I is Legend

This weekend Mel and I went and saw I am Legend. To be honest I was a little bored by it. Will Smith is good. I read a few reviews before I saw the movie and most of them trend toward agreeing that Will Smith is one of those actors that can carry a movie on his own. By one of those actors, I guess they mean a good actor. It's not like he's some kind of genius because he can hold my attention is a decaying Manhattan for 45 minutes. I can sit in my backyard and watch squirrels chase each other for forty five minutes. Let's not make a god out of him quite yet.

The CGI graphics could have been better (especially that lion). Occasionally the cityscape looked realistic but I didn't really see too much that I hadn't seen in the trailer. In that way it reminded me of the 1930's Manhattan that was created for Peter Jackson's King Kong. Both look nice but not much was done with them. Most of what we see of Manhattan in Legend is an early scene where Will Smith is cruising around in a Mustang named after Melanie's sister. Good clean fun, sure, but you can see most of that scene for free on Youtube.

I think what disappointed me the most was how little interaction there was between Smith's character and those unfortunate creatures that he shares the city with. Say what you want about Omega Man but I really like the conflict between Heston's character and the night creatures. In Omega Man they were intelligent. In I am Legend they show glimmers of intelligence but that conflict is not pursued like I was wishing. We see a few shots of an infected human that is portrayed as being a leader of the infected masses but the movie doesn't explore that. There was your movie, not the arrival of two other immune humans and some mythical safe harbor that they can flee to.

As far as movies about an apocalypse I think I would have been better off watching The Postman again.

The 50 most loathsome people in America

I love this list: "Given low-wage job test-licking all Chinese imports, incurs brain tumor, has epiphany about consumer choice and income, then more brain tumors.

Rod Carew Shrine

Rod Carew Shrine
Originally uploaded by zzazazz

As many of you know, Rod Carew was my favorite baseball player while I was growing up. I think it came from reading those Ty Cobb biographies when I was a kid. Like Cobb, Carew hit for high average, eschewed the home run and stole home on occasion.

In the last year I have been going on eBay and buying old magazines with Rod Carew on the cover. I take the covers off the magazine and put the covers in frames. I just now put the magazines on the wall down in the Halo den. I got one more to get. It's another issue of Sport magazine.

This is not a drill

Hey look, the dispatch that was sent out by CINCPAC announcing the attack on Pearl Harbor. You know, I missed Pearl Harbor Day this year. I don't know how I did that. For as long as I can remember I have remembered, in my own way, that day 26 years before I was born.

Geek Quiz

How big of a science fiction nerd are you?

	I received 78 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz canon s5 is

Bojangles Handoff

Bojangles Handoff
Originally uploaded by zzazazz

I took this picture on the way to work. I have stopped drinking soda so I go to Bojangles for sweet tea.

Howdy

I just received an email from some realtor that I must have given my email address to back when I thought my credit was good enough for me to buy a house. I noticed they sent the email to a lot of people and didn't bother to set it up so I couldn't see the email addresses of all those other people. Naturally I responded to all and mentioned a great website I had discovered. That website being this blog. It's an experiment. I am curious to see how many suckers actually click the link and come here. Probably none. I wouldn't. So far about 22 of the addresses have bounced back as undeliverable and a three people are out of their offices until after the Christmas holiday. If this is your first and, probably, last time here at least check out this cute picture of my cats.

Ron Paul on Fox News

Wow, I think the entire cast of this Fox "News" morning show may be functionally retarded.

It's on

It's official, Peter Jackson is going to make a a movie based on the Hobbit. Merry Christmas to me, baby.

My job

I am the breakfast cook. It's no mystery as to how I became the breakfast cook. It's because I have to eat breakfast. I cannot begin my day without some sort of decent breakfast. If I do miss breakfast and show up to work hungry I am not fun to be around. I know people like my Dad who hardly ever eat breakfast. People like him just drink coffee until it's time to each lunch. I can't do, I won't do that. At the new house I make breakfast for Melanie and me.

Today I made gluten free pancakes. Melanie has an allergy to everything wheaty, dairy and beefy and eating together can be an adventure. In the morning I usually prepare a healthy portion of hash browns; add green pepper, tomato and onion; fry them up with some chicken sausage; give half of the result to Melanie; then scramble two eggs; add some grated cheddar cheese and eat the results of that concoction.

The gluten free pancakes were pretty good. They had a pleasing pancake taste and the only real difference I noticed was that they weren't as fluffy as the pancakes to which I am accustomed. Even the substitution of soy milk for cow milk didn't faze me. We added some chicken sausage for Mel and some eggs and sausage for me and we had a tasty little breakfast.

For Xmas

By the way, if you are looking for something to get me for Christmas, look no further.

I love a good monster movie and it's been a while since I've seen a good new monser movie. My fingers are crossed.

Not Clemens...

Baseball is dead to me.

Christmas 1968

Christmas 1968
Originally uploaded by zzazazz

For some reason this picture is one of the most popular pictures on my Flickr page. Of course, being the most popular picture on my Flickr page only requires about 300 views but why should this particular photo keep getting viewed? Am I that cute? Do people love plastic robots? Is it the magic combination of the words Christmas and 1968?

The house thang

I've found that just doing at least one thing a day that improves the living conditions at the new house slowly moves us forward. Take this morning for example. This morning I placed all my Robert Heinlein books on the shelf in the order in which they were printed. I think everyone at the house will sleep better knowing that my Heinlein collection is in chronological order. I know I will.

Remember the new roommate that couldn't be bothered to box a damn thing before the moving day? Well, he's got two more days off before I have a six day Christmas break and if his crap is still piled in the laundry room by then I am going to make a Leaning Tower of Useless Shit on his bed next Friday. Know that.

I also found that I am short about six books from having a complete collection of his books. Time to go shopping. Half.com, here I come.

Gojira

Gojira
Originally uploaded by zzazazz

Have I shown you my black and white picture I took of my Godzilla figurine? No? Well, I have now.

Hey baby, whoa baby

This morning I was able to download the Led Zeppelin show from two nights ago. Some guy snuck in his recorder and I now have in my possession a listenable audience recording of the now famous show in London. I dumped it on my Ipod before I left for work and I was only able to hear about 2 1/2 songs. The band sounds as good as all the raving reviews say and the audience is literally screaming between songs.

I downloaded the show through a torrent site called Dime a Dozen. I was blown away by how popular the show is. Most good torrents that people go gaga over will generally have a bout two or three hundred traders seeding the show. For those of you that have not messed around with bit torrent, a seeder is someone that has the whole show on his hard drive and is sharing with those that are downloading. Instead of a couple of hundred seeders the Zeppelin show from two nights ago has three thousand seeders. That is an amazing number of seeders. I've never even seen one thousand before let alone three thousand.

With this show being so popular I can't help but admire Robert Plant's unwillingness to tour as Led Zeppelin. It's obvious that Jimmy Page is dying to take the dinosaur out and walk it around the world once or twice but Plant has his own thing going. I will say this though, I've seen Plant play Zeppelin songs with his band Strange Sensation and what they present is very good. I notice they mess with the songs, give them more of an eastern feel and they do attempt to rock them out...and they do. Nothing that Strange Sensation and Plant do together can touch what he and Page present. I know this is nothing new, Page and Plant, Lennon and McCartney, Meg and Jack, sometimes two people just bring out the magic in each other. The whole sum is greater than the parts thing that happens in all great bands.

Even if they do decided to set out on a North American tour and they come to Charlotte I am not sure if I will go. Decent seats are going to cost at least $100 and I ain't paying $100 to see anybody. There are plenty of other people that will, I'll just wait for the bootlegs and hope they shuffle their set list and do some jamming.

Led Zeppelin

Unless you are under a rock or live in the mining hills of northern Michigan like some crazed hillbilly gun runner, you probably have heard that Led Zeppelin played a concert last night. I found a good write up by David Fricke here. There are some nice photographs if you scroll to the end of the article.

You can view a few videos here.

The core bullshit issues people really care about

I didn't know The Onion did video.

A Quote

I am currently reading Steve Martin's memoir entitled "Born Standing Up." As you may have guess from the title the book focuses on his ten years as a working stand up comedian. Here's a great quote from the book concerning his decision to attempt to make a living by making people laugh: "I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naivete, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do."

Howdy

I knew moving three households into this house was going to be challenging. I had no idea how much work this was going to be. We're getting there, though. The living room is set up and has surround sound ready to go. The downstairs den is also ready to go and it also has surround sound. I got my clothes unpacked but I have five boxes of CD's that I have absolutely no idea where to put. Right now they are stacked in my bedroom. I tried to give the CD's to Chris and then told him to get his CD's the hell out of my room but that didn't work.

How about a few pictures of the new place?
Here's a shot of the house from the backyard?

Here's a shot from the street.

Here we see Melanie doing proper women's work.

Yesterday afternoon, while listening to while listening to radio broadcast of the Panthers' most recent meltdown, I put up some Christmas lights. I was really enjoying working outside. I only wish we had a competitive football team so I could have had something worthwhile to listen to. I guess I should have turned the game off and listened to some tunes.

Saturday afternoon I hooked up some outdoor speakers to an extra receiver we had sitting around the house. Sitting on the back porch on a mild winter evening, sipping a Gaelic Ale by Highland Brewery and listening to you 100 most listened to songs set to shuffle on the Ipod is an ideal way to spend time.

Coincidence?

What happens when a conservative knucklehead becomes president and starts supporting more abstinence only sexual education? Why you have a rise in teenage mothers. Jackass.

Why worry about creationists?

John Scalzi gives the best answer yet. Yes, sometimes the simplest answer is the best answer.

Speaking of War Mongers...

As usual, Josh Marshall is on the ball concerning Bush and Iran. Patrick Lang also has a rational view of the situation.

Our new neighbor, Crash
Originally uploaded by zzazazz

The first neighbor we met at our new house was an extremely friendly black kitten named, according to his collar, Crash. He lives two houses down from us and his owner saw Crash walking among us and he hollered down, "I see you met Crash." I hollered back, "Yeah, he seems to be the neighborhood welcoming commitee." "Be careful," the owner said back, "He likes to climb inside cars." "Yeah," I said, "he's already been in my trunk." We both laughed.

Crash and Melanie's miniature dachshund have had a few spirited races around the yard. I've thrown Crash over the fence a couple of times to save him from Isaac but he keeps coming back. He's on his own now. He's younger and faster than Isaac and they both seem to enjoy their chases. Hopefully the chases won't evolve into captures.

This picture was taken through the kitchen window. He really wanted in but with three cats and a dog of our own he can go inside at his own house.

Big Hit

One of my favorite bits that David Letterman did back in the 80's was dropping things off a five story tower. I found the following Youtube video where he has his employees drop a safe onto a car. Now, that's good television.



What the?

I love the public. This lady just spent the last 30 minutes trying to recover her Yahoo email password. I was helping her and she couldn't remember what answer she had given to the secret question. I told her if she didn't know that answer I had no way to recover her password. She decided to use the Yahoo help system and, in doing so, logged in with her Yahoo ID, the password of which she had written down in a notebook. I never thought to ask her "You do know your Yahoo ID is tied into your Yahoo email account, right?" The public offers me a new challenge every day.

Shit Shovelers

Well, it looks like Bush and Cheney were completely full of shit in regards to Iran . Big surprise, I know. At least this time they were stopped before they started another war. They really wanted this one, too. Right now they have more wars than they need but not more wars than they want.

Howdy

I haven't posted anything for a few days because I have been moving all weekend. And I do mean all weekend. From Friday until yesterday I spent over 8 hours a day hauling boxes and furniture from three different apartments into one pretty big house. I don't ever want to do that again. One of my new roommates (an old friend of mine) didn't even bother to pack his belongs until we were at his old place and ready to put his stuff on the truck. I still think he's not aware of just how close he came to getting killed by me, Wendell and Melanie. He set us back a good three or four hours on Friday. Considering Friday was already going to be an 8 hour day you can understand why I was unable to articulate my rage into words. Word of advice, if you ever have to move try and box up your belongings before the day you actually are supposed to move.

New blogger

Jim Bailey, guitar player, reader, mountain climber and Yeti wrestler, now has a blog. He has joined the ranks of the chosen millions. He's the second new blogger to emerge from my group of lifelong friends in the last month. You can read his blog right here.