I do plan to bob around in a boat for a week watching the loons float over the lake.

Anyway, The League will be on hiatus, so I will redirect you all to my blogroll during that time.

Clinton's memoirs came out yesterday, but until it's in paperback and until I hear a decent review of the book, I'm not very inclined to pick it up. I voted for the man the one election in which I could, and I followed the misadventures of the Clintons with the rest of the country for the term of Bill's presidency. It's probably a worthwhile memoir to have. Just not yet, for me.

If anything, the interviews Clinton is giving on his book tour seem as interesting as any book is going to be. The left-leaning media is constantly fishing for him to bash the current administration, and the right-leaning folks are keeping quiet thus far, I guess. At least I haven't heard anything. But the whole thing is dredging up a lot of bad memories.

But it is nice to remember we had a President in the recent past who can form a complete sentence. And that's about as political as I feel like getting right now.

You know those commericals where somebody joins Bally's gym and in 30 days, they're suddenly sexy? I am getting none of that effect. But I also am overweight for real, not TV overweight. I'm the dude who would have been called "Tubs" or "Chubby" in an old 1940's western. People like me do not become sexy after joining a gym for a month.

And this should tell Randy why I would not dress as Superman for the annual Superman celebration, should I ever attend.

whoa. A real supervillain.

Two things

1) And so it begins... And now for the long, painful descent we all knew was coming.

2) Apparently MTV is now running a commercial (I did not know this until last night) of a cartoon history of "bling-bling". This commerical also pronounces the phrase dead (although they say it died in 2003...). The cartoon is hilarious, and if anyone knows where to download it from, I would greatly appreciate a link.

It is nice to know I am not alone in this.

Yesterday sucked like a mighty black hole.

Really. It was awful.

At 10:30 on Sunday night, my woes began. I didn't get to sleep until 2:00am, and getting up for work (which I was an hour late for) made me feel just plain crummy all day.

The work day was sort of nightmarish, and then about 9:00 last night I ate one of my new "Philly Cheesesteak" Gardenburgers to try and get some protein in my body. In general, I like Gardenburgers. THis one was terrible. I woke up this morning pretty much convinced I was going to heave. I didn't.

My work woes, which I was unsure had by-passed me, were no longer present when I showed up today, and by 9:00, the fake-Philly Cheesesteak Gardenburger nausea has passed.

I miss real meat sometimes.

The bottom line is: When your servers go down, people get really pissy.

Hey Everybuddy,

Nordstrom has posted his nominations for the 2004 Mellies. God bless the little tyke for participating.

It occurs to me that I'm probably going to lose track of these nominations if they just appear on your blog. So you might want to e-mail them to Mel as well.

You can use the address over yonder

<------------------------------------

or Write to Melbotis

most important .mov file ever...

I'm in negotiations with the wife to attend next year.

To dream the impossible dream.

The 2004 Mellies are stirring up no small amount of controversy. In order to clear up some of the questions/issues/whatever... The League offers the following:

1) The 2004 Mellies are not a contest anyone can win. We're looking for nominations, but unless you are, say, the most loathsome celebrity, you're not winning anything. We're just looking for nominations so everyone can vote.

2) It's not that NOBODY sent in any nominations thus far. It's that nobody good sent in any nominations thus far. Except for Jill. We LOVE Jill here at The League.

3) Randy has decided to get in a huff over being singled out. He has taken his proverbial ball and gone to his proverbial home.

4) The last day to submit nominations was supposed to be the 30th, but I think I'll be bobbing on a lake in Minnesota, trying to catch some fish on the 30th, so it'll be sometime after all that.

5) If you live in Japan and feel culturally our of touch with US Pop Culture, feel free to submit whatever you like. We got no hard and fast rules here at The League.


In other news... sometime Saturday evening the end of my nose began to feel a bbit tender. On Sunday, it was reddish. Sunday night it was really getting reddish.

During the course of the day on Sunday I tried Jamie's Biore strips twice in order to try to unclog pores, etc...

Alas, this morning my nose was way worse than it was. I tried another Biore strip, which appeared to just take a layer of skin off my nose. It being a workday, I've soldiered on. Within two minutes of arriving, my co-worker Tom announced, "Hey, you look like... Yeah! You look like Roger Rabbit!"

It is not going to be a high self-esteem kind of day.

It doesn't look like the Squawkbox is working. Sorry, team. No idea what's going on there. In fact, squawkbox.tv didn't look like it was working, either, so who knows.

anyway, hope everyone had a good weekend. I noticed NOBODY has entered a nomination to the 2004 Mellies. You're all ungrateful bastards.

Leaguers, I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't plug Free Comic Book Day.

Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) is an annual event held by many comic shops across the country, and supported by comic book publishers, both large and small. Essentially, it is what it sounds like... kind of.

The publishers select a few titles from among their imprint. Usually these items will be one from each of their various demographics. For example, DC might print up a free Justice League Adventures comic based upon the cartoon series for younger kids. Teenagers might get Superman or Batman. 17 and up might get a Vertigo book, like Y: The Last Man.

I think DC is actually doing a Teen Titans, Go! free comic. I hear the Go! comic is actually pretty good.

Anyway, the point is, as long as you take one of each, the comics are FREE. Now, with all the different publishers participating, it turns into an event where you can walk out the door with about 10-15 free comics. Not bad. That's about $25 - 45 dollars worth of stuff.

The idea, of course, is for retailers to also vacuum their store for once already, and put up some cool displays of items folks might want to buy. And in the two years they've done FCBD, many shops have done okay with it. There were so many people, the event sort of had a carnival like atmosphere where I went. Of course, both times I happened to be at Austin Books on Lamar in Austin, which is an amazing comic shop.

So keep FCBD in mind as something to do on Saturday in two weeks. Heck, it's on July 4th weekend (FCBD = July 3rd), so it's just something fun to do after you've seen Spider-Man 2 and aren't quite ready to go out and Bar BQ.

And, Maxwell... NYC has some of the best shops in the country, and may have signings from big-name talent as the big-name talent gravitates mostly toward NYC. Or used. If you see Pual Levitz, give him my name. I command you to go to Midtown Comics and see what's going down.

Thanks to Randy for reminding me to say something about this day, which I assume will soon become a National Holiday... like Christmas or Arbor Day.

The League does not speak Spanish.

Two years of public education Spanish and one day of college Spanish (I dropped out the first day as the teacher ONLY would speak in Spanish... and I had nooooo idea what was going on), and to this day, at best, I can read signs and occasionally make out some very basic Spanish if I read it.

I briefly began to learn Spanish in 1994 when I did not have cable and the only station I could tune in was Univision. My roommates and I became swept up in some Telenovella, and after a few days, you do begin to pick up on a few things. Not much, but some stuff. Somehow the female stars of Univision were keeping us from wanting to (a) turn off the TV, or (b) get English channels.

Alas, someone went and bought a coaxial cable, English-language TV returned to our life, and the dream of becoming bilingual came to an end.

I also took a semester and a half of Italian. I was flunking Italian part 2 and had to drop. So, my last refuge was Danish, which is pretty much just drunken English. I got through it with a C and a B.

I can now proposition someone in the filthiest manner, order someone to shove something up their ass, and order a cup of coffee. Aside from that, my Danish is now a distant memory.

But last night I was flipping channels, and on Galavision (apparently a subsidiary of Univision, but for our purposes, a Spanish language TV channel), I saw the coolest thing ever.

I have no idea which program I was watching, but the show was a multitude of actors, all in weird make-up, with strings tied to their heads, re-enacting Thunderbirds.

For those of you not in the know, Thunderbirds was a television program starring a cast of marrionettes who were kind of a crack action-adventure team. There was usually a nefarious plot by a mad scientist, and the Thunderbirds would have to get in their very cool vehicles and race to the rescue. The puppetry in the show was about as good as you're going to expect out of marrionettes, I guess. Their mouths moved, their eyes rolled, but the whole feel of the show was kind of slow and weird. And they also had no problem intersplicing in close-up shots of real hands if they needed to show any sort of manual activity, such as opening a can, or playing with a Rubik's cube or whatever.

The coolest thing about the Galavision version was that the characters were humans, but the actors and director had committed to the Thunderbirds style. All of the actors had learned the walk (a sort of slow, bouncing motion as you go from point A to point B), knew that you never turn your head (you turn your whole body), and to speak, you only move your lower lip in a quick flapping motion. Also key, but slightly more subtle, you MUST walk everywhere with your arms either straight at your side, or bent 90 degrees at the elbow.

I have no idea why I find this so fascinating, but the fact that they were willing to re-make Thunderbirds as a live-action TV show, including all details right up to the strings coming out of the actor's heads, is just not the sort of thing you get on English speaking TV too often.

Curiously, Thunderbirds is being turned into a live action film in english, and directed by Star Trek's Jonathan Frakes. I have no idea why this is being funded, or how it can benefit from becoming a live-action movie, versus puppets.

Producer: So then I thought we'd have Tom Cruise play John Tracy!
Screen Writer: Yeah, he's got a good voice.
Producer: Voice?
Screen Writer: Yeah. THis is Thunderbirds.
Producer: Right! And it's going to have Tom Cruise in it!
Screen Writer: As the voice of John Tracy? Sounds good.
Producer: What the hell are you talking about?
Screen Writer: Thunderbirds is a licensed property. It's a puppet show. This script is for a puppet show.
Producer: Nobody is going to pay to watch puppets for 90 f**king minutes. SHit! Who else knows about this Thunderbirds show?
Screen Writer: Well, it's been in syndication on and off since the 60's...
Producer: Shit! I just spent $200,000 optioning this f**king puppet show! I can't spend $80 million on a f**king 90 minute puppet show! I wanted f**king Tom Cruise!

Randy steps up to the plate with another Super Rumor.

Can the WB actually put out a movie which respects it's franchise characters? Can they actually learn a thing from the multi-billion dollar success of Spider-Man?

If Catwoman is any evidence... Probably not.

I hope the rumor is true. The sooner they just make the darn movie, the sooner the pain will end. Right now it's like waiting to get hospital tape taken off.

SUPER thanks go out to JimD who provided this link.

The much hoped for arrival of Lois Lane on Smallville is now a reality. WHOO-HOOOOO!!!

Let's hope they cast her well. She's not only a fave-rave of The League, but she's possibly one of the four or five most important comic book characters of all time.

In lieu of creating any actual content, I've been editing and adding stuff like hyperlinks.

Go ahead and browse my blogroll down left, see if I don't have anybody listed that I probably should, and note the increase in fun and affordable links to other sites.

Special thanks to

www.jdedman.com , www.cowgirlfunk.com and www.michaelscaljon.com for plugging The 2004 Mellies.

Also, thanks to Jamie and Jill for actually submitting nominations.

No thanks to Randy, who has now gone into a huff and refuses to send in any nominations.

He will be taunted relentlessly in these pages until I get a nomination.

Nonetheless, he did send this bit today. The world gets odder and odder.

Will W be famous for saying America has fallen into a mayonnaise?

I don't even know what to say.

This should be a terrifically funny story, but it's not. It's scary.

Read here about The Swarm.