About frakkin' time:
From TV Guide:
Hey You Guuuuuuyyyys! PBS is powering The Electric Company back up starting in January.
The 1970s-era educational show -- whose regulars included Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno and Bill Cosby -- starts production on new episodes this week and is geared, as always, to the six-to-nine year-old set.
No doubt in my mind -- the most important TV show in my life up to around age 7. Maybe i didn't love it as much as, say, Adam West's Batman, but it was more important. The Electric Company helped me learn to read.
It makes me a little sick to embed a video from Fox News, but my brother is in this one. For about 2 seconds. he's the bald cop getting into the car. Otherwise, this is an actual balanced story about Nerf guns used on campus for playing Humans vs. Zombies. Apparently, it can be done!
I promised my friend Bill, who should by now be back in Iraq, ready to spend 12 to 18 months in the Green Zone, that I would blog all about Iron Man, as well as the other big summer movies that he won't get to see until the illegal DVDs are with the troops.
My opinion is little different than many others: this is probably the best adaptation of a Marvel Comics superhero to date. Probably only Spider-Man 2 is better, and even that's iffy if you take exception with some of the liberties in the story of Doc Ock. (For my money, there's still no greater scene of super-heroics in history than watching the unmasked wall-crawler on the front of the runaway elevated train, trying desperately to stop it from crashing.)
Iron Man started first with a good, funny script (you can't go wrong with jokes about Operation: The Wacky Doctor's Game) that worked in two of Shell-head's rogues gallery members (hard to tell if you don't know the comics, but the Afghan war-lord that kidnaps Tony Stark is part of a group called "The Ten Rings" and he's either there to represent or work for The Mandarin). Iron Monger is a little more obvious. It's a good trick since Iron Man doesn't exactly have a memorable villain line-up when compared other Marvel heroes. Only Thor's bad guys are lamer, but at least he's got Loki.
Second, they cast the film with real actors. I suppose this was harder to pull off 25 to 30 years ago, and that's why movies like the original Punisher and Captain America sucked -- okay, it didn't help that the rights were owned by companies with no talent for making movies -- but Tim Burton changed all that when he made Michael Keaton into Batman. Suffice to say, Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic. (And Gwyneth Paltrow as a red-head? Oh my yes. Though really, when do we get a super-heroine movie that doesn't suck? Have Elektra and Catwoman ruined the chances forever with the fickle Hollyweird studios?)
Third: Great effects. Of course, CGI is much easier for armor than it is for living things. That's going to hurt Incredible Hulk later this summer.
Fourth: Fanboy lip service. Toward the end of the film, a running gag coalesces into the mention of one word (which I won't give away here) that ties the film into another Marvel Universe staple, which had at least geek in the audience (not me, I'm happy to report) exclaim, "Oh, Shit!" And that was with joy. Those of us who knew to stay through the credits and see the cameo at the end got an even bigger tie-in; it will drive the uber-geeks wild with its promises about the future of Iron Man as a franchise. (I'm here to say right now [SPOILER], there will never, ever be an Avengers movie. Not like the fans want. We're never going to see Robert Downy Jr. at Tony Stark and Ed Norton as Bruce Banner (with an equally big name Cap and Wasp and Hawkeye, etc.) on the same screen with a bunch of other guys playing super-hero. Not. Gonna. Happen. The expense of paying the stars alone is too much for any studio. Maybe with unknowns? Not even then. They just tried it with Justice League from the distinguished competition. Didn't work. Won't happen for Marvel, either. But that's what animation is for.)
The lip service doesn't help them make a better movie, of course, but pandering to the base never hurts the word of mouth.
All in all, Iron Man is a great way for the summer movie blockbuster season to kick off. Hulk not withstanding, the rest of the summer has a lot of promise with Speed Racer, Indiana Jones, Wall-E, The Dark Knight, Hellboy II, and even X-Files: I Want to Believe on my must see list already. (Maybe not The Happening: in the theater watching the trailer with a few hundred college students, the trailer got an unintentional laugh when the title was revealed. Probably not what ol' M. Night's looking for.)
Cory Doctorow needs my help selling his new book Little Brother about as much as Robin Williams needs more chest hair. But dammit, I'm telling you anyway, go buy this book. I haven't read it yet, cause I wasn't smart enough to steal the advanced reader copy from the book pile at Viable Paradise last year, and I've regretted it ever since. I'm not even going to wait for the Amazon-with-free-shipping-version nor even Cory's traditional free electronic copies this time. I'm going to be the reader he's always talking about -- the one who read one of his other books for free (and listened to some as free audiobooks) -- and then became a paying reader. That's me, at Borders, tonight. Cause it's easy to see from all the advanced notice this one is not to be missed.
This upcoming movie of Land of the Lost will, no doubt, squirt shit all over my memories of how scary this show seemed when I was a kid, but I'm still thrilled that they got the Sleestak exactly right.
Land Of The Lost: First Glimpse Of New, Non-CGI Sleestaks from io9.com:
They look a bit cooler than the original versions, but still have the actors-in-suits thing...
Herman Melville on life:
...that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.
Yeah, I'm reading Moby Dick. No one is more surprised than me.
Tips are a staple, some might say the life-blood, of computer journalism. Well, probably no one would say that. But readers do so love learning shortcuts and new ways to do things. Tips are quick and easily digestible...they're the fast food of computer mags! Yum!
That's why PC Magazine has 529 of them coming in the next issue, and they're already posted online, so no waiting. I wrote somewhere around 120 of them, but after I put them in I dunno how many survived. I do know I wrote them for the various Google Tools, Word 2007, and Firefox -- the three software/services I spend 90% of my day in.
Read all 529 and you'll definitely find a life changer or two in there somewhere, no matter what you use.
I went to a free talk tonight given by an IC grad of '74, a long-time book publicist (and author, though he was not shy about admitting he can't write and he always works with ghost writers). It was about "how to get published" and for the most part, he had it right from what I know, though he concentrated mostly on non-fiction (that's the stuff found in the boring parts of the book store) and was a little too into recommending self-publishing using print-on-demand services, which I think is ridiculous.
(Has any one ever written about how self-publishing for prose is considered the worst thing you can do, yet somehow self-publishing in comic books can actually garner you all sorts of praise, assuming you don't suck?)
Anyway, I took some cursory notes, but mostly just enjoying some of his stories (his tear jerker about his dad reading Tuesdays with Morrie was pretty good) and let my mind wander. I've been worried you see... I've had nothing to write lately. My books are at a point where I need to wait for some critiques to come in, so I can fix what needs fixing. In the meantime, nothing.
And then, fully-formed like Athena from the head of Zeus, it came to me, for absolutely no reason at all! A NEW IDEA.
Well, except it wasn't fully formed, it was more like a skeleton inside floppy skin, desperately in need of some muscles and ligaments, but that's more than I had three hours ago.
That's where writers get ideas. From not paying attention.
My Wife -- whom I call Squanto -- has been gone since Saturday, out in California at a conference. She's not back until tomorrow night. Here's how I've managed to capitalize on all the free time this has afforded me:
- Played approximately 13 hours of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 on the Xbox. Most of it with my brother and Joe. Including a 4 hour session on Saturday night.
- Put away approximately three years worth of comics, including the last few "floppies" I purchased before going all trade paperback graphic novel only. Bought three short boxes for the comics (I need to move from all long boxes to short. The longs are too heavy.)
- Wrote three critiques for my online writing critique group. At least one may have been coherent.
- Watched 3 Netflix Movies in one day: Hot Rod (could have been funnier), Enchanted (surprisingly great), and Justice League: The New Frontier (not as good as the comic it is based on, though it did make me crave a Green Lantern movie starring David Boreanaz, and I'm not even a big GL fan).
- Ingested:
- An entire rotisserie chicken
- Two bowls of salad (with copious croutons)
- One bag of kettle-cooked potato chips
- A cake
- Three baby carrots
- Helped my dogs deposit a couple of pounds of dog hair on the carpet. (They didn't really need help, but they're needy and want extra petting when mommy isn't home.)
- Got a haircut.
- Mailed new copy of my revised/edited/chopped/cut manuscript for my first novel to my agent.
- Finished another feature for work, started another, planned yet another, and wrote one blog entry.
Wow, I'd planned this entry to show my sloth-like existence (number of walks in the park: zero!), but I almost feel like I accomplished something. Especially by eating that cake. It was like a mound of fudge the size of softball, people! It was hard work!
Don't watch this if you ever intend to see There Will Be Blood. (And if you don't intend to see it, sucks for you.)
Best. Line. Ever.
Some might call this cruel, some might call it funny, but I call it good training, especially having had my Labradors knock over an entire sliding screen door in their excitement to go out...
Want to listen to my uniquely-squeaky-yet-middle-aged voice talk about tech? Check out the link below, and skip to the bottom to get the MP3 of my interview the Smart Family on Online Tonight. (As always, I try to speak without ums or uhs, and not to fast, and sometimes, on topic. Occassionally, I manage all three.)
Smart Family Tour: PCMag, Nim and Your Calls
My dad has finally mastered sending email with a method he's comfortable with... he just sends pictures from his digital camera through KodakGallery.com. (and to be fair, he's not alone in sending this way.)
This image is his latest... it depicts the donkey hood ornament (with light up eyes) he got for Xmas, finally mounted on his truck. Tis a thing of beauty, even if the ass looks like its taking a dump on the hood. And, it makes him look like he'd actually vote for Hillary! 
