Happy New Year

I think the fact I'm writing a New Years message on my blog at midnight says something about the scope of my plans to celebrate the new year, but whatever.

All the best to you and yours and all that then.

Stick People Comic Reviews: Amazing Spider-Man #545

Here's a Stick Man look at Amazing Spider-Man #545:

50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007

A little dark, but surprisingly accurate. All of the obvious choices, and a few I'd forgotten about.

Check it out.

Happy Holidays!

Hope everyone has a pleasant holiday season. I've got the latest Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume from my brother and a San Diego Comicon Grundy figure I ordered to give to myself, so I'm happy. Best of the season to you and yours.

Here's a little something keeping with the spirit of the season:

The 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings

To view at your discretion.

Wonderfully Twisted

I came across these TV theme remixes while checking out Happy Days clips on Youtube. A little off, true, but mostly in line with what I consider uproariously hilarious. There's a Ducktales remix that was pretty good but awfully twisted that I might post, but I'm afraid it might be a little much for the more pure of mind out there. Either way, great work who ever you guys are.




(To clarify I didn't just happen to think of Happy Days out of the blue -- it was just on TV Land and that got me thinking about it. That's all, I swear.)

My Lost Years

I've been seriously depressed for two years now. It started in 2003 and got worse from there. I used to be able to balance work and school with my burgeoning depression because, despite feeling 'down', I knew if I kept plugging away and working toward a goal that things would be get better. When they didn't, it became harder to keep plugging away at those things. Harder to work that summer job at the movie theatre, so that had to go, harder to work myself into the schedule of friends and family too busy to see me otherwise so they had to go, until school became too much to deal with and half-way through a semester I just gave up. That was about two years ago.

About that time I began taking anti-depressants. I was told it might take a while to find one that did the trick. By the time I'd gone through two or three in my search, I'd started seeing a therapist. That's been going on for about a year or so. I hesitate to say there haven't been any major breakthroughs, but some of the little things I've been able to better understand about myself have been terribly helpful. And it's nice being able to get everything on my mind out there, not unlike a blog except you're actually talking to someone and it's less likely someone halfway around the world is liable to stumble onto my ramblings that way.

I say this because I had a conversation today with a close friend who stubbornly attributed the lack of forward movement in my life to laziness. I won't dispute that I am indeed lazy at times and favor procrastination over finishing something soon as possible, but I found it so terribly offensive that he would say that I choose not to do something about my depression and that my depression is my own fault because of my lifestyle. I found that so offensive it made me sick.

And now I don't know what to do with this "friend". I promised myself I the next time he said something so vile that was it. I was cutting myself off from him. The first time was when he, myself, and a few of the guys were in a bar and he got pretty drunk and started throwing things at me. The second when he told me my whole like was a "complete f**k up and all I do is sit around on my fat ass". This would seem to be the third strike against him. But I have so few friends at the moment, I'm afraid to lose one, even if he is a miserable bastard.

And then there's the whole thing about putting this in my blog for all the folks that might stumble upon it to see. Well, it's more a cathartic practice for me than for the amusement or reading enjoyment of any potential visitors. If you found my ramblings interesting, then I'm pleased. If not, I apologize. Just felt like I had to get this off my chest, is all.

Thoughts as I'm Watching "Seinfeld"

I'm watching the sixth season of Seinfeld on DVD and two things come to mind.

1) Third Rock From the Sun wasn't a very good TV show. Sure, it had it's moments, but once the novelty of the premise and the performances wore off, there really isn't much there. It all boils down to the reason I stopped watching it during the run and why it died a slow painful TV demise -- there was just no progression and it was the kind of show that needed it. Not a big sweeping change to the status quo or anything, but some forward movement. If a show is based around a gimmicky premise, it's a necessity after a few years. I thought That 70's Show was running in circles after a while, but the core idea behind the show, that basically of teens hanging out, is solid enough there are directions to go with it organically. Third Rock From the Sun's premise is that they were aliens on Earth to study humans while pretending to be humans. Unless you do something to shake things up you're going to start repeating yourself after a while. Wouldn't have even needed to be a big change, maybe something as simple as Mary finding out the truth, or Sally marrying Officer Don while keeping the secret going. There were subtle changes to the status quo over the years on the show, but it invariably reset itself after a while, and that lack of forward momentum killed the show. Why bother with a new episode when you've seen the same dozens of times before?

2) What ever happened to that woman Kramer got pregnant in "The Chinese Woman" episode of Seinfeld? Not that they confirmed she was pregnant, but that whole thing seems an odd thing not to get back to.

More Youtube Stuff

I've been watching the first season of Flight of the Conchords on DVD and here's my favorite song of the moment from that series.

The DVD set is good. It's nice having the episodes in one collection. Would've preferred some bonus material though with the set, like the Flight of the Conchords HBO special from 2005 or something, but still.

Well, geez...

If the last few issues of Spider-Man weren't indication of the dissolution of Peter Parker and Mary Jane's twenty year marriage (which is, like, five years in comic time), this comment from writer J. Michael Straczynski seems to spell things out:

"In the current storyline, there's a lot that I don't agree with, and I made this very clear to everybody within shouting distance at Marvel, especially Joe. I'll be honest: there was a point where I made the decision, and told Joe, that I was going to take my name off the last two issues of the OMD arc."

Thanks, I guess, to the Comics Should be Good guys to pointing this out.

I don't know... I liked them as a married couple. Guess there were enough higher-ups at Marvel who felt otherwise though.