Alex Toth

I just read that Alex Toth passed away today. He was a legend in comics and animation, and he possessed a style which can never be duplicated. He will be greatly missed.

Slot Machines and Furry Animals

We just got back from a short vacation in Las Vegas, and although we didn't win a boatload of money, we had a good time nonetheless. It's been a year since we've been there, and the place is still booming. There's still plenty of room for more hotels, casinos and shopping centers. This town has a long way to go before it hits the saturation point for all this decadence.


Here's my one gripe: people, leave the kids at home. If you have to bring the kids to Las Vegas, at least get them to bed at a decent hour. Nothing is more appalling than seeing a mother walking around a casino at 1:00 in the morning with a drink in one hand and a small child in the other.

While we were Vegas, we saw Over the Hedge. This was a movie that I've been waiting to see, and I wasn't disappointed. The kids will be entertained, and there are plenty of jokes only the adults will understand. What's not to like? This is good, clean family fun.

It's amazing how good they can make CGI animals look nowadays. Furry animals look really furry. These computers - I bet they'll become really useful one of these days.

Caves and Caverns

I was looking through the upcoming DVD releases the other day, and there was a movie coming out called The Cavern. It's about a bunch of explorers who discover a deadly secret in an underground cave system and find themselves in a desperate fight for their lives.

Hey, wait a minute - wasn't there already a movie about that? Oh yeah, it was called The Cave. It was about a bunch of explorers who discover a deadly secret in an underground cave system and find themselves in a desperate fight for their lives.

Maybe it was just a coincidence that these two movies have similar stories. Maybe underground monster movies are really big right now. Maybe these movies are metaphors that you can't run and hide from the rigors and responsibilities of daily life. Who knows?

At least The Cavern could have come up with a different poster design that didn't remind me so much of The Cave. If you line them up, you can pretend the hapless explorers are descending down from one movie into another:

So what have we learned? Not much. All I know is that X-Men: The Last Stand opens in a week. Wahoo!

It's A Baby!

Our friend mochablue had a bouncing baby boy on Monday! Congratulations...you so rock!

Actual baby not pictured.

Mission: Impossible 3

I watched the original Mission: Impossible series on tv when I was a kid. My favorite part of the show was at the beginning, where the leader of the Impossible Mission Force would take his special binder labeled "IMF" and carefully select the photos of the agents he wanted for the show's mission. The funny thing was, except for the occasional guest star, he always picked the same agents for every mission.

I remember usually the shows involved trying to get some information out of a guy. They would come up with some elaborate scheme to make the guy believe he was on a tropical island or in a foreign country. Once the IMF extracted the information then needed, they would pick up and leave. Their poor victim would then find out he wasn't on a tropical island or in foreign country, rather the whole thing was a setup and he was on some backlot in L.A.

For this latest installment of Mission: Impossible, I was glad that the movie finally involved some IMF teamwork, rather than Tom Cruise working solo. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of Tom Cruise solo action; he's running around this movie as fast as his short little legs will take him.

Run Forrest! Run!

For a while I thought that I wouldn't be able to truly enjoy this movie, because all I would see is crazy 'ol Tom Cruise with that big toothy grin of his. However, the good news is that this movie makes you forget he's insane in real life, and he doesn't flash his goofy grin until the end of the movie.

Mission: Impossible 3 is the first of the big summer blockbusters, and it certainly delivers on the big guns and blazing explosions, the prerequisites for any summer movie. I wouldn't say that this is the best in the franchise, although it will tide you over until the next big blockbuster comes out (X-Men: The Last Stand - 5/26! Wahoo!).

Luckily, there was a box nearby for Tom to stand on.

TV Shows I Miss

I probably watch too much TV. Unfortunately, that means I also spend way too much time thinking about TV. From time to time, I think about shows that I'd like to see on TV again. Since I know everyone would want to know, here's my current list:

Fear (2000) - This reality show was inspired by the Blair Witch Project, where MTV would send a group of teenagers into a supposedly haunted location wearing cameras on their heads. The group had to spend the night, and each person had to go to a certain area to do a task, which could possibly stir up the alleged ghosts in the area. It was kind of silly, but it was fun to watch the kids freak themselves out over nothing. There's a DVD out with a few episodes, but they should put out the entire season with all the episodes.

Actually, watching Ghost Hunters on the Sci-Fi Channel is a decent substitute for this show.

Bands on the Run (2001) - This was a VH1 show that followed four indie bands as they traveled around the U.S. competing against each other for a recording contract. It was a good show because all the different bands had interesting characters in them, and made for some good reality TV drama. What was cool was that the band that won, Flickerstick, won because they had the best music, despite the fact they never won any of the individual challenges on the show. I don't know if they could duplicate the success of this show with another group of bands, but at least they could show the reruns of the original show. It would certainly be a whole lot better than Celebrity Fit Club or The Flavor of Love. Plus, it would actually have something to do with music!

Bakersfield P.D. (1993) - As I recall, this Fox show didn't last a whole season, but I remember really liking it a lot. It was kind of a Northern Exposure "fish out of water" show where Giancarlo Esposito played a police detective joining the small police force of Bakersfield, California. Naturally, everyone else in the town is kind of odd & quirky in comparison to Esposito. The show was critically acclaimed, but unfortunately no one watched it, and it was cancelled before it found its audience. It doesn't seem likely that this show will ever see the light of day again, even as a DVD.

Behind the Music (1997 -Present) - I know they occasionally make new episodes of this show, but they have a ton of these shows that they never show anymore. It seems that whenever this show is on, it's either about the Notorious B.I.G. or Kid Rock. What's sad is that they have over 180 other episodes of this show that they never show. Sure, not all of them are winners, but in a lot of ways Behind the Music is an educational show about music history. Heck, without this show, I would have never known who Thin Lizzy was. What it kill VH1 to show just one different episode per day?

Kindred: The Embraced (1996) - In order to provide a fair and balanced view, I asked my fiance what show she missed, and this is the one she told me. I've never seen this show before, but it's about vampires. Neat!

Clone High (2002) - This was a short-lived cartoon on MTV, which only showed about six or seven episodes before it vanished. It's about a high school with all the clones of famous people throughout history deal with teen problems. How could this fail? The show had some hilarious moments. It's got one of my favorite cartoon lines: "If there's anything that Mahatma Ghandi stands for, it's revenge!"

...Believe me, it's funny if you've seen the cartoon. I just bought the series DVD on eBay, so I actually don't miss this one much anymore.

No! Not You! Anyone But You!

I'm going to put on my comic book geek hat on now. If you have one of your own, go ahead and put it on too.

One of the things that I like most about comic book covers is the cheesy dialogue. The little spoken word balloons that were used to describe the earth-shattering dangers or the life-chaning drama that was waiting for you inside the comic. Did the dialogue on the cover always deliver in the story? Sometimes. But it always helped sell the comic - the action on the cover told you that you would be making a big mistake if you missed this issue.

The sixties and the seventies were a great time for cover dialogue. Unfortunately, comic book characters stopped talking on comic book covers in the eighties. The trend continues today, where comic covers are mainly illustrations which usually have little to do with the stories contained inside. It's really a shame.

I really love the comic book style of speaking. If you could hear how I think, you'd probably hear me talk to myself in the typical superhero style: "I must do laundry now...or all is lost!" or "Someone will pay for these high gasoline prices...this I swear!"

Today's theme is "no, not you, it can't be you", courtesy of the Fantastic Four: