If you've run out of things to collect...

I wasn't aware of the massive number of 'life masks' that were available to collect and call your own. I stumbled across a bunch of them on eBay and they run the gambit from Abraham Lincoln to Tom Cruise.

Below you'll find Angelina Jolie, Christopher Walken and David Bowie. I can only imagine what people are doing with the Jolie mask.

Eric Poulton does Steampunk Star Wars

This guy rocks my world. What a great concept. Check out his Blog for more images.

Ooooooh, that's rich...

Hey all. Do yourself a favor and get some Izzard on by watching The Riches. It's on FX and it's pretty tasty. Really.

Escape From John Carpenter

Lotsa fans of the original Escape From New York have their panties in a bunch over talks about a remake—but not me. The idea of a remake makes me as happy as a little girl.

The only John Carpenter films that I can watch repeatedly are the original Halloween and The Thing—the rest leave me cold (even Big Trouble In Little China). Sure, I kinda liked Escape From New York back in 1981, but the cheese factor in it is much too high for repeated viewings. The premise is brilliant but the execution is seriously lacking—for me. Everyone seems to be hamming it up and almost winking at the camera. Plus, I felt that Kurt Russell was too pretty and light to play a badass like Snake Plissken. The Kurt Russell I see in the upcoming Grindhouse would be perfect.

John Carpenter movies just don’t seem to have a soul. Maybe it’s me. I always get excited when I hear what his latest movie is about (like, Vampires and Ghosts of Mars) but I always walk out of the theater shaking my head. Again, maybe it’s just me.

Rumor has it that they’ve nabbed Gerald Butler to star. The dude can roar—as we’ve heard in 300—I just hope they nab some talented young buck with a bombastic directing style to bring the potential of Escape From New York to life.

An order of Ratatouille to go, please...

This is an Asian advance poster for Ratatouille. Can someone run it through Reed Richards' Universal Translator and tell me what it says?

Oh mommy...

Salma Hayek may not be the greatest actress of our time, but wow is she going to have a happy baby.

My mother never breast fed me--she said she just wanted to be good friends.

Nothing but cheese...

I grew up with two older sisters who controlled the comic book content in our house for a long time. Until I was ten or twelve the bulk of the comics I read were either Archie’s or Harvey’s.

The first Marvel comic that I got hooked on was Marvel Double-Feature, which reprinted Gene Colon’s Iron Man and Jack Kirby’s Captain America. What a combo! If this comic didn’t get you jacked up you probably didn’t have a pulse.

I wonder if way back then I would have swallowed the notion that Marvel would kill one of their cash cows like Captain America. I wasn’t the most sophisticated kid on the block back then, but I’m pretty sure that I would have guessed that the event was little more than a crass marketing ploy.

Does anyone really care that Steve Rogers is going to be killed? I know I’m getting cranky in my old age but the only good I can see coming from this will be watching the dimwits on QVC trying to sell the comics in six months.

Bah. You kids get outta my yard!

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, he's got dynamite in his pants...

Long, long ago in a far off land called New York, I worked in the DC Comics production department under the auspices of the remarkable Rick Taylor.

I took the job because I wanted to get work writing for DC and I figured working on staff would help expedite matters. (It didn’t)

The DC production department was composed of a diverse and colorful cast of characters back then. Earlier today I was thinking of one such character, the always-redoubtable Nick Napolitano. The thing that started me thinking of Nick was this stunning piece of art from the upcoming Spider-Man movie.

Pretty cool, eh? Nick and I shared a cubicle for a couple of months and while hunkered over our respective drawing tables we would combat boredom and monotony by often sharing obscure and inane bits of trivia from our pasts. One such nugget of Nick Napolitano trivia that will make me chuckle until the day I die concerned the theme song to the 1960s Spider-Man animated series. Nick confided in me that he had misunderstood the lyrics to the theme song, and for the longest time instead of “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man!” he thought the song went, “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, he’s got dynamite in his pants!”

I can’t be too hard on Nick. I guess when you’re a kid the idea that someone with the proportional strength of a spider might need some dynamite from time to time, and hey, the last time I checked Spider-Man didn’t have any pockets in his costume, so why not slip a couple of sticks into your pants. When you’re a kid you find it much easier to justify things like that.

The devil you say...

I haven’t had the chance yet to see Mark Steven Johnson’s Ghost Rider movie, which is currently burning up movie theater screens from coast to coast. It should be hitting the hundred million dollar mark any minute now. Who would have guessed?

If you’ll recall, it was Johnson who wrote and directed 2003’s poorly received Daredevil movie. I’ve always had a soft spot for the film, despite its many flaws, and when I was in Wal-Mart this past weekend and saw a copy of the Director’s Cut for nine dollars I figured I’d give the movie a second chance.

I guess you’ve already figured out that things turned out well—otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this

Mark Steven Johnson’s cut of the movie (as opposed to the studio’s version) clocks in at thirty minutes longer and nearly every minute of it is put to good use. There’s an extended fight scene in Josie’s Bar that we didn’t really need, and a longer version of the end battle with the Kingpin that we really did need.

The biggest addition is a neat subplot that features rapper-turned-actor Coolio. This leads to extended scenes of Matt Murdock in his civies, using his heightened senses to investigate leads and hunt for clues in order to solve mystery. The additional screen time helps round out the characters and gives us more to sink our teeth into than abbreviated bullet points.

Another fun subplot that gets put back in involves Wesley Owen Welch, the Kingpin’s second in command, who recognizes the writing on the walls and makes a deal to land butter side up when the Kingpin’s empire crumbles. This explains why the cops are coming to arrest Kingpin after the end of his slugfest with Daredevil. In fact, it’s not until you see the extended version do you realize exactly how many gaping plot holes were left unaddressed. (I don’t know about you, but when I go to see a superhero or crazy super action adventure film, I try to keep my mind as open as physically possible. You have to be willing to grant huge doses of forgiveness in order to enjoy the movie to any degree. I just bite the bullet and take the good with the bad.)

If you sorta liked the Daredevil movie and have thought to yourself all these years that maybe it wasn’t as horrible as you remember it—the extended cut is for you—it’s exactly for you!

Enjoy.

Who knew?

One of my most favorite things in life is talking about myself, but I've been so busy that I simply haven't had the time.

I guess it beats the alternative. You know, I was mad about not having any shoes until I met a man who had no feet.

I'm pretty sure that the chief medical examiner on the series CSI doesn't have any feet. I think his legs end just below his knees so whenever he’s standing he’s constantly balancing himself on his prosthetic legs. Not that long ago people with artificial legs used to try and hide that fact, but not anymore--especially if they have one of those new state-of-the-art legs that is mostly a piece of curved metal. They also have really skinny ones that consist primarily of a rod and shock absorber-type piston.

When I was a kid one of my dad’s brothers was missing a leg and he hated like hell to wear his artificial one. I guess he wore it when he went somewhere, but when he was home drinking beer and watching the Cubs play on television, he didn’t see the point of strapping it on.

There was another person from my childhood who was missing a leg that made quite an impression on me. When my mom would take us shopping on a Saturday or Sunday up and down Michigan Avenue, we would always park our old Buick in the same parking lot. It was adjacent to Gately’s People Store, and it made perfect sense to park the car there because it was always our last stop for the day, so we could finish our shopping and walk out the back door to pile in the car.

Anyway, there was almost always this same fellow who sat on the sidewalk in front of People’s Store. He had either one or two pink prosthetic legs—but it was hard to tell because of his long pants. He always wore the same light blue pinstriped suit and he had a hat that sat one the sidewalk in front of him filled with pencils and loose change. This was in the mid to late 1960s and lots of soldiers were coming home from Viet Nam missing assorted body parts.

I always wanted to buy a pencil from the guy, but my mom would always steer us clear of him, as if losing limbs was catchy. I remember being intrigued by this guy’s cleverness. A.) He was well dressed. B.) He lost his leg(s) fighting for the US of A. And finally C.) He was offering something useful for any donation you might want to make. As far as I could tell, his system really worked—his hat always had plenty of quarters and dimes in it.

I remember for a while the homeless in NYC were ‘selling’ some sort of newspaper. I guess the way it worked was in exchange for a buck or a couple of spare quarters you would get a copy of the Bum’s Daily Gazette. That’s not a horrible idea. I wonder if I could wander the streets ‘selling’ copies of my very own daily newsletter? Hmm. That’s such a good idea I’ll bet someone’s already done it.

Duty calls and I must answer, otherwise it will keep calling until I grab it by the collar and smash it into wedding cake.

Talk wit you soon.

Nothin’ up my sleeve… Watch me make three television shows vanish!

Don’t blink or you’ll miss them…

Humor.

Vulcans claim they don’t understand it and I’m not sure any of us humans really do.

One of the most agreed upon theories is that humankind developed humor as sort of a coping mechanism. Like religion, only with more fart jokes.

Learned men with neatly trimmed white beards that they stroke absent mindedly while deep in thought, believe that humor is a way for us to deal with the fact that the world can be a damn scary place to live—this was especially the case back before we became the enlightened sophisticates that we are today.

The biggest problem with humor here today in the twenty-first century (in my humble opinion and if I may be so bold) is that it’s so damn subjective that anyone who dares to be a fringe dweller stands a good chance of never being heard (and even if you do find a forum to express yourself and someone does take notice, you have to keep your fingers and toes crossed in hopes that they actually ‘get’ you).

Sedaris and Jeff Foxworthy are both very funny men, but which one are you more likely to find in the bargain bin at the bookstore?

When it comes to movies and television (especially a new television sitcom), it’s essential that they hit the ground running and do whatever it takes to be instantly adored by the masses. Every once in a while one of the networks will give a show they really, really, really believe in a few extra weeks to find its footing and gather a following, but this is hardly ever the case. Look at the series ‘Arrested Development’ for example. It was a critical darling up and down the boards, and if a viewer got within fifty feet of a television while it was playing, they were hooked for life, but the show was on life support since day one. It got plenty of breaks and second chances, but humor being the subjective beast she is, not enough Nielsen Families in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewa or Grovers Corners, New Hampshire really understood the brand of humor the show was dishing out.

We’ve never been asked to participate and be a Nielsen Family, but if you want to know if a new television show you’ve taken a liking to is going to survive or not, just give us a telephone call here and find out what we’re watching. Valarie and I have a long track record of backing losers. I guess we wouldn’t fit in too well in Moose Jaw or Grovers Corners.

Here are three of our favorite new television series. Just for laughs, let’s see if anyone even remembers they even existed come the end of this summer.


--The Class

The first three or four episodes suffered the shaky legs of a newborn colt and the critics had a field day trying to match the characters on the series with their counterparts on the shows Friends and Will & Grace (the comparison was inevitable, thanks to show’s creator David Crane being a driving force behind Friends.

The cast and the writing staff have things on an even keel and each consecutive episode is getting funnier and funnier. Now all that’s missing is a regular audience. It won’t take you long to know if it’s your cup of tea. It’s a show you’ll know by the first commercial break if you love it or hate it. If it’s still on the air by the time you read this, give it a try. If you need help finding a half an hour to spare in your busy schedule, give me a call.

--The Knights of Prosperity

This one is a slam-dunk. If you like Donal Logue and have enjoyed any of the movies or television he’s starred in (especially the comedies like Grounded for Life, American Splendor, and The Tao of Steve), you’re going to know exactly what to expect—with the only major difference being that The Knights of Prosperity is approximately thirty-nine times funnier than anything he’s done in the past.

The show is a product of David Letterman’s production company, which probably accounts for the quality of the writing and the overall polish on the production. They advertised the beejesus out of the series, weeks and weeks ahead of the debut, so you may already know that the plot revolves around a ragtag bunch of working stiffs who decided to rob Mick Jagger’s fifty-two million dollar New York apartment.

It shouldn’t have worked; it really shouldn’t have, but this bombastically preposterous plan being executed by this gang of certified losers, manages to come off as endearing. What they’re attempting is purely idiotic, but at the very least you have to give them credit for trying. The casting for the six lead players is so precise that some sort of laser must have been involved.

And as an extra bonus, like when you get home from Burger King and see that the chimp working the drive-thru window accidentally gave you an order of onion rings that you didn’t order or pay for, it turns out that Mick Jagger is a pretty freakin’ funny guy who doesn’t have any problem with poking a little fun at himself. Interspaced between segments of the show are clips of a VH1-type special wherein Mick Jagger takes the viewers on a tour of his fifty-two million dollar apartment. It’s worth watching the show just to see the new ways that Mick has come up with to torture his silently suffering houseboy.

--30 Rock

I don’t get it.

This show is about the trials and tribulations of a female head writer of a Saturday Night Live-type show. Which is what Tina Fey used to do/be.

One of the Executive Producers of 30 Rock is Lorene Michaels, which is what he does every week for Saturday Night Live.

My problem is that the two of them are doing a thirty-minute parody of the ninety-minute show that they used to do together, and the parody is infinitely funnier than the real show was.

Was Tina Fey saving all her really funny stuff material just in case she would get offered the chance to parody herself?

No, that’s too silly to even imagine. But why wasn’t Saturday Night Live three times funnier when she was the head writer of that show. They had three times the airtime and budget.

I think that 30 Rock is one of the funniest sitcoms currently on the air yet Fey and Michaels’ Saturday Night Live used to put me to sleep. There has to be a complicated story behind all this. Fey will probably write a book about it when all this is done and over. I’ll wait to buy it when it comes out in paperback. It probably all makes perfect sense when you know all the facts. In the meantime, I’m going to soak up the good times.

The casting is sort of hit and miss. Alec Baldwin deserves all the awards they throw at him. My secret favorite is Jack McBrayer’s Kenneth. Do yourself a favor and watch it while you can. It’s far too good to last.

I wish I had a dog...

Cats are fun, but you just can't beat a dog. Well, you can, but it's frowned on by society.

It could have been a contender…

We recently rented Crank, a movie that started out with a fun concept (think Speed, but with no bus or Keanu Reeves) and starred Jason Stratham, one of the most charismatic action stars to come along in the past few years.

The film was co-directed by a couple of newbies, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who clearly have all kinds of energy and are students of the staccato/stylized school of filmmaking that has produced other directors like Darren Aronofsky, Luc Besson, Louis Leterrier, Quentin Tarantino, Tony Scott, Christopher Nolan and Michael Bay.

Crank started out with a bang, but by an hour or so in it fizzled and sputtered along to an unsatisfying ending.

I hope Neveldine and Taylor get another chance. They’ve got talent and with a tight script they could shine.

Oh, and speaking of Louis Leterrier (which I just was a couple of paragraphs ago), it looks like he’s officially signed up to do the new Hulk movie. I have mixed feelings about this. The guy has an astonishing visual style and he’s definitely got a handle on tight, close up fighting (as he demonstrated with Jet Li in Unleashed) but I wonder if he’s got the scope and range to pull in a big scale movie like Hulk 2.

This just in from the "Better Late Than Never" department on the third floor...

For years Val and I have been hearing how brilliant HBO's The Wire series is. For some reason or another, probably the planets never aligned properly, we saw fit to ignore these suggestions.

Until now, of course.

Everyone was right. It is one of the best shows on television at the moment. We're like a couple of kids who have made off with the cookie jar. We're currently gorging ourselves on the first three seasons out on DVD. Who cares what time it is and if we have to get up early the next day, there's always time to squeeze in just one more episode. And then one more after that.

We also know how fortunate we are not having to wait a whole week or two between each episode, and then the better part of year between seasons. It's like digging both hands into the middle of a birthday cake.

Ah, the decadent life. I wonder what the poor are doing right now.

Choosy Mother’s Choose Flint…

There have been spy flicks pretty much since there have been flicks (short for flicker, as in the flickering images on a movie screen), but things really started popping in the early 1960s with the advent of the first James Bond movie, Dr. No. There has been a steady flow of spy movies and television series since the arrival of Dr. No. They range in quality from outstanding white-knuckle rides, to pretty good damn good--I'm going to have to add that to my DVD collection, to a fluffy Saturday afternoon movie or show when there's nothing better to watch. Some of these titles, off the top of my shiny bald head, include The Prisoner, Three Days of the Condor, I Spy, Casino Royale (the new one), Mission: IMPOSSIBLE, The Wild, Wild West, and especially, Patrick McGoohan as Danger Man (a.k.a. Secret Agent Man).

There was also a slew of spy spoof television shows and movies, like Get Smart, the Matt Helm movies, the massively underrated Zoolander, Casino Royale (the 1967 version) and the Austin Powers and the Derek Flint movies.


When I was a young’n I thought Dean Martin’s Matt Helm movies, which included the likes of The Silencers, Wrecking Crew and Murderer’s Row, were the hands down winner in the spoof category. Dino had hot and cold running dames, enough booze to float a boat, and if the mood struck him he’d even croon a little ditty for the situation at hand.

Coincidently, within the past twenty-four hours I’ve had occasion to see a good chunk of both The Silencers and In Like Flint (along with an hour or so of Dr. No,, which is so painfully dated I can’t bear to watch it anymore).

In retrospect, I think the aspect of the Matt Helm movies that was so appealing to me as a kid, is exactly what turns me off to them today—which is Dean Martin’s habit of ignoring the fourth wall and mugging directly into the camera. By comparison, James Colburn, in In Like Flint and Our Man Flint, played it totally straight. No matter how silly the activity, he always kept a straight face and soldiered through.

So, in case anyone out there keeping tabs on such things, when it comes to spy spoof movies, I now officially prefer Derek Flint’s activities to Matt Helm’s. (Plus, it didn’t hurt that the Flint movies had bitchin’ cool posters by Bob Peak. I think the hipsters refer to that as the ‘icing on the cake’.)

And there you go.

I've got the kitty cat blues...

When you have a multi-cat household, like we do, hierarchy is a force to be contended with, and it’s really hard to figure out.

Valarie and I got our first cat, Sammy, back when we were still housemates. We were living in Chicago and there was some sort of humane society location directly across the street from the First Comics offices. One day after work we took a walk over and walked out with Sam. This was maybe sixteen or so years ago.

When he died earlier this year, after leading a fairly adventurous life, Sam had been joined in our household by Tiger, Jack, Ozzy, Dusty, Yoshi and Blackie—all males and there was never a lick of fighting between them. They are all indoor cats and seem to like it that way.

Sammy was Valarie’s cat, plain and simple. He liked me a lot, but he slept on Val’s lap when she was on the couch and slept on her pillow when she was in bed. Sammy tolerated the newcomers into his household. He’d clean one of them on occasion or allow one to snuggle next to him for a nap, but mostly he was above them and tolerated them like a grandfather tolerates a load of grandkids who have come to visit.

When Sam got sick and eventually died, the others spent a couple of weeks wandering around, wondering what had happened. Jack stepped up to the plate and became Val’s new lap cat. Tiger, who had been spending most of his nights downstairs, took to sleeping between our heads, up against the headboard. This was sometimes a little dangerous; because of all the cats in the house Tiger is the wildest and will sometimes bite or seriously scratch for no apparent reason. He loves getting attention and being stroked and cuddled, but then out of nowhere he’ll get a wild hair up his butt and go into attack mode. During the waking hours it’s easy enough to tell when he’s about to flip, but when you’re tossing and turning in your sleep there’s no warning system. It was sort of like sleeping with a ticking bomb next to your head.

Then, out of the blue, he stopped coming upstairs. He stayed on his little pillow on the end table next to Val’s side of the couch. Either he decided he didn’t feel like sleeping on the bed anymore, or somehow he was scared off. Jack and Dusty became the new regulars on our bed during the day and the night. Ozzy has always preferred sleeping beneath the bed, except when he gets cold and then he’ll burrow under the blankets and sleep down by our feet. When Yoshi and Blackie came into the house this year as Val’s Mother’s Day present, they traveled freely upstairs and down.

Things were going along fine after the two new boys arrived. I added a new litter box and stepped up the scooping schedule and all was well, until for some reason, Dusty declared war on Tiger.

The attacks began in the middle of the night. I think part of it hinged on Dusty taking every opportunity to climb onto what had become Tiger’s pillow on the end table. He seemed to me to be doing it at times just to spite Tiger.

We would wake in the middle of the night to the sweet sound of two cats screaming their heads off at each other. Then there would be a crash that usually meant that the battle had moved up to the kitchen counter top and Val’s collection of antique bottles and salt and pepper shakers had taken a major hit. By the time we stumbled downstairs the fight was over.

We tried to keep the peace between them, but no solution worked. After a while Tiger totally gave up on his favorite pillow on the end table, because Dusty had taken to sneaking under it and attacking from behind. Since Dusty and Jack had always been thick as thieves, Jack would be drawn into the attacks. Tiger sought out resting places where he could have his back to the wall. For a while he took refuge in the downstairs bathtub, but that turned sour for him and he finally settled into the corner of the kitchen counter, next to the sink. There was no way a sneak attack could be launched. We took to putting a bowl of food and water up there for him, because every time he would jump down to eat where we keep the food and water in front of the dishwasher, Dusty or Jack would race into the kitchen and jump him. So he pretty much camped out there. A couple of times a day I’d pick him up and carry him to the litter boxes. I’d have to close the door and wait for him to do his business, and then I’d carry him back. Sometimes he cooperated, other times he added to the scar collection on my hand and wrists.

Weeks passed and all efforts to bring peace to the situation were futile. Tiger likes me a lot. Even though he’s a killing machine, he greatly enjoys climbing up on my chest for attention and a short nap. As much as he likes me, he adores Dakota a thousand times more. He will follow here all around the house for hours, and he’s in a special state of bliss when she lets him in her room. He will burrow into her pillows or perch onto one of her chairs and spend hours keeping her company while she draws or watches television. He loves sleeping with her, but in the middle of the night he’s prone to waking her up for attention. Plus, he’s always done this thing where he’ll be sleeping right next to you, then he’ll yawn and stretch and just slightly pop his claws out enough to give you a little jolt.

So for a while I would rotate Tiger from the kitchen counter to Dakota’s room to the cat’s bathroom. Dakota was a champ about it, but he has a real knack for wanting attention when she’s in the middle of lightboxing something, or writing a story on the computer. When Dakota is on the computer Tiger insists on stretching out between the keyboard and monitor.

The nighttime attacks were happening again, with Dusty or Jack climbing up on the counter and invading Tiger’s corner, so I have taken to locking him up in the downstairs bedroom that Valarie and I use for an office. It has two nice windows to look out of and I gave him his own litterbox and food and water. So now he rotates between the office and Dakota’s room.

We were wondering for a while if Tiger was sick or something, and Dusty and Jack could smell it and decided to prey on him. He seems pretty healthy. The worst thing of all is that this whole affair has made him horribly skittish. He used to walk around the house like a king, but now he scoots between bedrooms with his tail between his legs. I’ve tried a variety of things to right the situation, but with no luck. I can let Yoshi and Blackie into the office to hand with Tiger and there isn’t a hint of trouble, but if Tiger is making one of his rare public appearances, racing around like a scared rabbit, the two boys see this as a game and chase after him. It’s become one of those vicious circles you always hear about. The attacks have made him weak and now his weakness are cause for attacks (even if they’re innocent playful attacks, like from Yoshi and Blackie).

As I type these words Tiger is roaming around the desk, giving me headbuts in an effort to get some love. He’s a great little guy but I’m running out of options. What’s a fella to do?

I’m dreaming of a partially-cloudy Christmas…

This has been my fifteenth or sixteenth Christmas in California, but there’s a stubborn part of my brain that refuses to accept this fact. I guess I’ll be a Chicago boy no matter where I roam. So when I went outside to haul out the trash I half-expected to see some snow or at least see my breath. Instead I got a face full of sunshine. The temperature was in the mid to high sixties and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

I miss seeing the snow but I don’t miss cleaning a foot of it off my car in the morning and driving down icy roads. I don’t miss shoveling my driveway and front walk, and I certainly don’t miss stepping into an especially steep puddle of slush and having it fill up my galoshes with icy wetness. (Do they still even make galoshes?)

Our clothes dryer went belly up about a month ago and that took a big bite out of our Christmas budget, but Santa still managed to stop by with a generous assortment of books, DVDs, toys and other assorted goodies.

Dakota scored the biggest load. She got a nifty Bluetooth headset for her cell so she can now chat with friends hands-free, while she chats with other friends online. She also got a lighted make-up mirror (I never knew my pores were so huge!) along with some books, jewelry and tons of clothes.

I found myself a bit melancholy on Christmas Eve. Earlier that day Val and I had watched Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, which turned out to be a movie about death—sorry for the spoiler—and it left me thinking about Christmases long long ago, and all the relatives I’ve lost since then. Val and Dakota seemed a little down in the dumps as well, so we went to the movies and saw A Night at the Museum, which was exactly the bit of fluff that was needed to lighten the mood.

Later that night Val and watched our all-time favorite Christmas movie, Scrooge. I don’t know if it’s a letter-perfect adaptation of Dickens, but it’s a fantastically entertaining musical with Albert Finney and Alec Guinness absolutely knocking it out of the park. If you’ve never seen it you really should oughta.

I have to go get my teeth cleaned now. I don’t know what possessed me to make an appointment with the dentist for the day after Christmas. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. I’d best go brush a couple dozen times before I go.

Happy holidays all.

Is that a couple of D-cell batteries in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

This may or may not be the offical logo for the Iron Man movie. I hope it's not. It's too slick to interest the eye.

If anyone gets their hands on any production artwork and sends it my way, there's a foot rub in it for them.

Forget about my two front teeth--all I want for Christmas is a real atomic pistol.

Who needs teeth when you can blast stuff into smithereens?

Mel Gibson used to kick ass like a pro...

It's not quite 8:00 a.m. yet and already my day has been made.

I'm a big fan of Brian Helgeland's film, Payback. Mel Gibson played a royal hardass who's been done wrong and now he's back to get what's owed to him. The good news is that an even meaner cut of the movie is due out early next year.

As much as I love the movie, I've somehow managed not to own the DVD--but now I have no excuse. If you've never seen the film, do yourself a favor and rent it. Don't bother trying to watch the toothless version they play on basic cable. It's not worth your time.

I don't know Howie does it...

I don't know how it's currently doing in the ratings, but for the first couple of weeks after it debuted, my wife, daughter and I were major fans of the television game show, Deal or No Deal, hosted by Howie Mandel.

Once the producers knew they had a hit on their hands, they really began to milk it, and the show began to be more commercials and fluff than actual game. Toward the end it got to be an actual chore to watch, but it was worth it to see Howie Mandel.

Over the years I've hated/loved Howie in a variety of television and movie projects. I thought he was outstanding in the early 1980s drama/comedy St. Elsewhere, and even though I wasn't a member of the target audience, I laughed a lot at his voiceover work in animated series like Bobby's World, Amazing Live Sea Monkeys, Little Monsters, and Muppet Babies.

Over the years Howie Mandel has kept his hand in the field of stand-up comedy, and that's where my opinion of him varies wildly. He's had me rolling on the floor laughing myself sick, yet the next time I watch him I throw the remote across the floor in disgust. For a while I used to think he was following in Andy Kaufman's footsteps, doing some sort of performance routine, where he was playing a prank on the audience. But no, it became clear that he really does suck super hard sometimes. Really, really hard. Is he aware of it? He's got to be, but how do you from one extreme to another with no middle ground? The guy blows hot or cold and that’s the limit to his range.

I watched Howie co-host Live with Regis and Kelly this morning and he totally killed. I laughed out loud too many times to count. Dusty and Yoshi, two of our most tolerant cats, left the room when they came to realize that I wasn't going to let them sleep.

Try and figure out humor. I dare you. Some people howl in delight over that mellon-smashin' Gallagher, while others giggle and chortle over shows like Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives.

She's like Wolverine, except she's cuter and she can get through airport security...

Save the cheerleader, save the world, save this show.

If you're not watching Heroes on NBC, you should be, so just go ahead and tell everyone you are and catch up on the episodes as quickly as you can.

And here I thought Misfits of Science was our one chance for a network show about superheroes

Weekend rentals—due back by Tuesday

For a nice change of pace, Val and I actually got around to watching the movies we rented for the weekend.

We’d both been waiting to see Thank You for Smoking, having missed it while it was in the theaters. We both love a good satire and Smoking had a mouthful of sharp teeth. It hit the ground running and started out wickedly funny. Aaron Eckhart owned every scene he was in, and he was surrounded by a talented and funny supporting cast.

Unfortunately the movie got soft about midway through. The narrative thread got a bit tangled and I wasn’t sure what the movie was about anymore. It ended with a thud rather than a bang, but the film wasn’t a total loss by any means. There was plenty of good humor.

The second film we watched (Dakota joined us—making it a family affair) was Click, featuring the sporadically talented Adam Sandler. I didn’t like the previews for this film when it first hit the theaters and the commercials for the DVD didn’t win me over either. But, Dakota really wanted to watch it with us, so I tried to clear any preconceived judgments out of my mind and give it a chance. Sandler can be a very funny man at times.
This didn’t turn out to be one of those times. This is an ugly movie about an ugly character (Sandler) who learns the error of his ways and is handed a second chance, a do-over, to start fresh. He doesn’t earn it—it’s just handed to him. The script is lumpy, depending on fart jokes and dogs humping stuffed animals for laughs, and it expects the viewer to swallow some massive contrivances to keep the plot from completely falling apart.

One of the most disturbing things in Click, and something that totally strips away any of the suspension of disbelief you might be able to muster up, is when we see Sandler’s character in the future, when he’s become extremely overweight. Instead of strapping Adam Sandler into a Fat Bastard-type fat suit, the director decided to paste Sandler’s head onto a fat guy’s shirtless body. I can’t begin to tell you how disruptive I found the special effect to be. Even when they actually got the head and body to properly match up, it still looks horribly wrong. Then, to make matters worse, when we see the character later, he’s dressed in a 3X jogging suit, that looks like it’s pumped full of helium. So you go from the real body of a fat guy to Sandler skipping around in a lightweight fat suit that doesn’t even begin to look realistic.

One of the biggest sins Click is guilty of is wasting a precious natural resource—Christopher Walken. Until now I didn’t think it was possible for the man to be bland and unfunny in a movie. Now I know differently.

Bad cats, bad cats, what'cha gonna do?

No root canal for me today. The dentist's receptionist called me this morning to report that the dentist's cat bit him yesterday and now his hand has swollen up like a sausage.

The same thing happened to me a few years ago. I was goofing around with one of our cats and he got a little bit out of control and bit me on the hand hard enough to reach the muscle. Cat spit is so toxic that by the next day my hand was three times fatter than normal.

Cats suck sometimes, but they're still smarter than most dogs.

What's the best time to go to the dentist? Two-thirty. Get it? Tooth-hurty! Get it now?

I have to go to the dentist tomorrow to get my second root canal done. I'm not stressing, though. The technology available to today's dentist has improved by leaps and bounds compared to just a few years ago. The worst part about getting a procedure done these days is having to hold your mouth open for a half hour or so.

I like my new dentist so much I trusted him to stick his fingers inside my daughter's mouth. She had a couple of small cavities on each side of her mouth and she walked out of the dentist's office a whole lot happier than I did when I was a kid. Dentists were barbarians back then. They hardly ever washed their hands and if you asked for Novocain before the drilling started they would sneer and call you a little baby.

Great Expectations...

Nuts! I have to stop listening to people hyping movies.

If I hear enough positive buzz about a movie I build up all kinds of unrealistic expectations for it. Expectations that can never be reached, unless I directed the movie myself.

I’ve heard nothing but good things about the horror movie Slither. It was written and directed by James Gunn, who wrote the screenplay for the most excellent Dawn of the Dead. (He also wrote both of the Scooby-Doo movies, but we all have to pay the rent sometimes, right?)

Earlier today the family and I were out picking up some last minute Halloween gear. I saw Slither in the new releases section of the home video of Wal-Mart. We had talked about renting it for a fun Halloween movie to watch while giving out candy, but I figured there were probably a few other people who might have that idea, so I bought it.

We got about halfway though it when I paused to go to the bathroom and to switch the laundry. (For some reason Dakota’s P.E. clothes never seem to make it into the wash until Sunday night, and I seem to be the only one concerned with getting them washed and into her backpack by bedtime Sunday night.) When I got back to the living room I saw that Dakota had gone to her room to take care of something and Valarie was getting ready to go upstairs to read for a while. She told me to go ahead and finish watching Slither with Dakota was gone for almost a half an hour so I figured we were done for the night. I cleaned up the kitchen and started getting ready to go up and read for a while myself.

The movie turned out to be some harmless, lightweight horror fluff. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it certainly wasn’t as much fun as I’d expected. Plus I was kind of annoyed because I specifically picked the widescreen version of the full screen version, but what was inside the widescreen box was the full screen version.

As I was getting ready to shut down the television I caught the beginning of a noir-looking movie about pool hustlers. It starred Freddie Prinze Jr., but it also featured Ving Rames. It started out sort of interesting, but quickly fizzled. Then Dakota came out of her room and asked if we were going to finish Slither. I hemmed and hawed for a minute, but then I gave in.

The movie ended pretty much the way you’d expect.

Again, it wasn’t horrible. I probably would have liked it more if I hadn’t heard word one about it. If the DVD had been the widescreen version I’d wanted I probably would have slid it into an open slot in our DVD collection, but it isn’t so I didn’t. I’ll bring it back to Wal-Mart and either get my money back or exchange it for something else.

Any suggestions?

Fear of the iron mask

I know the Iron Man movie is at least a year or two away, but has anyone seen any recent concept art or designs yet? I need something to put my mind to rest.

Whenever I think of someone doing an Iron Man movie I have nightmares thinking of the pilot for the television series Exo-Man back in 1977.

I’ve always loved movies, comics, cartoons, short stories and novels about guys in armored suits, but one of my pet peeves is that at some point in the story it’s inevitable that the armor will develop some sort of mechanical defect. Whether it’s dead batteries, short circuits, oil leaks, or some sort of sabotage. Writers typically seem to be more focused on what could go wrong with armor as opposed to what could go right with it. That’s why the Tony-Stark-as-a-drunk storyline was so refreshing. For once the problem was with the wearer and not the suit.

Two on the aisle, please...

My wife Valarie and I were decadent beyond compare this weekend and actually got out to see two movies at the theater. Val had some dicey deadlines to dance around, but she made it work.


On Friday night we saw The Prestige, which apparently was the most profitable movie playing this weekend by just a whisker. Val enjoyed it and I think I would have had a better time if I hadn’t read the book last year. Instead of sitting back and letting the film wash over me and absorb it as it was presented to me, I kept making comparisons to the book and wondering how some of the more radical changes would affect the outcome. If you get the opportunity to catch it in the theater before it goes away, go for it, but with all the craftiness that Christopher Nowlan serves up, this is a film designed for DVD, so you can back up and track down all the clues that have scattered around.

The second film was Martin Scorsese’s cop drama, The Departed. Scorsese has once again cast Leonardo DiCaprio in a starring role, which is starting to get a little old, but the good thing is that there are plenty of other juicy parts to go around. Jack Nicholson plays a colorful crime boss, while Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, and Martin Sheen play agents in the Boston police department. Alec Baldwin adds some weight to the cast; milking his role as a taskforce team leader for all it’s worth, and manages to get a lot of funny lines in along the way. I’m unfamiliar with the Japanese film that The Departed was based on, but I’m betting there were too many changes to keep track of. That said, both Val and I enjoyed the film quite a big. Matt Damon has a reputation for being something of a joke in Hollywood, but he manages to hold his own just fine here. Jack Nicholson comes close to overplaying his role, which was originally written for Robert DeNiro, but I think he hold it back and quite well and I don’t think I’ve liked him in anything this much for a long time.

Have the lab boys dust for monkeys...

I’m normally not a regular viewer of the Sundance channel, but every once in a while I stumble on a fun film or series. The way our cable company has the channels set up, the Sundance channel and IFC, the Independent Film Channel are off in the middle of nowhere, hidden between coverage of local politics and one of the sixty-four NASCAR channels.

Sundance has been showing an animated series that first played on BBC 3 a few years ago. The show is called Monkey Dust, for no apparent reason. The episodes run a solid thirty minutes with no commercials and features reoccurring or standalone characters and settings.

The animation is done by at least five or six different art teams, each with a dramatically different style. England is dirty is funky and pleasantly twisted. Some of the art styles might be a bit sloppy and unkempt, but for the most part the writing is as clean and sharp as a laser.

Like a lot of things I talk about here, Monkey Dust isn’t for everyone. It’s one of those love it/hate it situations. Don’t you just hate situations like that? Or maybe you love it. Whatever. Free country and all that.

Here's a cool stocking stuffer for this Christmas...

I'm not a huge fan of the Richard Lester version, so it couldn't be any worse. Plus, this was before Donner had the creativity drained out of him by Mel Gibson and the Lethal Weapon sequels.

My mutant power is to forget that I have a mutant power. Damn!

Last night I was checking out X-Men: The Last Stand on DVD and I noticed an interesting phenomena. The special effects that I thought were more or less passable in the movie theater were seventy-three times worse (I did the math) on my television screen.

Maybe I’ve got the contrast up too high or the color values set too low, but something is wrong. In the past, going from the big screen to the living room has helped smooth over lackluster effects in movies, but not this time. The Angel’s wings look like they were pasted on in Photoshop. The chrome on Colossus was impossible to look at without laughing. And the effect of smoothing twenty years of wrinkles off Xavier and Magneto in the beginning of the film looked so downright creepy and slimy I needed to wash my eyes after watching it. They looked like they’d fallen into a vat of Botox and then Bob Layton had inked them. Blech.

Maybe I was just in a more forgiving mood six months ago in the theater when I still had my hopes up. But again, blech.

Name the television show and win a prize...

As if you even need a hint, Burgess Meredith had a starring role. If Hollywood is so out of television series and movies to remake, they ought to give this show a go.

Yo, Santa...

Look who's coming for Christmas. It'll probably suck like a Hoover (or a Dyson if you like) but it's hard for me to be a total Sly Stallone hater. Rocky 2 is one of my favorite movies. There, I said it.

Static until further notice

Sorry about the lack of posts. This sinus thing refuses to go away. Tomorrow I'm going to have me skull electroscanned. I'd love to post that image.

Now that we have our Iron Man, who will play Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts?

Tony Stark
Makes you feel
He's a cool exec
With a heart of steel.
As Iron Man,
All jets ablaze,
He fights and smites
With repulsor rays!
Amazing armor!
Iron Man!
A blaze of power!
Iron Man!

...and nothing but the tooth

In case you’re wondering, one of the few things worse than having a three-week-old sinus infection that makes all the teeth in your mouth sing in pain every time you move, is coming down with an honest to goodness toothache that reminds you what real pain is.

Wisdom teeth aren’t smart but according to my dentist they’re a dying breed. Not to brag or anything, but I have a huge bite radius. This means that I have plenty of room in my mouth for all my teeth, including my wisdom teeth. My dentist, who only yesterday did a snappy and relatively pain free root canal on my lower left wisdom tooth, says that even though Americans as a whole are getting fatter, our mouths are getting smaller, and many of us don’t have room for our wisdom teeth. (There’s another school of thought that believes that we’re losing our powerful grinding teeth because the food we eat is so much softer than it used to be. It doesn’t take much effort to chew up a Quarter Pounder.)

Due to this lack of space, lots of wisdom teeth grow in cramped or crooked and need to be yanked.

The only problem I’ve ever had with mine is that they are so far back inside my cavernous mouth that I have trouble reaching them with a toothbrush and my fat fingers have a problem getting a loop of floss next to them. As a result I’ve had cavities in a few and just yesterday needed a root canal to save one.

The last time I had a root canal was ten or eleven years ago and I was stunned by how technology has improved the process. The advent of new drills with super sharp tungsten files along with real-time X-ray viewing has cut the treatment time, which used to eat up most of a day, to under an hour!

With me, there’s always been a massive degree of shame associated with going to the dentist. I never seem to find the time to go in for regular, preventative check-ups, so when I walk in the door it’s because I’ve gone and let one of my precious teeth succumb to the ravages of decay. Maybe it’s because I had a horrible dentist when I was a kid (which I did), or maybe it’s the overpowering position the dentist has, looming over you when you sit in the chair, or maybe because it’s just so easy to put off dealing with. I don’t know, but I’ve never gotten over the curve and started going in before a problem develops.

Just like smelly feet, dental problems run in my family. Most of my relatives come from the old country, where dental hygiene was apparently never a high priority. My uncles were a hearty bunch and I recall a few of them were fond of popping the caps off beer bottles with their bottom teeth, and one of them was so adverse to going to the dentist that he used to yank is own bad teeth with a pair of pliers.

Ow. Just typing that hurts my mouth.

Do I look any different to you?

A big strong deliveryman came to my house yesterday. He had legs that were thick as tree trunks and he looked strong enough to tip over my car if he wanted to. He brought with him a new computer so of course I welcomed him heartedly.

I’m not exactly certain what specific model computer this is. It’s a Mac. I know that much. I also know it’s got a more sophisticated version of OSX than I have on my iBook.

Hmmm, I just did a little looking and discovered that it’s an iMac 5.1 dual Pentium core nitro-burning funny car. I’m certain that it can crunch numbers like crazy and juggle sixty-two graphics files at the same time, but I mostly like it because it looks like a gay Scandinavian college student designed it as his Industrial Arts thesis.

It’s a skinny little thing, which I like, because that means the cats can walk behind it, as opposed to climbing gracelessly over it or tripping drunkenly over the keyboard like they usually do with my iBook.

Technically it’s Valarie’s computer. An old friend of the family (she wrote and delivered our wedding vows some fourteen years ago) does a lot of political consulting work and Val pitches in donates a lot of her time to help out. This had becoming increasingly difficult with the limited equipment we had here which is why the big strong man showed up yesterday with the box.

It’s situated in the home office that Valarie and I share, and it’s much nicer to work on than my iBook—still, I feel funny using it. It’s not mine. I feel strange.

I’m sure, like most things in life, this guilt too shall pass.

Does anyone have Dennis Quaid’s telephone number?

I haven’t been the happiest camper of all the campers out there for the past few months. I’ve struggled with a handful of silly/stupid illnesses and it’s tough to keep yourself on an even keel while spending extended amounts of time loafing around trying to heal from something as idiotic as tripping over wheelchair.

My sleep has suffered immeasurably. While stretched out waiting for cracked ribs to heel, and goofed up on painkillers, napping becomes a common habit. Which of course screws up your nighttime sleeping schedule, which results in sleeping during the day while the rest of the world is active, which leads to copious amounts of guilt and embarrassment.

The latest ingredient into the mix is a painful sinus infection that appeared out of nowhere. For a week or two I was pretty dizzy and it felt like I was wearing a hat that was two sizes too tight. During a normal visit with my MD she poked and prodded and concluded that I had an infection. She sent me home with a big bottle of antibiotics. For some reason antibiotics kick my ass harder than cheap vodka. I feel terrible when I take them. A week later the problem is back and she ups the dosage and changes the spectrum, or something silly like that, and now I’m on a new brand.

I’ve had nothing but Franz Kafka dreams for the past two weeks. I must be near the point of losing my mind but I don’t know how much further I have to go. Which is why I need Dennis Quaid’s telephone number.

Dennis (the Quaid brother blessed with the looks) starred in a1984 semi-cult classic film called Dreamscape, where he and other government-funded flunkies were doing experiments in entering test subjects brains.

[Hollywood drones—if you’ve run out of ideas and are looking for a reasonably solid movie to remake with all your CGI toys, this one should be in the running.]

My dreams are fraught with anxiety. Buckets of anxiety loaded into a cannon and fired right in my face. There are large chunks of what takes place during the dreams that I can directly connect to something I read in a book, saw on television, or discussed during a conversation the night before. The thing is, being able to dissect them later, doesn’t make waking up from these dreams any less stressful.

One common thread that runs through a lot of my dreams involves large contained places. Whether it be at a big consumer electronics show, or the San Diego Comic Con, the offices of a new company that I’m working for, or even an especially large house. I always seem to be in a hurry to get to one corner of the building to the next and my legs seem to be slowing me down, like I’m running through sand and mud or pudding. I’m always late getting to where I’m going, and a lot of the time, when it’s a new job I’m left on my own to figure things out and to get things started. Nobody expects me to do very much during the first couple of days, but I’m sitting there in this new office; I really need to be getting something done.

As if we needed yet another reason to watch 24 this season...

James Cromwell has been signed to play Jack Bauer's father, while acclaimed British comedian Eddie Izzard will play a "villainous accomplice" named Darren McCarthy.

I don’t like The View from where I’m sitting…(will the puns never stop?)

The other morning I watched Live with Regis and Kelly and then some of the new and improved—The View (G’bye Star—Hello Rosie)!

During the day and at night I listen to 70s pop and rock when I write, but early in the morning I love coffee chat shows. Perhaps I should delve into this with my therapist one of these days.

I feel this odd attraction for watching/listening to Live with Regis and Kelly for a number of reasons. For starters, over the past year or three it’s become abundantly clear to anyone with at least three of their five senses that Regis is rapidly slipping into old age dementia. It’s most noticeable during the part of the show where they interview guests—the ones who have been nice enough to stop by to visit. (They do this bit during almost all the talk shows, especially Conan O’Brien, who should know better by now, and it drives me 100 percent bonkers. It happens at the end of the interview and it goes something like this…“Thank you so very much for finding time in your busy schedule to come by and visit us, Mandy Moore. And thanks for telling us all about your new movie that’s opening this weekend and maybe we’ll see you soon—perhaps you’ll visit us just in time to tell us all about the next new movie/CD/Afternoon Special that you crap out of your talentless ass!”

Please don’t treat us like we’re three months old, guys. Nobody does anything for anyone out of the kindness of his/her heart in Hollywood. The closest thing they’ve got to impromptu out there was planned three to four months ago.

So like I said, It’s fun to watch the decline of Regis. Seventy years of having his brain baked under those hot studio lights has taken its toll. He can’t pronounce the names of most of the guests, even if they’re sitting right there in front of him. Fantasia Barrino becomes Anastasia Burrito, Amy Lee and Evanescence becomes Effervescence, and desperate housewife Nicollette Sheridan somehow turns into Nicole Ritchie. The cool thing is to watch Kelly Ripa sitting next to Regis. She knows perfectly well who the guests are and she probably knows perfectly well which names Regis is going to botch and mangle, but she always waits until he’s buried his foot deep into his mouth and has floundered a while before coming to his rescue.

Ripa sits there laughing AT Regis just as much as she laughs WITH him. As she cackles and pats his liver-spotted hand, she does her impression of a family member stuck talking with an ancient relative at a family affair.

Another fun thing to watch for on Live with Regis and Kelly is when Regis zones out. He just flat-out drifts away to his happy place while Kelly is busy gabbing with Jessica Simpson or someone important like that. After a few minutes his internal timer kicks in and in a mad panic his eyes do that auto focus sort of thing and he’ll repeat the last thing he heard Kelly said and will suggest that they look at a clip from Jessica’s latest movie, even though they just did.

Regular visitors to the show like NASCAR’s Jeff Gordon or maybe Queen Latifah are in on the joke and they play along, but every now and then they’ll have a politician or an author on. Suddenly from out of left field Regis will ask them if they work on a computer or an old fashioned typewriter, and then he’ll ramble on about his AOL account and how he can’t check his email or phone messages, and then ask whatever happened to writing someone a letter on a piece of paper. The guest being interviewed will look around like he’s being Punk’d or something and then will visibly mouth, “What The F**k?!?”

Plain and simple, this is too much fun to pass by.

About halfway through Regis and Kelly I would normally switch over to music, or just turn the television off, but then one day I stayed around and watched The View. I’ve had a minor crush on Meredith Vieira since she was on Chicago news during the early 1980s. My wife doesn’t get it; just like she doesn’t understand my attraction to Susan Sarandon or Jamie Lee Curtis. That’s fine. She doesn’t need to understand. The only thing she has to ‘get’ is that all three women are on my list, so if the stars align and I find myself locked in a hotel room with any or all of them, she can’t complain. (Just like I can’t complain if she finds herself hooked up with Bruce Willis or Justin Timberlake. Willis I can see, but come on, Justin Timberlake?)

If you’ve never seen it, The View has a somewhat interesting format. When the show begins the four or five ladies will sit around politely slurping coffee and talking about hot topics of the day. It starts out slow, but five or ten minutes in they’ll all be shouting and clawing for camera time. After they’re done with their Hot Topics and a stretch of commercials for feminine products, the featured guest (normally a man) will nervously climb into the viper pit and try to look as comfortable as possible while dodging meat hooks and puddles of estrogen.

I don’t miss Star Jones a whit. She annoyed me to no end and made my stomach roil. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya.

I don’t really miss Meredith Vieira as much as I thought I would. Her role on the show was as a player/coach who worked hard to both keep the peace and to keep the show moving along at a lively pace.

Barbara Walters has positioned herself between the two potential powder kegs, Rosie O’Donnell and Joy Behar, but that won’t last too long. Everyone has been playing nice since Barbara unleashed her power by cutting Star Jones free. It’s crystal clear that this is her show and people are going to play by the rules or there’s the door.

She’s only a couple of weeks in but O’Donnell’s comedy isn’t meshing with the other women. She used to make me laugh years ago, but not so much now. She talks about her kids a lot, which wouldn’t normally bother me, but when she recounts their activities she has to narrate what happened talking in baby talk. Her kids are almost teenagers and they still talk in baby talk? Baby talk by adults should be outlawed. I hate it with a passion. My wife and I never talked to our child like she was an idiot, so she never did it in return. God, I hate baby talk. It’s like my kryptonite.

To boldly go where we’ve all been before…a bunch of times….

I’ve heard the story of how Paramount is sprucing up the original 1960s Star Trek series for another run on broadcast T.V.. They’re doing some CGI shots to cover the special effects that they feel are a little too embarrassing for today’s audiences.

The photo I’ve pasted somewhere in this item is a sample shot from one of the contractors trying out for the job.

My first impulse was to wonder why they’re wasting their time? I’m not a massive Trek fan but just about everyone I know has seen the original episodes a couple of dozen times each. I’ve seen all the episodes of Next Generation at least once. I started getting my fill of Trek around the time Deep Space 9 and Voyager came along. I think there’s still a Trek series currently in production. I believe it’s called Generations(?) and it stars that guy from Quantum Leap, Scott Baklava.

So why make the effort to release the original Trek series—especially with G4 doing their fun Trek 2.0 show?

And then it dawned on me. I hate it when obvious things clobber me over the head when I’m not looking. When I was young I used to watch WGN TV on Sunday mornings. For the longest time the Sunday AM lineup included The Wild Wild West, Secret Agent Man, and then Star Trek. When baseball season was in full swing the Cubs would play around lunch time, after Trek. When there was no baseball WGN would pull out their collection of Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan movies. Each week they would switch back and forth between the two detectives, and every once in a while they would switch things up with a Mr. Moto movie featuring the always-creepy Peter Lorre.

So why is WGN or some other Chicago UHF channel going to start showing the old Trek episodes? It was kind of embarrassing when the answer hit me. It is so easy to forget that there are more people in the United States who don’t have basic cable than those who do. They can’t watch the original Trek episodes on G4 because they don’t know what G4 is. And besides, even if they do have basic cable, they can’t set their TiVo or cable company digital video recorder to snag it when it’s on each Thursday night at 3:00 a.m. because they don’t know what a DVR or TiVo is.

There are only three people who live in my house, yet we have three color televisions, two cable digital video recorders, two CD burners, one DVD video recorder, and all kinds of assorted MP3 players and digital cameras, and a couple of clunky PCs in the garage that may be slow by today’s standards but they probably had a hundred times the computing power that the computers aboard the first couple of Apollo moon shots had.

It’s the whole embarrassment of riches thing that socks me in the gut every once in a while. Valarie is talking about a new Mac she’s getting too do some work on, yet there’s a good chance that a handful of kids my daughter Dakota goes to high school with, not only don’t have a computer or digital video recorder, but they probably go to bed at night with nothing more nutritious than a bowl of Ramen noodles in their bellies.

Forget about television sets and iPods, I learned the hard way that it’s a whole lot easier to get help in this country if you need a lot than if you simply need a helping hand.

A few years ago my family was in serious trouble. I called in every favor I had saved up but I still couldn’t get a scrap of writing. We had been selling off a lot of our old books and toys and crap on eBay to help pay the rent, but we needed to get the car fixed and we had some major bills to pay so I did something that I never thought I’d do. I walked into the local welfare/public assistance office, laid all my cards out on the table and told them that we needed help. Cash would be great, but even if it were some food stamps or help with paying the utilities would make all the difference.

The robot sitting across the desk from me took down all my information, did a little math and talked with someone on the telephone. Things were sounding pretty good until she told me that she was sorry but my requested had been denied. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t understand what she was saying so she gave me a brochure with a toll free number on it that I could call for a full explanation.

When I didn’t get up and move out of the office quickly enough a supervisor and a security dude came over to pry me from my chair. The supervision was a tad more understanding than the robot who had been helping me. He looked over my application and told me that the reason I didn’t qualify for any sort of public assistance was because of my current lifestyle.

His words were bouncing off me like bullets off Superman’s chest. The two big reasons we were declined was because we were paying too much money in rent on our house each month (I think it was around $1200 a month) and our car was too valuable (we had a Honda Civic that we were still paying for and was only worth five or six thousand dollars).

So, in essence I was being told that the government wasn’t interested in helping me if I was simply stumbling around trying to get a hand up. On the other hand, if I were nearly down for the count, inches away from falling down into the gutter, they’d be more than happy to help.

I don’t have the figures in front of me but there is a large portion of the population of this country that doesn’t have a single black & white or color television in their houses (there’s probably a substantial lack of milk and bread in those households as well). There are even a higher number of people who don’t have a computer, and even if they did there’s a high likelihood that they wouldn’t know how to use it to get a job in today’s society.

I know that Bill Gates is doing fantastic things with the billions he’s accrued over the years. It might not put too big of a dent in his budget to make sure that there’s a computer in every school classroom in the U.S.. Perhaps if a student demonstrated and affinity or aptitude toward using said computer, how much more would it cost Mr. Gates to put a PC into that child’s home?

He knows that he can’t take the money with him, and apparently he’s not going to make any of his children or heirs instant billionaires, so why not? The man has the resources to change the world. Isn’t it his responsible to do so?

I blame society...and the SciFi Channel

Normally I'm more than capable of making a fool of myself with no outside help, but this time the SciFi Channel has pitched in to give me a hand.

A couple of weeks ago I sang the praises of the BBC import Garth Marenghi 's Darkplace that SciFi had been playing at midnight on Sundays. I told everyone I know to tune in for a good time, but before they could the SciFi Channel pulled the rug out from under us. Bastards. They show Mansquito three time s a week, but they hold back on Garth? Again, bastards!