Monthly Archives: November 2007

holidays

Happy Burgess Meredith Remembrance Day!

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I feel terrible. A remembrance holiday I created and I almost forgot the dang thing.

When I first announced this holiday, I mentioned it was going to be Mr. Meredith’s 100th birthday.

I had gotten his birthdate from his IMDB entry, but after looking at a few more sites, I think he was born in 1908, not 1907, so this is actually his 99th birthday (I’m shocked, SHOCKED at a factual error on the IMDB).

What is there to say about the man? I first saw him as the Penguin on reruns of the old Adam West Batman TV show. How many of you reading this can instantly hear his wonderful Penguin laugh?

Jon Stewart has incorporated it into his frequent impressions of Dick Cheney.

Then I saw him as Mickey in the Rocky films:

A couple years later I saw a performance that really moved me — Henry Bemis in The Twilight Zone episode ,”Time Enough At Last”. In a documentary I watched about Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone, a talking head mentioned that Serling protagonists are often people with fatal character flaws, that in the end get their comeuppance. But for Henry Bemis, when he breaks his glasses and says, “It’s not fair — It’s not fair”, it really *isn’t* fair – he really didn’t deserve the fate given to him.

It’s one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes.

Please join me in remembering Burgess Meredith.

Happy Burgess Meredith Remembrance Day!

rpg, world of warcraft

Baklava The Bear

2 Comments

I apologize for leaving my readers in suspense about my brother’s involvement with the game World Of Warcraft (WoW). When we last left him, he hadn’t decided whether he would go beyond the initial 10-day free trial and actually start paying to play the game.

Would he would decide to pony up some money to continue playing Baklava the Night Elf Druid and Mazgul the Undead Mage? Or would he quit the game cold turkey, abandoning his characters to be deleted by some underpaid sysadmin?

What? You weren’t in suspense? Is that ice water in your veins?

Baklava and Mazgul are alive, for the moment. My brother paid 20 bucks for a licensed copy of the game, which gave him 30 more days of hot WoW action.

He was nice enough to take some screenshots for me, so now you can begin to see these heroic characters in all their glory.

This post will be devoted to Baklava. I’m sorry, Mazgul fans. You’re going to have to wait a little longer to get your Undead Mage fix.

Baklava from the main character screen. My brother calls it his ‘class photo’.

Baklava is now at Level 14, and has the ability to use a whole new slew of spells. But, a lot of time has been spent transforming into a bear, a skill a Druid can acquire at Level 10.

Baklava The Bear

I told you Baklava was a mighty hunter of deer-that-don’t-fight-back.

Now you can witness the epic battle!
Click on the pictures to get even larger images of the carnage!

Spotting his prey

Unleashing a ridiculous amount of damage via a ‘Wrath’ spell

Baklava Triumphant

Attempts to get a good pelt from the carcass prove to be unsuccessful

Baklava isn’t just about the hunting. He is also making lots of different kinds of food. He now knows how to make spice bread and herbed eggs (eating food heals you, though I think my brother gets a perverse pleasure from the act of virtually cooking for it’s own sake). Baklava is currently considering pursuing Herbology as a hobby.

Baklava has recently also taken up fishing

Another thing Baklava likes to do is sit on things. Do not question why. Baklava does not need to answer your foolish questions.

Sitting in the middle of a campfire

Baklava rides a Hippogriff

And now, the icing on the cake. A hot night elf babe.

writers' strike

Whoops, My Earnestness Is Showing

3 Comments

As so many bloggers I read are great about analyzing, critiquing and clamoring about aspects of the Bush Presidency (I give praise to them for doing so), I often feel whatever I would say about it has already been said.

However, seeing as there doesn’t seem to be a great amount of activity about the ongoing writer’s strike in what I regularly read, I guess I’ll just step up to the microphone for a bit.

SIGN the petition to support the WGA strike.

READ about the latest strike news

LISTEN to Billy Bragg – There Is Power In A Union

While you’re at it, read this and VOLUNTEER — the writers need support, but there are plenty others who need it more.

writers' strike

Miscellaneous Writer’s Strike Stuff

3 Comments

Hiya,

I don’t know if you have been keeping track of the ongoing writer’s strike, but I find it interesting in a variety of different ways.

1. Labor asserts itself against management, usually something I can cheer for.
2. One of the core issues of the strike involves digital rights and online content.
3. I may not get paid for it, I may not be great at it, but through this blog I am an “online writer”.

There’s some lively intersection that can occur between my tiny blogoworld and the world of these striking writers, I just haven’t figured it out yet. There’s a way of coming together, of supporting a group of people, but I don’t know how to do it. Any ideas are welcome.

I did make an offer to any writers to create a story featuring the iSplotchy, but have only had one taker thus far. Yes, I’m pathetic, I’m glad you pointed that out. I did finally locate the WGA’s strike rules (at least for their east coast branch). From what I can tell, I am not a “struck company”, so a story featuring the iSplotchy would not constitute a violation of strike rules.

Regardless of the iSplotchy stories about to leap from the pale stubby fingers of the striking scribes (alliteration…suffocating…me), there are some busy online-content-generatin’ writers generatin’ online content.

Here’s a couple links:

A nice little video put together by some Daily Show writers (link via BoingBoing)

Another link of interest: an ongoing writer’s strike blog by some Late Show writers (link via Reel Fanatic)

Long Live Labor,

Splotchy

movies, two buck schmuck

The World’s Most Boring Vigilante

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Has it been over two weeks since I last visited the LaGrange Theatre? Perhaps I should have waited another week.

Tonight, the weather took an abrupt turn into winterville. The wind picked up and the temperature dropped. Part of my drive to the theater took place behind a person barely pushing 25mph. They kicked up a lot of leaves into the beam of my headlights, which both calmed and cheered me, and counteracted my impulse to haul ass and lean on my horn.

As I parked in downtown LaGrange, I noticed that Christmas lights were all strung up on trees, signposts and storefronts. Some people don’t like these early-bird Christmas decorations, but I got a happy feeling from them.

Okay, okay, enough warm and fuzzies, what were my choices tonight?

The Bourne Ultimatum – Seen It!

Hairspray – John Travolta is in it, the start time wasn’t until 9:40pm, and John Travolta is in it.

Mr. Woodcock – No, I don’t think so.

Which left me with:

The Brave One

Oh my. How boring was this movie? Let’s put it in perspective. It wasn’t quite as boring as Fracture, but it was more boring than Ocean’s 13. What I’m trying to say is that the place on the shelf for The Brave One is comfortably bookended by two equally shitty and boring movies.

I mean, c’mon. Look at Jodie Foster in the poster. She looks bored, and she was paid to be in it!

Jodie Foster plays verbose public radio talk show wiener Erica Bain, who, while walking her dog in Central Park with her fiancée (played by Lost’s Naveen Andrews), gets beat up by a gang of generic young toughs. She is badly hurt, but Mr. Andrews gets killed. As the violence unfolded, I thought of a more interesting scene, where instead of these toughs inflicting the beatdown, it was a bunch of fed-up former Lost fans.

“What is with the goddamn smoke monster?!!”
“Why does Locke completely change his motivation every goddamn 3rd episode?!”
“Statues with f*cking four toes??! Are you f*cking kidding me?”

Anyways, Erica Bain physically recovers, but she’s all emotionally on the edge and stuff. She goes to a police station to check on the progress of the investigation of Lost guy’s homicide, but is told to sit down to wait for a detective to come out.

Unfortunately, she waits too long, so like any impatient person promptly goes out and buys a gun. I tell you, the filmmakers are onto something with this — it’s a surefire solution for a long wait, whether at the ATM machine or in the doctor’s office.

She puts on dead Lost guy’s cross necklace and then ever-so-slowly gets to the killin’ of people. One thing I noticed in the poster was that she’s not wearing a cross necklace. What is that, a Freemason symbol?

Honestly, a lot of the killings are done purely in self-defense. The first occurs in a convenience store where a guy is going to shoot her if she doesn’t defend herself. The second is on a subway where a guy is going to knife her if she doesn’t defend herself. Really, Ms. Bain? You expect me to call that vigilantism? I think not.

There are absolutely no shades of gray in this film. It’s made clear to the viewers that everyone killed by Bain had it coming. The main dramatic conflict involves us waiting for Bain to realize she is above the stupid law.

Terrence Howard plays Detective Mercer, who eventually figures out Bain is the one doing all the “vigilante” killings. Yes, he’s fine with what Ms. Bain is doing, thank you for asking.

Okay, so the female Ira Glass that is Erica Bain has been killing loads of one-dimensionally evil New Yorkers, but what about those young toughs that started the whole movie on its boring, mopey course?

Ahh, Detective Mercer luckily gets a tip which leads to the gang. Bain is brought in to identify the suspect. BUT SHE DOESN’T. Oh no. She is going to kill the S.O.B.

As she pulls up to the guy’s apartment building, I got to thinking, I wonder what happened to her dog that she was walking at the start of the film. Sure enough, we see one of the young toughs holding it by a leash outside. Those goddamn dog stealers!

Bang, she kills the guy with her dog. Bang, she kills another guy. She goes for one more guy but he gets the drop on her. Detective Mercer busts in and now once again the “good guys” are in command. So, what does Mercer do?

Of course, he gives his gun to Bain to shoot the guy lying on the floor. Which she does. Then Mercer has her shoot him in the arm with her gun. You see, he realizes that Bain is doing some damn fine work, and he’s going to frame the toughs for Bain’s previous murders, and make it look like they killed themselves, or shot at him, or something. The important thing is, this is the good kind of frameup, folks, not the bad kind.

So he tells her to skedaddle, and she does. Her dog runs after her. I’m not kidding. Her dog runs after her. So everything ends okay. Oh wait, there’s one more thing that could make this ending even a little bit more perfect.

A Sarah McLachlan song kicks in.

Oh, mercy.

math fun

Celebrating Math With Matty Boy

11 Comments

I really enjoy when someone expresses an interest in something that I have a degree of familiarity with, but displays a knowledge deeper and a passion greater than my own about it.

Their excitement about a subject is often infectious, and their posts are a pleasure to read.

In honor of Matty Boy and his ongoing series of posts on math, I present one of my favorite equations:

11112 = 1234321

So, what’s your favorite mathematical equation?

california

San Diego Trip: Day 3 And The Trip Back

7 Comments

I want to start off by clearing up an error I made in my recounting of Day 2 of the San Diego trip. I did not go to Denny’s on Friday morning. I actually went to a favorite breakfast joint of MizSplotchy’s brother, The Pancake House. I had chocolate pancakes with chocolate chips. It was a little too chocolatey for my tastes, but I had been jonesing for some chocolate for a couple days (okay, I had some chocolate at Ghirardelli’s the day before, but it wasn’t enough). I actually had a Grand Slam Slugger breakfast on Day 3, Saturday morning. There, error corrected. I feel better.

So, after breakfast, the first business of the day was to visit the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park. If it was just MizSplotchy and myself on the trip, I would have voted against going there, as we live in Brookfield, home to a quite large and noteworthy zoo that we visit regularly. A giraffe is a giraffe, right?

Still, the Wild Animal Park is a little different beast (har-di-har) than your typical zoo. It’s got some wide expanses where animals can roam. According to the cheerful guide I was half-listening to on a tram tour we were riding in, the park was initially used to breed animals for the San Diego Zoo. There’s still plenty of babymakin’ going on there. I think the guide said that 2.5 animal babies are born at this facility on a weekly basis. If the zoo is a rockin’, don’t bother knockin’.

A bigass balloon you could pay 20 bucks to go up in and get a bird’s eye view of the park

The bigass balloon airborne, carrying people who forked over 20 bucks

The recent wildfires actually came very close to the Wild Animal Park. I was told that the fires were actually visible from within the park. The fires also came very close to MizSplotchy’s brother’s house. It was primarily a well-watered golf course that prevented the fires from getting too close to them, though they did receive a strange snowfall of ashes.

They had to evacuate for a little bit when it was uncertain how far the fires would go. My sister-in-law said the day they were evacuating there was a very eerie orange cast to everything. There were virtually no people left in the neighborhood, but she could see animals scurrying around. They currently have a couple giant rats roaming around their backyard bushes as a result of a nearby mountain catching fire and pushing the animals down into Chula Vista.

The Wild Animal Park was actually about a half hour drive outside of San Diego. I had expressed a desire to MizSplotchy’s brother to see some effects of the fire. He had guessed that we would be passing some signs on the way there, and was not mistaken.

Some charred cacti – you can see some green ones near the top spared by the fire

When we first got to San Diego, MizSplotchy and I were looking at possible things to do there. I was looking at the attractions contained in Balboa Park, a very large area near downtown San Diego that contained a lot of museums. As I came across the San Diego Model Railroad Museum I became a man obsessed. I absolutely had to visit this museum. Everyone was sort of surprised by my obsession, even MizSplotchy. She knew I liked when everyday objects were made big, but was apparently not aware that I also love seeing things shrunk.

I don’t have the patience or eye for detail that would be required of someone putting together a model railroad, but I love seeing real tiny people and cars, and trains moving about. I freaking love it.

So, as soon as we finished a quick lunch at a cafe in the park, I bolted, literally bolted, to this museum.

A rural scene

One of the many people making the tiny trains run on time

Who doesn’t love a miniature hobo?

We could have probably spent a couple days just stationed in Balboa Park. It was a lovely place.

I missed the puppet shows.

I spotted a piece of artwork by Niki de Saint Phalle, an alligator sculpture that looked very similar to one I recently saw. The piece was outside the Mingei Art Museum. I went inside the museum and asked a woman who worked there if the piece had been recently installed. The woman smiled and said it was a permanent piece there, and had been there for quite some time. As I nodded my head and started to walk in, she said, “There is an admission to this museum, and we are closing.” Ow. Not just a rejection, but one with a double jab and an uppercut.

Niki Gator, but not the one I saw in Chicago.

Many of the museums were closing up shop. I saw some skywritten letters: M♥C. I tried to convince MizSplotchy I had paid for it but they got her initial wrong, but she wasn’t buying it. A short time later I looked up at the sky, and noticed the letters had dissipated, but the heart remained.

A rare pic of yours truly

Later that night we pretty much just hung out at MizSplotchy’s brother’s house. I made the mistake of drinking a few beers, which completely knocked any energy I had left out of me. After some time spent on the couch, staring ahead like a zombie, I drove a few of our party back to the hotel and crashed (on the hotel bed, not in the car), while MizSplotchy stayed up a little later with her brother and reminisced.

The next morning, DENNY’S! This time it was just MizSplotchy and myself. It was nice to have a little quiet moment to ourselves. We had a good time.

We met up with her cousin and the boyfriend, dropped off the rental car, got to the airport and boarded the plane. The flight back mostly consisted us of watching episodes of Season 2 of Spaced on MizSplotchy’s laptop. We got a few looks as we were cackling out loud at some points.

This is one of the funnier scenes we saw:

So, overall a good trip. I hope you have enjoyed reading about it. In any case, I’ll be able to remember what the hell I did a year from now.

Love,

Splotchy