By special request, I'm going to run down the top films of 2006 (or that I saw in 2006).

First off, let me say, movies suck. There wasn't a single film in all of 2006 that came even close to the high quality found on TV today (and obviously not all TV. 90% of everything is crud, but that means there's still some good stuff). I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's a golden age for television.

Consider: both TV shows and films are written by committee. Very seldom do you see a single writer on a Hollywood flick these days. The nadir of this, 1994's The Flintstones, had a total of 35 different screenwriters take a whack at it. Only three got final credit through the bizarro world process of the Writer's Guild West. That's the worst example, but pretty typical.

Of course, a single writer on a film, even single writer/director, doesn't guarantee anything either. Just ask George Lucas.

The committee of writers on a movie are all forced into one-upping and over-writing each other. However, on television, there is one uber-writer/producer, who sometimes was the creator/developer of the show, who has the ultimate vision for the program. He or she works with a number of people in a writer's room where ideas are tossed around and around until they get the thread of an entire season, or part of a season, down to a single episode -- even individual beats in an episode -- down to where it has to be before an individual writer takes off to write that script. It must be a glorious thing (If you want to see it in action, rent The Shield season 3 extra disk and watch the "breaking" of an episode to see how it all happens.)

Oh, so best TV shows of the year?

1. The Wire -- this was my year of The Wire. I saw all four seasons, the first three on DVD. Even if I'd seen them all before, I'd single out the recent season 4 as outstanding.
   
2. The Shield -- The scene where Kavanaugh realizes Mackey is watching him on the hidden camera? Perhaps the greatest TV moment of 2006. I was jumping out of my chair. And they topped that by tossing a grenade on Lemonhead.
   
3. 24 -- you can't beat an opening that involves shooting a beloved character in the throat, especially if that character is the president.
4. Battlestar Galactica -- those who can't get past the name are missing out on greatness. If so, I pity you.
   
5. Veronica Mars
6. Heroes
7. The Office
   
8. Weeds
9. Dexter
   
10. Doctor Who --This show made a much beloved return to my life after almost 20 years. It used to get by only on good writing. Everyone (in America at least) thought the rest was a joke. Now, however, it has great writing, acting with emotional resonance, beautiful effects, and the most kick-ass opening title music, period. I can't wait to somewhat legally download the new season through the BBC's new bittorrent deal.
    
11. LOST -- things may have slid a bit in the third season, but remember season two when Michael shot Ana-Lucia and Libby? Holy. Crap.
    
12. Grey's Anatomy
    

ALL of the above are better than just about any movie. There's more laughs in one episode of The Office than in all of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (and I liked that flick).

So, here's the best of the movies I watched in '06 (because some are from '05... if Netflix didn't let me track what I'd rented, I wouldn't remember anything), in order:

1. Superman Returns -- far from perfect (Supes picking up the kryptonite continent, the casting of Kate Bosworth) it's still the most cohesive and beautiful depiction of Supes to date. Now, if he just got to punch someone or something, it would have been perfect.
   
2. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang -- sometimes it does work when one guy writes and directs his own flick. This is best example of it.
   
3. Transamerica -- You will believe that Felicity Huffman was once a dude. In fact, I have a hard time now not believing it.
   
4. Capote -- Writing In Cold Blood was hell on poor Truman.
   
5. The Squid and the Whale -- divorce, 70's style.
   
6. A History of Violence -- based on a graphic novel and directed by David Cronenberg, you'd think it would be campy as hell. Instead its a nice meditation on how you can't always escape your past.
   
7. Jackass 2 -- Nothing made me laugh (or cringe) more this year.
   
8. Junebug -- Amy Adams playing the pregnant young southern wife? She's perfect. How is she not a bigger star?
   
9. Redeye and Slither (tie) -- two funny, scary films. The latter is like a great 80's horror comedy. Think Gremlins, only slimier.
   
10. Good Night and Good Luck -- Says as much about today as it does about the McCarthy era. But with more smoking.
    
11. Hard Candy -- The creepiest, scariest film I saw all year. Not for the least reason because of that cute girl who played Kitty in X-men 3 (Ellen Page)...
12. Brick -- 1930's film noir played out in modern day high school, done to perfection.
    

There's some films I'm looking forward to seeing on DVD as soon as possible (Casino Royale, Borat, Little Children, Children of Men, The Prestige, The Departed) and in theaters soon (Pan's Labyrinth). But I guess they'll have to be in my 2007 review.

[Movie I forgot: Little Miss Sunshine. Movie I just watched after I posted everything above: Monster House. Both outstanding.]

You know, I love chocolate-tinis too!

Watch carefully as I offend people who thought of me this holiday season and praise those who have forgotten my existence!

For most of the month, I've wanted to write about a topic that's near and dear to my heart: Xmas cards, and just how stupid I think they are.

But I didn't want to offend anyone. Seriously. The teeming masses who read this wouldn't send me a card because they don't have my address, so screw them. But what if I hurt the feelings of people who do know me personally and give a shit enough to send me a folded piece of cardboard? I mean, it's the thought that counts, right? So props to everyone who has me in an address book and sprang for the stamp.

Sigh.

I still just don't get the card thing. I know this is because of my upbringing. My side of the family doesn't do cards for the holidays, but that's because after purchasing half of Wal-Mart each year for each other, there's not much money left.

For a while it looked like the only two Xmas cards we would receive here at Casa de Griffith were from my in-laws and sister-in-law. Yes, very nice, but, uh... Why waste the stamp? I'm going to see them all on the 24th to break bread, open presents, and (I'm told) play Monopoly at the request of a 4-year-old. I understand cards from far flung relatives (Hi, Uncle Dave!) but not from people I see all the time. (And no, I don't do birthday cards either, unless they're specifically used to pass on cash money.)

I've done the Xmas card thing a couple of times in the past. I only ever enjoyed it once, in 2001, when I sent cards to my friends from Access Magazine using left over Access cards from the previous year. This was six months after the magazine went belly-up, so it had irony and shit going for it.

Previous to that, I'd done the "Year-in-our-lives" note to go with the card, which, honestly, only barely makes the whole thing seem reasonable. My wife's got an aunt who sends such a card each year that we find endlessly entertaining, as it's filed with info on how Jesus saves and God loves, though we are apparently no longer on that list due to our unrepentant paganism and Satan worship. But I can't see much point in the letter bit anymore. Anyone who really gives a damn about what's up with us reads this blog. Plus, I have a hard enough time finding topics to write here... my letter would basically say: Spent 10 months in the basement working, went to Arizona and got an ulcer, came home, watched TiVo, happy holidays.

Can't people at least spring for a funny card? The only funny one we got this year was from the lady that cleans our house every other week. It featured a picture of a kid with a tongue stuck to a pole, ala Christmas Story. That's the only card I put on the fridge.

Much better than cards, and perhaps better than any letter, is the baby photo collage. My friends Vikki and Giff sent pics of their adorable daughters (who they have separately with their respective spouses Ed and Sheila, as Vikki and Giff, I believe, have never met, though I'm sure they'd make a lovely couple). Vikki's pics always include her dog Casey with daughter Sarah, so she gets extra points. (And where are all my other breeder friend's kid pics? Just two? WTF? Show me the kids! Those stay on the fridge for months. I think my friend Bill's brood are still up there from a couple years ago...)

But today, I got the best card of the year, hands down: Josh sent a pack of pictures. 12 in all, one representing each month of the year, with captions on each describing his big life news of each month of 2006, from a house purchase to basement flood to vacations all over the map (fucking travel writers, always traveling). It was classic and classy and nice to see Josh since we haven't been face-to-face since summer of 2003. Now that's a fucking Xmas card, people. Way to work it.

Still, I suppose anyone who sends a card at all is still putting in more effort than me, so I should probably just shut the hell up. Rest assured if I ever do bother to send one again, it'll ROCK. Luckily, I'm lazy enough to make sure that never happens.

For those who love me, there's still time before Xmas to get me this:

Hellboy's Right Hand of Doom 1:1 Prop Replica

Taken straight from a mold for the hand used for stunt work in the film, this life-size movie-accurate replica of Hellboy's stone hand is made of a dense rubber material. The foam of the stone hand is hollow and includes a built-in grip. The display is complete with black base, featuring the BPRD logo and an engraved nameplate.

If $200 for a foam-rubber hand seems too much, how about this? Or this? or THESE??

I don't wear glasses. My eyes cost me $5,000 to get lasered to pristine mint perfection back in 1998, and miraculously, they still hold up today with near mint 20/20 vision. 

However, the rest of my family, most of whom also had some kind of eye surgery years ago, be it LASIK (like me) or PRK (where they slice your cornea like an orange), they're back in glasses. As my most recent  eye doctor said, "Near sighted once, near sighted for life."  Which is sad, but, hey, at least it's not me. Yet.

The latest victim of this is my sainted wife (whom, after a new color job on her hair to include blond highlights, I call the vanilla-frosted Squanto). She was not happy (with the glasses, not the hair). I do not blame her. Worse: she got her prescription and found out buying glasses locally would cost around $200.

There was never any intent to buy them locally, however. My brother has been back in glasses for a few years and been buying all his spectacle on the Interweb ever since. Cheap. He uses a site called Zenni.com. The wife looked there and at others before she settled on trying Optical4Less.com. (If you're not convinced of the benefits of buying glasses online, check out the excellent Glassy Eyes blog, in particular this "dialogue" with an optician. If not convinced after that, you are a dolt. Don't give me that "I need special fittings!" bull. You're only special in that you need to ride the smaller school bus because of your desire to spend more money.)

Her glasses came in this weekend, but I didn't pick them up for her until yesterday at the post office. They were sent registered mail from Hong Kong, where they were made. Total cost? Around $43 bucks. Including shipping.

One of the entertaining things about the glasses -- which look great on her, by the way, giving her that whole sexy librarian vibe ("Oh, I'm sorry, am I returning this book late, Miss Squanto? You should punish me!) -- is the CAUTION instructions included, written in the best Engrish money can buy. My favorite line: "Always use the our cleaning cloth to wipe your lens lightly...avoid from wiping them rudely."

That means no using your ass.

I learned last night from my magic tee-vee picture box exactly how elephants get pregnant. This video describes it perfectly:

It's true. No penetration! Elephant va-jay-jays are just too small.

As my wife said, "that sucks for all involved."

Also, even more disturbing, is that dogs get stuck together after and actually turn bum-to-bum so the male's johnson is PULLED AROUND BACKWARDS!.

Worst. Position. Ever. (But this is worse, not to mention unromantic.)

When I was in choir in the seventh grade at the ol' Hornell Middle School (now Intermediate School, because more syllables makes you smarter), it seemed that one out of the few boys there always had been in trouble in an earlier class. The punishment of choice was forcing kids to write out sentences over and over, 50 to 100 times. It was the typical Bart Simpson-esque stuff like, "I will not disrupt Mister Meadows class again with fart noises from my armpits." If it was 100 times, then four of us would each take a sheet of paper and do 25 repetitious lines to spare the actual victim having to do it all by himself. Everyone got the same treatment as I recall, very fair and equitable. And the teachers never seemed to notice that each sheet of paper had different handwriting. Suckers.

I remember quite vividly the time I almost ran away from home. I was probably six- or seven-years-old at the time and all I knew of running away I'd learned from Little Rascals shorts in perpetual syndication on Channel 5. I don't know if I was mad at my parents or if I just thought it would be something cool to do. I told my cousin Bill about it. He was several years older than me and said it sounded like a good idea and he'd meet me at my window (that I was on the second floor right next to my parent's bedroom didn't bother me) and we'd take off. I packed all my important possessions into a towel. I'm sure that included my teddy bear Rosie and a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #168. I tied the ends of the towel together and then hung the towel sack on a pool cue so it looked like something Alfalfa would carry while walking train tracks. I fell asleep in our old, green, vinyl sleeping bag, right next to my bedroom window. Bill would be knocking on the glass at any moment. He'd wake me. But he didn't, and I woke up the next morning with a vague sense of disappointment and then went back into life of watching Batman reruns and eating Nestle's Quik powder and never spoke of it again until today.

Holiday Advertisers Seek Coveted Dicktard Demographic | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

The dicktard demographic -- a nationwide consumer base that crosses all economic classes and levels of income -- was once the sole province of dullard-friendly superstores like Wal-Mart and Sears. But in recent years, these companies have lost market share to smaller outlets and online stores, which allow not only dicktards, but asshats and douchelords as well, to consume more products faster.

I'm probably of the "dickweed" generation at my age...

A cautionary tale...

Let's say that your 37th birthday coincides with the local dog park finally becoming off-leash legally. Part of it, at least, but that's better than nothing. So you decide you'll take your oldest dog to the park to celebrate the occasion with all the other local people who fought tooth-and-nail for the privilege, even though you didn't do much. You pack up your 10.5 year old Labrador and your wife in the mini-van, along with all the garbage from your house. You go to the local dump and drop it off and then head to the park.

Here's what you should not do: When you're in the far left lane of rt. 13, and ahead of you a guy has stopped his car just past the next intersection because he's leaning out the window trying to push a stray shopping cart filled with garbage up onto the sidewalk, over the curb, you should not try to go around him. Because, that bus behind you? The airport limousine bus that was right behind you last time you looked in the mirror? He got the same idea: go around. Only he did it a lot faster than you did, so as you start to move to the right, he's already there.

Now, you learned long ago from Star Trek and in X-Men comics that two pieces of matter can't occupy the same space at the same time. Teleporters and intangible people run into this all the time. It's just not done in polite society. So it should come as no surprise to you when your wife gasps in shock -- as close as she gets to screaming -- when the mirror on your passenger side gets clipped and is no longer visible. The hurtling bus to your right is all you sense now, that and the feeling that it has just scraped off the entire right side of your minivan.

Oh, and the putz ahead of you who'd been playing with the cart? He gave up and took off. Which is probably good, as you want to punch him in the mouth. Plus, you need the space he occupying to pull off the road and inspect the damage.

You pull the cart off the road for good measure. Wishing you could find who put it there in the first place and shove it up their ass. You're filled with adrenaline and your wife is being all positive and shit, which is doing nothing to help calm your jangled 37-year-old nerves. "Why are you being the voice of calm reason?!" you yell. You are being an unreasonable ass, but that's actually a birthday perk, right?

Somehow, the bus has missed scraping any thing on your vehicle.

The mirror is made to flip forward in such an impact, and it pops back into place no problem. Even the remote control adjustment for it still works.

No one is hurt and you're now mad only at yourself. Didn't you just a month ago accost a little old lady in a parking lot when she drifted into your lane? Hypocrite! You're a danger to yourself and others.

Of course, the nimrod playing with the cart and the bus that hit you don't stop to check that everything is okay. So it's good to know that bad as you are, there's still plenty of douch-baggery to go around.

And that's how not to celebrate your 37th b-day.

I'm just saying.