I would watch that show

I'll leave you to figure out which one.

Now you know what's out there in the world

In my CD rotation over the last few days I've been working through all the Sondheim I own, which really only consists of Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, and Into the Woods. It's interesting to note that the least depressing of those shows is the one about the homicidal barber who kills people and has them baked into meat pies. Maybe it's because so many of the numbers in that show express some sort of joy, be it love of all sorts ("Johanna," "Pretty Women," "My Friends"*), or finding that your homicidal urges will provide a monetary windfall, or even that human flesh is effin' delicious.

Meanwhile in the other two shows you've got betrayal, longing, broken friendships, deaths of wives and children, characters waking up to find that they've wasted their entire lives... all happening right there on stage!'

Seriously, those shows are a BUMMER.



*This remains the most beautiful song ever sung to a set of straight razors.

Clearing the air

There's a new strip over at The Lair, and with it, let us put all speculation about the Atrox's sexuality to rest.

Also, big ups to Paul for pretty much writing the entire script.

Up in the sky

So, I hear Superman returned!

It was a good movie. Solid. Steeped in the first two films, but since I knew that going in, it didn't really bother me. Basically it was the Donner approach minus all the cartoonishness (save for perhaps Lex's master plan, which ultimately makes no sense). There were good performances throughout. I was particularly impressed with Brandon Routh. Spacey and Parker Posey were great together, and Jimmy Olsen had some really impressive comic timing. And Marsden! He was great, too. Tragic underusage of Kal Penn, but at least he got a nice paycheck from it, I'm sure.

There were some beautiful moments. Superman falling from space after removing the crystal. Superman's line "I hear everything" and all that that implies. The airplane crash was awesome. Superman's beating at the hands of Lex's goons was really pretty heartbreaking.

But it's a long movie, and you notice that. And there's a point where Superman lifting shit just doesn't do it for you anymore. In its last act the movie kept losing my attention and then winning it back. It's not a masterpiece or anything, but I liked it.

"It reminds me of the hate"

Emory's latest film kick (after last month's Godzilla-fest) is Shaw Brothers kung-fu films from the 70's and early 80's. Frankly, I'm amazed how entertaining many of them are. The other day we watched Lady Assassin, the last shot of which features our titular heroine cutting the main bad guy straight down the middle, and she strikes a lovely posed as she's framed by the two halves of the guy's body splitting before her. Then there's a freez frame and "The End" comes up on screen. It's AWESOME.

That ending is the best, but the funniest was Executioners from Shaolin, where there was a freeze frame in the middle of the last fight, and a caption came up assuring us that yes, our hero did eventually best his enemy with his superior kung fu.

And while some of these films are beautifully coreographed, none of the ones we've seen yet can possibly compare to the final sequence of The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, in which Gordon Liu throws down with like a hundred dudes armed only with his trusty pole. Seriously, it is one of the best action sequences I have ever beheld. Here's a little sample of what Emory and I were yelling throughout the twenty-minute sequence. "Oh my God! OH MY GOD! OH DAMN! HE IS SHOOTING BAMBOO POLES STRAIGHT THROUGH DUDES! Oh, man! Oh shit. Oh, that guy's teeth! Holy shit! HOLY SHIT! Right through that guy! And that OTHER guy! Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. HOLY SHIT! Oh no watch out! Watch out, Gordon Liu! They got him! Wait, no he's okay! Now they are going to taste the pole! They are LITERALLY going to taste the pole! Oh damn! Awesome! HOLY SHIT!"

And on and on and on. It behooves you to see this movie, or at least the last action scene. The rest of the movie makes almost no sense.

I can also say that I catch a good amount of the references in Kill Bill now.

Movies I've seen recently

I already told you how much I liked Wordplay, right? My feelings have not changed. It's really quite something.

In order to kill time before Deadwood this week, we watched Batman Returns. That's still one of my favorite movies. Hiariously, Batman in only in like 45 minutes of that movie, tops. But then there's always the old argument that each of the major characters in the film is a facet of Batman's fractured psyche, so take that as you will.

Last night was the second installment of Man of Steel Mondays over at Frank's, and a bunch of us watched Superman II. It's a vast improvement over Superman, despite some intense goofiness and the faux-Gene Hackman. But it totally delivers on the action front. But then I am a sucker for a film in which one flying dude kicks another flying dude into a giant electrical sign. And Terence Stamp is just so great. Do you ever think that if Kal-El had just kneeled before him a little earlier, a lot of time could have been saved? That's all the man wants, after all.

So, that weekend

Not quite the rip-snortin' adventure that my post on Friday might lead you to believe, but a good time nonetheless.

It was one of those weekends where I went to be relatively early each night, but was awake so early in the morning that I still didn't really catch up on any sleep. Stupid biological functions.

Friday night I just sort of bummed around my apartment, waiting for my friend Meaghan to arrive. She was staying at Llama School for the weekend, since she was in town for the wedding. But her plane was late, so I just kicked it at home by myself all night. When she got in Corinne came over and we talked for a bit, but Meg had flown in direct from IRELAND, so we let her get some sleep. I insisted she take my bed while I slept on the futon, since I would imagine that traveling for 24 straight hours and then sleeping on an uncomfortable futon while being assaulted by cats would be NO FUN AT ALL. Of course, that meant that I was on the futon being assaulted by cats, so going to bed around 12:30 didn't mean much when the cats woke me up consistently.

Saturday Corinne came by and picked us up to head to Rachel's wedding. Trumbo rode with us, too. Oxy reunion! It was 1999 all over again! Anyway, the wedding was a nice time. Nice ceremony, good reception, fun time for all. The only downside was that there was a weird two-hour gap between the ceremony and the reception, so our car, as well as Kim and and our old Oxy friend Barry, spend the lull at this restaurant/bar. Hilariously, the restaurant would not serve Barry a beer because his license was expired, even though he was the oldest one of us. It was sort of sad. But mostly funny. Anyway, the reception was nice, everyone was in high spirits, Rachel was giddy, and we had a good time. Naturally we missed the cemetery screening of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I meant to hook up with the team who went to the screening after the wedding, but I fell dead asleep on the ride home. I might have had something to drink at the wedding, so sue me.

Naturally that meant that the cats woke me up at 7:30 and I couldn't get back to sleep. Stupid pets. So I played Mega Man until Meg got up, and then we had some lunch and went to see Wordplay with Paul, Frank, Lindsay, and Mike. That movie is DELIGHTFUL. I had a really great time. Afterwards we all went back to my place to hang out, eat hot wings, and watch Deadwood. Woo! Brian Cox!

Oh, and the ex-girlfriend quotient for the weekend was reduced by one when Ali decided not to come down after all, but I half-expected that anyway, so no matter. I had a fine time, regardless.

Why the internet exists

CAPTAIN EO



Sans the 3D naturally, but there it is, in all its cheesy-ass glory.

A thought

The last thing anyone should ever get truly upset about in this world is fast food. Anyone who screeches at a fast food employee should have to go fend for themselves in the desert for a week.

I know, there are some truly horrible fast food employees out there. They should also have to live in the desert.

Why can't all the unpleasant people be forced to live in the desert?

Anyway...

THIS WEEKEND! Weddings! Parties! Birthdays! Old friends! Ex-girlfriends! Shaw Brothers Kung Fu Movies! Clint Eastwood IS The Man With No Name! It's rip-snortin', two-fisted action in the mighty Jeff Stone manner!

And you will hear all about it Monday. Probably in a pretty dull prose style.

Sleepless

Last night Mike and I were bemoaning our lack of sleep this week (there hasn't been a night yet where I've been in bed before 1 AM) and just like that, my body decided that enough was enough. I blearily shut off my screeching alarm at some point this morning, and was eventually awoken by my boss calling my cell phone. So deep was my slumber that when the phone rang I thought "Who is calling me at 7 in the morning???" except it was 9:15. I only got to work 2 1/2 hours late!

Atrox

New strip up at The Lair. New storyline. New adventures. New!

There. You can stop bugging me now, Leslie.

Comics that are rad

All the ones I read this week!

Astonishing X-Men #15 - Oh Whedon, I can't stay mad at you. Sure, "Danger" wound up sucking, and I can't deny that I detest the "White Queen's been evil this whole time" plot, but here you've actually gotten me excited about this title again. Sure, you're just riffing on old Claremont stuff (like Morrison did) only without making any actual changes in the tone or status quo (like Morrison did), but dammit, this is about as good as the old superhero soap opera formula gets, and I thank you for it. (You just know Whedon popped a boner when he wrote that last page. I, for one, had a good laugh.)

All Star Superman #4 - Reading this book is one of the bright shining stars of my life right now. It's just so full of heedless joy. How on earth does Morrison do this crazy Silver Age shit while still finding a relatable human emotional core? HOW??????? Whatever. It's the greatest.

Cassanova #1 - The new book from Image to follow the Fell format (16 pages of comics for $1.99), the first issue is actually 32 SOLID PAGES of comics for the same cheap price. Sold! The price and my enjoyment of Matt Fraction's The Five Fists of Science OGN convinced me to buy this first issue, and I'm pleased to say that I liked it enough to come back. I'd try to explain the plot, but it's a busy book and involves floating telepathic heads, 60's spy tropes, parallel universes, and robot sex slaves, so just trust me when I say it is good and buy the thing. It's two bucks, for crying out loud.

The Fate of the Artist - I just finished this new OGN from Eddie Campbell over lunch today. It's fascinating. You will remember Mr. Campbell, at the very least, as the artist on From Hell, as well as many other projects (including an extremely odd issue of Joe Casey's run on Uncanny X-Men), and this is an autobiographical work in which Eddie Campbell does not actually appear. Told in varying styles of prose, Sunday funnies, photography, and straight-up comics, this is another tough one to describe (at least, given the fact that I write these entries during lulls at work), and I certainly want to read it again before I really tackle it in a public forum like this, so let me just say that it was extremely involving and someone else should buy it so we can talk about it.

For those who can't get enough of this crap

You know who you are.

The annotated Scott Pilgrim.

Annotated by Mr. O'Malley hisself.

Supes

There's just no getting around it: the original Superman is just not that great a movie. Great score, great lead, great stuff in Smallville, but the rest is just goofy as hell. And I hate Margot Kidder as Lois Lane more than I can possibly say. But Superman II has 110% more TERENCE STAMP as well as 110% more car-throwing, so next Monday's screening should be a good time. Haven't seen these movies in forever.

In related news, Superman Returns got a pretty scathing review over at Newsarama, but then again they gave a glowing review to X3 so I'm taking the whole thing as good news.

Weekend

Man, what'd I do this weekend? Oh, that's right.

Friday was Whitney's going-away party (thrown well in advance of her actually going away, because Nell is going away first). It was a good time. There was merriment. I passed out on the couch at 952 at some point and apparently snored like a bear, as I do. I was pissed that I conked out. Stupid sleep.

Saturday night a few of us saw the production of True West that Sam directed, which was good, but then everyone went to bed afterwards but me, so I went to a party my friend Clare from Oxy was having. She only lives two blocks from me. The only two people I actually knew at the party were leaving as I arrived, so I figured I'd have a shitty time, but it turned out okay. Clare's friends are pretty cool, and there was one guy there who was like if Adam and Brent had a baby, so that was endlessly fascinating.

During the day both days we were shooting a new video short for The Atrox. Alexandra and Nell and Laurel were in it, and they all did a great job. It's so nice to know people who are so talented and psyched to do creative things with us. Anyway, the footage is pure gold, so hopefully the short will cut together well. It's one we've had in the pipe for a good long while, and I'm pretty excited about it. It'll probably go up in the next week or two, depending on Paul's schedule.

I could not write an Atrox strip this week to save my life. I had NOTHING.

Sunday night Lindsay and Mike came over and we watched some quality Sunday TV. Entourage was harmless as usual, and all the stuff at the high school party was solid gold. Also I love that in the Entourage universe, Aquaman could out-gross Spider-Man. It should also be noted how deeply I love Deadwood. I am so psyched for next week's episode, which will feature both Brian Cox AND the return of Mr. Wu! Mr. Wu is the SHIT.

"23" in 24

Over at The Atrox we've put up our award-winning 24-hour film short 23, in which a young woman receives some upsetting news on her 23rd birthday. If you haven't seen it, now you can. And you SHOULD.

Surrounded

Inky the kitten has been kind of wary about my room since he arrived last week. Whenever I took him in there he'd poke around a bit and then run away. But last night when I went to bed he hopped up on the bed with me, much to Odin's chagrin. They wrestled a bit, and then Odin hopped off the bed while Inky bounded around happily. He finally chilled out enough for me to get to sleep. I woke up a few hours later to find that Odin had nestled up to my right side and Inky had curled up at the crook of my neck on my left side. It was adorable.

If back in college you would have told me that in four years I'd be sleeping with a bunch of cats, I might of punched you in the face. But then I was pretty unhappy for large chunks of college.

New slang

You know how the kids these days, when they want to say something is bad, they say it is "gay"?

That's not cool.

Which is why Emory and I have come up with a sweet alternative. Instead of saying "gay" to mean bad, say "Kazaam." Yes, this is in reference to the film starring Shaq. Have you seen that movie? It is KAZAAM. Here's an example of proper usage!

"Man, did you see X3? That shit was kazaam!"

Now you can say what you feel without ragging on homosexuals!

....


Needless to say, there is some confusion sometimes. Here's a true mini-play starring me and Emory.

Re: The Neverending Story

JEFF: That movie is so gay.
EMORY: Don't you mean "kazaam"?
JEFF: No. I mean that the movie is ragingly homosexual.

Some stuff is just straight-up gay no matter how you slice it.

Those were some good times

Between watching X3 and getting psyched about the upcoming late-night show for Superman Returns, I am reminded of when we all went to see X2 at midnight a couple of years ago. There were like 25 of us there, and Mike dressed up (and Josh, too, but he wasn't there with us), and we sat in two rows, and Asa was sitting directly behind me (I'm pretty sure, it may have been the other way around) and there were moments in the movie where I had to turn around to check in with Asa and he has the same ridiculous expression of joy on his face...

That was one of my best theater-going experiences, easily.

New strip

There was a new strip put up last night at The Atrox, and if you haven't read it yet you definitely should.

The trials of my day

Oh, fellow employee whose cubicle is across from mine. Why don't you fall asleep all day, instead of just for 15 minutes every morning? Then at least you wouldn't be constantly be whistling and humming to yourself all day.

Here comes the porn!

Some time ago I posted here (and on Begum, as I recall) that I thought it was weird that on MySpace I didn't get nearly as many porn messages/friend requests as everyone else did. Like even pornographers were not interested in me. But now today I've gotten a ton. Like, six in the last hour. Just girls in various states of undress looking for that special someone. That special someone who will pay them money to look at their tits, I guess.

If it keeps up at this rate, this might be a problem.

Things that are okay by me

Underworld: Evolution - You know, this was pretty awesome. Certainly an improvement over the first one. It jettisons all the talkiness and dreary pace of the last one and replaces it with non-stop werewolf/vampire wrasslin'. Sold. And Kate Beckinsale? Not a bad-looking lady.

Samurai 7 - Emory and I watched the first episode of this last night. It's an anime version of The Seven Samurai set in some techno-fuedal landscape. So the bandits use giant robot suits to steal the rice and all. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.

Photos

I've put up quite a few poorly-taken photos up on my page, there. Memorial Day BBQ, Jared and Anne-Elisa's wedding, Mayday and the like. Pretty much all the Mayday ones were taken by Leslie. I haven't uploaded the ones I took later in the evening.

"Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!"

You know, the Daleks on Doctor Who are great, because they are physically ridiculous-looking, yet they sound like the worst nightmare you've ever had. All "Exterminate! Exterminate!" as they roll at you on their little wheels, looking like a halloween costume you might have made for yourself when you were 10. They're genocide on a budget!

The Who finale was great, by the way. I might very well like that show better than Galactica. It's a bit more up my street, so to speak. We'll see how the second season goes.

A bit more X3

And then it turned out that Stephen Notley had more or less the same criticisms as I did, only he put them MUCH MORE SUCCINCTLY. So, there you go.

The Last Stand

Guess what I saw last night?

Naturally, I have some things to say about it.

It's barely a movie. There are almost no recognizeable character motivations, and barely any plot. As Frank said, some executive decided that the only thing audiences wanted was to see the X-Men use their powers, so that's really just all the movie is. Phoenix is a complete cypher, which is deadly, since so much of the plot revolves around her. Why does she kill Scott? Or Xavier? Or go with Magneto? Or just hang out in the final action sequence until she can be dealt with? We'll never know. She's just a black hole. And since all of Wolverine's "arc" has to do with Phoenix, it's a complete waste. The only character that really gets any sort of development is Storm, and boy do I hate Storm.

And all the deaths and depowerings serve only to give some "heft" and shock value to the relentlessly dull procedings. Sure the execs were all trumpeting that it was the "last" X-Men film, but at the end Xavier's alive and Magneto has powers and the whole franchise has been burned to the ground around them. I mean, Storm and Wolverine are still around, but Halle Berry has said she's not interested in doing any more of these and Jackman's primed for his solo spinoff. And that leaves the kids, none of whom are developed to the point where the could actually carry a movie, save for maybe Rogue, who gives up her powers for what seems to be middle school-level jealousy. Maybe if Iceman and Shadowcat had at least kissed or something, but no. Remember kids, loving yourself as you are is for suckers.

I liked how they couldn't even be bothered to give the villains names. Did they ever say Callisto's name? What about my favorite new character, Porcupine Face? I guess it didn't matter in the end cause they all got blown up as an afterthought, but still.

Isn't it funny in the final action sequence where each villain just stands in the background until it's his/her turn to have a fight scene? It's like a fucking videogame. And what was anyone's plan in that final action sequence? I guess Magneto wanted to kill Leech? Why not just use your amazing magnet powers to collape alcatraz, Magneto? Or hey here's an idea, why not dovetail the Leech plot with the Phoenix plot? Then if Phoenix briefly lost her powers we could talk to Jean Grey at least once during the whole damn movie? ("Kill me" doesn't count)

It's all just such an affront to basic storytelling.

There were brief moments here and there that worked. Single lines like Magneto's reaction to Xavier's death, for example. Iceman "icing up" was kind of neat to see, although his fight with Pyro was pure anticlimax. I'm pretty sure Magneto's motely crew of goth mutants all had the omega tattoo that Quentin Quire and his cohorts sport in New X-Men.

NERD NITPICKS

Why was the Danger Room there again? And I know it's the near future, but that tech seemed awfully sophisticated. The comics at least have the excuse of intigrating Shi'ar technology with the mansion.

I'm sorry, but if Shadocat phases you into a solid object and leaves you there, you are dead. That is Shadowcat 101.

Hey, let me put it this way. Last night before Emory went to bed we watched Running Scared, that crime movie starring Paul Walker that came out earlier this year. Running Scared is a much more successful movie than X-Men: The Last Stand.

Forgetful

During my recounting of the weekend I forgot to mention that on Sunday evening Laurel invited me and Alan and Corinne over for vegetable lasagna. It was delicious and Laurel is nice.

C'est tout.

Mayday weekend!

Woo! Mayday!

It was a really great time. There were a ton of people there, the venue had plenty of space, and the Psychic Bunny guys did a great job of bringing it all together. It rocked. Thanks, guys!

Our movie did all right. The audience seemed to really like it, and we ended up winning two awards: Most Deserving of Jams and Jellies and Best Line (for "Good thing I've got a doctorate in jujitsu!"). And really, the quality of the films overall was easily the best in Mayday history. Most everyone brought their A-game, and that was great to see. Afterwards, Alan's brother Cell Fone kicked out the jams, but just as with every Mayday, 90% of the crowd fled immediately. Screw those guys! But that also meant that the only people who stuck around were all awesome people, so that was nice. There was some dancing and additional drinking. Ugh, drinking. Earlier that week I had thought "Hey, I should really cut down on the drinking," but then at Mayday I got completely wrecked. The end of the night is not wholly in focus. So sorry if I made an ass out of myself. More than usual, that is.

Saturday Emory and I watched the original Drunken Master, which was great, and then that night a big group of us headed to the cemetery to see The Philadelphia Story. I had never seen the movie before, and it was great. Then afterwards some of us went back to my place and stayed up playing with the kitten and talking until like 3:30 AM. It was nice. And I didn't even drink that much!

Sunday we saw A Prairie Home Companion, which I liked quite a bit indeed, and afterwards I bought that Megaman compilation that we played the other weekend at Asa's. I even managed to beat Megaman III before Paul and Lindsay came over. Corinne came over as well and we watched the premieres of Entourage, Deadwood, and The 4400. The HBO shows were as fine as ever, but The 4400 is really shaping up nicely. It's pretty much turned into X-Men the series, and I can think of worse things.

Argh

Seven Soldiers #1? Now taken off the schedule, although it will hit in September at the EARLIEST.

Not as late as Scott Pilgrim 3 was, but it still stings.

On edge

Yesterday I had one of those occasional days full of anxiety/loneliness, so I'm glad Blogger wasn't working all day or else I probably would have posted something embarassing. I'm feeling much better today. As Doughty says, the only way to beat it is to bat it down. I leave you with quotes from two fine works of fiction.

"Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at the age of 26, and we were of that disposition." - Rob Gordon, High Fidelity (the film)

"It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them." - Lady Croom, Arcadia

Webcomics!

Paul reminded me last night, but you know when we did this bit? Summer of '99, I believe. Of course, back then we didn't know it was ACTUALLY TRUE. Then again, there are other ways to restore prints of the original trilogy, but Lucas just doesn't want to admit that the entire world has better taste than he does.

There's a new "comic" (I use the term loosely when Leslie gets busy and I have to draw the strip) up at The Atrox. Enjoy, if you can.

I'm going to call him "Scrambles"

Bask in the glow of E-Dogg and L-Boat's new kitty.

How I do things

If I'm ten feet away from my bus stop corner and the bus blows right by, I don't just stand there, teary-eyed, as I call my job to tell them I'll be late, no sir. I dash down Hollywood Boulevard, cut up Cherokee, and catch up with the bus at Cahuenga, because I AM ALL THAT IS MAN.

Do not ask me how many times I have tried this manuever and failed, because the answer is three.

Also do not ask me how well my legs work right now, because the answer is not very well, thank you.

Go team

Well, Team Atrox is officially going to have our movie shown at the Mayday screening, so go us.

You should come to the screening! Then vote for us! Or vote for whomever you choose! Which should be us!

Just come to the screening, okay?

Sexy harassment

Forgot to mention this until now. Alan will like this one.

Friday we had a mandatory sexual harassment meeting here at work and during the presentation the lawyer they brought in actually brought up MALINS. Not by name, mind you, but he mentioned the Friends lawsuit. He sounded pretty contemptuous that Malins beat the rap, too. Whatever, lawyer! MALINS.

Bus

Peripheral characters from my life have started showing up on my bus. First there was Brock, he of Jack Left Town/Mayday fame. And today this girl Anna showed up, who I've met a couple of times via Cinema House kids.

I suppose this is what happens when you know a bunch of film students and your bus goes straight to Warner Brothers.

SMRT happenings

I actually contribued to the new SMRT-TV! There's a Young Ones review in there that's sort of rambling despite being so short, and I contributed the cliffhanger recaps for House and Lost. You might ask "But why didn't Mike do Lost?" and my only answer is that he must have been hit by a bus or something.

Out of sorts

If I knew what's been wrong with me the last week other than a general ennui, I'd tell you, I promise.

Weekend

Man, I can't even remember what I did Friday. Wait, yes I can. I went to Kim's new apartment in the Great White North. It's a swell apartment, yes it is.

Saturday some of us went to see Over the Edge at the cemetery, and it proved to be a perfectly enjoyable piece of early-80's alarmist cinema. And its soundtrack ROCKED ASS. Ilah was in town with her new husband, so it was nice to see them. Afterwards we headed to Laurel and Trumbo's for Trumbo's big birthday party. It was a good time. I am not adept at smoking weed. Frank fell asleep pretty soon after we got there, and there was some point where I was ready to leave but he was asleep, and then I fell asleep waiting for him to wake up. As a result, we were two of the last people to leave. Stupid sleep.

Sunday was a day of rotating houseguests, as Mike and Corinne came over in the early afternoon and after they'd left Frank and Lindsay showed up in the early evening. Then we drank at The White Horse.

This dull relating of a series of events has been brought to you by Monday morning!

Television

It's a mite depressing, how short our DVR list has gotten now that all the shows are done for the season. At least I still have the Doctor Who and Sopranos finales waiting for me. Oh, and one last episode of Degrassi next week.

Emory, Leslie, and I finished watching the second season of The 4400 this weekend, in anticipation for next week's premiere. Granted, the series still doesn't have a character half as intriguing as the homicidal baby, but the final episode was really strong, with some intriguing developments for next season. And even though I've been expecting it for half a season now, the final shot still filled me with joy. The show's a minor pleasure, but it is sort of comforting in its mildly-above-average-ness.

When Mike and Corinne were over this weekend Farscape came up, and then it turned out there was a syndicated episode on RIGHT THAT MOMENT so we all watched it, and it was "Scratch and Sniff", which is one of those truly spazzy episodes of Farscape with the characters being drunk for at least half the running time. You know how on Star Trek whenever they do an episode where all the characters get sexed-up and crazy it seems really pandering and lazy? There's just something about Farscape's tone where that sort of thing just seems par for the course, you know? I suppose my saying that Farscape is my favorite space show tells you what sort of things I like from my television. Things like body switching episode where the whole cast switches bodies like eight times.

Might I recommend...

The Five Fists of Science, the new graphic novel from Image, written by Matt Fraction and illustrated by a dude whose name I can't remember? It's about Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla teaming up to create world peace. And they fight Thomas Edison. And a yeti. It's brilliant. Mastodon City boys should take note.

Oooh, and it looks like season 3 of The Wire will be out in August. Dudes, I know I run this shit into the ground, but The Wire is the BEST SHOW YOU DON'T WATCH. If you start now, you could be all caught up when the fourth season begins in the fall!

Too much MySpace

You know, I bet all the real swingers on MySpace get all mad at all the people who claim to be "swingers" but aren't. It's like, "Who can you trust? These people just want to be clever, not actually swing!"

Or something. I'm so out of it.

Stuff I forget

Do you ever worry about forgetting everything?

When I was at the HH's totally sweet-ass Memorial Day BBQ I remembered about how a large spider corpse wound up in a margarita I was about to drink while we were out on Catalina. I hadn't thought about that at all since then, and I then I thought "That's probably because I never actually wrote anything about Catalina." Like I only know if I've done something if I wrote it in my blog.

I don't know. I thought this was going somewhere, but this is stupid.

I remember back in Glendale I was putting photos into a photo album and Emory was making fun of me because Emory is full of spite and then he said "Do you do that because of the tenuousness of memory?" And I was like "Yes! Exactly! Oh my God, think of how much we've lost!"

I don't like sleep because it's like forgetting something you haven't actually done yet.

Yeah, this is really stupid. Sorry.

This all started because I had this exact thought earlier today, and didn't remember having had it before in the slightest.

I'm still in the game!

Yesterday I did awesome things

As part of a general self-improvement plan, Frank and I ran up in Runyon Canyon yesterday. Yeah, we RAN. We ran up the steep way to the first plateau (before it gets REALLY steep), hiked up the steep part (which actually turned out to be the hardest thing, since we were so beat from the initial run) and then we jogged all the way back down. Did you know that it is easier to run downhill than uphill? SCIENCE. Anyway, it was great. We're hoping to start doing it a few times a week, so wish us luck.

Afterward we picked up Paul and went to see Miller's Crossing at the New Beverly. If I could have that movie's baby, I would. It's just so great. And it has one of my favorite title scores ever. I first saw it on video back in high school when I was in my post-Fargo Coen Brothers craze, but I didn't really appreciate it until college, when I read and re-read the screenplay about a million times freshman year. "Don't smart me. I want to watch you squirm. I want to see you sweat a little. And when you smart me, it ruins it." It's probably my third-favorite Coen Brother film, behind Fargo and The Big Lebowski. Hey, when are those guys going to make a decent movie again?

How to alleviate a boring day

By reading a new Atrox strip, of course! Atrox and Bigfoot are bored, too.

I'm rather fond of this one. Leslie does some great work.