Countdown to 2008

Ring in the new year with Hands in the Air by playing this video at 11:59:20 tonight.



For reference, here are the blogged events of 2007 that are counted down in this video:

10. New York subway samaritan (January)
9. Britney shaves her head (February)
8. Star Wars 30th anniversary (March)
7. 300 (April)
6. Grindhouse (April)
5. Sanjaya (April)
4. Drunken celebrities (May)
3. Larry Birkhead (June)
2. Writers Strike (November)
1. Celebrity deaths (Lily Munster, Iwao Takamoto, Anna Nicole Smith, Kurt Vonnegut, Don Ho, Charles Nelson Reilly, Mr. Wizard, Bob Evans, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Merv Griffin, Kevin DuBrow)

2007 in Review

There are mere hours before we have to retire our Hilary Duff calendar for the year, so it's a good time for me to blog poetic on 2007's best and worst...


Best Comedies of 2007
Pregnancy movies: Knocked Up and Juno, though I actually consider pregnancy movies to be of the horror genre.

Best Semi Truck vs. Fighter Jet Scene in a Movie
Live Free or Die Hard. Strangely enough, it wasn't any scene in Transformers.

Worst Timing Award

• The release of Things We Lost in the Fire just before the California wildfires began
• Lynn Spears trying to publish her book on parenting

Guilty-Pleasure Pop CDs of the Year

• Dignity by Hilary Duff
• We Are the Pipettes by The Pipettes
• Headstrong by Ashley Tisdale
  (But NOT the new album by her fellow High School Musical costar Vanessa Hudgens. Well... I'm not a fan of V-Hud's music album, at least. Her personal photo album, though, is an altogether separate matter.)

Restaurant Jingle of the Year
The Outback Steakhouse song ("Let's go Outback tonight...")
I can't get that damn song outta my head. It's based on "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games" by Of Montreal, but I actually like the digeridoo'd up version better.

Worst Restaurant Name
Pastagina.
I thought this was a symptom of a really bad yeast infection, but I guess it's just a poorly named Italian joint. But did they really need to use a triangle of spaghetti as their logo?

Other restaurant names to avoid: anything ending in "-esticles," "-lamydia" or "-airy nutsack." Also anything rhyming with "Schmapplebee's."

Best Pregnancies
5. Halle Berry
4. Jennifer Lopez
3. Christina Aguilera
2. Jessica Alba
1. Jamie Lynn Spears

Jessica Alba would've topped the charts if I had posted this in early December, but I ended up waiting. Meanwhile, Jamie Lynn Spears didn't end up waiting. Good thing for this list.


Top Celebrity Jail Sentences
5. Michelle Rodriguez
4. Keifer Sutherland
3. Lindsay Lohan
2. Nicole Richie
1. Paris Hilton

Paris wins for the blazing the trail and serving all the extra days that her other debutards didn't. Turns out that Lindsay's 84-minute jail term was longer than her movie I Know Who Killed Me lasted in theaters. I guess "overcrowding" wasn't the case in those theaters.

Microwave Lovin'

The other day some guys were microwaving a bar of soap. With the lights out. At work.

Now we've all microwaved things we shouldn't, or you know, things that maybe not everyone would appreciate us microwaving, but, at work? I feel really bad for whoever was next to microwave something in there...the entire room smelled of melted soap 'n' perfume, I imagine it might affect your ramen noodles a l'il bit.

In case you don't know, microwaved soap expands into a fluffball and I guess the effect is sort of neat (not plasma-generating grape or cd neat, but neat nonetheless) but this was at work, in a microwave other people expect to be able to burn their popcorn in as is their federally mandated right.

This reminds me of the time I went to microwave something at a different work and this woman was microwave-steam-sterilizing her breast pump accessories and what not. Yes, that's right, she was atomizing her titty drippins into the microwave I used to heat up my leftover pizza and, of course, it was wafting into the motherfucking air I breathe. It was sending out a steady billow of steam and I was like, YUM!

And she'd been breast-feeding for a while so chances are, I accidentally ingested or inhaled that shit. I actually complained to HR for that one. Anonymously, because it was shameful what I saw. Shameful! This woman blacked out her office window so she could breast feed in privacy but thought it was ok to share her steamed boob juices with the rest of us and our community fucking microwave? The same microwave that someone had placed a bitchy sign near, requesting that no fishy, garlicky, oniony or otherwise in any way ethnic or fragrant foods be microwaved there, lest their sensitive noses be bothered by it? Had that signmaker only known someone was blasting nippy squirts in there, too--well. I can't even imagine the signage then. Fuck, I shoulda made a sign.

I can't say that I haven't done somewhat naughty things with a microwave--I destroyed this one slut's Phish CD in a microwave because:

A. She was a slut
B. It was a Phish CD
C. You later
D. I heard it would be pretty

And it fucking was, like those lighted fountains tourists gather 'round to gawk at in your nicer malls, only made of sparks and in a microwave. I guess if you watched the video I linked to you know that, tho.

And this one time, I allowed this very cute boy to "put a bunch of things in my microwave" to "see what would happen," including a cheapie plastic elephant bank which btw does not smell good and yes, you should stop it when the black smoke starts pouring out. We probably both will get cancer some day because of that but you know, it was funny to see the elephant kind of poof out and then start to melt and collapse in on itself. And he was really cute, so, what was I supposed to do--say no? I have a hard time saying no to cute boys, I guess. I'll let them do practically anything to my "microwave."

But anyway all of my microwave crimes were in my own place of residence and did not involve lactation in any way.

And I kept the lights on.

Since Jason has a bug in his butt about end of year lists, I now present my top 5 people I've encountered in the Valley:

5. The guy who parks his kidnappin-ready white van so it creates a blind spot at the end of our street

4. The neighbor who hides behind the columns on her porch to avoid me saying hello to her

3. The same neighbor's kids or grandkids and their friends or cousins or some shit, who kept coming back to trick or treat at our house over and over again, causing us to run out of candy early
2. The other infinite numbers of people who come and go at that house, it's like a fucking clown house--how can that many people fit in one small, one-story house? Anyway, they don't all hide behind columns but none ever will look our way so fuck 'em

1. The person with the blue van totally stuffed to the gills with what looks like other people's mail. What's with the kooky vans???

Silent Knight Music Video

It's a Christmas miracle! Check out the very first Hands in the Air music video. It's my cover of "Silent Night" (with a silent "k" added in honor of Knight Rider's David Hasselhoff) starring the HITA gang, Santa and Jesus in a stop-motion fiasco guaranteed to earn me a lump of coal this holiday. It's also a little more "stop" than "motion." Humbug.



In honor of our music video for a song debuted in last year's HITA holiday podcast (we swear Season 2 will debut in 2008), I'm tacking on my best-of list for albums of the year. We'll be posting more best-of lists in the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, here is some proper music you should be listening to now that you've endured my holiday song and video...

Jason's Top 20 Albums of 2007
(or, "The 'Where's Radiohead?' List")

20. The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
19. Calla - Strength in Numbers
18. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
17. The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
16. Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis
15. Rockfour - Memories That Never Happened
14. The New Pornographers - Challengers
13. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81
12. Albert Hammond, Jr. - Yours to Keep
11. Lily Allen - Alright Then
10. Stars - In Our Bedroom after the War
9. Peter Bjorn and John - Writer's Block
8. Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City
7. Idlewild - Make Another World
6. Trembling Blue Stars - The Last Holy Writer
5. Maps - We Can Create
4. Sondre Lerche - Phantom Punch
3. The Shins - Wincing the Night Away
2. I'm from Barcelona - Let Me Introduce My Friends
1. Band of Horses - Cease to Begin

How Swede It Is

We're suckers for a good promotional website. Or maybe we just like to surf the web for the stuff to do at work other than work. When the boss isn't around, check out the new site for Be Kind Rewind, the upcoming comedy in which Jack Black and Mos Def re-enact famous movies after erasing all the tapes at a video store. They also coin the term "Sweding," which actually has nothing to do with meatballs or Ikea furniture. Instead, to Swede something means to redo something in your own DIY style, which is pretty much what we've been doing with the toy tributes throughout our site. You can Swede yourself at the Be Kind Rewind website, and here are some of our Swede-Ass results...

Jason is Jason X in the Friday-the-13th-in-space movie
and Steve as himself in that hairy feet movie.

What Jenni would do to star in Friday, Next Friday and Friday After Next. Y'know, they really oughta make a sequel to The Day After Tomorrow and call it Three Days from Today.

R.I.P. Quiet Riot Singer Guy

It's the biggest '80s music tragedy since Richard Marx hacked off his mullet: the death of Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow last Sunday.

Kevin DuBrow
Quiet Riot lead singer
October 29, 1955 - November 25, 2007

The only way for some '80s headbangers to make it
back into the news is to die. Take note, heavy metal has-beens.
I'm talking to you, Kip Winger and the
dude who sings "The Final Countdown."

Now while your fists are raised at half mast and your heads are bowed at medium-bang for Mr. DuBrow (appropriately rhymes with "da 'fro"), it's worth noting that I haven't posted an R.I.P. tribute in about two months, so I've overlooked some other seemingly noteworthier deaths. Joey Bishop. Norman Mailer. Deborah Kerr. No, the "Cum on Feel the Noize" singer is more in line with our readership. Plus, Pavarotti just couldn't belt it out with the Muppet-pitched ferocity of DuBrow, and mime Marcel Marceau (rest in peace in your invisible box) was just a little too quiet and not enough riot.

Sundae School

Aight y'all. Now this is a church after my own heart. If I thought I could get me a big ol' chocolate shake at church I might consider going once a year or something.

And, of course, another reason this church is one after my own heart is becuz they're obviously saying some bullshit to get people to come in, and clearly they think people are stupid as hell.

The thing is, there are actually websites and books that this church coulda used to do something still incredibly stupid but at least a little more compelling that, yeah, still wouldn't have worked (Are those signs supposed to be advertisements? Because, lame.) but at least people might have chuckled or smiled and thought about God fondly for a minit before they remembered that going to church is way boring and organized religion is pretty much ass.

Chocolate shakes are delicious, tho. Not get my heiney back into church delicious (they'd basically have to offer me the ability to break at least five commandments at a time in some upgraded, sensually padded pews to get me back into church but um I think that kinda defeats the purpose), but pretty fucking delicious.

Amen.

Stop Objectifying My Pretzels!

With Turkey Day around the corner, it's time for me to reflect and give thanks. And what better thing to give thanks for than unintentionally dirty advertising, like this accidental nastiness from Wetzel's Pretzels?

The lunging, circumsized pretzel dog.
The little submissive chef on his knees.
The sting of a salt crystal in the wrong orifice.

Not since the ill-conceived "Cinnabondage" S&M campaign of '98
has a food court promotion generated enough steaminess
to blow up the skirt of cold-fish Auntie Anne.

Here's hoping this won't make you feel forever uneasy when you see a pretzel. At least no more uncomfortable than spending a big dinner with the family. Happy Thanksgiving!

Writers Strike Happens Too Late to Spare Us from Premiere of "P2"

After two months of not writing on this blog, I've decided to return to posting on the very day that the Writers Guild of America strike begins. That's what us writer-types call "irony."

A picture is worth a thousand words...
except when there's a writers strike.

With the exception of Chris, the entire Hands in the Air gang is made up of professional, published writers (a letter in Penthouse Forum still doesn't count as "published," Chris), so we all know how important this strike is for Hollywood's movie and TV writers. And, with the exception of Chris, we'd really rather not get stuck watching reruns of Moonlight and Girlfriends. That's what us writer-types call... um, well, I can't think of a clever word because bloggers don't have union benefits motivating them.

Anyway, here on the Los Angeles frontlines, we're seeing writers rallying against the studios. Instead of writing us good TV and movies, they're out there picketing in their red shirts, which is the color of choice for the strikers. That also happens to be the shirt color of choice for Gay Day at Disneyland, so those picketers in front of Disney Studios might want to be careful which shuttle bus they go home on. Like Jenni told me, "Haven't the writers taken it up the ass enough?"

Happy Day of the Dead

Boo Hoo

I am not a big fan of Halloween. This strikes a lot of people as odd--I guess I seem like the Halloween type, whatever that is. Maybe 'cause it's the holiday all the cool kids have adopted? Perhaps it's 'cause I'm sort of a fan of the macabre otherwise? Something about me dressing in black a lot? Fact: in high school some awful, really ugly guys who were hitting on me and my friend Maureen at the Pizza Hut asked me if I was a goth [uh or whatever it was called at the time] and I said "What? No--why would you ask that?" to which they replied "Uh, I dunno, you just seem like a natural goth." Yeah. Whatever. I hope they're dead or in jail now.

So, right, I'm lukewarm on Halloween. I like candy all right, but you know, you can eat candy whenever. And I don't like begging strangers for candy. I prefer when it's offered out of the back of a van. Guess I'm traditional that way. Anyway, I stopped trick-or-treating pretty early, and instead handed out candy to other kids.

Even now handing candy out to kids is fun, sort of. You know some kids don't say "trick or treat" anymore? They just walk up and stick their bags out. I tend to just stare back at them until it dawns on them that there's a part of the ritual they're missing, or until they walk away. How often do you get to confuse kids that aren't your own? Not very often.

I also really enjoy adults who are trick-or-treating for their babies in strollers. Really? Your baby is going to eat five pounds of candy? Huh. Neat. I bet Britney Spears trick-or-treats for her kids every year and she should totally get her custody/visitation rights back because of it.

Halloween has also sort of become a big event for adults, which I don't exactly remember it being when I was a kid, and, eh, it's sort of sad. Mostly adults seem to use Halloween as an excuse to have a shitty party or go to a bar and get wasted. Do Americans really need an excuse for that? The thing is, kids in costumes are generally adorable. Adults in costumes...unless they're really good costumes...not so much.

Me, I don't really like dressing up for Halloween. I think I might if I had like, a big budget, a great idea, a professional costume designer on call and a lot of time, so I looked like people do in the movies and on TV, with a fancy, elaborate outfit. But, just throwing something together or buying something off the rack generally doesn't turn out all that swell and I kind of hate drawing attention to myself, particularly when I'm wearing something half-assed. Also, I really like me. I don't actually want to be anyone else, even for one drunken, chocolate-smeared night.

You know what I do like, tho? The way the movie channels show a bunch of horror and suspense movies in October. So I guess Halloween isn't, like, that bad. It's just not that great, either. Definitely better than Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July (uh, except you get days off for those, which is sweet) but far inferior to Christmas, the king of all holidays. Sorry non-Christmas celebrators, but it is. It's the fucking best. Jesus may not have hit home runs every time, but Goddammit if his birthday isn't some good-ass shit. Fuck, do I love me some Christmas.


Yeesh, you can tell I haven't blogged in a while. Eh, well. At least it's a post.


As a bonus, I present to you some semi-dirty Halloween-related phrases I thought up while trying to come up with a title for the post, which I realize are all better than what I ended up naming the post, but none of them really worked:

Haloweenis
Prick or Treat
Rumpkin Carving
Crack o' Lantern
All Taint's Day

To Catch an Asshole

NBC loves child predators! LOVES them. Wants to marry them and have all of their little pervy babies and then will watch patiently as those nasty Internet predators seduce them. I have been in Internet blogging for twenty-four years and I have very seldom been at a loss for words.

Okay. Word-loss over. Rant continued.

So how do I know that NBC loves Internet predators? Simple, they are pulling back on, or maybe eventually cancelling the "To Catch a Predator" series of Dateline specials. If reading that made you spout a torrent of four-letter words and racial epithets like a drunken Archie Bunker with Tourrette's, welcome to the motherfucking club.

The cover story is a simple one: they're laying the blame on advertisers who don't want their products associated with legally and ethically vague sting operations orchestrated to boost the ratings of an otherwise lifeless news magazine show on America's number three or four network. But that's bullshit and we all know it. NBC and all of the advertisers who have pulled their support for this groundbreaking series have become enamored with Internet predators, and in fact, may be Internet predators themselves. As Nietzsche prophetically warned, they have become the very monster they sought to fight. The abyss has stared back at them, and it is apparently the warm, cozy genitalia of an underage girl!


Shame on you, NBC. Shame on you!

And we all know that the current "To Catch a Predator" series is rife with product placement. For example:

Mike's Hard Lemonade - Sexed up, underage teens love drinkin' it and Internet predators love supplyin' it.
Trojan condoms - Um, DUH!
Astroglide - I doubt any of the Internet predators will actually need it, but whatever.
Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Windows Live Messenger - Kids and Predators have to meet somewhere, right?

And let's not forget the real victim here. No, I'm not talking about the underage teens who are about to be deflowered now that NBC and its advertisers have turned on them. I'm talking about the stalwart defender of underage genitals himself, Chris Hansen. He was just getting to the point where the predators knew who he was. He was on the cusp of one of them even knowing his name before he said "I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC and we're doing a story on people who try to meet teenagers for sex on the Internet." That man deserves better. Even Oprah gave him the seal of approval.

President of NBC (I don't know his/her name. I could Google it, but now the Internet is full of predators and I don't want to be molested), I hope you come back to your office to find Mr. Hansen and his trusty crew waiting for you, his accusatory stare a proxy for the one the rest of us non-Internet predators are wearing. I hope that, confronted with the shame of your new, perverse desires, your mind scrambles for an answer that will most likely begin and end with "oops." Then I hope you get tazered. Congratulations, Internet predators. You're entering a new, Chris-Hansen-free renaissance--and probably an underage vagina--very soon.

Cock-a-doodle-doo

Jason and I were inspired by seeing Superbad this weekend, so we whipped up a couple of penis drawings to pay tribute to one of the funniest scenes in the movie.



Steve, by the way, still can't see how I can say that Darth Vader's design was based on a penis. The man is blind.

Sorry to anyone who is offended by, you know, dick pictures.

Tho I dunno how you could be because they're totally awesome.

There should just be more penis in this world.

R.I.P. Merv

The creator of two of TV history's most popular game shows died yesterday. With Wheel of Fortune, TV pioneer Merv Griffin revealed that R, S, T, L, N and E were the most important letters of the alphabet. And in the early days of the series back when people had to spend their jackpots choosing prizes from the Wheel of Fortune showroom, Merv made us realize that there were two types of people in this world: those who would put the remainder of their winnings on a gift certicate or account and those who'd prefer to blow the rest of their Wheel wad on a porcelain dalmatian.

Merv also created Jeopardy!, the influential game show that redefined trivia. At the same time, Merv redefined the meaning of "jackass" with the casting of host Alex Trebek. Let's just say that Merv was a gift certificate man and Alex was a ceramic dog kinda guy.

Merv Griffin
TV host/TV icon/Real estate mogul/hot tubber
July 6, 1925 - August 12, 2007

Answer: The tikka-tikka-tikka sound of the Wheel of Fortune wheel.
Question: What does Merv Griffin spinning in his grave sound like right now?

Say Hello to My Little Friend

Exactly two weeks ago we were at Comic-Con competing in Diamond Select Toys' first-ever Minimate scavenger hunt. The game required us to take photos of a special-issue Minimate in various situations while geeking out at the convention and whoring it up around San Diego. We could also get extra points through creative challenges like drawing a Minimate movie poster for a film that started with the letter "S" (Maybe Shanghai Surprise? Howzabout Speed 2: Cruise Control? Perhaps, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot?). I ended up making a Scarface poster for our team, and you can see the crude original here. I spent, like, five minutes drawing it, but I figured I should remake it all proper-like. For you, I've spent about 20 minutes...

A Minimate version of Scarface.
He's almost as tall as the actual Al Pacino!

Needless to say, we lost the scavenger hunt big-time. It was probably because we made a point not to spend any money on the challenges. And it was also probably because we were holed up in a hotel far from home, so we had to MacGyver it and use whatever free materials we could scrounge up (the original Scarface poster I drew for the competition was on the back of some hotel postcard). In the end, it just confirmed for us that we'd be the worst-ever team on The Amazing Race since we'd do the bare minimum to get by. But for you, I'll spend 20 minutes.

Where are our balls?

Jason and I have been victimized--which is harder for us than for normal people, because usually, we're the victimizers, not the victimeez.

Our balls have been stolen.

Well, our antenna balls. We still have them other balls. At least I do.

Now, Jason had a relatively cute Jack Skellington antenna ball, not too dirty or streetworn. So I guess I can see why the criminal element might want it.

But um, my antenna ball was f'ed up. It was a cowgirl antenna ball Jason bought me to replace a cowboy antenna ball that was, in an unrelated crime, stolen back in the day when I lived in Seattle but I was visiting Canada...anyhoo, it was to'e up big time, its braids completely undone, hair turned almost gray with road dust--actually the entire thing was dirty as all hell and just really busted in every imaginable way, tho all that weathering made the hat look kind of sweet and accurately cowboyish. In fact, I actually have a clean, unweathered, still-in-the-plastic cowgirl antenna ball Jason bought me as a backup but I had resisted replacing the weathered one because, ironically, I thought the clean one would be too much of a temptation to antenna ball kleptos.

Anyway, here's my question: Who the fuck steals an antenna ball, let alone two? We suspect an inside job, as it appears the balls disappeared in or around the same time frame. I guess it's possible our neighbors hate us, as we've lived in the same place for, oh, five years and still don't actually know the names of any of the people we share a building with. Well, I don't, tho Jason helped the next-door lady "fix her VCR" if you know what I mean*.

So. If you live in the area, or even if you don't, since our antenna balls may be victims of antenna ball trafficking, please be on the lookout for our precious balls. And if you have ball(s) of your own, hold them close--or you might find that the next time you go to adjust them, they may be gone.



*What I mean is, help her figure out why the bootleg DVDs of Borat and something or another else wouldn't work on her DVD player, which she called a VCR. It's because her shitty DVD player couldn't read DVD-Rs and the like, in case you're curious. Worked fine in our bootleg-friendly DVD player. We don't know this woman's name, but we do know she favors walking around in her silky, spaghetti-strap, deep-plunge nighties ALL THE TIME. And she's like, our moms' age. So, yeah. Hot. Jason's always trying to fix the ol' VCR. Don't worry. He's kind and rewinds.

R.I.P. News Reporter Guy

For those of you who don't live in Los Angeles, the city has just lost a local celebrity and television fixture. Today, KTLA's Hal Fishman died, and he was apparently TV's longest-running news anchor. He also had this weird lazy eye, so when he delivered the news, he could look at you squarely with only half as much journalistic integrity as his co-anchor. Meanwhile, his googly eye would be simultaneously leering at you like a lecherous fogey. This just in: his newscasts were both informative and creepy.

Hal Fishman
News anchor
August 25, 1931 - August 7, 2007

Great. So the last news story I ever reported on is about Lindsay Lohan.

Most of you have probably seen Hal Fishman play a news anchor in various movies, including such gems as Joe Dirt, National Security and Malibu's Most Wanted. He was also the news guy in Spider-Man 3 who asked, "Could this be the end of Spider-Man?" which I think happened to be the legendary sign-off of newsman Edward R. Murrow.

Fishman was also known for his nightly editorial rants that he always tried to tie up at the end with some sort of clever turn of phrase, like "and so the world turns" or "don't miss the bus" or "please touch me there." In the spirit of Hal Fishman, I had to report the breaking news of his death as soon as I heard, and here are the actual e-mail responses I received this morning from fellow Fishmaniacs Jenni and Steve.

Steve: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!"

Jenni: "I guess Hal's giving his insightful commentary to God, now."

See, that's what I call a turn of a phrase.

R.I.P. Legendary Film Director Guys

I haven't done an obituary posting in a while, even though there have been several notable deaths of late (Tom Snyder, Tammy Faye Messner, Lady Bird Johnson, Liz Claiborne, voluntary reading for kids since Harry Potter is finished). But two legendary film directors, Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, both died this past Monday, so I figured I'd better memorialize them before another silver-screen great's life is claimed, like the guy behind No Reservations or maybe auteur R. Kelly (please preview his upcoming Trapped in the Closet: Chapters 13 - 22 here and enjoy the multiple R. Kellys crooning "Oh, Shit" in the background).

Ingmar Bergman
Film director
July 14, 1918 - July 30, 2007

Ingmar Bergman finally rejoins Death after having directed
him playing chess in The Seventh Seal.
Yeah, I know. He totally ripped off Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

I actually don't really have too much to say about Antonioni and Bergman, since their "legendary film director" status means:

1. I had no idea they were actually still alive
2. The only other time I've referenced them was to hold my own in a movie geek conversation because I know other people haven't really watched their movies for fun, either
3. As legends of cinema, their movies -- by definition -- can't feature opening credits that contain the words "starring Steve Guttenberg"
   
   
   
   

Comic-Connage, Part 2

We've survived another Comic-Con, and I've spent another $20 here and there to buy some vinyl toy that'll just sit around my desk! As fun as it was, this year's show was pretty anticlimactic. With Hollywood geek-cinema currently sitting in limbo between trilogies and franchises, there was no big news scoop to steal the show. The only real news I have is that if you're one of the dozens of dorks who dressed up as slave Leia or a 300 Spartan, you really should've laid off the World of Warcraft for a while to do some sit-ups before suiting up.

I got the exclusive Vampire Jack Skellington.

Steve got the exclusive 300 King Leonidas.

Jenni got the exclusive Grimace toy and Castlevania figure.


Todd McFarlane out-ridiculoused himself with his upcoming
"Twisted X-Mas" figures. They're even more idiotically gory than his
Twisted Fairy Tales line of toys.

"Ho, ho, ho" is how Santa describes Mrs. Claus, Claus, Claus.

The new Pirates of the Caribbean toys.
Pillaging whoremongers never looked so huggable!

A Star Wars Lego mural. Ten years from now,
George Lucas will wreck it by adding some Lite-Brite special effects to it.

The many flavors of Artoo droid, including "lesbian."

Wittle Hewos

Cute heroes are the only heroes I take pictures of.

Comic-Connage

I feel like poopsticks today, so while the boys are at Comic-Con, I'm sitting here crying softly in the hotel room (which is located so conveniently close to the highway you can actually tell how heavy traffic is by sound alone), eating extra crunchy peanut butter out of the jar without the help of utensils and overpaying for internet access to upload some piccys.

Comic-Con is like crowded or something. It's never a small group of people, but the damn thing almost totally sold out this year, so I think that means that there are more nerds and geeks in the world than ever before. It's funny that this is the year that Comic-Con is blowing up huge, since in my opinion the programming isn't as good as it has been in past years. I dunno, maybe I'm just jaded.

Anyhoo, I took some pics of cute toys and stuff.

They were actually advertising the fact that you could get real, live Stargate Atlantis water at some concession stands. It's been forever since we made it back to Atlantis, so it was pretty exciting to get a taste of the sweet, life-giving water of the lost continent.


I think this is like a copy of a gold box from some Bible movie or something.


The cutest little world-eater you'll ever meet.

Batman, from the Super Friends series. I like his little half-smile.

Get a load of these huggable heroes. I really like the idea of superhero toys for little kids. I don't know why.

Blogger is being weird so I'll do more pics in another post.