A Couple of Interesting Things...

Not much to say, unfortunately. I wasn't sleeping well for a while there, but I've been getting better hours lately and have had more energy as a result. It was rough the first night though -- I guess my body had adjusted to getting five hours sleep a night (which was what was screwing me up) so after hour five of my getting-back-to-normal night I was waking up hourly and trying to fall back asleep. After keeping better hours for a few days I got hit really hard by my allergies and lost a day because I could barely think, much less breathe. Things are better now though, and I'm hoping to get things back on track.

That's the extent of my life since the last post, give or take the odd dinner out with the guys or whatever. Thankfully I've come across a few things that I thought'd be worth passing along, so here we go.

Entertainment Weekly's New Movie Classics

A look back at the new classics, films from the last 25 years worthy of the title. A few of my favorites including The Naked Gun, Back to the Future, and There's Something About Mary made the list, so I'm happy.

Japanese Invent Car That Runs on Water

Not exactly as pictured, but it was hard to find a good descriptive image and, really, who wouldn't want to drive a car that could ride on water? Anyway, it'll probably be a long time before the cars mentioned the article are sold in North America, but you'd think people would want them as soon as they could get them.

Read Deepak Chopra's Beyond #1

Haven't read it myself, but my brother's really into Chopra, and a free comic is a free comic.

That's all I can think of for now. Have a good day.

Hi there.

Hi. Hope everyone had a good Halloween. I was hoping to actually do something last night, but my semi-plans fell through. I guess the fact my pumpkin imploded when I was getting ready to carve it implied my Halloween would be about much fun as the last nine New Years. Pleasant, but woefully uneventful.

Anyway, I'm contributing to the Marvel Appendix website and my latest profile should be on the site in the next day or two. Don't think I've mention it in the blog so far, but figured I ought to lieu of having anything more recent to write about.

http://www.marvunapp.com

Edit: Turns out I mentioned it, not a week earlier. Whoops?

What a Living Room!

Check this out:


I came across this, killing time on deviantart.com. Cool, huh? I'd love to have something like that in my place, if only I had the art skills, wall space, and paint supplies to do it.

JLU vs. Superfriends

Here's a link to a great article online comparing Superfriends and Justice League Unlimited:

http://toddalcott.livejournal.com/65562.html

Here's an excerpt for whet your appetite:

"In Superfriends, Batman has a computer and a cave full of gadgets, Wonder Woman has a magic rope and an invisible plane, Green Lantern has a magic ring, Flash is fast, Superman has his multitudinous powers, Aquaman talks to fish. Those are all fine attributes, but they do not, in and of themselves, constitute character. If all that mattered was the number of powers, Martian Manhunter would be a more popular superhero than Superman.

"What the producers of Superfriends chose to do is give all their heroes the exact same personality, whether they are the Last Son of Krypton, the Dark Knight, the Amazon Princess or The Guy Who Talks to Fish. The heroes of Superfriends are uniformly game, brave, chipper, chatty, easily startled and, paradoxically, unflappable. No sooner do they exclaim "Great Krypton/Hera/Gotham/Neptune!" than they pull some improbable solution out of the air and calmly implement it (as Seanbaby mentions, this solution often involves "spinning around" the bad guy/explosion/missile/lava/monster/lava-monster until the spinning affects it somehow).

"This conceptual blunder, not the dumb plots or the cheap animation, is why Superfriends is so reviled. Television can soar on dumb plots and cheap animation, it cannot survive without characters. This is why episodes of Superfriends feel so shallow, repetitive and lame; there are seven main characters and they all think and act exactly the same way. Think about it: Hanna-Barbera actually gave the members of the Justice League less personality than they gave to the members of the Mystery Gang."

Honestly, I don't get why some folks are so hung up on Superfriends. It's the same thing with shows like He-Man and Ninja Turtles. I get affection for old cartoons you watched as a kid, but really, a lot of those shows are pretty bad. Not just the animation, but the writing and voice acting too. And hey, there are things I liked as a kid that I've rewatched as an adult and found nostalgic enjoyment in, but they're far from the be-all, end-all.

Read this.

http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/

I recommend everyone check out Valerie D'Orazio's "Getting out of Comics" series in her blog. It's inspiring, troubling, emotional, and very compelling writing. Kudos to her for having the bravery to put it all down the page.

I finally gave in and got my own myspace account. It's at myspace.com/georgemorrow, for anyone interested in being my friend. To be perfectly honest, I signed up out of bordom and think myspace is a stupid way to keep in touch, much less meet people, but it might come in handy.

In other news, McHammer has a blog. Huh. http://mchammer.blogspot.com/

Hi there

Hi. So, I found a few issues of the 2000-2001 Static Shock mini-series. I'm glad I spent that half hour wading through the back issue bins tracking them down -- even if I did only find issues 1 and 3 -- because they're well worth it. And luckily I found the first issue, which I have yet to find online, at least at a reasonable price. Speaking of which, I think the the comic shop I found the books at in Niagara is jacking up the prices on the books a little too high. The five back issues cost twenty bucks, and even then they were all from the 50% off boxes. If the selection weren't so good I probably stop going there.

On an unrelated note, here's an interesting link for anyone that stumbles upon my blog my mistake (since that's about the only traffic I'm sure I get). http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2006/04/diane-farr-is-hot-for-peter-mcnichol.html Pretty funny stuff from Simpsons and Frasier writer Ken Levene.

Have a good day.

Just Thinking...

There was this great short film I saw a few years ago called "Indefinitely". Looking back it probably wasn't as great as I remember (I did catch it at about five in the morning and even then came in a little late), but the punch-in-the-gut ending was perfect and the tone was just right for a romantic comedy. Unfortunately I haven't been able to catch it again, which may well be for the best, and it seems the official website is down, but if it's on and you have a chance to see it, I really recommend you do.

And in lieu of the website, there's a blog by the filmmaker, but it's a little out of date. http://bareruinedfilms.blogspot.com/