Oil and Water

Busy week!  Put down some cocktails in NOLA for the Superbowl, passed out through the game, but rallied for the afterparty.  What can I say, I got  issues. ;-) Biggest news is we're putting on a show.  That's right, I and some friends will be writing/directing/producing/starring in a sketch comedy show for the upcoming C2E2 convention.  Details to be forthcoming, but needless to say excitement is high and creativity is popping!

Reading Son of Ambush Bug this week.  LOVE me some Ambush Bug!

For those uninitiated out there, AB is a creation of Keith Giffen and scripted by Robert Loren Fleming.  He first showed up in Superman books as kind of a villian.  He possessed a 4th wall breaking sense of self and his comic series were always a mish mash of wacky, metatextual gags on the comics industry.

Giff and Fleming use a Borscht Belt style humor which is just note perfect.  Corny at times, there's such a sense of fun in all his books that the groaners are easily overlooked.

Cheeks, The Toy Wonder, might be my favorite cast member, after AB himself of course.  He's just a doll, but gets into misadventures.  Kinda like Peter Sellers in Being There. 

AB's archenemy is Argh'yle, Doctor Doom reimagined as a sock.

This is funny comics.  In a way, it's a precursor to the JLI books that everyone loves so much.  Seek these out for a good time.

Now for something completely different...

MotD: United 93 and World Trade Center

This is what happens when Netflix recommends movies.  Your queue becomes a rolling account of your interests, flowing with styles and actors.  At times it becomes like a six degrees of Kevin Bacon game, where you can see how the movies in your queue are connected to one another.  So, when you select one movie, it recommends another one like it.  You then get a double whammy of United 93 and WTC in back to back days.  I'm very glad I watched these, both are very well done and I recommend them to everyone.  Just not back to back and just be ready for it.  Not feel good, it stirs a lot of memories, as it should.

Video killed the televison too

My goddamned tv broke yesterday.  Grrr....  Google searches are telling me it's a blown capacitor, even my tv has more fun than me.  I think I'm gonna crack it open and see if I can replace it myself, get a buddy of mine to do the work, I don't know shit about motherboards.  Probably not going to do the repair route, because spending $500, which seems to be the average, on a product that will probably break again seems crazy.

That said, I don't know if I want to get a new one either.  I'm at a crossroads here where I do NOT want to continue to encumber myself with "stuff".  At least not now.  Who am I fooling, I like some bullshit, but for now, I'm interested in getting leaner and meaner, more mobile if you will.  Dropping $1k on an electronic albatross is not that.

The flip side of that is sad too.  This TV was the thematic icon for my journeys.  I put myself in some crazy debt after college (who didn't) and in 2000 I made some dramatic turnarounds, financially and personally.  I dug myself out and when I made the choice to buy a condo 4 years ago, I paid proud cash for that tv.  It was the first thing I bought for this place.  It's a symbol of my independence and yet it does that by keeping me shackled to the couch.  Yes, I see the conflict there.

So, as someone who looks for signs, sees portents in events, this is telling me something.  I think it's telling me to get off my ass and go places.

MotD: Up

No fooling, this was the movie I was watching when the TV crapped out (see above soul searching).  If you've not seen it, it's the Pixar brilliance of a man whos life flew by and he never realized the one dream he had since a boy, live in Paradise Falls in South America.  So, he ties balloons to his house and  floats the house to South America, like anyone sane would do.  He has a stowaway in the form of a young wilderness scout and hijinx ensue.  It's the things we collect that weigh us down and I think there's a reason why this is the dvd that broke the TV's back.