Vibes

As my subconscious is more clever than I'll ever be, I have learned to trust my gut reactions to situations, what one might call 'vibes'. It's not unlike playing a trivia based game: your first guess is probably the correct one and if you think about it too hard you'll just mess yourself up. My 'vibes' are like that. It's not that the first instinct is always correct, far from it, but they're more often than not accurate, or at least in the neighborhood of being accurate anyway.

I had a dream about William Hartnell's portrayal of the Doctor recently which has led me to wonder if that means more footage of him will soon be found. It could also mean that I was looking at the DVD of 'The Time Meddler' recently and that I should have bought it to watch. The details can be a bit vague at times.

I've also got a number of bad vibes regarding the health of the company that needed to part ways with me earlier this year. It's hard to trust these vibes because I can't be sure that there's no bitterness in them. It's not far to want them to fail just because they didn't want to 'play with me' anymore. It's hard to judge what I think in that regard.

Right now, it seems that I'm still better off outside than inside, just for my own sake and the sake of the writing I'm accomplishing. That I know is a good thing.

Olymp-yawn

Are the Olympics over yet? I'm getting tired of ignoring them.

In the interest of getting my interest, I recommend eliminating some of the gymnastic competitions where winning is subjective to someone's opinion anyway and adding paintball as an Olympic sport. Maybe playing at war every few years would help reduce the amount of actual war.

Or it might make better warriors, I dunno. These ideas do tend to back fire on me.

When Erics Collide!

I had a lunch appointment with one of my old co-workers today. After a certain amount of 'I don't wanna pick, you pick' via email, we settled on an establishment. I was to meet Eric at Noon.

Driving through the parking lot just before noon, I saw Eric and his family. Not the Eric I was there to meet, but another of the Erics I know. With a 'what are the odds' sort of amusement, I parked my car and laughed my way over to them. As I chit-chatted with them, the Eric I was there to meet pulled in and I dragged him into our brief conversation.

As we walked into the restaurant, Eric noted he was glad it happened to me. He noted that he would have second-guessed who he'd been emailing all this time.

I thought it was funny.

Working in the Archive

The archive is full of stuff.

Yesterday I found my CD soundtrack to 'Enter the Dragon', a newspaper clipping from 1987 regarding the live-action marriage of Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson in Shea Stadium, the Don Martin solo magazines from 1994, and a comic I drew (poorly) while in middle school.

And other stuff. There's always other stuff.

Meta Stooge

So I'm watching the Three Stooges the other day and they play 'Crash Goes the Hash'. If I'm not muddling this title with the other shorts they played that night, Moe, Larry, and Curly get mistaken for hot-shot reporters and are sent in to get a story about a royal wedding, with a bonus promised for a picture. They arrive at the house in time to hear that a cook and two butlers are required and fill those roles. Naturally as they accept the employment, there's a certain amount of misunderstanding and slapping to be had.

All this causes the head butler (Bud Jamison) to laugh. He notes that the boys remind him of the Three Stooges. At this point, the boys get very offended and tell him off.

A meta reference. In a Stooge short. In the 40's.

Awesome.

Gong Show Revisited

If I am to continue to watch the new Gong Show (I'm up to twice now that I've seen it), I think I shall have to record it. That way I can bypass the commercial breaks and watch the programme in about 12 minutes. More or less.

It just feels like I would be more efficient that way.

Going for a Walk

I'm not fond of exercise for the sake of exercise. Keeping fit solely for the sake of it, in some twisted belief that this will forestall death is foolishness to me. There's also the individuals that become as addicted to exercise as some do chocolates, beer or cigarettes. It's still an addiction.

Exercise for a goal I have no problem with encouraging. Trying out for a team, rehabbing after an injury, too fat are all good goals, all good reasons to exercise.

I am a bit too fat. While I believe the averages medical personnel have determined to be a bit on the thin side, I know I'm over by a good twenty pounds or so. I've been walking. With the extra time I currently have on my hands, it's been easier to be regular at this and I take a half-hour to an hour walk most every day. I vary the path a bit to keep things interesting. I plug myself into my iPod and off I go.

And I think. Playing with my 'toys' I work on the items I'm writing, trying to work out how the next bit should go. Some days the characters give me something, some days they don't. Some days my mind wanders a bit, despite my efforts to work while I walk. Some days I come up with a totally different idea and, try as I might to not get distracted by the new idea, I do.

Yesterday was a new idea day. Figuring out what to do with it while not slowing down work on the things that are almost done is the next trick. Maybe on today's walk I can figure that out.

It's been awhile

I may have gone a little eBay mad today. It's easier to do that now than when I first started eBaying. That involved a lot more going out and getting money orders. PayPal makes it so much easier to spend a lot of money on eBay that you hope you don't regret in a week.

Time will tell.

Me am a Sucker

I'm a sucker for 'drive-in' type movies (the sort of movie made inexpensively with the expectation that most patrons wouldn't be watching much of the movie anyway). I'm also a sucker for programmes that have been restored and/or remastered. I'm also a sucker for low priced DVDs.

These interests collided with a purchase I made yesterday: 'Drive-In Cult Classics Volume 2'. This 4 double-sided DVD collection boasts 8 movies and for which I paid the princely sum of $10. 6 of the 8 movies boast that they have been remastered, either from high quality film prints or the original negative. 2 are in widescreen. One movie boasts Donald Pleasance and Peter Cushing!

So I bit.

I've scanned a couple of the movies to see what they look like. The transfer on 'Madman of Mandoras', the movie transferred from the negative, looks quite nice for the couple minutes I watched. There did appear to be a slight gatefloat type shudder to the transfer but I'm not sure if I was imagining it, if it was only for a reel or what. I'm going to try to talk myself into watching it soon and perhaps I'll figure it out then. The set also contains the extended for TV version of the film which bears the more colourful title 'They Saved Hitler's Brain'.

So far it looks like it was worth the $10. Hopefully more to follow on this one.

C'mon Brett

'I will always be a Packer.'

Really? You had to say that in your first press conference as a Jet? Really?

Dude, if you have a messy public breakup with one girl, you don't tell the next one that you'll always love that other girl. Even if it's true. I'm stupid and I know that much.

But you've always been honest, often stupidly so. I can relate to that.

Favrey and the Jets

I'll admit it; I've been far too wrapped up into the whole Favre soap opera during the last week. And why not? I've had the time available to it and I'm fascinated with the Packers and Mr. Favre so I might as well have been.

My short answer about the whole thing - It was a mess on both ends.

The downside to it was that I let it get to me a bit. It's like when friends fight and you're in the middle, understanding why everyone's upset but just wishing they'd all let it go so you can get back to watching the movie without all the tension.

Speaking of movies, I considered going to see 'The Dark Knight' during all this and then decided against it. It didn't seem fair to the movie. Either I'd go in extra grumpy and the movie would have no chance to succeed in my eyes or I'd go in extra grumpy and, in my need to be removed from that mindset, it would be the greatest thing ever. With the hype being as it is (although I am hearing more negative reviews of the movie now) I'm trying to be as neutral going into the movie as possible. Which isn't easy.

Now Brett Favre is a Jet. Good luck to him. I have my doubts as to how long he'll last but I hope he does well.

Not as well as the Packers though. Go Pack Go!

Where Did I Put Them?

Can't find my assessments for the past few years of my job. Basically they were 'this is what I did last year so that you should not only keep me employed but give me more money next year' documents. I thought I had them saved as files at home but maybe not. I might have paper copies of most of them, unless I tossed them out in a fit of 'will never need these again'. They'd come in handy in my attempts to generate a resume.

Even if I don't find them, it'll be okay. It was just a nice moment of panic when I went 'wait, where are they?' I don't remember last week very well, let alone two years ago, so they would be handy.

In the meantime, there's always more script to write.

Or

Or there's talk that Favre will be traded to the Vikings. So, rather than have his number retired on opening night of the season, Favre's starting streak could continue... for the Packers opponent that night?

That would pretty much suck.

Hooray?

And now it looks like Brett is back, possibly even returning to the Pack.

Weird. Not unpleasant at all! Just...weird after everything.

Curse Remains Intact

Why is there all this trouble between the Green Bay Packers and Brett Favre?

'Cause Brett's on the cover of this year's edition of the Madden video game.

Simple when you think about it.

Brief Lament

Sometimes all you can do is be there for the people left behind.

Hope we helped in this troubled time my friend.

Tidy Time

As I have some extra time available to me at the moment (especially so seeing as how I've been very lazy about looking for new employment), I've been cleaning. The first thought when I start a big clean is generally 'Man I got a lot of stuff.' The second thought is then 'Oh, forgot I had that.'

As I've been going, I've tried to be reasonable about things, scraping off a layer of items that perhaps I could live without and turn into gifts or money or something. I don't currently need to turn items into money; what I need to turn them into is more space.

Another nice thing about this is that I can change the piles a little. It's little how a store changes their layout on occasion in order for you to see different items. I rearranged my decreasingly sized pile of 'stuff to read' yesterday in an attempt to make some items that have been in the pile for awhile more obvious so that they'll get read. Once read, most of them move to the library room for longer term storage.

I can barely get in that room right now. Cleaning that out will be ... interesting.

Never fails

Went to Best Buy earlier in the week and spent money I by in large shouldn't have really spent. The next day I get my Reward Zone gift certificate in the mail.

Sigh.

Perhaps worse...

Perhaps worse than a sudden shock of bad news is knowing that the bad news is coming, that each ring of the phone may be the one that communicates sadness. While you never wish it to arrive, at least once it does you can stop being afraid of the phone ringing.

Just a Thought

Beauty is fleeting; stupidity is forever.

Wii breaks my back

I've been trying to not start getting involved with video games now that I have a little extra time on my hands. As much as I enjoy them, I know what kind of time they can demand of me. A really good one is like a good book; they become impossible to put down. Even with the extra mobility that playing my Nintendo Wii offers, it still feels like I'm sitting on the couch playing games all day rather than getting something done.

A few months ago, I bough Metroid Prime 3 on sale. I left it in the wrapper until it was time to play it. Friday I broke down and started playing it. Excellent game so far. The point and shoot interface worked better than I expected and quickly became second nature. I had to kinda prop my arm up in order to keep it pointed at the TV but that seemed like a minor detail.

Minor detail at least until my back started to flare up on Saturday. I'm really trying to not play today and give my back a little rest but it's not easy. I want to know what's next!

Allergic to Hype

"How can you say that?!?" Pete exploded. Pete explodes in surprise on a pretty regular basis but this particular explosion was about a month ago after I had declared my belief that the upcoming 'The Dark Knight' movie would suck.

His explosion was not unsurprising and was not the first time I'd received a reaction of shock or surprise to my declaration that I disbelieved in the positive quality of this film. It's not the first time I've said this sort of thing about a film nor do I expect it to be the last. You see, I'm allergic to hype.

I learned as a child to fight the urge to get too excited over things. My imagination is such that I can generally imagine something more exciting than the reality. If I spend too much time pondering how awesome something is to be, chances are that the version I've 'seen' in my head will be better than anything on screen and I'll be disappointed. The lower I set my expectations and the less I think about it, the more likely I am to enjoy myself. If I don't end up enjoying myself, I know something is wrong. Heck, I set my expectations so low for 'Electra' that I managed to enjoy myself. Not by much, but I think my point is made.

Now, being a comic book geek, I've been hearing about how 'awesome' this 'The Dark Knight' movie is for about six months straight now, apart from a few weeks when we enjoyed 'Iron Man' and 'Hulk'. There is no way I can build my expectations that high for that long and have it pay off with anything but disappointment. Even if it is a great film, as many of my friends have already said it is, and I go in expecting a great film, then it'll be hard to be excited. I got what I expected. If I expect crap and get great film, I'll be happy.

Yes, 'The Dark Knight' sucks and I'll continue to believe that until I see it. After that, I can have a real opinion.

Watched the new Gong Show last night

I have memories of the original Gong Show, more I think from its recycled syndicated life than its original run. This new Gong Show felt very much the same in general: weird acts doing weird things in front of a panel of 'D' list (no offense meant to them) celebrities. I did laugh rather enthusiastically a couple times, oddly with the proceedings rather than at them, so the show succeeded in that regard.

I also came to the conclusion that Andy Dick is this generation's Charles Nelson Reilly, insomuch that, in thirty years when they replay these shows, the young people of that day will be more familiar with his game show work than anything else. And they both have a weird vibe to them. Andy Dick is just more of a ... well more of a dick about it I suppose.

Sorry Chuck.

A Moment of Silly

So then I told Billy 'If you continue to do that, there's a good chance that your arm will fall off.' He continued to do it and his arm fell off.

Zombies shouldn't do jumping jacks.

Torn

Part of me is fascinated by history, is interested in baseball, and, therefore, wishes to protect baseball history such as Yankee Stadium.

Part of me wants to help destroy the place, with a bazooka preferably. I don't care for New York in general.

Wanna drop someone's IQ by 90%?

Put a steering wheel in front of them. Geez!

'Darkness' - The Vampire Edition review

Before seeing the DVD in the store, I don't recall having heard of 'Darkness' before. I'm sure I must have read about it in some passing article at some point as the movie is from 1992 and I read a LOT about 'fantastic' films, but no information about it flared in my memory. That the case identified it as a 'cult classic' and that it had been restored for this release became enough for me to become curious.

Not so curious that I'd watch it immediately mind. I reviewed some of the extra features, saw how the restoration had improved the visuals and waited for the moment when I could watch it without interruption. As it turned out, that was a couple days ago.

It's small town America. A vampire kills our hero's family, altering them into vampires. The morning's sunlight ends their unholy existence. With nothing left to him, he begins hunting the creature, looking for revenge. A group of young people return to their town after a concert to find much of the town has been turned, most of their families included. Our hero tries to help them survive to daybreak.

It's an interesting movie and even now, a couple days later. I'm not complete sure if I enjoyed it or not. Some of the movie is let down by the do-it-yourself nature of its making as many of the night time scenes are very dark, some of the acting can be awkward (moreso in the 'normal' scenes than the horror scenes oddly enough), and some of the sound recording is a bit poor. I also didn't care for some of the editing choices. Some scenes are apparently edited for some artistic effect and I felt it more annoying than anything else. The characters are not introduced in a traditional manner and I found it difficult to keep track of character names or know who they were.

It's that lack of traditional manner that I also really enjoy about the movie. Often in movies characters get a chance to identify themselves, almost standing up in front of the audience, saying their name and stating their cliche ('Hi, I'm Beth and I'll be the stuck up rich girl for this movie.'). 'Darkness' feels very much like a documentary in this regard, with events being captured by a camera for posterity. Long time friends don't say things to each other that they already know in order to explain themselves to the audience.

The way that the vampires are treated is also very interesting. Movie vampires are generally sexy characters that hypnotize their prey into wanting the kiss of the vampire. In this movie, the turned are almost beasts, hunting in packs for those they can bite. Of the few (if not only) actual bite scenes in the movie is not a calm moment as victim sighs and vampire bites, it is a fight with the stronger vampire winning out, wounding its prey until others can join it and truly bring down the blood feast.

The gore effects, of which there are many, are also quite good, very impressive considering the no doubt low budget of the film. Lots of blood spurting and flesh melting and things like these.

All in all, as I noted, an interesting film but I'm not sure if I enjoyed it. Or perhaps how much I enjoyed it. From some of the special features, it appears this was the first in a trilogy. Part of me is keen to see the other two, part not so much.

Mildly recommended for those interested in low budget horror or gore films. I doubt anyone else would very this interesting at all.

Survey says!

I've got all these forms and things to fill out so that the outplacement group can get to know me better and, at least in theory, be in a better position to help me find something interesting to do. One section of the survey would list four jobs at a time and I'd rate my first and second choice of the four. The results came back that I have a high interest in the literary field.

All I could do was laugh and feel confident I'd filled it out correctly.

Announcement Type Thing

I don't talk about my day job much online. There's a good reason for that. I've been near to a situation where individuals have gotten dismissed from their job for complaining about it online. Admittedly, this was slightly above normal complaining but it was still a reminder: be careful what you type.

Since I have this mindset, why am I bringing up my day job? Simple, I currently don't have one. My employer of multiple years went through an employee reduction recently and I was part of it. My last day was July 3rd. It was a sad day for all.

The upside is that the company is being very nice about it. I've got outplacement classes to assist me with getting myself back in the job searching mode as well as a severance package that I consider generous. In the short term, I'll be good. Long term, this might be a good thing or really good thing. If I have to be in this position, at least I'm excited about it. A little nervous but excited.

Let's see what's next, hmm?

Tomorrow is my Independence Day...

...but i'm not looking forward to it like I am Friday.

In brief

'Time for a Change' is coming...

...in more ways than one.

I'll Explain Later...

You know, I wanted some more time off but this is ridiculous...

I have new comics again!

Got my hair cut today during my 'tired and want to sleep more but can't so I can stay up and sleep tonight to go back to work tomorrow after having been on 3rd shift' period. Since my barber shop is next to my comic shop, I picked up three weeks worth of books today. Best yet, I can go back tomorrow and get more!

The 'Secret Invasion' just keeps getting deeper and deeper...

-Steve

Brief note on the previous post

The story of El Muerte Rojo is one I’ve wanted to tell for some time. It is a sad story really, one of loss and pain, a story of lashing out, a fall from grace and things like these. The story arc is all there in my head, waiting for use as it has been since I came up with it in the waning days of the EEW. The question has been how to use the story. Text is an awkward medium with which to deliver this particular tale due to the style of the story but it’s currently my only way to deliver it. If I can find a way to keep it interesting in a text format, perhaps by telling it in a unique manner, then it’ll happen. Probably here.

The Mask of the Red Death

I died in that ring. In moments I will live in it again.

My enemies conspired against me as they sought my destruction. My person was stolen from me. My face, my being, was ripped away from me. This is what remains: pain, suffering, anger.

I will show all these things. I will vent my anger on my opponents to make them suffer. My pain will be transferred to them. They have no understanding of what they’ve unleashed. They will know that which I have lost: fear.

I am El Muerte Rojo. I am destruction and doom. I am the devastator of hope.

My music hits. It is finally time for all to see what I have become.

I don't miss this often when I'm sick

For various reasons, I haven't been to the comic book store since May 21st. I have not gotten new comics in three weeks.

I don't miss it like I thought I would. Weird.

Just a thought

You're only as good as your last failure. In a pinch, your successes will be hard for others to recall but your failures will spring readily to mind.

'Cloverfield' thoughts

I saw 'Cloverfield' last weekend. It's the American Monster movie from the first person perspective of the humans running in fear of the creature destroying the city. It's not bad but it didn't quite click either. I found it increasingly difficult to believe that the people we were following would continue to bother with the camera. Part of the problem may have been my recent re-watching of 'Diary of the Dead', George A. Romero's latest zombie movie, which uses a similar story telling style. The characters in that movie start out in a position where this sort of activity would seem natural and discussion over this becomes part of the story. In 'Cloverfield' there's just too much running to make lugging a camera around seem reasonable. The movie barely runs 80min which suggests that the filmmakers found it difficult to keep the story interesting from this perspective. While I applaud their apparent lack of desire to fill out the movie to a minimum of 90 mins, it does make it feel more like an experiment that never completely gelled.

I don't care for the design of the creature but am willing to note that's a personal preference. You get a good look at it over the course of the movie but it's not in the movie much. Given the way the story progresses, this makes sense but it is still a little disappointing. That's probably due to my previous experience with watching giant monster movies and having the expectation that the creature will be on screen for a good, oh, half the film.

Due to the story telling style, we rightfully learn little about the creature itself (not unlike the ghouls in 'Night of the Living Dead' to return to that reference point). It's not important what the creature is or where it came from, the important point is that it is here. This lack of information got my buddy George all sorts of curious and we watched one of the few extras on the disc as it claimed to discuss the creature in more length. This is where I got annoyed.

The idea for the movie came from a trip to Japan and seeing all the Godzilla toys (good start). America hasn't really had a creature movie since King Kong (starting to go downhill, the idea that they were apparently trying to project was that American movies haven't had an identifiable giant monster creature character since Kong but the way the statement is made, one would be left thinking that there hasn't been a American Monster movie since 1933 which is very untrue) and they decided it was time. They then give us no concrete information regarding the creature but provide insights as to the sort of things they were thinking might be true about the creature as it destroys New York. The designer gets very enthusiastic about the idea that the creature could be a lost infant crying out for its parents. At this point I grew annoyed because, from his manner, he seemed to think this was a new concept. "In the sixties," I noted to our group, "the British called that movie Gorgo." On the way home I also recalled the Japanese 'Gappa' which used the same idea. By their phrasing they showed either a lack of knowledge on the subject (which isn't necessarily a bad thing as it might prevent them from falling into the same cliches as the earlier kaiju films) or a deliberate attempt to restate history (which made me question how much of a misphrasing that the earlier line was about Kong).

It's worth seeing but that's about it. I think I'm also annoyed because it's the sort of thing I would have liked to do but, obviously, didn't.

Call me Oscar...

...cause I've sure been a grouch of late. Not that some people haven't deserved a little wrath. Some of the people that have found themselves targets would always deserve it. They're just getting hit a little harder than normal.

I'm not sure what the reason is. I've been tired of late and it might be the spring weather. Might have something to do with the tension in my back getting to me and disrupting my sleep last week. Might be a lot of little things rolled up into one.

What it is, is annoying.

Stabbing Westward makes me think, curse it

I believe that 'I Won't Become the Thing I Hate' except for the fact that I'm no longer sure what I hate. That's a bit disconcerting. There are plenty of things that I'm not that I don't hate but what must I avoid to remain myself?

Am confused.

Make room! Make room!

The hard drive where I was slowly collecting all my music filled up last week. It was the first external drive I bought for this computer. I got it once I realized the 80GB that came with the Mac probably wouldn't be enough to support the DVD work I wanted to do as well as store my music. The 160GB drive was a good place to store the DVD work. Then it became a good place to store my iTunes folder, especially once I got the 500GB drive last fall to store all my video stuff on. At least until it filled up. I would have moved it to the 500GB drive but it didn't have room for it.

Yesterday I bought a 1TB external drive. Hopefully that'll keep me for awhile. $240, not bad. I think that's what I paid for the 160GB drive years ago.

Progress is good

Last night's read through went well. I got to see the flow of the story, identified some gaps in the story telling as well as came up with ideas to resolve some of them. Also found a scene or two that needed to be swapped around in the order. Typos, lots of typos, especially of the 'what word was that supposed to be?' variety.

So, there's still some stuff to throw into the story and maybe some stuff that needs to come out yet, not necessarily entire scenes but the occasional sentence or paragraph, mostly stuff that's filling a purpose now but might be redundant when the entire thing is pieced together.

I wanted this done a couple months ago already but it wasn't ready and saw no reason to rush it for my own self-imposed deadline. I think I've a much better handle on it now than I did a couple months ago. I just need to keep at it...along with everything else I'm doing.

Into the edits...

Getting close now

I very definitely feel that I'm in the home stretch of one of my writing projects. I hate this part of the process.

Don't get me wrong, the feeling that I'm close to completion is a sweet one. The home stretch is more work than the rest of the creative process, to me anyway. I've already edited and hacked at this story more than I normally would. I'm reading through the edit, digging for all the awkward phrases and mistyped words and gaps in the story and it's work. Thinking up scenes is fun, the mind is free to imagine what it may and once a few scenes are in place, the rest can come like a waterfall, rushing into place. This part is less free, more crack filling.

It's also the part of the process where I turn on my work. It's all horrible and I can't see why I'm bothering to finish this fool thing when it's so horrible. No one's paying attention anyway.

In the end, all will be well. For the moment, it's all a pain in the kester.

Reminder as we head for the summer

The larger the crowd is, the smaller their cumulative IQ will be. If you get a really big crowd, the decisions get worse and worse.

Probably explains the results of some elections.

Isn't it always the way?

Thought I had something to say. Sat down, brought up the page, can't remember what it was.

Bother.

The sound of the voice in my head

For the past few days I've been watching a show from the sixties called 'Fractured Flickers'. The basic premise is that they took silent movie footage, re-edited it, and add their own voices to it. Since it was a Jay Ward Production and I've enjoyed the other Jay Ward Productions I've seen in the past, I figured this would be pretty funny and I was right. Found the entire series on sale at Amazon. Good deal.

The show is hosted by Hans Conreid and the sound of my thoughts has been changing to his voice a lot since I started watching. It's not a bad thing. I just wish I could talk like him, even a little. It's a rich sounding voice and fun at the same time. Hooray for Hans!

Just curious

Do you know anybody that regularly watches any of the Networks' Nightly News shows?

Me neither.

For that matter, I barely watch any of the Local News shows. Seems like such a lot of time to spend to learn so little.

Commercial Weakness

I'm not normally a sucker for commercial spokespeople but I must admit that I'm keen to get the AT&T U-verse stuff because Stephen Root does a commercial for them. I love that guy.

Of course, I did also see a retro-commercial today for A-1 sauce that featured Boris Karloff that made be want A-1 sauce so maybe I'm just in a suggestive sort of place today.

Messed Up Spidey

In the mid 90’s, Marvel Comics decided that Spider-Man needed some help. The sales were down, the stories had become routine and they already regretted marrying Spidey to his long time flame Mary-Jane Watson (in 1987). Referencing a tale from the 70’s, the believed dead clone of Peter Parker returned, calling himself Ben Reilly after his aunt and uncle. This individual was later indentified as the true Peter Parker and that the married Peter, the one we’d followed for 20 years was the clone.

This attempt to revitalize the Spider-Man books is considered one of, if not the, lowest points in the history of Spider-Man comics, if not comics altogether. Due to turmoil behind the scenes at the publishing house, a possibly intriguing story became increasingly convoluted and complicated. Fan reaction was increasingly poor and sales became affected. It was soon explained that the test showing who was a clone was a trick, Peter had always been Peter and Ben had always been a clone. Long believed dead Norman Osborn (aka the Green Goblin) revealed himself as the mastermind behind this and other assorted recent traumas in Peter’s life. By the end of the final battle, Norman was once again the Green Goblin, Peter Parker was once again Spider-Man and the clone was dead.

Time passed. The stories improved. I believe sales slowly rose. Spidey remained married to Mary-Jane (she would disappear for periods of time but they remained married).

Leadership at Marvel changed. Once again it was determined that Spidey lacked … something. Tinkering was made to his abilities, most of which were largely forgotten about as soon as they were granted. The marriage to Mary-Jane was once again considered a problem. Spider-Man revealed his secret identity to the world. Things grew complicated.

But! There was a plan. We were told not to worry, all would be fixed in ‘Brand New Day’.

First, all the bad things had to come to a head in ‘One More Day’.

As part of Peter’s revealing of his secret identity, his family became a target. His Aunt May, a character who had been depicted as old and feeble since the comic was launched in the 60’s, is accidently shot by an agent of one of Spidey’s villains. The wound is fatal and she barely clung to life. Peter’s life is based on guilt and this additional guilt becomes too much to bear. Losing his mind, he does whatever he can to fix this, do whatever to have her healed, despite the fact that multiple individuals, including Doctors (such as Strange and Richards), note her age and that it might just be her time. Only one individual offers him a ray of hope. “I can heal her,” the demon Mephisto says, “make it like it never happened. But I want something in return: your marriage. I fix this for you and you will have never been married to your wife.”

They will never remember the marriage, nor their deal with the ‘devil, but everything will be fixed. Mary-Jane whispers something in Mephisto’s ear, the offer is taken and, magically, history is altered. Aunt May was never shot because now no one remembers who revealed themselves to be Spider-Man, Mary-Jane is off somewhere and long-dead Harry Osborn is returned to life.

The stories after have been good. Perhaps sales are returning. But ‘One More Day’? Worse than the Clone Saga.

While the premise of the Clone Saga was a reboot, it used the history of the Spider-Man comic to provide the ‘out’ for the reboot. While many felt at the time that this would have made 20 years of stories ‘worthless’ since they were the adventures of a ‘fake’ Spidey, it is not a complicated premise to understand. The stories all happened, even if it was to a ‘fake’ Spidey.

With the change to history caused by ‘One More Day’, it is unclear what has been affected. How is Harry now alive? How are thousands of other stories affected by this change? If this doesn’t alter ‘everything’, what has it all changed? It’s complicated. And annoying. They found a way to make things worse in their attempt to make them better.

(Post 175)

Current projects

- Getting my A+ Certification - Completed 5/2
- Pulling files from my backup DVDs and arranging them on my 500GB HD - closing in on done
- Finishing the 'complete' story from last year's 'Fresh Fiction for Friday' start - almost done, I can taste it...
- Spring cleaning - barely started
And probably some stuff I'm doing that I don't remember...

On an unrelated note, 'Iron Man' was beyond excellent, perhaps the best comic to film translation to date. Can't wait for more...

Anger fades

Bought some used wrestling DVDs last week and started skimming them to verify that they'd playback okay, weren't all scratched to smeg, ya know, worth the bargain I got them for. Since they were all WWE DVDs from the past five years or so, I couldn't avoid seeing glimpses of Chris Benoit.

I found it interesting that I didn't get mad. Sad yes, but not mad. I even smiled once, remembering what it felt like to be a fan before the ... unpleasantness.

My first instinct was to wince in pain though. Still, I found it an interesting change in my reaction. Dunno what it means exactly for the long term.

Just a thought

I don't believe it's a secret that the major networks (that which was just called TV when I was young) are dying. Cable/Satellite channels and the Internet have eroded their power. The recent writer strike did them no favours either. How different are the big four from most pay tv? Apart from the FCC, nothing really.

My feeling is that the next step will be the rats abandoning the sinking ship. Within the next year, perhaps two, a network show that is still popular will come up for renewal. Rather than just accepting the renewal from it's current home, the show will shop around for a better deal and get it.

I'm kinda hoping it's 'The Simpsons' because I think that would be interesting. It's animated so it has a bit more flexibility to continue (even at this age) than a live-action programme, it has a large following (revived by the success of the movie) and its creator has already had very public problems with Fox. If Cartoon Network wanted to split Adult Swim off into its own channel, don't you think they'd want something like brand-new episodes of the Simpsons to lead the charge?

Just a thought.

It worked!

Remembered! Had feedback to leave on eBay.

I feel better now.

Blast it all

Ever get the feeling you should be doing something but can't remember what? I have that now. I've the feeling I should be doing something or saying something here but can't remember what.

Oh well. Maybe I'll remember once I hit post.

A late though about a late performer

Won't a zombie Charlton Heston fight for your right to bear arms against him?

Kept alive on sugary sweets

I'm in class this week instead of work, getting educated towards a certification to prove that I have a clue about what I do at work. While there have been a number of interesting points and I've been learning (or re-learning in a lot of cases) things, there's been a lot to cover and a lot of review. I left yesterday with my head feeling stuffed.

Luckily the place I'm at for class believes in feeding us (apart from lunch) so there's been free coffee, Rice Krispes treats, donuts, etc. It's hard to behave when I've got a basket of candy within arms reach. I know I probably should since I've been sitting all day for this class and I want to get closer to my 'fighting' weight again, especially if George gets that 'bouncy house' for Amy's graduation party and we wrestle one more time.

One more piece should be okay. Right?

And another of my favorite performers retires in March 2008

If I was stranded on a desert island with only one DVD worth of wrestling, I would hope it was packed with Ric Flair matches and promos so watch it all night and then watch it a little longer. Woooo! Space Mountain! Woooo! Four Horsemen!

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

As I am not a kiss stealin', wheelin' dealin', limousine ridin', jet flyin' son of a gun (Woooo!) but Ric Flair always will be:

Thank you sir.

Not much

Getting better but still recovering from being sick. Things started to loosen up nicely yesterday but I'm still a bit congested and wheezy. Still, getting better.

Wish I had something more interesting to stay but, at the moment, I don't.

A Tale from 'Video Games Live'

With a quiet ‘ah!’ I located the graphic novel section of the Borders media store we were in. The pre-concert activities for ‘Video Games Live’ were not as extensive as we believed they would be. Since Borders was across the street and open, we wandered around the store for a bit as a distraction.

Mark and I were in the science fiction section. Knowing his past connections with comics, I had been keeping an eye open for that section in order to make a few recommendations. It wasn’t so much that I expected him to buy anything that day but I just wanted to give him some things to keep in mind when he saw the right price for them.

As we approached the wall, I realized that the two shelves we were nearest was made up of collections of Japanese works. Gesturing towards the expanse before us, I noted “Welcome to the world of manga.”

“Is there something you were looking for?” creaked a voice to my left. Believing this to be a store employee, I mentally prepared my standard polite ‘Just looking’ response. It was not an employee.

The individual was an incredibly slender young man of Asian descent. Were it not for the long black trenchcoat he wore, I’m not sure we would have seen him from the side view. As I observed him, he was carefully returning a book to the shelf, using hand gestures so elaborate that they would have made Bela Lugosi proud. Had he been older and more wizened, I would have expected him to offer me a Gremlin. My creeped-out meter quickly pegged out at full. I returned to the books before me.

A few minutes later, after being a bad influence on Mark’s wallet (not at that specific time, none of us bought anything that night), we crossed his path again. As he flipped through some book, he started burbling aloud about the attempt at censorship in the panel before him. He was alone but speaking at full volume. Did he know we were behind him and was hoping to start a conversation? I’ve no clue. Mark and I exchanged a glance. He expressed an interest in looking at the soundtrack CDs and off we went.

I consider myself to be a bit odd or weird, but in a friendly way. I’ve been to many conventions and often been around those less socially capable than myself. Sometimes these events collect the truly unusual. This guy was one of the ‘best’.

I’ve nothing against him or any of the other awesomely strange ones. This guy just creeped me out.

When telling the story, Mark does way too good a job imitating him. I’m not quite sure what that means…

Sick again

Throat's all sore. The upside is that I sound more like Dick the Bruiser when I talk that I do normally. It would be more fun if it didn't hurt.

What was that shadow?

After leaving the theatre and bidding George good night, I walked off and was alone in the parking lot. I trusted nothing. A parking lot, even a brightly lit one, cannot be trusted after a zombie movie. Every corner is a possibility for attack. I even checked the back seat of my car once I got in it. You can't be too careful.

We both enjoyed 'George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead'. Just so you know.

Regarding Daylight Savings Time

Most people get presents on their birthday. I get to lose an hour of sleep.

A Quick Letter to Brett Favre

Speaking as someone who considers himself a fan of the Green Bay Packers and has been watching the team since his youth, it has been a joy to watch you play for the team. Thank you.

I hope you get to enjoy doing 'nothing' for a very long time.

Just stopping by

Nothing complicated to say today. I realize I've been slacking of late, been busier than normal, sick, blah, blah, blah excuses all of them. This is my practice/play/express area and will only improve my skills if I use it as such.

Anyway.

I've never really considered myself popular because I wasn't that guy in school. I wasn't the guy that was going to be voted 'best' or 'top' anything at the end of my senior year of high school because I wasn't known by everyone in that way. That lack of status always pleased me because I never sought it. I am who I am. Sure I 'jellyfish' a bit by not being very forceful about my opinions at times (I am willing to let other people be right if it's not worth the argument) but that's still me being me. For what that's worth.

Occasionally I run into other people I know when I'm out with one set of friends ('crossing the streams' as it were) but not often. That's generally the role my other friends with me play. 'Oh this is such-and-such from work' or 'that's the guy I was telling you about that I know through my brother' or whatever.

Last night George and I went to the car show and it was my turn to be that guy. Senor popular. Ran into a couple sets of friends from work and a group via brother, all within the space of 10-15 minutes or so. It was kinda fun.

It unnerves me a little as well. After that I crossed the paths of the Compound Geeks and the Point Crew. People I work with have been really nice to me the past week or so. Am I sick and no one's told me yet? I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I should really just enjoy it while it lasts but I guess I'm a little paranoid as well.

Just me being me.

Just a Thought

One of the best ways to maintain rulership over a people is to keep them divided and distracted. In this way, they cannot unite and remove rulership that they find oppressive or unworthy. (The best way to maintain rulership would be to keep everyone happy but that's not really an option.) We see that today. After 9/11 Americans were briefly allowed to unite against a common foe. Once it was realized that there wasn't a clear, obvious foe to face, a 'bad guy' like in the movies, we were quickly resplintered. Certainly, there was a target we were given, a specific face to put on the enemy but that face couldn't be tracked down and there was no proof that said individual had anything to do with the specific event that he was being blamed for and now he's not being officially sought for that event. Not that anybody really knows that.

Builds up fast

The other week I noticed that the debut album of one of my favourite bands was not in my iTunes. This led me to go through my CDs and see what else may have gotten missed over the years. I figured it wouldn't take long since I'd been good at getting all my music on the hard drive.

I was wrong.

My folder size has jumped about, oh, 10GB in the past couple weeks. And I'm not even close to being done.

The best part about it is that I've been getting to hear some music that I haven't heard in years. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed hearing some of these bands. Good stuff.

Regarding the Super Bowl

*points at the Patriots*

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

18-1! According to what you said earlier in the season, it wouldn't be worth it without winning the Super Bowl. And you didn't! Ha! You suck!

(See past rant regarding the suckiness of Boston, repeat)

That... that was fun...

If the thin quality of my wallet is anything to go by, I'm doing my part to stimulate the economy. I guess it's a pity that I'm stimulating other countries as well and not keeping it all at home.

I need to stop stimulating economies and start stimulating women. It's not likely but it's worth a shot. I guess.

The problem with...

The problem with doing things is that it doesn't leave you any time with which to get anything done.

Nothing Like...

There is nothing quite like conversing with a young lady so pretty that she makes you feel older, balder, fatter and scruffier each second that she smiles at you for fixing her printer.

Not sure

Not quite sure which is more odd: the fact that someone is planning to make a movie based on the video game 'Gauntlet' or the fact that I know someone auditioning for a role in it.

And she's not going for the role of Blue Valkyre. Pity.

The problem with...

The problem with getting a little exercise is that it shows you how little exercise you get.

The Adventure Ended - Aftermath

If every good adventure has a backstory, I guess it should have an aftermath as well.

George, perhaps not for the first time, has vowed to never return to that state. I’d love to say something like that but I know it wouldn’t stick. I tend to have business there in that place.

In an effort to figure out where we went wrong in missing the connection to 23, George did some investigating online. Turns out that, while 90 and 23 do cross paths, they don’t connect in any way. The directions he’d gotten were wrong. It wasn’t our fault.

Was it all worth it?

Sure. As tiring as the experience was, there were some interesting things to see and experience. Again, while not a fan, the ‘Star Wars’ stuff was neat to see and I’m glad I got to see it.

Writing through this has also let me ponder the museum itself. Right after we got back from the trip, I wanted to go back, feeling that my impression of the museum would be different on a less crowded weekday and without the need to monitor small children as I went through it. As I’ve reconsidered it, I’ve decided that, on the whole, the Museum of Science and Industry was a disappointment. In my opinion, there was too much of it incomplete, messy or pointless.

Let me explain what I mean by using the word ‘pointless’. As we first started down the ‘Yesterday’s Main Street’ exhibit, George and Amy reacted very positively. It’s similar to the ‘Streets of Old Milwaukee’ exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum insomuch that both show what a main street would look like around 1900 or so. The difference is that the ‘Streets’ exhibit in Milwaukee has depth, corners, levels. ‘Yesterday’ is a brief street in comparison. The only advantages are that the street is wider, has the ice cream store and had a couple young ladies in period dress near the movie theatre that was actually operating.

Another problem is that ‘Yesterday’ doesn’t fit into the theme of the museum. There is no context to the exhibit, no comments on the technology of the day and how it’s led to what we have today. It’s just a collection of store fronts that belongs in a natural history museum not in a science and industry museum.

While I’ve not been to the revamped ‘Discovery World’ museum in Milwaukee and hadn’t been in the version 2 setup since it opened, it has generally been more focused than what I saw in Chicago. Don’t get me wrong; the Museum of Science and Industry has some really excellent and unique things in it. There’s a submarine, the trains and planes; it has stuff that draws the interest. I just don’t feel there’s enough interest to make a two and a half hour drive down there on any kind of regular basis.

Or maybe even ever again.

(Post #150 = Hooray!)

The Adventure Concludes... Where Faquowe?

Immediately upon exiting the underground parking structure we were faced with a decision: Should we turn right and go back the way we came or go left? The highway sign pointing to the left indicated that highway 90 was that way and that was the first number on our directions. George chose left.

Later on, this moment would be referred to as mistake number one.

We drove through some unattractive city streets and George immediately began second guessing his decision. We were still seeing 90 signs and considered this a good thing. A few blocks later we were directed onto the skyway for 90. There were no direction options at this point; we could either get on the skyway or not. We did.

Turned around as I was, I wasn’t sure which direction we were now headed in. It didn’t feel right but I put it down to the tollway structure that I’d long found confusing in Illinois. We soon paid the $3 skyway toll (robbery!) and were off.

It didn’t take long before we passed a sign that read ‘Welcome to Indiana’. Wha?

Evidently Indiana has a tollway as well as we were soon encouraged to pay fifty cents for the privilege of using their roads. At that booth we double checked our math. ‘This may be a dumb question but is this Indiana?’ It was. We were heading East instead of West. Easily fixed, we’d just turn around at the next exit and head back.

One of the problems that I have with the Illinois tollway is that it doesn’t like to have ‘matching’ ramps. By that I mean that the ratio between entrance and exit ramps is not 1:1. Through most of Wisconsin it is a 1:1 ratio so you know that, if you exit the freeway, you can easily get back on it, even in the opposite direction if you like. Illinois is not like that. Neither is the chunk of Indiana that we got to see. All exit ramps but no on ramps to be seen. We kept driving.

George was now noticeably uncomfortable. Part of this was us being turned around but most of it was because Amy was now very late for her fun. We’d stayed at the museum longer than expected and now we were lost in Indiana. Amy should already be there relaxing!

After another aborted attempt to exit the highway, George pulled onto the shoulder, eyeing a gap in the barrier between the Eastbound and Westbound lanes. ‘What are you going to do?’ Amy asked, concern in her voice. I knew that tone, polite as it was delivered. It is not an actual request for information. Amy knew exactly what he planned to do, as I did. That tone is meant to question the action that everybody knows is to be taken.

‘Let’s not question it,’ I noted as George grumbled a ‘Nevermind’. ‘The worst thing that can happen is that we get caught and, at this point, I’ll help pay the ticket.’ One illegal U-turn later and we were finally Westbound and down. Of course, that also meant we had to pay the tolls again so our getting turned around cost us $7 in funds and about a half-hour of time.

The boys were distracted with the movie playing through the DVD player and the toys they’d gotten in the gift shop. They expressed their concerns briefly over the situation but left us alone when we said everything would be okay. Kara had fallen asleep before we’d even made the skyway, a fact made known to us after George had quoted Simpsons with a loud ‘So long stink town!’ as we got on the skyway and gotten yelled at for it. Kara had been far over tired and needed the sleep. Good for her.

90 took us through Downtown Chicago and the idiots that drive there. George grumbled at many of them and I joined his quiet chorus. Halfway through downtown, Kara awoke screaming, evidently from a bad dream. She refused to be calmed down but did stop screaming. Eventually. She would cry for a half-hour before she completely calmed down. George’s visible tension grew.

By the time she relaxed, we’d already followed the split of the highway to continue on 90. We could have still taken 94 and headed directly home but George was still expecting to deliver Amy to her fun. With Kara now out of sorts, Amy no longer had an interest in leaving us, considering it abandoning her daughter. We reasoned that (1), we’d already made the split and (2) we had lots of time yet before we reached that area. Kara should be asleep again by that time and we could make a final decision then. I don’t believe Amy had any intention of taking the opportunity if it did present itself but, since we were already on that road, there was no point in arguing.

90 was taking us to Rockford, a city that I’m unfortunately familiar with to a slight degree. I find it an unpleasant place but it was a familiar landmark. Of course, our directions had us intersecting with a highway 23 before we’d reach Rockford. The problem was that we didn’t know when that would happen. So onward we drove.

Another thing I dislike about the Illinesian tollway is the lack of quality signage. If you are on a major highway in Wisconsin, you get regular updates as to where you are and what’s near you. For instance, if you are on 94 heading west to Madison, every few miles will be a sign with an update listing the next couple exits, the distance to them and the distance remaining to Madison. It gives you a feeling of accomplishment and progress. You know you’re on the right road. Beyond knowing this was 90 to Rockford, we knew nothing. There were no ‘Rockford – so many miles left’ signs to give us a hint. There would be ‘highway whatever – 5 miles’ hints but that was the extent of it. On we drove.

Two issues started to present themselves. The van was getting low on gas. Not impossibly low on gas, not ‘about to run out’ low on gas, just ‘getting uncomfortable’ low on gas. It was also well after 19:00 and the children politely began to ask when dinner would be. Not clear on how far we had to drive before we reached the junction for 23, we tried to delay dinner until we were back in Wisconsin, or at least on 23. A number of the exits we passed weren’t promising on ramps to reenter the tollway anyway. On we drove.

We reached the junction to 20 and decided enough was enough. It was closing in on 20:00, we needed a break and food. George took the dare and pulled off the tollway. Thankfully, a gas station and a McDonalds were less than a block away, sitting right next to each other. I’m not a fan of McDonalds but, as I was suddenly very hungry, I decided to not care.

While George added gas to the tank, I visited the bathroom. Before I could leave, George met me at the door, noting it would be wise to check on our current location. Duh. We asked the very nice lady for some information in that regard and she was only too helpful, pointing at a map of Illinois to note where we were and where 23 was in relation. According to her, it was about ten minutes down the road. We discussed a few other routes to Wisconsin but all were back roads and that way led to truly being lost. We fueled up at the McDonalds and were off again.

Knowing we didn’t have far to go, George and I kept our eyes peeled for the sign to 23 but it was not forthcoming. We had to stop at yet another tollbooth which noted there was one more tollbooth between us at the state line. This seemed ominous to me. Amy began to question where 23 was but it had to be ahead of us yet as we’d seen no signs. Still, something didn’t feel right. On we drove.

We came to a city and passed through it. Something triggered in my head and I began scanning for landmarks. ‘I know where we are,’ I noted. ‘This is Rockford. I think we missed it.’ George argued against this; we’d both been searching and seen nothing for 23 so we couldn’t have missed it. Somehow, I knew we had. In fifteen minutes we’d be at the last tollbooth and about ten minutes after that we’d finally be back in Wisconsin.

And I was right.

I cheered gently as we returned to the ‘Motherland’ at 20:30ish. George quickly hopped onto 41 which would take us past Delavan and Lake Geneva. ‘How much longer until home?’ asked the boys. When I noted we had about an hour left, George grunted and muttered an expression that indicated he would be taking action to reduce that time significantly.

That’s when the fog rolled in. Deep thick heavy fog that forced George to slow down. A lesser man may have been forced to tears. George grumbled further and kept driving.

At this point, George was ever more focused on delivering Amy to her fun night out. Amy had been texting her friends, updating them with our situation, and had already told them not to expect her. George is not the sort to give up on a quest, especially when he feels like it owes someone but Kara was still awake. When asked if she’d be upset if mommy left, she replied in the affirmative. Grudgingly, George kept on driving.

We made it back to Compound 1.5 at 21:30. The ride had been three and a half hours, not really longer than the ride down to Chicago that morning when you think of it, but it felt longer. We stopped for longer periods of time on the way down so it didn’t feel like we were just in the van like we did on the way back.

It should be noted that Kara was still not tired. I made the mistake of stretching out on the floor and she starting climbing onto my chest and jumping off, landing far too close to my head for my own comfort. She giggled the whole time. She’s like that.

Anyway, the adventure was finally over, thirteen and a half hours after it began.

The Adventure Continues... Jump to Lightspeed

After a bit of investigating we found out that the ride lasted six minutes and that the area could hold seven people at a time. Seeing the length of the line in front of us, it didn’t seem that this would take all that long.

Ah, but just because they could fit seven people in there, it didn’t mean that every group ahead of us was made up of seven people. Afterall, we were only six. Once again, we were waiting in line.

It was late, we had been at the museum for hours now and the children’s ability to wait was now extremely curtailed. While they did their best not to complain, they were honest about not really wanting to be in line. They wanted to do the Ride; they just didn’t want to line up for it. Kara kept wandering around outside the line and, eventually, we stopped fighting her over this so long as she stayed near us.

Finally we were next. We entered the ride at 17:28. The museum was scheduled to close two minutes later. Overtime!

Again, I’m not a Star Wars fan, but I had been looking forward to being ‘on’ the spaceship. The cockpit of the Falcon did not disappoint in this regard. We were encouraged to flip any and all the switches we could find, bar one that would shut the ride off. George and Jason took one front row seat and Niko and myself crammed into the other. Amy and Kara sat behind us but just to the side so they too could see. The little room darkened as we fiddled with the switches and, suddenly, the ‘windscreen’ in front of us lit up. We were in space!

X-Wings and Tie Fighters flew past us in a dog fight!

It was a beautiful thing.

Rather quickly they started whipping the education on us again. Anthony Daniels came over the ship’s com system (identifying himself as the voice of C3PO and then doing the voice, Niko did not react to this moment of ‘reality’) and took us to lightspeed to our real universe. In the Falcon, we flew past Earth and our Moon, visited the reaches of the solar system, observed the radiosphere and saw what the edge of the universe might look like before returning, again via lightspeed, to the Star Wars universe and X-Wings. The situation was totally immersive, not unlike the reaction my brain has to an IMAX movie but on a much smaller scale.

As we exited the ride we expressed our glee for it. There was no question that it had been worth the wait. George felt ten again.

The lights were being turned off. The museum was closing. Finally it was time to go. By the time we collected our coats, visited the bathroom one last time and I paid for the parking it was 17:47. We had been at the museum for seven hours. No wonder we were all so tired!

Still, George is an expert driver and we had directions that would take us more directly to the Delavan/Lake Geneva area that Amy was headed for so this wouldn’t take long.

Right?

The Adventure Continues... Spinning Our Wheels

As we passed through the ‘Yesterday’s Main Street’ exhibit earlier in the day, we saw the ice cream parlour within. Now became the time to visit it. I got a sundae that turned out to be larger than I expected. I’ve grown a bit lactoic intolerant as I’ve gotten older so this was not the wisest choice I could have made.

(It’s also possible that after the ice cream is when we visited the balcony but I don’t think so. My memory is fuzzy on this set of events for some reason. Normally it’s just fuzzy.)

We returned to the main rotunda with far too much time yet to spare. While George started hunting for the Christmas tree decorated for Greece, Kara decided it was time to play with me. We directed each other into a National Geographic exhibit just down the hall. After meddling in there for a few minutes, it occurred to me that the rest of the gang had yet to follow us. Before my concern could turn into something more, in they came.

Either due to the placement of this exhibit (just off the main aisles) or due to the increasing lateness of the hour, this exhibit was pretty empty. This gave us a chance to relax and play a bit. Once Kara was distracted with map related blocks, George started watching her again, mostly so he could sit down. I tagged over to Jason and we caused some trouble.

There was a display set up like a meteorological map with a camera pointed at it and everything. Perhaps proving that the lad believes in climate change, he found every hurricane symbol in the set and spread them across the US. Then again, he could be into whole-sale destruction as well.

There was a raft that you could fit half a dozen kids on that you were supposed to point towards the North Star. Or, if you pulled on the rudder fast enough, it would slam back and forth on its moorings. This was more entertaining to Jason thereby feeding into my ‘destruction’ theory of before. We visited a nearby tropical jungle tent where he grabbed all the toy food he could, especially the soda. I quickly grabbed a fruit medley and was happy with that. We built a pyramid out of foam and then he climbed it. There was a cutaway of a plane cockpit and we joined up with the others as we played with that. Again, no real learning on my part but it was relaxing after everything else.

Finally it was closing in on 17:00 and we returned to the transportation exhibit and the Falcon ride. We were only five minutes early (or so) but they wouldn’t let us enter the line until 17:00. This led to me following Kara into the back parts of the exhibit, watching her climb onto a cable car and trying to keep her from escaping the building through the massive doors on this side of the building. I succeeded in this at least.

Then it was 17:00 and we could get in line. It wasn’t a long line so this should go pretty quickly, right?

The Adventure Continues... In a Galaxy far, far away...

After some more waiting in line, our tickets were checked and we were waved inside. The first item of business was a picture taken in front of a Star Wars backdrop. This was an official type museum picture as opposed to a ‘pause with the digital camera’ type picture. George was handed a ticket to identify which picture was ours and we were off.

It was cool.

While the exhibit did bother to try to make things educational, such as comparing the ‘science’ of a landspeeder to the science of a hovercraft, it was too much fun to be bogged down by the educational experience. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that to decry the educational experience in general as the whole concept of this museum is to distract you with the entertainment while you learn something. I’m all for that. There are just certain circumstances where the educational part of the process can feel very deliberately grafted on and this one walked that line on a lot of occasions. It was also the exhibit that I could most easily see the educational part of the process ignored the easiest. ‘Do I look at the costumes or read this panel about ‘real’ spaceships? Hello costumes!’

I spent a lot of time with the spaceship models as I like that sort of thing. I even looked at the educational real spaceships part. They were all theoretical designs for future ships. Oddly enough the ‘reel’ spaceships look more real than these did. Give it time.

Next door to this was the droid theatre. In a small stage was a mock-up of the interior of the Jawa Sandcrawler. Referencing that moment early in the original movie, C3PO laments all the trouble his buddy R2D2 gets him into. The ‘story’ then breaks away to a discussion between the slightly animatronic droid on stage and a video screen just off of it with a real robot designer. They go back and forth, we get introduced to the other real robots on stage (despite the fact that these are probably animatronic versions of the real things as well) and learn how far actual robot designs have gotten. Very interesting. Even if I hadn’t wanted to stay and watch, I had to as Jason wanted to stay and someone needed to stay with him. So I did. We arrived just at the start of the show and stayed the ten minutes or so through the whole thing.

While that happened, the rest of our group pretty much saw the rest of the exhibit! The theatre was the third of four sections of the room. George had taken his pictures and we were about ready to go. I looked at a few costumes, we walked past Vader and exited into the gift shop.

This is also where our pictures had printed out. I thought it odd that they printed all the pictures. Surely a lot of them went to waste as not everyone would want their picture. If memory serves, the package was 3 ‘big’ pictures, 4 wallet sized, a cardboard frame and a key chain for $20. Not a bad deal. It didn’t hurt that the picture turned out looking nice, even with my bald fat self in it. I almost look human! ;)

As it was the second to last day of the exhibit, the merchandise in the gift shop was on sale. George got himself a t-shirt and the children picked out toys. Even after all this, it still wasn’t even 16:00. We had chosen later tickets to the Falcon since we expected to be in there for awhile. Now what would we do?

The Adventure Continues... Post Lunch Disappointments

As we were on the ground floor and we still had a couple hours to spend before it was our turn for the Star Wars glee, we wandered around that floor for awhile.

The Colleen Moore Fairy House is the finest doll house perhaps in the history of everything. It’s a highly detailed castle that’s about as big as a person, certainly as big as a child that might have played with it. Sections are cut away to reveal the decorated interior. It was much more interesting than I expected. With that said, I wasn’t quite sure how it fit into the museum. It wasn’t scientific and hadn’t been mass produced so I’m not sure where the industry might have been for it. There was an entry room with information regarding the house so I suppose I missed it there.

We briefly passed through ‘Yesterday’s Firefighters’ which had old fire engines in it. Unfortunately there wasn’t much to look at as the room was under construction.

Next door was a large room with all sorts of exhibits about energy. Lots of buttons to push, things to spin and levers to fiddle with to be found here. Can’t say I learned much of anything but it was a fun room to play in. The children seemed to agree.

We then gravitated to a room with a pair of covered wagons in it. Interesting and the comic style artwork on the walls was nice but that’s all the room had in it.

As mentioned there was a Circus room. It was rubbish. The entryway held the worse big cat sculptures I’ve yet seen. The model circus was okay but what was the point of it? How does it fit into the concept of the museum? It didn’t. Oh, there were some fun house mirrors along the one wall in a failing attempt to add a little education to the room but it didn’t work. There was also a video screen near them that functioned similarly to a display I’ve seen in the mall. The one in the mall works better.

We also visited the ‘Eye Spy’ exhibit which felt like less of an exhibit and more of a hallway with windows. I understand that really that’s all most museum exhibits are but most of them tend to hide this better than ‘Eye Spy’ did. There was more foot traffic flowing through the exhibit than stopping in it so maybe that’s why it seemed more like a hallway than anything else? The window displays were evidently meant to be little puzzlers and be politely clever. The hallway was too crowded to really examine them. Half of the exhibit was missing anyway, removed for reasons not provided in the display.

We abandoned this section to head for a section I vaguely remembered from my youth that read ‘Racing Cars’ on the map. We passed through ‘Ships Through the Ages’ to get there. This was mostly models of ships in cases, very nice, and a mock ship’s deck which we had to climb onto. While we didn’t linger, this was on of the nicer rooms we’d been in since lunch and it was relaxing in that regard. The design of the room was pleasant, the room was clean, the exhibit was intact and it didn’t take effort to understand how it fit into the motif of the museum.

The Racing Cars were a bit of a disappointment again. Behind the glass, some were wrapped in plastic. Many were very dusty; inches thick dust. By this time I’d started to wonder if the museum had experienced a water leak but the rooms we were in that were ‘incomplete’ were spread out enough that this seemed unlikely. It’s possible that they were just remodeling a number of things at once but, you know, it really didn’t look good.

Growing slightly annoyed with all this, we headed back upstairs and then visited the balcony where we could walk through one of the planes hanging from the ceiling. The balcony ended up being less busy than anywhere else we’d been in awhile so we could let Kara run around a little, hopefully to burn off some energy. It kinda worked.

Finally, it was almost ‘that’ time. We headed back downstairs, some of us visited the bathroom one more time and we were in line. ‘Star Wars’ here we come!

The Adventure Continues... Lunchie Munchies

When the museum was designed, those designers seem to have understood that they would have crowds. The walkways are large and easy to traverse. There is plenty of seating spread out for the Food Court. The Food Court itself… well, there’s a Circus exhibit down the hall that must have been based on the Food Court.

There’s plenty of variety, which is nice, at prices that are not unexpected for a location like this (my sandwich, bag of chips, brownie and juice ran me almost $11) but it’s all about standing in lines again. We scouted the location, found tables at which to sit, George took orders from his family and scurried off to stand in line.

Now, the first problem was that we grabbed two smaller tables next to each other as there were no large tables available. Amy was set to take Kara to the bathroom so I would stay behind with the boys. In order to hold both tables we needed to have someone sitting at both. Since there were three of us, one of us would be ‘alone’. From the way we happened to sit down, Jason took on this duty and immediately wanted to dismiss it. I couldn’t blame him as all he wanted to do was sit with us and not be stranded off to the side. Before I could suggest he just sit at the other table but closer to myself and Niko, there was some yelling and tears. We survived.

Soon enough Amy and Kara were back. Somehow we sort of distracted the children while we waited for George. And waited. And waited. It wasn’t his fault as the place was busy but it felt like he was gone forever. Niko entertained us with Pretzel Wars, naming his miniature pretzel as if they were wrestlers, having them fight and then eating the loser.

George appeared with most of the lunch and went back to get into different lines to wait some more. I dove in with him. I walked around for a moment, found that there was an area in the center of the room with pre-made sandwiches and thought ‘to heck with these lines’. The down side to all this was that I didn’t grab the sandwich I wanted. Somehow I must have picked from the wrong pile. The upside was that I saved George from standing in one line as they had the sandwich Jason wanted available in pre-made form. The sandwich wasn’t bad. Actually, for not being what I wanted, it was quite good. Not sure if it was worth $6 though.

After all the fighting to get lunch, actually eating it was anti-climatic in comparison.

The Adventure Starts to Stand Around...

The main lobby that we’d seen primarily existed to hold three things: the Burlington Zephyr (a train, a huge real train!), the gift shop and the ticket counter. Since we already had tickets for the museum, we didn’t need to stand in any of these lines. We could line up for the entrance to the museum proper, an entrance that was two floors up. So, we dropped two floors exiting the parking structure and climbed them back up again to get inside. Weird but, what are you going to do?

After riding the elevator up, we lined up briefly to have our tickets looked at to prove we’d paid. To prove we’d been checked, one employee ripped my printed ticket ever so slightly. I thought this weird, especially since I then had to stop at a nearby desk to have it date stamped. I think this was due to our entry into the special exhibit but the reasons weren’t explained and it just seemed confused. Luckily the process didn’t take long and we were finally inside!

We headed up yet another level and were in the large rotunda area on the main floor. It was decorated with Christmas trees of the world and was all bright and shiny. As we wandered into the centre of the area the Star Wars exhibit quickly came into view on the right. To our left was the transportation area with another real train, model trains and real planes hanging from the ceiling. This was also the location of the ‘Millennium Falcon’ ride. We lined up for this. I quickly decided that sitting for the better part of three hours and then standing for a prolonged period of time was not a good choice. Luckily I was asked to check on the length of the line and any cost associated with the ride so I got to take a little stroll. As it turns out, the ride was free but we were lining up to get tickets for the ride, not actually ride it. We scheduled our trip for 17:00, far later than we expected to stay but, as we didn’t know how long it would take us to go through the exhibit, we scheduled it to give us as much time as possible.

Finally we were freed from the lines and only had to deal with the crowds. The transportation exhibit was investigated before heading through Enterprise, ToyMaker 3000 and Petroleum Planet. Finally freed of all the sitting and standing, the children started to run wild. I couldn’t blame them really as I wanted to stretch my legs a bit as well but this meant we really didn’t look at anything. We looked and chased and played a bit.

Exiting Petroleum Planet we passed the Coal Mine ride. The boys were instantly interested. Even after a visit to Yesterday’s Main Street they were interested in the Coal Mine. The announced wait for the Coal Mine was a half-hour. This didn’t dismiss their interest. While it felt like we’d barely started walking, we were apparently ready to line up again.

Another half-hour or so of waiting was not easy on the children. They grew itchy. Kara especially grew bored by this standing around. Once we reached the ride, she was well and truly bored and wanted to play. None of us had ever been on the Coal Mine ride before so we no clue what to expect. As it turns out, it was less of a ride than a guided tour of an exhibit with some riding involved. Keeping Kara quiet proved impossible and keeping her contained slightly less impossible. Somehow, between us, she managed to entertain herself and stay somewhat non-disruptive.

The ride exited down on the Ground Floor, right by the Food Court. 13:00: time for lunch.

Unfortunately, we were not the only ones with that idea.

The Adventure Continues... Arrival

Things started out well on Saturday morning. George wanted to get started at 8 in the morning. Like a fool I stayed up late knowing I had to get up early but made it to the Compound 1.5 right on time. A couple minutes later we were on the road, all the way up to the Krispy Kreme a couple blocks away. After fueling up on coffee and donuts, we were on our way.

Once we made it to Gurnee Mills (not all that far inside Illinois comparatively speaking), we stopped at the Toys ‘R Us. We needed pullups for the youngest, Kara, as well as needing a stretch of the legs and a trip to the bathroom. We had a look at the toys as well but nothing caught our eye. After this break stop, we were on our way again.

We didn’t stop again until we got to the museum. We didn’t get lost or anything. Our parking ticket stated that we arrived at 10:47. It was a long trip but it could have been worse. The traffic hadn’t been awful and the children had remained distracted. We were there!

The parking structure was three underground levels. We parked in-between the first and second levels. We walked up towards the entryway on the first level. When we entered the museum, we realized this was backwards. The primary entry area was on level three. So, by walking upstairs, we only made ourselves need to take an elevator downstairs again. As we figured this out, we saw Star Wars characters walking through the lobby.

Excitedly we hurried the elevator into getting us downstairs before they got away. George got the camera out and the boys lined up for pictures. C3PO was there and Darth Vadar, Boba Fett, Stormtroopers and Rebel Pilots. It was a nice turn-out of ‘professional’ fans; the sort of people that regularly dress up like this at conventions and such so that they have the costumes and experience to volunteer for things like this. They did a good job of staying in character, especially C3PO.

After getting to meet C3PO, Niko imparted a great truth to me. “They are real robots you know, C3PO and R2D2,” he said, his face completely serious. “I could really tell when I was standing next to him.” Now Niko is 8. He seems to have almost figured out the truth behind Santa Claus this recent Christmas and yet he believes in the droids. I couldn’t tell him otherwise. I started talking to him about droid maintenance. That seemed to work.

The Adventure Begins...

Every good adventure has a background. This is the background of Saturday’s adventure.

On the last Friday at work before Christmas, my phone buzzed with a text message. It was Amy, George’s wife. This was a rare but not impossible occasion so I was curious indeed. She wrote to mention that she’d just ordered tickets to go to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. They had a Star Wars exhibit that was running until early January and she’d gotten tickets for the last Saturday that the exhibit was open. A moment too late she’d considered that I might want to go along as well. Did I?

Despite the fact that I’m not a Star Wars fan, I wanted to go. Watching George’s reaction inside would be worth the trip. Besides, I hadn’t been to that Museum in… far too long. In general, the Museum would be fun.

It is not uncommon for me to go on otherwise family trips with the Gentekis clan. This is especially true now that there are three children. This way the children don’t outnumber the adults. That helps more than you’d think. It’s not a deliberate part of the decision making process when I’m invited to come along but it’s a good reason all the same.

One problem with this situation is that Amy had accidentally double-booked herself. She had plans to go to Delavan (a small town about an hour west of Milwaukee) that night. Since our tickets for the Star Wars exhibit were for 15:00, we would have to run from the Museum right to Delavan in order to get her there in time. George’s excellent driving skills would easily get her there.

Of course, the biggest problem with the whole concept of going to the Museum of Science and Industry is that it would involve going to Chicago. Nothing good comes from Illinois. Not literally of course but, you know, they suck. It’s a good-natured distaste of our Mid-West ‘brothers’. It’s good-natured until you go there anyway.

There’s nothing quite like going to Illinois to make you never want to go there again.

RIP TTT

Last week I found out about a loss 'in the family'. While at the Milwaukee Public Museum I found out that they closed down the 'Temples, Tells and Tombs' exhibit. Permanently. Poor Djed-hor; homeless again.

Perhaps a side note before I continue: I usually go to the MPM at least a couple times a year. I have a membership. I can tell when things have been moved or changed. I'm a fan. It annoys me that there doesn't appear to be a website dedicated to documenting the general phases and changes of the museum; the sort of thing that would help me better recall my childhood memories of the place. I'd do it but I haven't the documentation. I do have a fuzzy memory but that's not much to go on.

For instance, I remember Djed-hor, our resident mummy (man I hope I'm spelling his name correctly) first residing on the first floor in an area that I believe was called 'The Rise of Civilization'. It was a thin, narrow area that covered thousands of years of history in maybe 100 yards. You started with mummies and by the back of it you were playing with a telephone display. As I recall, it didn't link to anything so, once you reached the end, you had to turn around and walk back the way you came. The area is now the Rain Forest exhibit and connects to the Third World exhibit (pre-history, dinosaurs and glaciers, that sort of thing) so you don't have to turn around like before.

The Third World was assembled in the middle 80's as I recall. The Rain Forest was set-up after that, opening in the early 90's I believe. As construction started on the Rain Forest, the 'Rise' exhibit was reassembled in a generic way on the second floor. I have a distinct memory of being in that area and seeing the humpbacked whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling (the skeleton that currently hangs in the entryway on the first floor, it was covered with lights for the holiday season) so it was being used as a catch-all area at the time. Since nothing else has been changed recently on the second floor, I have to believe that this was the exhibit area that would become 'Temples, Tells and Tombs' as well as an area for touring exhibits.

This would have opened in the early 90's. I have a video tape from a trip to the Museum from December 1992. As I walk into the area, I can clearly hear myself react in surprise, which tells me the exhibit was new to me then. It covered the periods when Egypt, Greece, Rome were world powers as well as having some stuff on the Middle East in general. The exhibit stayed largely unchanged during it's existence so that old tape is still a reasonably accurate document of the exhibit. In October 2007 when I visited the MPM, the exhibit was still open. Last week it was gone to provide more space for the touring exhibits.

Worse yet is that some of the cases from the exhibit are waiting to find permanent homes. The Roman Soldier is in the main entry area on the first floor. Our friend the mummy is sitting in the entryway to the Africa exhibit on the third floor now. There was an empty corner and he was crammed into it. It looks temporary so I can only hope it is. The fellow looks sad and homeless now. He's a squatter.

Tune in next time to more memories of the Milwaukee Public Museum. ;)

When Did I Get All Old?

Today's during-the-Packer-game lunch had some spicy food. Chief amongst these were some buffalo wings that were not immediately hot but warmed up nicely after a few moments. I'm not a big fan of hot that's hot for the sake of being hot as I prefer flavour to heat but these were good. I only had a couple or three. Ate too much, drank too much, went home and took a little nap.

Now my tummy is not so comfy. Worse yet, I'm not good company, even for myself. I don't remember this being a standard reaction to hot food so when did I get all old?

Ow.

Deep in the Tape Archive

Been digging extra deep in the tape archives of late in an attempt to convert as much of the old footage to DVD before it disintegrates. Some of it is close and barely plays back. Some of it doesn't play back. Some of it looks shockingly good for 15 year old tapes in SLP mode.

I ran across a couple tapes today that made me think 'Why am I bothering with this tape?' I mean, if I haven't watched 'The Stand' since the original broadcast, why bother keeping the tape? I'm not very interested in Stephen King's work anyway. I've also got a copy of 'Braveheart' from laserdisc. If I decide to watch that movie again, would I do it from tape? Nope. I'd probably spend the $7 to buy it or, better yet, borrow it from someone that has it.

You could probably make an argument against most of the tapes in the archive. I can't watch most of this stuff regularly and there's so much of it. Why bother with any of it? To that I answer with the 120 Minutes I'm currently watching/dubbing from 1995. I just got to see the Mighty Mighty Bosstones play live. Forgot I had that. That was nice.

Moments like that are why the archive exists and needs preserving. Most of it does anyway.

All Tied Up

I'm not sure who created the tie as an article of dress clothing but I'm going to guess it was a woman. As it's not a functional item, merely decorative, and uncomfortable, it strikes me as the sort of thing that would be created by a female out of revenge for all the frills and uncomfortable garments that they've often worn to look fancy. "The men look too comfortable," I'm sure one said. "Let's find them something so they'll squirm more."

"Why should I wear this extra piece of cloth?" that first man wondered aloud. "It's not covering up anything that's uncovered. It's just gives me an extra item to try matching the rest of my outfit and I'm already not good at that. What's the point?"

"It looks nice. It's pretty," he was reassured. "You want to look nice don't you?"

"I'm already married; I don't need to look any nicer than I do."

"You'll be a trendsetter. You'll become more important. It's important to me that you do well."

He grumbled, feeling his position quickly erode away. "Well, can I just loop it around my neck, kinda like a scarf?"

"Ye...No. No that won't do. You must knot it properly so it looks organized. You learned all those knots while in the Navy; isn't there one of those you could use to make it look nice?"

He choked. "This is really uncomfortable."

She smiled. "That's how you can tell it looks nice. It's like medicine; you can only tell it's working when it tastes horrible."

"I guess."

"Let's go. You'll be the talk of the town!"

I think the thing I hate most about ties is that I can't tie them. I like to think I'm a reasonably intelligent man but the method to make this work still eludes me. Even with pictures and instructions.

Stupid ties!

My Quest is (nearly) at an End

I cannot remember a time in my life without Godzilla. I have interests that I remember vaguely starting at one point or another and some interests that I remember starting with a certain point (like when I first saw the cover to ‘Doctor Who and the Cybermen’ and I became very curious about what it was) but, like the Muppets, I only remember the Godzilla switch being in the ‘on’ position.

I don’t know why this would be. The Muppets make sense as I know I watched Sesame Street so having early memories of them makes sense. My parents have no real fondness for Godzilla so it’s not like they’d have the movies on constantly. Is it just that I don’t remember the trigger point? That I don’t recall the moment when the normal childlike fascination with dinosaurs turned into a fascination with their fictional descendant? I suppose it’s not important when or why it started, the important thing is that the interest is still there.

When I was younger, I’d read about movies, knowing that I’d never have a chance to see most of them as I didn’t have cable or a VCR. Once I got a VCR, I started collecting tapes of things but knew I’d never get to see the Japanese versions of the Godzilla movies. When I started finding fansubbed bootlegs of the Japanese movies, I figured there was a chance I might be able to see them eventually. In the early days of DVD, there were only a handful of quality Godzilla DVDs amongst all the public domain junk. Now there are legitimate versions of most of the Godzilla films available on DVD that feature both the original Japanese versions of the film as well as the American edits. Wow.

After picking up the recently released Godzilla Collection (Classic Media’s box set of their previously released DVDs as well as two disks currently exclusive to the set) I looked at my shelf of Godzilla films and was shocked to realize that I have nearly all of them. There are a couple of the later films that I don’t have in the versions I’d like and a few I don’t have at all but I’m seriously close to having a copy of every Toho Godzilla film (yes I’m being very specific with that statement in order to indicate the fact that a certain film isn’t in the listing).

This is weird. My quest is almost at an end. I didn’t expect that would happen. Ever. Now, if they’d only release a quality widescreen version of ‘Godzilla vs. Megalon’ I’d be all set.

They've got what now?

I just saw an ad for McDonalds offering their new sweet tea.

McDonalds is offering tea.

This... this creeps me out.