(Mostly) Off-topic:

I've been thinking about music a little more than usual, but unfortunately, it's about music I no longer have. Moreover, it's music I no longer have and am not about to pay for again; songs I had on tape or CD's that I've lost or had stolen over the course of years. It started when the Oldest liked the Talking Heads' "Take me to the River," and the Youngest loved "Psycho Killer" (the 'fa-fa-fa-fa" bit cracks him up) and I remembered I lost my old Stop Making Sense CD. The Sand in the Vaseline set doesn't have "Life During Wartime" on it? Did we lose said war? (No "Slippery People" either, and both were story titles in old Captain America issues by Mark Gruenwald.)

And that opened the floodgates: old Police stuff? Completely gone. The Deftones, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Anthrax (I went through a metal period...), David Bowie, the Breeders, Prince, Morphine, I think even the first They Might Be Giants album; those and dozens more not on my hard drive and hence nowhere.

Yes, I know I could use iTunes or some other silly thing to download anything I miss, but currently I'm standing by my guns; since I already paid for those damn songs once at least. I sure as hell don't need to pay for something like Bush twice, that's for damn certain. (I do appreciate "Glyercine" a lot more since Homer reworked it...I guess that episode wasn't popular, but I loved it.) Also, I don't want to rack up a huge bill...ala another Simpsons episode.

More unrelated nonsense after the break!


I'm a fairly healthy chap: I bike a lot, walk my dog, get a good night's sleep. (When I'm not immersed in a game or toiling away to bring you bloggy goodness.) But I also have, at best, a nodding familiarity with 'nutrition.' (Yeah, nodding at it as it leaves...) So, I've been trying to take advantage of the finally pleasant weather, and get more exercise; including getting back to the weights and sit-ups and whatnot.

So, I got the bright idea from some half-remembered tidbit from a magazine; that Britney Spears, when she's in shape, does 200 sit-ups a day. Well, I figured if she could do it...and maybe I couldn't do it all in one sitting, but if I did 200 sit-ups at some point during the day...currently, my abs might not be a six-pack, but that doesn't matter since I can't stand upright.

Maybe I should just, I dunno, eat a vegetable or something. By the way, don't you love supposedly helpful hints, for losing weight or saving cash or magically improving the marginal quality of your life, that you're already doing? Like when you hear someone say, like it's a state secret, that you can shave unwanted flab by taking the stairs instead of the elevator? Hey, great plan! I've been taking the stairs for years, but now that you've told me, I'm sure the flub will just melt off now!

Financial planning advice is in the same vein for me: ride a bike instead of paying for gas, make your own coffee instead of buying lattes, don't eat out? Hey, I do all that, and I still don't have enough cash for all the comics I want. It's just the kind of advice people parrot when they want to feel smart or empowered; or the crumbs of actual help those without financial problems deign to give those who do; and it's not really enough of either.

So whenever I get crappy advice like that, I feel like Joel, Crow, and Servo in the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 movie, as they try to get tech support for their Interocitor.

As alluded to above, I am in the middle of a game: Ghosts 'n Goblins, on the Capcom Classics Collection for PS2. I'm old enough to have played it in the arcades, but had never made it as far as I did yesterday, finishing level 5...only to be told I had to have the useless goddamn shield as a weapon and sent back to the start of four.

Per my long-standing attempt to eschew profanity here, I can not adequately describe how that made me feel. I also can't save on this game, so my PS2 is still on, as I sit here at work mentally berating myself for not calling in sick...


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Hey, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen opens today...

...and yeah, I'll be waiting until it gets to the dollar theatre, yeah. Or, if the kids and I are lucky, the drive-in when we're on vacation! That won't really make the movie better, but yay, drive-in!

Come to think of it, the Oldest and I saw the first one at said dollar theatre, too. He's getting excited, and picked up a couple new figures last Friday: Bumblebee and a Brawl...I think he's Brawl, anyway. We laughed pretty hard at Wheelie, and I also did not care for the unicycle-bot, whatever the blue motorcycle one was called. And we watched the first Transformers DVD: I don't hate it, but I did have to fast-forward through Michael Bay's extended loving homages to Top Gun the military, any scenes with Anthony Anderson...or John Turturro...or most of the human characters. (Sam's arrest, and the intelligence agents' subplot, were especially painful.)

Also, if I hadn't been watching it with a minor, here's a little drinking game you can play: drink every time you see an actor from some Fox show! "Thas's...that's that guy...secret service guy on 24. Yay, Uncle Bernie! And that kid was on Buffy like twenny years ago...hey, it's Sucre! Was he killed on Prison Break? And why is this bottle empty?" (Was Buffy ever on Fox? Ah, whatever.)


No disrespect to Hugo Weaving, but Megatron's funnier if you read it in Frank Welker's voice, and I can almost hear it.

So, while I enjoy the toys and Slurpees and occasional jest at its expense, it's safe to say, I'm not overly excited for Revenge of the Fallen. I'm not as not excited as Topless Robot, though. Granted, they have a lot of valid reasons to be pissed; but it's an unfortunate effect of the internet: Look, I've never met Michael Bay. I think I've only seen one other of his films, Pearl Harbor, and I was drifting in and out of it. I've never listened to his director's commentary, haven't read or seen a lot of interviews with him, and am not positive I could pick him out of a line-up of directors. ("Wait, aren't you Uwe Boll?") And yet I'm 90, 95% positive Michael Bay is a colossal douchebag. That makes me a little sad, because I could be wrong prejudging him, and Bay the person could have nothing to do with his work. Maybe Bay supports orphans or saves puppies or meditates daily or knits. I don't know, so it doesn't seem fair to think that.

Still, 90, 95% positive. I'll see Transformers 2 when I see it, and I hope the Oldest likes it.

A question--non-snarky this time, 'kay? In interviews lately, Shia LeBeouf was talking about getting gouged in the head with a bigass spike during a stunt. According to the story, he walked it off, got some stitches, and was filming a couple hours later. The story sounds like a badge of honor for Shia, and that's great; but...shouldn't he be kind of pissed that he got hurt? I know there's a risk of danger in stunts for a movie like that, but don't they try to minimize the chance of face-stabbery? Plus, I'm sure most of you reading this, if you got stabbed in the face at work--hell, if I got poked a little--you would take the rest of the day off and possibly consider suing, depending on the degree and the circumstances. Of course, you say, you're in a field where workers can reasonably expect not to get face-stabbed...maybe I'm reading too much into this.

Two short ones this time, but maybe I'll have something up later. Actually, I'm planning that vacation, and trying to get some backlog stocked up...I didn't really talk about these figures, either, but I think we'll come back to them, OK?
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(Mostly) Off-Topic: Further proof of the Happenstance method:

Per my Statcounter info, someone stumbled across my blog while searching "rhino bar and howard apartments building history missoula." Now, of course, I have no helpful information in that regard, and my blog only came up because the keywords Rhino (Scarface's henchman), Howard (for Howard Chaykin) and Missoula since I used to live there. In fact, the weird thing is, I briefly lived in those apartments! Random Happenstance indeed. I probably drank at least occasionally at the Rhino Bar, but I don't recall it as a favorite, but I drank too goddamn much back then...

Out for the weekend, though, so have fun, and be back Monday! Read more!

(Somewhat) Off-topic: Dubious lessons learned from recent TV.

Since I usually watch Prison Break and the Sarah Connors Chronicles, I taped the season premiere of Heroes. Yes, taped. I'm not trendy enough to download it to anything or Tivo or any of that nonsense.

A few words on Prison Break, a show that's come a long way from it's titular premise: while not a great show, it's at least entertaining, and although this isn't as prevalent as it was in prior seasons, you could probably get the general idea if you watch the first and last five minutes of each episode. Seriously, if you've ever felt swamped by a problem that looked way too big for you to ever deal with, watch this show. The brothers Scofield and Burrows, and their merry men, will show you how to break down a mountain of a task into several smaller, seemingly insurmountable tasks, that you can attack in one-hour installments. You may even have trouble with those, but persevere, and you can accomplish your goal, which will then lead to you being thrown into an even worse situation. The long, serial, formula, uphill climb of the characters on this show are a lot like a lot of comics, really. Or Super Mario Brothers: Sorry, but your princess is in another prison!

But Heroes, and I didn't think of this while I was watching it, the subject came up the other day at the Fortress of Fortitude: the heroes of Heroes seem to mess up, drop the ball, screw the pooch, shoot themselves in the foot, and so forth, a lot. A lot, a lot. Like, if anyone had any sense, or used their powers in a reasonable fashion, the show would be if not over, a lot shorter.

Mohinder: Oh no! The untested injection that I had no idea what it would do, is mutating me somehow! How did this happen? (Admittedly, scientists shooting themselves up with their discoveries is a proud comics' tradition, and Mohinder could do a lot worse than turning himself into the Hulk or the Lizard. Man-Thing maybe.)

Nicki, or whoever she is now: Oops! Accidentally froze a guy! Well, I'm sure no one will notice, or come looking for him...

Future Peter: Whoops! Changed my crappy future into something worse! Better change it some more...damnit!

Present Peter: Uh-oh! I look like an escaped prisoner! Better play along, regardless of whether I have my powers or someone else's!

The two "agents" that tried to stop Sylar: Oh noes! The taser isn't working! If only we had something, anything else to try! (Really, they looked at each other like they both thought the other had the bazooka, before Sylar did his point-and-grab power on them.)

Hiro: So bored...if only I had some noble quest, regardless of what danger it might pose for the world...hey, my inheritance! Dad's last wish is not to touch it, but I'm sure it won't get stolen seconds after I open it...hey!

So, Prison Break features characters in a series of Sisyphean tasks, where the goalposts keep moving farther away. Repetitive, but more entertaining than Heroes, where bad decisions and unforced errors seem to keep the plot moving. Moving in a downward spiral towards an inevitable disaster that can only be sped up by the characters' actions, but moving. Sort of. Read more!

(Mostly) Off-Topic: And we're back...mostly.

So, yesterday in Disneyland, I was wandering through Toontown with the family, and the sky was so blue it looked completely fake but made the sets look completely real. And now we're back home, where it's gray and rainy and about 30 degrees colder.

Even more than that, the Youngest will shortly be starting toilet training and a gluten/casein-free diet. Which means, aside from hopefully treating his autism, he's no longer going to be able to have milk, bread, yogurt, ketchup, mustard, baking soda...the list goes on and on, but if that's what it takes to help him, then that's how it's gonna have to be, I'm afraid. Getting off milk, though, is going to be extra-hard, since sometimes it's the only thing he wants, but the theory is, in his system it's like an opiate. I'll let you know how it goes, but I might be a little busy for a while. Yeah, I say that, and have said that before, yet remain surprisingly anal about posting. We'll see how it goes.


On the plane ride, when I wasn't trying to keep the Youngest from kicking the back of the chair in front of him (he was great on the way in and a bear on the way back!) or changing diapers on the fly, I read Trail of Time by Jeff Mariotte. I picked it up more for the Demon and Jonah Hex than Superman, and was pleasantly surprised to see Bat Lash, Scalphunter and El Diablo in there as well. A heads-up to Dwayne at Matching Dragoons: I believe Jonah adds (at least) four kills to his bodycount in this one.

Since Mariotte had previously written Desperadoes, the western bits in this one are unsurprisingly good, the best parts of the book. Bat Lash has a couple of good moments too, and I'm looking forward to his new comic. Bat Lash seems like a character that would make a good low-to-mid budget movie, if you could wrangle the rights to it and make a western that didn't seem like a western. As far as leads go, Ben Browder (of Farscape and Stargate: SG-1 fame, if you're a fan) voiced a great Bat Lash in the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Once and Future Thing," which also featured Hex and El Diablo as a western proto-League. I don't know if JLU was the first to hit upon that idea, since I seem to recall it from an old Justice League of America issue or two, but I'm not sure. Heck, I'm tired and rambling, and maybe we'll come back to it when the first issue comes out.

By the way, the Youngest wouldn't hold his gun, and I swear I had a higher score than that; although the kid ahead of me had my score beat by a cool million. And change. Like 300,000 in change. Read more!