Saturday, November 12, 2005

Suns off to a rocking 2-3 start!

Ugh.

Well, they've got 3 new guys on their starting line, Amare is out, and Steve is falling apart.

Ugh.

Luckily, this Bell guy is really good and Diaw seems to be working out. We're not getting killed out there, but, still... it's a 2-3 start.

Gotta stick with my boys. I know they'll turn it around.
Thanks, Moms

Word to our mothers.

The League and Mrs. League have been having a hard time of late, and due to some unforeseen difficulties, we were in need of some extra help around League HQ.

Special thanks to Judy and the KareBear for coming out to the miserable desert for a week each and offering a helping hand.

The League especially enjoyed the visits as The League got away without cooking for two weeks and only occasionally doing dishes.

Hooray for Moms!

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Aquaman to get own TV series...
also
Sweet mother of crap! Has the whole world gone mad?

Look, THE LEAGUE LIKES AQUAMAN! Do not let it be said otherwise.

Based on the strength of the "Aquaman" episode of Smallville the WB is working on a Smallville spin-off for the King of the Seven Seas.

Aquadork is getting his own show.

The League has a theory. Here it is (hold on to your hats):

Good looking people in swimsuits sell ad-space.

Aquaman's comics do not even begin to lend themselves to being a good idea for TV. They mostly take place underwater and involve a complex monarchy system, losses of limbs and dead babies. And a sidekick named "Garth".

My guess is nobody but about a handful of comic nerds knows or cares about Aquaman's story, and we can expect for all of that to be scrapped for a beachside resort which constantly faces crooks and criminals of the supernatural variety.

Yes, Aquaman is being turned into Baywatch Nights. (And, yes, at the height of X-Files' popularity, Baywatch Nights became a show about supernatural menaces).

Oh, Leaguers...

The League supposes we will watch the pilot as we are often wrong, and we are always curious to see how mainstream supoerhero properties will be mangled in the wrong hands.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Famous DJ not only Rocks San Antonio's Face Off, Also Rates Game

Nathan C. writes in:

Game? What the heck...?

I don't even think I had any game at all while at TU. This is going to sound really nerdy, but while I was in school, I had little to no interest in a relationship. Therefore, I went on few dates. Make that almost NO dates. I had a girlfriend for a few months during my sophomore year, and decided I'd rather be playing music with the Stray Toasters and inventing new cocktails with Frank in my spare time than dating. It was only after I graduated that I took any interest in such things.

So, Game during college? I'd rate it a 2.3. I am pretty clueless, and so I didn't really know if someone was interested in me or not unless they hit me over the head. And then there was the time a good lady friend flat out told me, "Look, we can't take it any farther than friends," and that was that.

--Nathan

Come on, Leaguers! Write in with your tale of college-era dating woe!

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

With Aplogies to Doug...
from whom I am stealing a great idea.

We're not to Christmas yet, but I need to do some shopping soon. I don't want to shop in the middle of mark up season.

The big question this year is: What to get Jason?

Or, as I shall put it into song by pictograph...



+




_



=


?

Monday, November 07, 2005

Yesterday the doors of The League's past were flung wide open, and who should come popping out?

Denise!

It's been years since The League heard from Denise, but we were pleased as punch to hear from our old college and high school buddy. If not for Denise's excellent driving skills one fateful night in 1993, I would never have been in San Antonio and never met the future Mrs. League. For that contribution, we're all eternally grateful. Mad props to Denise for her part in crafting The League's future.

Denise also took me to see L7 in high school. There was an all day music fest at UofH, and one of the opening acts was early 90's Canadian rapper "Snow". Remember Snow? I do.

Folks at the show noticed Snow was lip synching and called him on it. I'm not sure how it happened, but it ended with Snow being pulled into the crowd and security needing to rescue him.

Sometimes I really miss Houston audiences. I ask you, where else are they going to beat you up for lip synching?

Anyway, Denise is apparently now kicking it old skool in Pearland, Texas with her husband where she's a pharmacist. I shall soon be hitting her up for my oxycontin.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

The next Spidey movie is supposed to feature 2 villains instead of just 1. We'll see how that works in practice.

The Batman movies did this for the last three installments, and Batman Begins did it as well. Prior to batman Begins I thought this was a fairly dumb idea as it burned through the characters twice as quickly without really providing much more than a lot of one-upmanship in the scenery chewing department (see Batman Forever... or, rather, don't...).

At any rate, looks like occasionally popular actor Thomas Hayden Church will be playing Spidey mainstay, The Sandman. he was signed a long time ago, but it was never made public which character he would take on.

Well, please see below:


Comic Sandman


Movie Sandman

Who is the other villain? Surprise, surprise... the rumor mill is saying "Venom" as played by Topher Grace.

No. Really.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

RATE YOUR COLLEGE "GAME" WITH PEABO and THE LEAGUE

In response to my post on ASU's Palm Walk, Peabo writes:

Steans,

Is there really that much bare-midriff walking around the ASU campus ? Was it like that when we were at UT ? I can't remember. I do know that everytime I go to a UT game I look around and think "Were there this many good looking girls when I was here ?"
Either way, it makes me think how incredibly sad my dating years were while at UT. And let's be honest, I was a pretty good looking guy. Which leads me to wonder......how poor was my game when I was on campus ?
On a scale of 1 to 10 I would have rated my college game as follows:

- Freshman year: 5 (I would rate it lower, but I refuse to believe I was ever below a 5. You either have to be unattractive, overweight, or have a personality of Tom Arnold to go below 5. And I'm talking 1980's Tom Arnold, not the more calm, sedated, non-cocaine using version we see today.

-Sophomore year: 5.5 (It picked up a little, but I still dressed like a gym rat to class, and the girlfriend dumping me totally ruined the confidence I had going and had me in the dark staring out the window listening to Air Supply and such. I was totally pussified for like a 9 month period. I'm sorry for the use of the word pussified, but seriously, there was no better descriptor.)

- Junior year: 7.5 I saw dramatic imporvement and dated so pretty good looking girls. Something had changed. I'll give credit to the fact that for the first time I really began drinking alcohol on a social level.

Senior year: 8.0 I maxed out my potential at this time in my life. My maturity level was only going to let me go so hi. And my appearance probably would not let me get much higher.

So, League, rate your college game. In fact, this would be a fun exercise for all your readers. And since a lot of them are aquaintence you can call b.s. on them if the imbellish or start making crap up.


The League thinks this is a fine idea! Rate your high school or college dating game!

Don't post to comments, though. E-mail me your reponses.

The League will kick this off describing his college game and using the 10.0 scale.

Freshman Year: Bitter towards women in general after getting shamefully dumped at the end of high school, and then having nothing but bad dating experiences before arriving at college, The League ranks a solid "4".

At age 18, The League sort of decided bathing was for suckers, wore the same hat every day for a year (a "Tire Station" baseball hat), shaved only sporadically, and mostly stunk of coffee and other people's cigarettes. Usually cranky due to too much caffeine and not enough sleep, The League went on a lot of first dates, but not a lot of second dates.

I mostly remember the girls I DID want to go out with (ie. Jamie) would not go out with me, and the girls I didn't like were the ones who would go out with me again.

Sophomore Year: I was slightly smarter sophomore year, and since I had a bathroom in my apartment, I was more likely to bathe on a regular basis. However, as there was not a barbershop in walking distance of my apartment, I was constantly in need of a haircut.

The truth is, I had started dating a girl over the summer I'd met in summer school back home, and I didn't think a lot about "my game". I give myself a "5" for the year.

Junior Year: I was full of idiot confidence beginning my first film production classes, but it had nothing at all to do with meeting girls. I started the year still dating the same girl from Sophomore year, but that was sort of on the skids before school even began.

This was the year I sort of went crazy. I was determined to look the part of a professional and was getting regular haircuts, shaving daily, eating well and spent each morning pressing my shirts before going to class.

I was completely uninterested in dating, and that meant my existing relationship melted down early on in the year. But, as they say, these things tend to fall in your lap when you aren't looking.

Shortly after my other relationship fizzled, I went to see David Bowie with Jamie, and we started dating after that. By dating, I mean, we never actually dated. She just sort of hung her hat and never left.

My game for that year? A "2.3".


Senior Year Numero Uno: Jamie was well planted in my life at this point. I was still in film school and double-majoring in history.

I was smoking cigars a lot and still pressing my shirts. We had a "Phat Beach" poster in my kitchen, and infrequently cleaned.

A solid "2.2".


Senior year Numero Dos: Could not be less impressive. Jamie had sort of lived with me all summer, and I was carrying 18 hours and working. Any hint of "professionalism" I used to try to keep up went out the window.

Also, living in an efficiency by myself, I decided bathing was optional once again. Was smoking a lot of cigarettes and drinking about two pots of coffee a night. I wasn't ever sleeping. Yeah, I got a lot of work done, but I also firmly believed 5 hours of sleep a night was A LOT of sleep.

Game "1.3"


Okay, Leaguers! Time to play! Send in your game...

Friday, November 04, 2005

The League heaps love on Congress

I normally don't take up space here with political mumbo-jumbo. But I want to take a moment to point out that I am really pleased with a recent move by the kids on The Hill.

Check this out.

Don't ask me why, but this issue really, really bothered me. So I'm glad to see it bothered Congress, too.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Why should you watch Smallville tonight?

Because there's a terrific pair you don't want to miss.

Wait, that's not right.

Here's the pair!

Tom Wopat joins John Schneider for tonight's episode of Smallville.

And, yes, the writers have put Lois into a scene where she has to be a stripper for a day.

Sigh.

It seems not all that long ago the show was about a young Superman...

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Hey all

There is a post today! It's just not here.

Go to nanostalgia.com to find it.

Also, according to HotorNot.com, I am now uglier than I was a few months ago when I posted my photo. Back then I was a 7. Now I am a 6. How sad. As winter comes, you would think a chubby man would look warmer and more desirable to the ladies.

Oh, and check this out. Palmwalk.com is a site like hotornot.com where you can rate the ladies of campus I work on. Apparently it's entirely legal to take photos of these girls as they're in public, and even more legal to rate them. SWEET.

According to the usual rules of engagement, the girls are supposed to retaliate with a site where guys get rated from, say, the Union. Hasn't happened.
Babies + Costumes = Content Gold

The League has been swamped lately with a bunch of stuff we'll not go into here. We more or less missed Halloween hanging out at Desert Banner Medical Center as the doctors tried to figure out what to do with Jamie.

My opinion (sell her to the gypsies) was roundly ignored. She had a short surgery on Saturday to fix her, well.. it's complicated. Anyway, she may have more surgery again in the future, but we'll cross that bridge when we ge to it, I guess.

Suffice it to say, Halloween was a bust, and we spent our 10 year anniversary eating Chik-Fil-A off the roll away table in her hospital room.

Football was a hoot this weekend. UT came back from an idiotic defecit to win by an idiotic margin. If I was in Stillwater, i'd be feeling a little bummed about the whole thing.

Fortunately, not everyone had a boring and antiseptic smelling Halloween.

And that's why babies are content gold here at The League.


Arden rocks the house as an elephant




Reed dresses Meredith in proud Vikings purple and gold. He's starting the indoctrination now.
Meredith wouldn't be smiling like that if she knew how the Vikings were doing! Ha ha!

Well, at least he's not dressing her as a Cardinals fan.




And Meredith and Jen among the pumpkins.

Tonight kicked off the official NBA season.

Spurs looked awful and STILL won by a significant margin. Suns looked good, but lost to the evil Dallas Mavs. And I hate Mark Cuban. Won't somebody please kick that moron in the crotch?

The TNT team gained a mime-quiet Reggie Miller, retaining the punch drunk Charles Barkley, affable Kenny Smith and that boring guy, Ernie. Hopefully Reggie will stpe up and talk, because they need as many leashes as possible on Charles. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE Sir Charles, but, like the Sunday morning Fox Football show, you need three guys to sort of corral Terry.

Anyway, the season begins! Huzzah for our Suns and Spurs.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

The League's Halloween Costume selections throughout the years!

In lieu of a Halloween contest (which not one of you entered. Judy, I'm looking at you!), a comprehensive look at what I recall dressing up as each year as far back as I can remember.


Pre-school: Clown, I think. I think this was the year it was hot and flooded, but my mom had made a clown costume. So I was a sweaty clown.

Kindergarten: Han Solo. Wore black pants, white shirt, black vest my mother had made. Carried a back toy gun which was not the official licensed Han Solo blaster. I also recall my mother had, in a panic, bought me a plastic Spider-Man costume as she was afraid she wouldn't finish the vest.

1st Grade: Chewbacca. Plastic costume out of a box. I was delighted to be Chewbacca because, unlike being a dude in a white shirt and church pants, nobody asked what I was.

2nd Grade: Hand-sewn ET costume. Thereby hangs a tale for another day, but thank God for my grandmother overcoming her painful arthritis and translating pages and pages of instructions from English to Finnish so she could make me this outfit. I still have it, btw. It's an amazing costume. My grandma was awesome.

3rd Grade: Was going to be "Dracula Jr." until it was pointed out my costume of a hand-made t-shirt reading "Dracula Jr." was, in fact, moronic, even with brylcreme in my hair. Instead, I Carried my sword and shield from the RenFest and wore my plastic spaceman helmet. I was a "space knight".

4th Grade: Tried to go traditional with a white sheet. I was a ghost. I also painted my face white. I remember sweating a lot.

5th grade: No recollection. I went out with this kid, Matt. He was a ninja and carried real throwing stars and I was convinced we'd get arrested.

6th grade: Tore up Dad's old shirt, covered it in fake blood, was an accident victim.

7th grade: same. I do recall we got into a fight with some older kids. I had knownt his might happen and put cans of soup in my "candy bag". I walloped one of the kids in the knee and took him down. Dad got pissed that I tore up another shirt. I remember that one very clearly.

8th grade: black and white face paint. Went to a haunted house somewhere.

9th grade: Nothing. I was doing homework for Mrs. Fort's English class.

10th grade: No costume. Dispersed candy. We'd just moved to Houston and I didn't know anybody.

11th grade: Pimp. Kind of. I wore a bowler and carried a cane and wore a long coat. I went to Jill's house with Mari Johnson who was dressed as a purple fairy.

12th grade: I was Alex from Clockwork Orange for the Drama Club party. Halloween night I was pretty much myself, I think. Sort of a spooky thing in 1992. Went and saw Dracula at the theater across the street from Willowbrook Mall.

Prior to Halloween I went and worked at the American Heart Association's haunted house in Downtown Houston down by Spaghetti Warehouse (this is a nice are now. It wasn't then.). It was a very expensive and cool haunted house. I worked in the "eletrocution room" where I wore a hockey mask and was repeatedly "electrocuted" all night.

Then Frank, the electrocutioner, and myself decided that we needed some drama in our scenario, so we added a fake fight. Unfortunately, as part of our fight, Frank and I slammed into a wall. And then went through the wall. I don't remember how we ended our little scene, but I do recall the very awkward minute as I stood and stared at Frank sort of just lying there on the other side and we were both sort of laughing and sort of horrified.

Well, that's 60 year old dry-wall for you, I guess. I hope we impressed the drunk Houstonians who paid $10 to get in.

Freshman in college: I was SUPPOSED to be a cyborg. But then I had a paper due and didn't go out until midnight. Went to a haunted house on 6th street.

The next day I found out a guy from my floor had used the stuff I was going to use to be a cyborg and applied the pieces with rubber cement, which had basically chemically burned his skin off. A near-miss, to be sure.

Sophomore year: Gangster. A very drunk 1930's era gangster. I went out with three other guys all in "gangster" clothes. It was actually kind of cool. Excpet some dude kept asking us if we'd seen "Big Eddie". He was just drunk enough to believe he was high-larious. He was wrong.

Junior year: recycled gangster, and Jamie was a nun.

Senior year Numero Uno: I had an exam in Roman History: The Republic. Studied my butt off and only got a "B"

Senior year Numero Dos: I'm ashamed to say I think I recycled the gangster costume again. Jamie was a flapper.

1998: I was a zombie! It was a great costume! My make-up rocked. Little kids who saw me thought I was a prop and I made someone cry. Jamie was Catwoman, and she was adorable.

1999: Mad scientist. Jamie had located a white lab coat for me.

However, the prize for that year was Steanso's innovative "The Blair Witch", which comprised of a pair of deely-bobbers. I think Jamie might have been a bee.

2000: I have no recollection. i recall I got home late from work and Jamie was handing out candy, and I had to run and get more. I guess I didn't have a costume. I think Jamie was a bee.

2001: Mad scientist. Mostly I remember we had no trick or treaters because everyone thought there would be anthrax in the candy. Jamie was a cat.

2002: Nothing. Dispersed candy.

2003: Nothing. I wore my Superman T-Shirt under my shirt while i handed out candy

2004: Green Lantern. I wanted to be John Stewart, but I'm a white guy, so I guess I was Hal Jordan. Handed out candy. Jamie was a bee.

2005: I'm looking for a "King" mask from Burger King. If that doesn't pan out, I'll just be Weird Neighbor #12.

All links courtesy the Retrocrush Costume archive.

Friday, October 28, 2005

this makes me think of Shoemaker...

At-At Halloween Costume
10 YEARS

The 28th of October is the semi-official dating anniversary of The League and Mrs. League.

Even after 10 years, I can still find new reasons to find her amazing. Every day is a new one, and every day I'm luckier than the one before for having her stick with me. She's the wonder of my life and she makes me a better person.

Happy anniversary, Jamie.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Hey, well, sorry there's no posting here.

I welcome you to hop over to the new site Nanostalgia. I posted an insane rant. You're welcome to read it.

Now, Steanso, Jim D., RHPT.com and Crackbass are contributors, so ya'll pop over and check it out.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

I keep forgeting to mention that my cantankerous brother, known here as Steanso, done got himself a fancy job with Travis County.

He's now working for The Man.

To get an idea of what his current adventures look like, we turn to the world of comics.

Thank you, Ms. Parks.

Rosa Parks dead at the age of 92.

Read here.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Sunday Night Super Post:

1) Superman Homepage has posted images from Game Informer. These images are from the upcoming "Superman Returns" video game.

I'm not sure how spoilerish the images are as many, many video games tied to comic-based movies add in characters from the comics who don't appear in the movie. So is the villain depicted in this article in the flick? I have no idea. It would be really stunning if he were.

2) Not a damn one of you has submitted an entry to The League's Halloween Contest.

Look, you guys ASKED for a Halloween Contest. I delivered. Now make with the entries or this site turns into a Nancy Kulp fan-site.

3) This has been the Wide World of Sports Weekend. We started Friday night with the Suns battling the Sonics in pre-season play. Suns look good, even with Stoudemire on the injured list for the foreseeable future.

Woke up, ate breakfast, ran errands and watched the UT game on PPV. Go horns!

I'm not really sure why they're ranked 2nd at this point as they're undefeated and their margins of victory have been so decisive.

Then watched Game 1 of the World Series.

Today, more football and now Game 2.

4) Got my "Adventures of Superman" DVDs in. Good stuff, man. Good stuff. I really, really like the George Reeves/ kid-friendly take on Superman.

5) We made a stack of Halloween cookies. Jamie has an excellent recipe for cookies including orange zested into the cookie batter.

6) And THE GREAT BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

Jim D. and The League are re-launching Nanostalgia.com. It's going to be a collabortaive media review site. Some Loyal Leaguers and beyond shall be included in the roster of reviewers.

I welcome each of you to pop over to review our Manifesto.

Book mark it now: nanostalgia.com

Friday, October 21, 2005

AQUA-DUDE

Wow.

Did tonight's episode of Smallville suck.

I don't often pop up to denounce anything Superman, but tonight's episode was unforgivably awful.

That said, I want to be clear that in the first thirty seconds of the show, Lois presented us with two fabulous reasons to continue watching that I hadn't noticed previously.


There are three terrific boobs in this picture. Can you pick the one which ruined the episode?

Yeah... this was the Aquaman episode of Smallville.

Aquaman.

Look, I am going to go out on a comic fan limb and admit that I read Aquaman. There's something appealing about an irritable sea-King I find interesting, but I always thought Marvel's Namor was... well, sort of dippy.


Just not The League's cup o' tea

Oddly, in the past five years, it's become a staple of comedy to make fun of Aquaman, and I'm not really sure where that came from. It's not that Aquaman doesn't have some room to poke fun, but have you looked at the useless line-up of the Superfriends? Samurai? The Wonder Twins? Robin the Boy Hostage?

Anyhoo, last season on Smallville Clark met the future Flash, so this season he had to meet somebody else. I guess it was going to be least confusing if he met the Crown Prince of Atlantis. In, you know, Kansas... Kansas, with its towering green mountains and shimmering fjord-like lakes. Yes, Smallville is filmed in lush, mountainous Vancouver. Thus creating the effect of what I like to call Canadasas, the magical Kansas where Clark Kent grew up.

Re-writes were necessary to make Aquaman fit into the world of Smallville, and we learn that "AC" (Arthur Curry for those of you wondering if Aquaman has a real name) is a surfer dude from Miami. Sure, in the comics he's from somewhere under-populated and with actual light-houses like New Brunswick, Canada... but, oh, hell, it's Smallville.. he's a guy from Miami who is written to speak with the irritating lingo of Southern California, repeatedly referring to everyone as "Brah". As in "Ready to go, bro'?"

We learn young Arthur has travelled via water passage all the way from Miami to Canadasas in order to stop the scheming Lex Luthor from testing a new sonic weapon intended for use by the Navy. Why? The weapon kills not just submarines... it kills fish.

And fish, we all know, are Aquaman's finny friends. It isn't covered in the scope of this show, but I assume Aquaman can still talk to fish, and this is why he's upset.

Truthfully, it's sort of tough to tell how Aquaman is feeling at any given time. I hate to be the one to say it, but Aquaman isn't much of an actor. He's not much of an actor to the point where one wonders what the hell the casting agents were thinking beyond the fact that the actor physically looks built enough to be a swimmer. The "surfer dude" take on Aquaman (appearing her for the first time, I assure you), has the same ring of surfer dudes written by the 40-year olds writing "Saved by the Bell". It's awful and unwelcome, and apparently was a huge problem for the actor playing Aquaman.

I looked up actor Alan Ritchson on IMDB. Apparently, this is it. Aside from appearing on American Idol during auditions, Aquaman here hasn't ever been in front of the camera before. And if that wasn't painfully obvious to the poor folks working on the episode, they should all get two demerits.

In his two scenes with Lex Luthor actor Michael Rosenbaum, one can almost feel Rosenbaum flailing, trying to get something out of Aquaman other than hammy posturing and stilted line delivery. Actor Tom Welling is serviceable as Clark Kent, but, let's be honest, he's not exactly John Malkovich. So the scenes with Clark and AC have a sort of dead-weight/ marking time feel one doesn't particularly take a shine to in hour-long TV.

But what's an Aquaman to do? He ends his scene by declaring billionaire corporate tycoon Lex Luthor is "a tool", and storms out of Lex's office.

So very, very phoned in by all parties.

If the powers-that-be at DC decided that Aquaman needed some screen-time, they really couldn't have botched the job any worse. From confusing priorities for Aquaman to a pointless romantic subplot between Aquaman and Lois, to casting a guy who wouldn't have made it as an extra into a high-school play, what could have been an interesting episode turned into so much chum.