If I Rode A Motorcycle...

....I would totally wear a helmet like this:


Badass! Woot!

Sun + Fog = Sog

I took this picture from my desk last month. The fog was really thick that morning, but the sun was quickly burning through.

My eyes kind of hurt after I took this picture. It was worth it, though. I think.

Black Friday, Black Saturday

We love Black Friday. It’s like Christmas, except we buy our own gifts. It’s a shame that it only comes once a year.

After last year’s nuthouse at our local Best Buy, we decided to try our luck at another Best Buy in a less populated area. All we had to do was to get up in the middle of the night and drive to a far away town. Did it work? Not really. There was quite a crowd already there. It didn’t wrap around the building and beyond like our experience from the previous year, but there were several hundred people in line ahead of us, already shivering in the cold winter air.

But they all deserved it, for showing up earlier than us. Ha ha! Freeze suckers, freeze!

Once we got inside the Best Buy, it was a feeding frenzy as usual. We got what we were looking for, although there actually weren’t that many great deals this year. I told myself that if there was a pile of PS3’s sitting in front of me, then I would treat it like a litter of puppies and find the cutest one to take home with me. However, I saw no such litter. All the PS3’s were caged away, already all adopted. Hopefully they all found good homes.

We wrapped up our Black Friday at McDonalds, which was a huge disappointment. We wanted sausage and egg McMuffins, but ended up with bacon and egg McGriddles. If you’ve never had a McGriddle, avoid it at all costs. This miserable excuse for a breakfast sandwich uses two pancakes as the bread instead of an English muffin. Pancakes! It’s an awful, awful combination of maple syrup pancakes, weak bacon, and bad eggs. I don’t know why anybody would willingly eat this stuff.

Disgusting.

Happy with our purchases, but disappointed with our breakfast, we trekked back home. Later that day, my fiancé says to me:

“Babe?”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to fall out of your chair, but Wal-Mart is having a “secret sale” on PS3’s. You get an 80 GB PS3 with 10 free Blu-Ray movies for $499.”

I picked myself off the floor, and the new hunt was on. Black Saturday, here we come!

**************************************************

I usually wake up pretty early for work every morning, but to wake up around 2 to 3 in the morning two days in a row is pretty brutal. You just hope that it’s going to be all worth it.

Duplicating our Best Buy strategy, we picked a non-local Wal-Mart and made the journey over. When we got there, there was no one there. Victory! We’re first!

We sat in our car and staked out the front of the store, not wanting to stand outside in the cold. A few moments later, a guy drove up and got out of his car. You could tell by the way the hair on the back of his head was awkwardly sticking out that he was there for a PS3. A few minutes later a second guy shows up and gets in line.

Now, it’s kind of a goal in my life not to look like a dork. If you are first in line at a Wal-Mart waiting for the doors to open to buy a PS3, then you are a dork. If you are the second guy in line, then you are also a dork, although a few degrees less dorky than the first guy. If you’re the third guy in line, you may be still a dork, but you are not so desperate that you didn’t have to be the first or second in line.

We were third in line in a group of three. When the Wal-Mart finally opened, a store employee told us that they only had two PS3’s available. Arrgh! Disappointment!

I was ready to pack it in and wallow in my despair. However, my lovely fiancé, the ying to my yang, the sweet to my sour, encouraged me not to give up and find another Wal-Mart.

We located the next nearest Wal-Mart and drove over. When we got there, we sprinted to the electronics department. Did they have any PS3’s? No! They only had two, and they were both sold!

Noooooo!

Giving it one last try, we drove to the next nearest Wal-Mart, where we found a group of four people waiting in line. Did they have any PS3?

Yes! Success!! Sweet Jesus, we’ve found the elusive PS3!

All hail the PS3!

With our new PS3 and ten free Blu-Ray movies in hand, we made our way home. On the way back, we found a McDonalds, and had some delicious sausage McMuffin sandwiches for breakfast. Life is good.

All hail the sausage McMuffin! With egg!

The Great Debaters

Since we are massive insiders in the movie industry (ahem), this week we went to an advance screening of The Great Debaters, a new movie with Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker coming out in December this year.

The funny thing about the whole event was how tight the security was. The big rule was NO CAMERA PHONES. If you had a camera phone, you would NOT BE ALLOWED IN THE THEATER. If you were caught with a camera phone, THEY WILL TAKE YOU DOWN. I guess you can take short videos with camera phones nowadays, but how good could the images be? This was simply a period drama, for pete's sake. It wasn't like Denzel and Forest were going to be dressed like Batman and Robin in the movie.

So how was the movie? It was pretty good. I've seen football movies, quiz show movies, cheerleading movies, but I must say this was the first debate movie I've ever seen. It takes place in the 1930's and tells the story of the debating team from Wiley College, an all-black university in Texas. The movie depicts how the team comes together and defeats all the other schools in the area, until the climatic showdown with the Harvard debate team.

Besides Denzel and Forest, this movie features a young actor named Denzel Whitaker, who oddly enough is not the love child of Denzel and Forest Whitaker.

At the end of the movie we had to fill out a two-page questionnaire on the movie. I couldn't find any flaws in the movie (other than not enough guns and explosions), and I really enjoyed it overall, so I gave it an "excellent" rating, and said, "yes, I would recommend this movie". So here's my recommendation - when The Great Debaters comes you, go see it.

By the way, there are absolutely no pictures available for this movie, so here's an entirely made up scene from the movie:

"Coffee is best with two lumps of sugar!"

"I disagree - coffee tastes better with only one lump!"

Only Mountain Dew and Crab Juice

To continue the crab theme...

Last week I was in Annapolis, MD for work, and I had accidentally dropped my toothbrush in the toilet. No matter how long you run it under hot water afterwards, you will never wash out the stigma that your toothbrush went into a giant bowl a pee.

So I drove myself to a nearby CVS Pharmacy to get a new toothbrush. Walking by the snack aisle, lo and behold, I saw it:

Go ahead, say it out aloud to yourself: "Utz... The Crab Chip". I think its sheer genius to name your brand "Utz". What does it mean? Where did it come from? "Utz" is something you say if you almost trip on something.

Utz had other chip flavors, but the Crab Chip simply cannot be beat. I'm assuming this is something that's only available on the east coast. That's so unfair; why don't we have Utz Crab Chips out here?

Now That's A Crab

I saw this link on Boing Boing the other day, which lead to this picture:


Not to simply repeat what's already been said, but CHEEZUS, THAT'S THE BIGGEST CRAB I'VE EVER SEEN. Please don't move, and especially don't make eye contact with the beast. I'm sure glad I'm not the poor sap who took that picture.

Luckily, after a great deal of diligent reasearch (mainly looking at Wikipedia), the coconut crab cand only be found "in areas throughout the Indian and western Pacific ocean". In other words, nowhere near where we live, and especially not in our recycling bin.

Bumbershoot & Flatstock 14

We had a great time at Bumbershoot and Flatstock in Seattle over Labor Day weekend. It was good - really good. It was the best. It was fantastic.

Flatstock was what we expected it to be - a lot of poster artists hawking their wares. It's funny, because we're used to Comic-Con sized exhibit halls that stretch as far as the eye can see. Flatstock was the size of a basketball court (okay, maybe two basketball courts). But it was more than enough, since by the end of the day we spent pretty much all the cash we had.

In terms of poster artists, I like Frank Kozik, and I like Coop, but neither one was there. However, my fiance does like Patent Pending and the Bird Machine, and they both had tables that we passed by again and again, and a few more times again, just in case we missed something the previous time.

Most of the other artists we didn't really know, but we know what we like, so we figured out right away which ones had the graphic style that fit our tastes. Here's just a sample of some of the posters we got:

Hey, we went outside too. The weather was great for an outdoor festival, and the place was packed. There was a lot of tasty food, and we helped ourselves to the free shots of Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Balance Bars. We sure do love free stuff.

There was a lot of live music being played all over the Seattle Center, but we didn't really bother seeing any of the bands. We did hear the Shins playing some of their popular songs. The festival was for three days, so we weren't there on the right day to see Fergie and her humps. Oh well.

We did manage to see one artist that I was somewhat familiar with named St. Vincent for a couple of songs. She's not really well known, so it was easy to get right up to the edge of the stage to take pictures like this:

All in all, we had a lot of fun and spent a lot of money. A most successful weekend.

Off To Seattle!

It's Labor Day weekend, the weather has been unbearably hot, and the Bay Bridge is closed all weekend. What do you do? You go to Seattle!

We're headed north, folks. Off to one of our favorite getaway cities...we're going to see the sights, eat a little crab, but mostly we're going to the Flatstock concert poster show at the Bumbershoot Festival! Wahoo!

Armed with a brand new portfolio, we hope to come back with a whole stack of cool posters. If they're all too expensive, then maybe we'll blow our whole budget on one poster. Who knows?

Simpsonized!

OK, we just couldn't resist it... we had to Simpsonize ourselves:What are you waiting for? Hurry! Simpsonize Me

Dries Twice As Fast

I had just got off a flight from Oakland to Dallas-Fort Worth, and as usual, I made a beeline for the men's room. When I entered the restroom, lo and behold, there it was:

The Dyson Airblade.

It's supposed to be the next big thing in hand dryers from Dyson, the maker of the vacuum cleaner. We have the "animal" model vacuum, and by golly, the thing really does work without losing suction. It's really neat to see all the dust, clumps of hair, and general scurf collected in the clear plastic container.

Anyways, the Dyson Airblade at the airport restroom was mounted on a floor-mounted stand, and it kind of looked like a trouser press. It's got that kind of smooth plastic construction just like the vacuum cleaners. It looks pretty cool, but its seemed a little out of place.

I saw several guys give it a strange look as they walked by. But I knew what this thing was as soon as I saw it. I had read about the Airblade, and was eager to try it. If the vacuums sucked so well, the Airblade had to do a great job of blowing. As I did my business at the urinal, I couldn't wait to wash my hands. That doesn't happen too often.

I washed up and approached the Airblade with my wet hands. You're supposed to put your hands in the openings at the top of the machine, and slowly draw them out. The Airblade is supposed to "squeegee" the water off your skin with a continuous jet of air. I put my hands in, and slowly raised them up. A blast of cold air hit me, which was kind of a surprise. I pulled my hands completely out, and...

...they were still kind of wet. I probably didn't move slowly enough, but I really hoped the thing would work more quickly then it did. I ended up wiping off my hands on my jeans. There was a man in a shirt and tie who was watching me use the Airblade; thinking he shared the same curiosity that I did, I looked at him and kind of shrugged my shoulders. He looked back at me like I was crazy.

Maybe I need to give it a second try, but I didn't see the big leap ahead in hand-drying technology. I guess we'll need to wait a little longer before we can really live like the Jetsons.

SDCC 2007 Report, Part 3

OK, after a brief interruption with the King, here's my big San Diego finale. We've seen stars, we've seen a lot of freaky things, and finally we get to buy stuff. I love the Comic-Con... it's the one of the few times during the year that I actually buy stuff from real flesh & blood people. Otherwise, its all online for all my comic-related needs.

So what did I get? Good question.

The latest volume of Mark Schultz: Various Drawings, signed especially for me!

Tripwire, a British comics magazine that's come back to life in a new annual format...

Matchbox Labels, a neat book I got from Bud Plant depicting matchbox cover art from around the world...

A hardcover edition of The Professor's Daughter, a graphic novel about a romance between a woman and a mummy in Victorian London...

Belle du Jour, a collection of cheesecake drawings by Bill Presing...

Uptight number 1 and 2, both signed with a sketch by Jordan Crane...

The Comics Journal number 284, with a Roger Langridge interview...

Captain America: Winter Soldier TPB - because you can never have too much Captain America...

Fleet Street Scandal: A Collection, with some really cool art by Kevin Dart and Chris Turnham...


Plus much, much more! Too bad Comic-Con comes only once a year.

The King & I

Last week I was in Memphis for work, and by sheer coincidence it was Elvis Week. I'm no Elvis fan, but I felt obligated to go to Graceland since I was in the neighborhood.

First of all, it was hot in Memphis. Hot as in 103 degrees hot and plenty humid. It wasn't pleasant. Elvis would have thought it was really hot and flew his jet to somewhere cooler. If I was feeling truly unmotivated (which isn't a stretch for me), I would have just stayed in my air-conditioned rental car and did a drive-by of the place. However, I miraculously decided to get out of my car and check out the visitor center.

Apparently, a lot of people still love Elvis. The place was packed. There were a lot of Elvis fans waiting in line to take the guided tour of the mansion. There were a lot of fans trying to stay out of the sun. There were a lot of fans just milling about, buying anything with Elvis' picture on it. That was enough to convince me that that I really didn't want to see Graceland. I decided to save $25 and see what I could from the street for free. Here's what I saw:

The wall in front of Graceland where everyone writes, "we love you, Elvis"

The sign in front that told me I had the right house

Look! Past the trees...Graceland!

Mission accomplished!

SDCC 2007 Report, Part 2

Let's have a look around the exhibit hall, shall we? If you concentrate hard enough, you can just smell the enticing odor of the unwashed hordes...

Hey, its Sgt. Slaughter!

Original Tim Sale Heroes artwork

Clever...

DC Booth

Carmen Mirandarth

Hey, its Danny Trejo - badass of the silver screen!

Who's that guy behind Captain America? Get out of the way, fool!

Warner Bros. booth

Lionsgate had a real amputee (no Rose McGowan, though)

Look at that guy in the headband! Ha ha ha!

The original version of the Iron Man armor...sweet!

Once you reach one end of the hall, you turn around and walk back. That's just the way it is.

Get it? Pea standing up! Ha ha ha!

Next time: A cornucopia of riches!
(Or...what I bought)

SDCC 2007 Report, Part 1

Now that over a week has passed since the San Diego Comic-Con ended and no one cares anymore, it's time to tell everyone how the trip was for us. By the way, how do other bloggers blog so quickly? Sure, it's great to get information right after it happens, but where do these people find the time? Don't they have other stuff to do? Don't they watch TV?

But back to San Diego. Whenever someone asks me, "So how was Comic-Con?", I never say, "Well, I saw a guy in a Spider-Man suit. He was a lot shorter than I thought Spider-Man would be, and not nearly as muscular."

No, the thing that impresses people the most is the celebrities. We sat through hours of panels to see the stars, and we weren't disappointed. This year we saw Steve Carrell, The Rock, Ed Burns, Shannyn Sossamon, Kate Beckinsale, Clive Owen, and many others.

I could just list them all out, but this year, I have blurry photos to share:

Edward Norton!

Liv Tyler!

Milla Jovovich!

Josh Hartnett!

Gwyneth Paltrow! Robert Downey Jr.!

Captain America! Wait...Captain America?

Next time: The Wild & the Woolly from the Exhibit Hall...