Double-stuffed post, now with sprinkles.

Well, it’s been more than a week since I wrote my last update, imagine that. But it’s not quite a week since I last posted one, so if this goes up the same day I’m typing it, we should be on track a bit. It’s Sunday and I’ve drawn the short straw at work and am stuck working. I got a call yesterday at about 10:58 am(I know this because my 11am alarm went off while I was on the phone still) from our typical Sunday guy, asking if I could switch Saturday and Sunday with him for the next 3 weeks…mind you this is 2 hours before I’m due in on said first Saturday of this "deal." He has some kind of pre-marriage, Catholic classes that are hard to arrange, so he had no warning…*shrugs*

Sundays aren’t necessarily awful here, but it’s usually dead most of the time, a few regulars that cause us to stay open on Sundays but that’s about it. So Sunday for me is laptop day! I use my laptop all the time at home, it’s basically a second desktop for me, so I never mover it much. When buying it, I went for power over compact design on that sliding scale of cost/features, so I can’t just grab it and carry it around as well as some of them out there. Sundays are typically a very good day for the laptop because of the spare time I have available to use it, as is depicted in this very blog topic.

If I had net access at work, I would probably bring the laptop almost every day, so without that I’m mostly looking at a DVD and game machine. And I guess blog machine, much quicker than my pda. Half the plaza closes on Sunday also, so it feels very much like a holiday, with little foot traffic and a near-empty parking lot. So planning ahead for a Sunday shift includes picking the distraction that I’m in the mood for. I know that the TV season is just about to start, so I’ve copied some ancient relics from my tivo to watch and free up some space for the new stuff coming up, this season has a lot of potential keepers for me.

Overnight I transferred over 4 movies I’d tivoed over the past year or so but never got around to watching. First one I think I got was Heavenly Creatures by Peter Jackson, guy who did the Lord of the Rings movies(and the underrated King Kong and The Frighteners.) I know nearly nothing about this movie, but heard decent things… Next up was City of God, a Brazilian movie I believe, that I heard was an awesome guy movie, so we’ll see there also. Thirdly we have Collateral, the Tom Cruise and Jaime Fox movie. I like 2 of Michael Mann’s other movies, Heat(amazing movie) and The Insider(surprisingly good) but haven’t liked some of his others, and when this one came out I just never got up enough enthusiasm to sit down and watch it, so maybe today… Last one was recommended by a friend, a remake of an old movie, Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman. Supposed to be some good action.

Update on getting home: Watched Heavenly Creatures and Collateral today. I liked Collateral and it was pretty much what I was expecting, just not sure I'd ever sit down to watch it again. Heavenly Creatures...what an odd movie, apparently based on a true story. I thought it was interesting, but too fantastical for a movie like that to me. Needed more nudity an lesbian scenes, too... It's funny how Peter Jackson feels the need to have a cameo in all of his movies, but at least he's not writing himself in with dialog like M Night S...omething.

(Post continues below, for "ease" of reading)

Part 2 of today's post. I type too much.

DVD- Two new for "the wall" this week…though it’s no longer just a wall, so even that name doesn’t fit anymore, the collection has expanded to plenty of other shelves now, the name "the wall’ is just a joke a couple friends use. I picked up Season 2 of Lost this week, but I think it might be my last tv season for a little bit. I picked it up because it was on sale, despite the fact that I saw the season as it aired, and presently have no interest in sitting down to rewatch it. Very stupid of me.

Second I got an anniversary collector’s edition of Gojira/Godzilla. It has the original black and white movies, the Japanese original and the American version with the changes they made to it over here, with a bunch of extras and commentaries on both versions. I’m not a huge fan of the schlock-fest that the series became, but this should be a neat look back at the origin of it all. This I don’t regret buying because I do actually want to see it and I can imagine myself watching it within the next couple weeks.

XM- This week I also got a new XM satellite radio. I had been eyeing a couple new models for about 6 months, but they lowered the price by about 60% on this model recently, figured it would be a good time to pick it up. My old model was totally portable and also dockable at home or in a car, for a better antenna and charging. It was also capable of recording about 5 hours of stuff, though it was a revolving 5 hours and would empty if you recorded more. I never used it portably, I was always indoors or in a car to use it, so that feature was lost to me. The new one records 50 hours worth and I can "lock" whatever I want to keep, any song or talk show. Plus I can now fast-forward through recorded content, on the old one I could only skip to the next or last song/show, this will save me a lot of time listening to talk shows.

I do have an odd habit, I record(or listen live) to two radio shows on XM every weekday. I guess I’m addicted to them, and since I have XM at home and at work, it makes it easy to listen when I want to(especially now with the new unit to record both shows entirely and listen at my leisure.) The first show I tried out when it went from an exclusive channel to free on XM, the Opie and Anthony Show. I’d stop to that channel for a bit when I was bored, found it to be pretty funny and started listening more often, even looking forward to it.

About a year ago I got the recently retired XM unit that could record, so it made it much easier to listen to every show. I can’t say the show is perfect or that I necessarily like the hosts a ton, but it’s very addictive can be hilariously funny at times. Not for everyone, they do get into a lot of "cringe-worthy" humor, things that just gross you out or make you feel bad for the "victim" of their ire at that time, but it’s still fairly compelling.

These are the guys who, about 4 years ago, had two of their listeners decide to have sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC to win a "sex in public for points" contest. They were caught in the act, along with a guy from the show who was calling in with updates, and arrested. After some outrage in the Catholic community, the guys were pulled from the radio. They weren’t necessarily fired in the strictest sense of the word, they were still under contract and being paid for the remaining 2 years of their contracts, the station wouldn’t let them out of their existing contracts. Right after that was up, they joined XM to nearly no mention in the press…until about a month later Howard Stern signed with the competition, O&A got off to a rocky start, but gradually built up a decent audience on XM. When Stern went to Sirius this year, a bunch of regional radio replacements were hired, but most failed pretty quick. At that point, CBS radio, the people who fired them 3 years earlier, came back to Opie and Anthony and asked them to return. So here they are, with more stations than they ever had before, doing daily shows on both terrestrial radio and XM. They were just on The Late Show with David Letterman last week also, their first late-night foray.

The other show is Ron & Fez. They were in Florida for a bit and then DC before joining XM. This is a show that I can recommend wholeheartedly, unlike O&A. Nearly impossible to categorize, each show consistently has me laughing my ass off. Ron has a semi-surly NY accent, Fez has a high-pitched gay voice. Doesn’t that sound awful? Once you get past the voices, the amazing comic timing of Ron and the silly relationship between the two come into play. Both shows have a lot of listener interaction and calling in, but Ron and Fez take it to a whole new level at times. I’m actually sorry I wasn’t able to get into these guys sooner, I had trouble with the voices being odd at first, so I wrote them off. Their topics vary greatly, kind of all over the spectrum. On any given day, Ron and Fez might be discussing reality TV, sports, comic books, food, music, movies, politics, or just their personal lives. Both shows are uncensored, so you get a lot better conversation and realistic flow to discussion, no words or topics are verboten.

Well, I was only going to mention the new XM thingie I got, but this turned into more of an advertisement for both shows…I’m too damned wordy. That’s about it for me for new stuff this past week, at the very least I’ll try to get one update up a week about what I’m up to. Maybe someday I’ll start adding pictures for *certain* people who post comments that totally ignore the content and just complain about a lack of pictures. I won’T gO acKnowledgIng any names though.

Better late than never(plus 4 days, for good measure.)

To get off to a bad start right off the bat, I wrote the following post on Friday at work(on my pda, that takes a while:) and am now posting it on Tuesday...enjoy:

Well, it's been suggested by "someone" to revive my boring old blog of tedium, but with more about me...lucky you! I guess some people get really bored at work if they want to read about what little I actually do:)
I think that in addition to a more personal take, I'll keep the hobby stuff I used to do...but with bolded or otherwise demarcated signs so people can skip the parts they don't care about(like I could see some Alaskans skipping any television discussion.)

Me- I always get excited when I start a "project" like this, but reality sets in by way of either me being lazy or losing interest. Some good examples of this include: this blog and its months of inactivity, the ice cream maker I got years ago and used once, only getting about 30% of cataloging/sorting my comic book collection, multiple attempts at reading Thomas Pynchon books, and plenty of others. I like having goals and working towards them, but more than half the time I slow down and finally stop. I guess I would make an unpopular barber.

This is my third try at this blogging thing. My first try was totally anonymous...and unread. I figured that maybe the anonymity might let me vent or bare my soul...but then I realized I had nothing to bare, there goes any reason to continue. My second attempt was the one Toki linked to, but I updated rarely and I lost interest quickly(doubt it was just me.)

So now I'll give it yet another try, all my previous posts are archived on the right for both of the other attempts if anyone wants to see the "evolution." I'll try to be less rant-y and maybe even add pictures...who knows.

Work- For those that don't know me well, I "manage" a comic book store. I use the quotes because I don't really have underlings really, only one guy works there besides myself and the owner(though at times we've had as many as 5 or 6 part timers) and that is for the dead-boring sunday shift. I've known the owner for going on 15 years now through past stores(I'm not just retailer of comics, I'm also a client/fan.) How much I do behind the scenes varies depending on how busy he is, his "day-job" is writing and directing movies(2 so far, his last was picked up by Lion's gate and is available to rent and/or buy everywhere.) It's a dead-end and mindless job, but very slacker friendly...also rut friendly.

I could go into the odd array of customers we get in this blog, there are some real freaks at times. We carry "adult" comics in the back of the store, so that section right there accounts for quite a few of the odd ducks. I worry when guys are back there for more than 10 minutes, it's within my view but their back is to me... I'm far from a prude, I love my porn, but I don't spend an hour in public pawing through boxes of comics, haven't these guys ever been online?

Also, comic shops get a surprisingly high number of deaf people as customers and an unsurprisingly low number of blind people(none).

Weather- Cool and rainy thanks to Ernesto, right around 70 but windy as hell. We need the rain at least, and it beats being in the 90's(Fahrenheit, Celsius sucks) but I'm just hoping the power doesn't go out. The neighborhood is over 30 years old, so all the powerlines are on poles, we lose power at least 5 times a year.

Books- Right now I'm on book 5 of 6 in a sci-fi series by Peter F. Hamilton. Masnark recommended the series and I'm really enjoying it. I don't think the overall series of 6 has a name, it's broken up into 3 pairs of books starting with The Reality Dysfunction. I can't get into the plot without spoiling much, but it's in the early 2600's and humanity faces oblivion. I'm not a huge sci-fi reader, it often alienates me(no pun intended) but this gas been really enjoyable and compelling.

TV- New season starting, last season I didn't pick up any new shows after I gave up on the couple new ones I tried. This season my "try" list is triple last year's, my poor tivo!

DVD's- Well, the collection has invaded another shelf. I had piles on the floor and on top of my tv that needed a home and a shelf with things not worthy of a shelf(old vhs tapes...ewww)

Been watching the LOTR movies with the cast commentary, some great stuff from the excellent actors, lots of anecdotes and stories. I feel a good commentary is the best dvd extra, these have 4 per film.

Picked up 3 tv seasons/sets this week, the question is when/if I'll ever get to them. The first set is the eighth season of South Park, probably their best season so far, it joins its 7 siblings on the new shelf. The other 2 sets are "classic" disney cartoons from their Disney Afternoon block, always something I looked forward to after school or in the summer. I won't describe them, but I will recommend them...I'm hoping Darkwing Duck and Tale Spin both live up to my childhood memories.