Been a while since I posted... but I got a chance. Today is a good day.... Today, "Serenity" and "Battlestar Galactica 2.0" BOTH come out today.....THAT is a great thing! I definitely will be in Best Buy today...besides buying Christmas presents, I will be getting mine as well! I was in Suncoast Video recently and I was so depressed at how far behind I am in my DVD purchases. Samurai Champloo is already up to volume 5 and I only have the first one...not cool. Plus Batman:The Animated Series volume 4 is out and I don't even have three. Superman: the Animated Series Volume 2. The last season of Farscape. X-Files 4 thru 8( I have to think about Season 9..lol...) I'm sure there are others but I can't think of them......Sigh....

Just saw the X3 trailer on the Apple trailer page.....NICE. Visually, this movie looks like Bryan Singer is still the director and not Brett Ratner. I think that's important, to keep a consistent visual tone for the series. It would be way too jarring to create a new visual language right now. It looks really good, really controlled. I was a bit concerned but now I am really looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to Singer's Superman Returns but I would like to see more scenes, that teaser was REALLY a teaser. Soon enough, though....

Whew, been awhile...so busy....why won't they leave me alone?!?!?!?....Anyway, here's anothere thing I was thinking...this is actually an idea that my friend Tony floated to me. Which is interesting because I'm the fan of the books and he's not. It's time for another Doc Savage movie. Forget the Ron Ely one in the seventies, it's time to do a new one. Everyone talks about Conan, Tarzan, John Carter and all the others ( and rightly so...I read those as a kid and loved them) but Doc savage has like 182 books or something like that. That's a ton of reference to draw from. And it's set in the 30's..prime era for clear cut heroes and villians. But nothing hinting at silly like, The Shadow or The Phantom movies ( ugh...) but a thoughtful take on it: Fun but mature. Doc Savage was my favorite as a kid, I have FOND memories of my mom or dad buying them for me when I was a kid. My dad worked three blocks from a Barnes and Noble on 33rd and 7th. (It's a bank now, which saddens me.) If I went to work with my father he would take me over to the store and wait as I looked for another Doc Savage book to get and he would buy it for me. Good old dad. I almost got hit by a car reading one back to his job..he was pissed...lol...
But I still have a bunch of them with the great James Bama (one of the best cover artist I've ever seen) or Boris covers. And I would love to see a film that captures that look of those covers and the adventure that Kenneth Robeson ( or Lester Dent, his real name) created. With the effects of today it would look amazing.A pulp cover come to life, similar to " Sky Captain". Look at the New York City that Peter Jackson's fx group digitally created for King Kong. In the books Doc Savage operated out of the 88th floor of the Empire State building. Maybe a new film production can buy the digital files from then, since they are so faithful to New York. It would be great.
Now here's the part you'll either love or hate: the role of Doc Savage. There's only one guy I can think of that looks exactly the part. He looks like he stepped right off of a James Bama cover. Doc should be played by.......The Rock. Yes. The Rock. HE CAN DO IT. The guy could pull it off. He's far more talented than I think people give him credit for. That would be perfect. Imagine him with the ripped shirt and the 30's aviator pants....It would be great. Again, I am yelling into the darkness, with no one to hear me but I have to. It would be really slick..

Anyone have Peter Jackson's number? lol....

I had some ideas about things I would love to see.... No one will probably see these but I have to get 'em out. Maybe some one will and pursue it if I float these out into the ether...or the ethernet, as it were. Ok, here's my first one...
This goes out to Chris Carter, the creator of the X-Files...How about ( now, bear with me) the return of the X-Files..but ANIMATED. It can be shown on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming. It could have all the voices of all the regulars. Mulder and Scully animated. It can have character design and animation by Madhouse Studios (Ninja Scroll and other great films) or Shinichirô Watanabe (director Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo). Imagine Mulder and Scully with an anime-infused design... THAT would be cool. It could be a great show. Just a half-hour, that's all you would need. Duchovny, Anderson, Pillegi doing the voices...and we can pretend that the 9th season didn't happen..or the 8th for that matter
(though the 8th is not bad). I think Spotnitz, Gordon, Morgan and Wong, Darin Morgan and the rest would love to write for that show. Mark Snow can come back for the music. It could be great. It could come on at 11 or 12 on Saturday night...it could even go further than the show did. And the collected dvd sales? Money. Pure money(You hear me talking, Fox?). Come on. Is there anyone out there that can get this to Chris Carter? I don't need a credit...a small "idea man" fee would suffice...lol...
And here is the final touch... The name of the show? The X-Files: Re-Animated. Oh come on, you KNOW that is cool. Don't try and act like it ain't..lol...

Did a sketch of Edward James Olmos as Commander Adama from Battlestar Galactica...need to try some more. I like the body but I think I have to play more with the features...

COMIC BOOK CORNER

Well, I just read something sad....DC's Gotham Central, of which I have every issue, is coming to a close with #40. In the solicitations for that month's comics it said "final issue" and I was like "Wha..?" I always knew that the book never sold really well but I had hoped that DC would keep supporting it. Then I talked myself into thinking that it was being relaunched because after " Infinite Crisis" I have no idea what DC is up to. Wonder Woman had a "final issue" label too...so I just thought they were gonna shake it up a bit and bring it back.

But I just read an interview with Greg Rucka over on Newsarama (one of a bunch of cool comic sites out there) and Mr. Rucka said that he just didn't have the heart to write it anymore after Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark left for Marvel. I was really sad to see Michael Lark go, his artwork hit the perfect tone of gritty for the series and you could totally tell in an interview I read with Rucka and Brubaker that they enjoy throwing ideas around and dreaming up stories together. In fact, they basically came up with the "Dead Robin" story in a Newsarama interview. With Michael Lark they had a definite team spirit. But Lark left and the artwork was never the same. And Brubaker seems to be more fatalistic and sarcastic than Rucka to me, so this added a different tone to the book. Without them Rucka feels like a single dad as it were. I can understand that. And he doesn't want anyone else to write it, which I can understand as well. So he asked DC to end it.

For anyone who has never read Gotham Central, do yourself a favor and buy the trade paperbacks. The series concerns the detectives of the Gotham City P.D. trying to do their jobs and often running into the fantastical, the monsterous and the just plain weird. And lurking in the shadows, alternately working with and hindering them, is Batman. Batman barely ever appears in this comic but when he does it is always to great effect. He truly comes across as dangerous and scary in this book. He, along with the city of Gotham, is a character that you don't have to see to feel his presence. Great book.

I only have one problem with the book and that is that I think they will kill off a character that I like quite a bit. It will have a dangerously negative effect on his partner, if this is the case, and that would be interesting to see but I am still not happy about it. But I think I understand why: This character appears to be the moral center of the book, and all bets for the city and it's people are off now as represented by his death. I hope it doesn't happen but I understand if it does. Much like Greg Rucka's decision to put Gotham Central down.

Got an e-mail from a friend of a friend...Jose Marzan, Jr. who you may know if you are a comics fan...Jose is a great inker, he inked some of my favorite Flash comics written by Mark Waid, along with a million other books. Good guy too..he still speaks to me, although I've owed him Sonny Rollins cd's for like 5 years now...lol..I keep forgetting! He got me some Jerry Goldsmith soundtracks ( he's a big soundtrack fan and I've tried to emulate in my small way) and I was supposed to get him those jazz dics....I'm an ass...lol...anyway, Jose wrote and had nice things to say about me being the artist of the month at The Digital Bits site. He has a site that I've put in the links but I'll put it here too. Check it out!

http://www.josemarzan.com/servlet/StoreFront

Plus he has a blog here:

http://josemarzanjr.typepad.com.

I said a friend of a friend at the beginning of this post..I know Jose thru my friend Kingman Huie, who I've known for years and is truly an extremely talented artist. Kingman is a great guy and I have been so busy that I have not added a link for his work. Again, I am an ass...lol... It's in the links list on the right but I'll put it here...take a look!

http://homepage.mac.com/dvdkingster/portfolio/index.htm

Yep...Shannon got smoked on "Lost"...and in an episode where they finally made her likable. It's funny, because I was telling someone last season how everyone on the island has been tremoundously screwed by someone in the past, they are all wounded and basically in a bad place in life. Well, Hurley is rich but he's haunted by those numbers... It's kind of interesting. Maybe Locke is right. Maybe they will all find what they are looking for on this island. Except for the poor folks who died...lol...Ok, guys, you knocked off another cast member, let's stop right here for a while, ok? Enough with the bumping off for a bit....I had planned to draw the cast of the show...do I do ghost Boone and Shannon, now?

Well, after three weeks we finally get a new episode of "Lost" tonight and I have finally resigned myself to the fact that one of the characters is a goner. I wrote an another post that I thought that ABC was jerking our chains and that some minor character will buy it but I think that's wishful thinking on my part. I'm still not crazy about bumping off characters a lot on shows, I think it's more annoying than dramatic, but that's what's gonna happen so I better deal. Everyone is forecasting Shannon as the stiff but that may be misdirection. Shannon is really the only character that I dislike so anyone else dying will only piss me off. I like "Lost" alot but they need to lay off the "kill off a character" jag they are on.....

Gonna keep this one brief....last night in the Nets-Heat game Vince Carter threw down a dunk over Alonzo Mourning that was beyond nasty...It was all manner of wrong. It will be on highlight reels forever...I refuse to describe it because a mere earthbound mortal such as myself has no business verbalizing such lofty displays. Go find it...nasty....

I was watching The West Wing last night, the live "debate" between the two men running for President, Democratic candidate Matt Santos( Jimmy Smits) and Republican candidate Arnold Vinick ( Alan Alda). It was excellent. Obviously, no debate would occur in the way that Alan Alda's character would suggest: He had the rules for the debate junked and had an open question and answer forum. Jimmy Smits agreed and off they went. Debating on health care, Africa, prescription drugs, jobs, immigrants and more, they said things that made you think. Both candidates said things that, truthfully, no candidate in reality would, but I think that was the point of the episode. It made us realize how much we may not know, how much more we should learn and how much two men that "has the best interests of the nation in mind", as Alan Alda put it, could do. Special interest obviously would handcuff even remotely all of the things they mentioned but it was amazing to think what could happen if government were unfettered and united to better this nation. They still held fast to their party labels, still slung a little mud, still made commentaries about what is really going on but they, though idealized, represented the best that we could have to run our nation. If only....Again, it was an excellent episode and I hope to get a transcript of it somewhere.

I was reading in the Post about "Vegas", which is a show that my wife likes, and how the producers are about to kill off a major character because they did it on "Lost" last season and it worked well i.e. got big ratings...see, this is terrible. This is the dangerous precedent that "Lost" has started...Now, TV shows will be killing everyone off 'cause it's good for ratings. And it's completely unneccessary. You get used to these characters, you grow to love them and they just bump 'em off. I understand the need for dramatic tension, floating the idea that these are life and death circumstances but damn...I can see it now: "Next week on 60 Minutes...one of these correspondents will not make it to the end of the show...BUT-WHO-WILL-IT-BE?!?" It's ridiculous. I can see a producer sitting there going, " Wel, gee....does it HAVE to be Two-and-a-Half Men?" lol.... It's just getting out of control. So I guess the November and February sweeps will just be filled with people dying...nice. I see enough of that in real life, I can be spared that in the shows I watch. Jeez... On the other hand, if there ever was a gimmick that could get me to watch "American Idol", that is it...lol...

You know, I know a few people who are very down on the NBA. I work with a guy named Todd Bond who's a really good guy, really sports-smart, but he's been down on the league lately. He thinks a lot of players aren't motivated, the games aren't good, etc. I disagreed with him completely. And after last nights, Pacers-heat game even he had to admit that was a good game. VERY hard fought, tightly played, very competitive. Dwayne Wade and Ron Artest were as spirited as you will ever see and the intensity was there all game for everyone. It was like a playoff game. I was really happy to see that because the critics are watching....

Working on a B&W U2 drawing...I've been trying to do more b&w so I can hit the local papers like The Village Voice or NY Press....I still have to add Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr....don't worry, I didn't diss them...

Well, here in the Tri-State area we are off to a bumpy NBA start....The Nets, who were up by 16 on the Bucks, got blown away in the 4th quarter and the Knicks, who didn't look that bad, forced the Celtics to O.T. before the wheels fell completely off. The Bucks look good, they have what Seattle had last year. Solid players with a big time scorer ( Michael Redd) to keep them in games. I don't know if they are is good defensively as Seattle was last year but they just might be. Andrew Bogut looks good and the have Jamal Magliore who is very good. T.J. Ford is back tearing thru defenses....maybe this Net loss isn't that bad a loss. But you want to win your home opener.
The Knicks just have way too many parts. it seems. I'm sure Larry Brown will start whittling down the excess and find his rotation. They didn't look too bad though. I just hope they can have a winning season and make the playoffs. It's been very rough in Knickville lately...

I'm a lucky man today...I was chosen as "Artist of The Month" on my favorite dvd site http://www.thedigitalbits.com/. Sarah Hunt was great to me and built a great page of my art. Please visit the site, besides the artist of the month, they have the BEST info on upcoming dvd releases and general buzz around the industry. Go now! GO! lol...

Recently my wife IM'd me a picture of my son that I've never seen before. It has to be at least a year and half old. I just stumbled across it again and I have to put it up because it amuses the hell out of me...lol...

Well, so long Pierce Brosnan..I enjoyed your run as James Bond, myself. He easily became my second favorite 007. But I'll give this new guy a chance. Judi Dench is going to be in the new Casino Royale, right? I like her as M quite a bit. And I like Colin Salmon, who is that brother who is M's right hand man. He's cool, I'd like to see him return. And the newest Moneypenny, I like her too. I hope they all come back. I'll miss ya, Pierce. Here's a sketch that I did of him not too long ago...

That's cool about the White Sox...congratulations! But, damn, I thought Houston would give them a LITTLE trouble at least...Well, you know, they did, really. It wasn't easy. Each game was tight as hell, but Chicago took advantage of all the breaks they got and Houston didn't....those poor people at the games in Houston looked like they were gonna do themselves. Very upset. But I can understand that. They waited all this time to go to the series and got swept...ouch....

I'm a "Lost" fan...I really think the show is kooky and very addictive...and I was just reading this article in the Post about another character dying....and all the speculation about it. 2 things: 1, I think ABC is jerking our chains. In the trailer for next weeks episode they say that one of these survivors won't make it. But they included a shot of that new blonde woman that is one of the rear-of-the-plane-survivors. They snuck her in with a shot of Michael. I think she's gonna bite it. They had all this speculation about how this character would be killed by another and that other character would be found out later. I think that big brother, another back-of-the-planer, is the likely killer. He just seems to have a secret or a number of secrets. The dead guy that he and Jin stumbled across? I bet he killed him...It was kinda cool when he and Jin hid and you see the legs of the "Others" go by. I bet they are past crash survivors, gone all feral as my friend Tony put it. They have a Lord of the Flies existence going on. We were comparing them to the Reavers from "Firefly" (that Joss Whedon is responsible for EVERYTHING, ain't he?). That's a possibility....
But anyway, I think they will knock off this chick. It's too soon for Michelle Rodriguez. Jack doesn't even know that she survived.
Oh yeah, I had two points, right? The other is that they had better chill with knocking off characters. When Boone died, I understood. The stakes are high and the audience has to be made aware of that. Folks could go bye-bye. But if you start bumping off characters that we've grown to love all willy-nilly, I think there could be backlash. I admit, I am not a big fan of Claire(who I thought was a goner last season instead of Boone) or Shannon but at this point, knocking them off would seem gratuitous... Lead up to it at least. Give us another season's worth of the character before they get shanked or bucked or crushed or drowned or...well, you get the idea...lol...

Here's a couple more.... The Locke is not so recent....and the Halle really isn't...lol...

Decided to post some of my newest work...I don't know why I am so reluctant to put work up here...I think I just wanted to mostly write. But I do have this forum and I should take advantage of it. It's a great way to have people see what you do. So here's a few recent pieces. Hope you enjoy....

Man, yesterday was dramatic finish day. The Giants won on a pass from Eli Manning to Amani Toomer with about 4 seconds left that tied the game and an extra point to seal it. The Vikings, who seemed completely done by half, came from 17 points down to win it on a LONG field goal. A couple of games were won on long field goals. And then, The Chicago White Sox won on a Scott Podsednik homerun off of Brad Lidge, who got whacked by Albert Pujols last week. Nice drama all around. This is the kind of stuff that you live for as a sports fan...
I liked the White Sox back when they had Harold Baines and Greg Luzinski in the 80's....Tony LaRussa was managing the team then. I wanted them to get to the World Series but no such luck..but here we are 20+ years later and here they are....It would be cool if they won. I don't have anything against the Astros, I'll never forget the '86 playoffs against the Mets. That was a classic and I really respected that Astros team. I think they're cool now but I really wouldn't mind if The Sox won...man, Chicago will be one big fist fight if they do, though...

My friend Tony bought the last Godzilla movie "Godzilla: Final Wars" off of Ebay and we hunkered down Friday to watch it. I knew going in that this was going to be a different kind of Godzilla movie. I had heard some things about it......Oh boy. I wanted to like this movie, I really did but, man....it's tough sledding thru this flick. The human aspect of all Godzilla films is always a tough part of the film to deal with. You just kind of want them to shut up and get back to the monsters. There have been varying degrees of success with the human story. Maybe it's because I have fond childhood memories of them but the human characters in the olders films like " King Kong Vs. Godzilla", "Monster Zero" (my man Nick Adams) and " Destroy All Monsters" have been way more interesting than in the latter films. I do like the psychic girl that was in pretty much all of the late 80's and 90's movies. Some of the human stories in those were somewhat interesting(Except for in "Godzilla Vs. King Ghidrah". The actors are awful and the movie makes no sense at all). But this new movie...wow, this has got to be, easily, the worst human story ever in a Godzilla film. It's laughable. The villain ( who, in the movies' only surprise, bumps off the guy you thought was gonna be the big bad guy) is a preening, childish, overly made-up, vaguely homosexual ( not that vaguely, actually) dope. He looks like the Marvel Comics villian Nightmare, as drawn by Kevin Maguire. This guy is ridiculous. And the dubbing just accentuates his dumbness. At one point the voice actor let out a laugh that floored me and my friend. The whole movie is this lame Matrix rip, with dopey fighting that you accept in a B grade Kung Fu flick but not in a Big G movie. And the music? OH....MY...GOD. Now, this is coming from a man that has Godzilla soundtracks, including the master Akira Ifukube, so believe me when I say that this is easily the worst Godzilla score ever. The absolute worst. The music is synthesizer garbage, 80's C movie grade. It truly is horrific. The closing titles theme sounded like 2 kids that learned a few chords on a old broken Moog.
Now I always cringe when I see an American in a Kaiju movie and this got a cringe factor of 7 or 8 (The bad guy and android from the aforementioned "Godzilla Vs. King Ghidrah" set the all-time mark with an 11 on the cringe scale.). The Atragon-type ship in the movie has an American captain, who's mustache does the better part of the acting. This guy gets points because of the hat and the sword but loses with the S L O W fighting speed he showed and the dialogue. Wow.
I'm not going to explain the plot. It's "Destroy All Monsters" made dumber. Don't ask how the Matrix type parts crop up, you really don't want to know. You really, REALLY don't.
Now, the monsters. Not enough of them but there never is. There's a great sequence of Rodan, Anguirus and others (King Seesar, anyone?) ripping up major cities all over the world. Rodan, destroying New York, however, is marred by a truly regrettable set-up of a purple-clad pimp with a purple car, black of course, having an argument with a cop as a homeless man, black again, chortles his approval. It's really embarrassing to sit thru, especially when you are an African-American. I am always amazed at how this country, and New York in particular, is portrayed around the world. I had to just laugh at it, it was that ridiculous. This is cool, however: When the Big G re-emerges about 40 or so minutes into the flick he is truly in a bad mood towards everyone. No one is spared. Godzilla is an unstoppable force of nature in this film, almost is vicious and brutal as he is in "Godzilla, Mothra & King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack", where is is just Destruction Incarnate. He just wipes out monsters left and right, including his lame-ass American counterpart, which is actually humorous. And there is a monster surprise at the end, which was nice, because it probably answered a question that fans would have. Effects are pretty good across the board and the monster designs are pretty nice. It was cool to see all the old monsters get updated. But the movie is all over the map. There's an old man and his Grandson running around with Minya, baby Godzilla and it's just ludicrous. At one point they are all crammed into the old man's truck ( which apparently, is the toughest, best gas mileage vehicle in all of human history) and Baby Godzilla has a seatbelt on...lol...Yeah, he might get really banged up in an accident, this mutant lizard...lol...Oh boy. Watch monsters, fast forward thru humans. And to use my man Shawn Atkinson's method of rating films, if I paid $10 to see this movie it would really be worth about $3...and that's pushing it....

Last night I watched (for like the 15th time) the last 5 minutes of "Pegasus", the last Battlestar Galactica episode. Man...Of course the rest of the episode is great but that last 5 minutes, from when Adama gets called over the ship-wide by Tigh to the very end, is an absolute perfect blend of acting, direction, editing, music and special effects...beautiful. I love the way the director Michael Rhymer has the camera circling Adama and Admiral Cain as they spar over the wireless. The editing of the camera work, linking the two. The way the camera slides back over to Cally when she realizes what is happening as Adama orders a marine strike force. Edward James Olmos and Michelle Forbes making difficult decisions and barely containing their anger. The music...I love Bear McCreary's work on this show. When Adama picks up to speak to Tigh you get some military drums, faintly. Then when Adama has made his decision you get these great violins, playing at a faster, more determined pace. And then when the Pegasus ready fighters launch and she starts to turn to face the Galactica you get those great tribal, powerful drums that have become a hallmark of the show. He combines all these different elements so well. And the fx....Do I really even have to commend Zoic and the shots they pull off? They did it for "Firefly" and they have upped the ante for this show. The CGI is just fantastic. I love the end of that episode. And I'll probably watch it 15 more times before BSG comes back on next year...

Just thought I'd share this..the other night my wife and I were watching the news and they were covering the Saddam Hussein trial. And the anchor finishes the little piece by saying " If convicted, Saddam would face the death penalty." My wife and I were like "Well...yeah. What else would he get, 7 to 10?" lol...Jeez, I HOPE he's up for the death penalty. I told my co-workers that and one of then named Maggie joked that he'll get 2 years community service at an Iraqi old age home...lol...

Well, Joe Torre is still the manager of the Yankees...I was wrong and really, I should be used to that by now. They say he flew to Tampa to have a face to face with Steinbrenner. He probably said "Fat boy, why don't you shut your mouth!" ( A little Twilight Zone reference there). Really, Steinbrenner talks mad garbage but when Torre got down there and in his face he probably was all contrite and like " Gee, Joe, the job is yours if you want it! Gosh, I'd love to have you back!" I could see him like that. Joe probably was all like "You've been popping crazy sh*t...I'm not having it. You better chill, son." Somehow, I suspect Joe Torre didn't sound like that at all, but I love to embellish with a Brooklyn version of the events. But, I'd love to have heard that conversation, anyway....
And I didn't mention my man Albert Pujols from the other night...what a blast! That thing was smoked. Prince Albert stomped on an entire city's heart, like Godzilla. What a moment. I hope that St. Louis can extend it, just make 'em sweat. And if they could win it? Oh man, that would be something....

This is hilarious....I typed in Larry Holmes and Godzilla into Google, just to see what would happen, and it came back that they both share the same birthday, November 3rd..lol...5 years apart but November 3rd, nonetheless... SEE!!!! This proves it!! lol....

I've been saying this for years but I have finally accumulated( through the magic of Google Image Search) the visual evidence to support my theory. After all this time I can finally prove that Larry Holmes and Godzilla are one and the same.

I wrote a few posts ago that I thought George Steinbrenner was going to can Joe Torre....I forgot to mention that if he does fire him, he'll wait until the first game or better yet, the last game of the World Series because he's a headline-grabbing, scene-stealing jackass like that.... He's done that before. He would be really inclined to do it if the Red Sox or the Mets were in it. I doubt there's two more teams he despises more. Last year and in '86 George must've lost his mind....
I really wanted to see the Cardinals go to the series and win. It's not impossible but they really are behind the eightball. I have to say, there were some truly bad calls in the game last night. And tossing the Tony LaRussa and then Jim Edmonds at a crucial point of the game really showed little restraint by the umps. These guys get a little full of themselves. I'm not sitting there to watch umps make calls. It's not about you, man. Ridiculous...That guy better steer clear of St. Louis for awhile....

My co-worker Joey Hart just cracked a good one...we got to talking about that old movie " Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry" with Peter Fonda and Susan George when Joey said they should make a black themed sequel called " Baby Daddy, Crazy Mommy"...lol... My wife will cringe when I tell her that. We were at the Path train station a couple of weeks ago when we saw a sister reading a book called " How To Marry Your Baby Daddy". I thought my wife was gonna shove her in front of the 33rd St. train...lol...

Damn, I've been so swamped ( bad choice of word, there. It rained for over a week in the New York-New Jersey area and everyone was soaked) here at work that I haven't had a chance to write at all.....They've got a lot of nerve here; they think I show up to do their stuff? I've got this blog to see to...lol...
The other day I came up with an odd question for my wife. Who did she think would die first: Whitney Houston or Bobby Brown? Morbid, I know, but this is what happens when you're stuck in traffic. She surprised me. I thought she would say Whitney but she said Bobby, theorizing that he's always in trouble and will get caught out there one day. That's why I thought it would be Whitney, because that would be more ironic in a way, even though she has her moments as well. Just one of those things you end up talking about when you're going 5 miles an hour....

Well, as my dad used to say, it's all over but the shouting. The Yankees are done. Fini. Oh well. I'm a Mets fan but I don't hate the Yanks. I actually like the team. I'm a New York fan so I want to see all the local teams do well. I really like Joe Torre. He's pretty cool under pressure and just seems to do the right thing. My wife always comments on how you can't tell what's going on in the game when you look at "Ol' Stoneface" as she calls him....I have a lot of respect for him. Plus he used to manage the Mets. But I have a nagging feeling that we just saw Joe Torre's last game as Yankee manager. I think the boss may pull the plug on him. Sweet Lou Pinella is waiting in the wings; the curtain may be ready to close on ol' Joe. Hey, there's precedent for this. In '95 Steinbrenner fired Buck Showalter after the Yanks lost to the Mariners in the playoffs. And in '80 I think it was, he fired poor Dick Howser after the Yanks lost to the Kansas City Royals...they won like 104 games that year. The Yanks haven't won in a few years and I think George has bided his time, letting some anti-Joe feelings stew while he plots. He knows there would be a public backlash against him but now that they haven't won since 2000 ( that's what they get for beating the Mets...hah!) he has some ammo. It wouldn't be cool but that's business. Derek Jeter said earlier this year that he couldn't imagine playing for another manager. Well, Derek, you may have to fire up that brain pretty soon...

Comic Book Corner

Ok, I'm a big comics fan so from time to time that will be a subject that will pop up. I'm starting off with a conversation about Batman/Superman or Superman/Batman, whichever way you prefer. That's the comic written by Jeph Loeb and is illustrated, at present, by Ed McGuiness. Ok. I picked this book up at it's inception purely for McGuinness. I knew a bit about Loeb but I've never read The Long Halloween or anything he's done with Tim Sale. Now that I think about it, didn't he write Superman when McG did it? Anyway, I was digging the first arc. Batman and Superman on the run. The comradery. The differences and the similarities in each's approach. The respect and what annoys each other. Cool. But by the time they got to the big giant Superman/Batman Anime robot and Superman impersonating Hawkman I was like " Wha?" I was like "Is this a goof?" Then Michael Turner came on and I basically stopped reading it. I don't like his art. Over the length of an entire book it's painful. I just knew it involved Supergirl. Ok. So Carlos Pacheco comes on and I'm back in it, I love that guy. But the story...again, I had that "Wha?" feeling. It just seemed like every spare character was tossed in this thing. So that leads me to the current arc, with McGuinness back drawing. The artwork is as good as ever, his wacky style really appeals to me. It just gels together so many different things, it cool to watch him pull it all together and make it work. But this story....There's a scene in "The Birdcage" ( yeah, yeah, yeah, my wife loves that movie...lol..) where Gene Hackman, faced with all this craziness like Nathan Lane being a man and not a woman married to Robin Williams and all (don't ask) says " I feel like I'm going insane!"
That's how I feel reading this book! Bizarro and BATZARRO?!?!? What the hell?!?!? I'm reading this decent goof on the Ultimates when suddenly this pops in! I can't even bring myself to read it! I'm just puzzled by this. And this last issue sent me over the edge. Suddenly Batzarro tumbles into the Red Sun Superman universe ( from the Millar/Johnson Elseworlds mini) and Bizarro falls into the Batman Beyond universe! And although they are two VERY cool pin-ups by McG, my brain suddenly felt like the nuerons stopped firing. I could feel myself having a stroke. What the hell is this? And then Batman becomes Kryptonite Batman, all green and glowy?!? It's like this book is written by Mattel or something. It seems like Jeph Loeb is dropping the biggest goof in comics on us. Oh man...Can SOMEBODY, ANYBODY help me make heads or tails of this?

Inapproprate Laughter #1

If you're like me you laugh at things that socially you are not supposed to. Very PC world we live in now, so it's even worse than before. And as I get older I find less things funny. So people falling down in the street or things like that don't amuse me as much as they used to (Poor me, right?). But once in awhile the "unfunny incident" gets a smile out of me. So now I will document them. I don't know how often this will happen ( hard to get a good laugh nowadays) but we'll see....
Anyway, I was watching NFL Primetime last night with Boomer and Tom Jackson and they showed a clip ( I don't remember what game it was) of a referee getting knocked down. Refs took their lumps yesterday: Ronde Barber accidentally cuffed one in the jaw and dropped him ( which was kinda funny)...that same ref got sprawled later on. But the ref I'm talking about got bowled over by a linebacker and a running back and fell hard to the turf, slamming his head on the ground (that wasn't what was funny). So they show the guy and he his laying face down, holding his head in obvious major discomfort(Still not funny). What amused me, however, was that this guy was laid out and one of his shoes were missing. LOL... It wasn't even in the frame, it was GONE. I was like "Damn, he got hit HARD!" If both of his shoes were missing, I really would've fell out...
See, I can't tell my wife stuff like this...she's horrified at what I find funny...lol...

Man, am I glad the Jets won.....It's been tough, what with losing the starting QB and the backup QB in the same game. I hope Pennington comes back next season fully healed. The team really responds to him and I'm hoping he has a long career with the Jets. Vinny looked good! For a 41 year old who was watching at home two weeks ago I thought my man did great. And after all that the Jets are 2-3. Wow. I don't know where they'll end up but as long as they keep fighting...and my man Vilma is wrecking shop! Linebacker is my favorite defensive position and it's good to see a Jet getting his. Let's see what happens....

Here's that Giambi piece in case anyone was interested.....

So Jason Giambi was named Comeback Player of the Year, huh? You know what? Good. I was really glad he had a good year...I did a caricature of him back when he first joined the Yankees and everyone was all over him for not producing. I kept telling these damn Yankee fans(don't even get me started on THAT) to be patient, the guy will get going and knock your socks off. And he did...And then the steroids thing happened. You'd think the guy killed an entire town by all the hate and invective I've read about him and steroid abuse....Ok. Steroids ain't cool. They definitely should be outlawed in sports and mandatory testing is the best way to go. But don't wish the guy into jail or a hole in the ground for it. Stop throwing stones, people. Take your average person, subtract steroids and substitute alcohol/drugs/sex/etc....come on down from that high horse. He made a mistake(people will argue and say that cheating is not a mistake...ok, maybe you have something there. I'm not smart enough to decide that fully) But everyone deserves a shot at redemption. Isn't that what confession is all about? And yeah, he was very elusive in terms of copping to it. Maybe he could've handled that better. But we are where we are and I'm glad the guy worked it out and got to where he is. They'll never let him live it down...but maybe he can take comfort and pride in this award. Hey, you can say what you want about him but at least he didn't say that Miguel Tejada gave him the steroids...lol...

I was watching my Season One DVD of Battlestar Galactica ( very nice! If you're a fan and don't have it yet...get it! Or get someone else to get it for you!) and I was listening to the commentary track by Executive Producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick. Very informative...but David Eick kinda cracked on Farscape. He was talking about how Sci-Fi thought that Farscape had become too "inside" and it might've alienated (alienated, I made a funny) the casual viewer but it was great for "the nine people who never missed an episode". Come on David. I love BSG and I think your video blogs on the Sci-Fi site are really cool and funny but don't rag on Farscape. That show has a helluve lot more than 9 every episode viewers and is, in my opinion, one of the best Sci-Fi shows ever made. They did fantastic, un-television-like things on that show and I think it helped shaped the adult attitude that allows BSG to be on Sci-Fi. Don't kick Farscape, man....kick Stargate...lol....

I was really disappointed to see that "Serenity" (do you capitalize movie titles or do you underline them or just put them in quotation marks? What's the correct way? Somebody let me know...) only grossed 10 million at the box office last weekend...I loved the movie, Joss Whedon and crew did a great job with it. I was hoping it would become a franchise..it still might but it has to take in a fair amount of dough for that to happen. It will probably sell alot of DVD's like the complete Firefly set did which would help. I remember reading somewhere that they never would've even considered doing a sequel to Austin Powers if they hadn't sold a trillion DVD's of it. That's what kept that franchise going.
But I have another beef about that $10 million gross...I know that Joss and Universal wanted to advance screen it to as many people as possible but I think, bottom line, tht they let too many damn people see it for free! It should've grossed twice that, I bet. The Firefly fans were gonna see it anyway... make 'em pay. Everyone got the five fingered discount and the movie got screwed. Now, I admit, I saw it for free too...and I was like " Yo, it was great and I saw it for free! Can't get no better!" But the movie and the future of the franchise suffers. I want to see it again, give them my money because they deserve it. If you didn't pay, go see it again and pay...Let's get these people back on the screen again...
My man Nathan Fillion should be a star, shouldn't he?

The strangest thing happened today...I was putting the garbage out at about 5:30 a.m. when I suddenly said to myself "I should create a blog!"
Now, this is very odd for me...I've only recently been able to look at blogs as being anything more than self-indulgent, pretentious ramblings...and I've never been one to just spout about any old subject that came down the pike. I've never particularly felt like it or thought that anyone should really care. I talk with people but I don't really get my thoughts out. I never wanted to bother people with them. But lately a lot of thoughts have been percolating in my dome and my wife tuned me out years ago...lol...so I just thought it would be a good way to get it all out. Whether anybody else cares or not is kinda immaterial, I guess. I'll try to not be too obnoxious...TRY, I said..lol...I make no promises...