RobberBlog

Closing Time.

2010-08-09T21:53:00.002-05:00

This'll probably be the last entry on robberblog. In case you didn't read the last post, I've decided to put this fella to bed. Why? It was time for something new. I named this guy after my first improv team in Chicago, the Space Robbers. We're retiring this weekend, and it seems fitting that I retire Robberblog too.

Robberblog was kind of a clearing house of whatever thoughts I had on a given day. It was a place for me to write, and share my thoughts and feelings with the folks out in the ether of the web. Frakking Shiny will be a collaborative effort between myself and my fiance. My hope is that the content there will be higher quality (or, I'll actually proofread things and write more than one draft) and more focused (more nerd stuff, less hockey stuff and personal stuff). I'm hoping that by providing opinions of two nerds who belong to a couple, Chelsea and I will be able to provide a unique voice (or voices) to the already busy world of blogging about geeky shit.

To everyone who read this on any sort of a regular basis- thanks. I hope you'll keep reading over at the new site. I realize there are only four or five of you, but to be honest, as much as this was for me, it was for you too. Thanks for coming. Hope to see you over at the new place.

It begins...

2010-08-08T16:53:00.001-05:00

Hmmmmm....

Life Imitates Art

2010-05-13T11:53:00.002-05:00

Did you ever see one of those movies where a small, independently run theater (or other business) is threatened with destruction by a large corporate developer, and then everyone at the theater (or other business) holds a rally, or puts on a show, or a fundraiser or whatever, and stops the developer?

Well that's actually happening to the theater I perform at, except without the rally/ fundraiser/ happy ending part. I mean, there may still be a rally and/or a happy ending, but basically, developers are going to build a massive mixed use commercial/residential space (or condos, and stores) at Addison and Clark where several businesses, including the world renowned comedy theater iO Chicago are currently located. Because you know, the world needs less theaters, and more Best Buys.

The whole thing hasn't played out yet, but it's mostly played out. The plans are in place, some political and business people voted and the theater may get bulldozed by this time next year.

It's scary, and sad.

Good Things

2010-04-15T11:23:00.002-05:00

I had a crummy morning. So, here are some things that I think are great:

1. Treme- Are you watching this show on HBO? Cause I saw the first episode on HBO, and I'm already obsessed with it. I've been thinking about it all week. The show follows a bunch of people, mostly musicians, around New Orleans a few months after Hurricane Katrina. It's by the people who did the WIRE so you know it's gotta be good, right?

2. Chickens- I took a cooking class last week called Chicken 101. I love cooking chicken. I especially love roasting chicken, and I learned some neat new chicken tricks (like removing the wishbone before roasting my bird).

3. C2E2, which is a huge nerdfestival opens this weekend, and I have tickets. George RR Martin will be there! And comic books! Hooray!

Creature of Habit

2010-03-30T09:54:00.002-05:00

I like patterns and repetition. I'm sure that this is part of the reason I like long form improv, and specifically the Harold so much. The Harold is all about patterns, and repetition.

This is also the reason why I do certain things pretty much everyday, like:

1. After I get through the actual cleaning myself part of my morning shower, I count backwards from 30, giving myself a solid 30 seconds to just enjoy the hot water everyday.

2. I avoid stepping on cracks on sidewalks, and the divisions between the concrete blocks on the sidewalk as well.

3. Before I leave my apartment, or anywhere else really, I touch my pockets to make sure I have my wallet, inhaler, keys, and iPhone. I started doing this years ago after losing my wallet, some IDs, and several sets of keys.

4. Working out. Working out gives my day structure. I work out everyday at the same time, and while I switch up the exercises, repetitions, etc., I get to add one more "thing that I do everyday, and kind of obsess about" to my day.

Structure. Patterns. Ritual. If I don't have these things, I'm kind of lost. Call it obsessive compulsive disorder if you want. I call it "things that are necessary for Sean to exist as a functioning human being".

Case in point: I have today off from work. I had some extra vacation days left over from last year, and I had to use this one by March 31st, or I would lose it. So, here I am, using my vacation day. I have a full, unstructured day.

And you know what? I feel kind of off. Not quite right. It's ten, and I haven't showered, or eaten breakfast, or really done much of anything. In about five minutes I'm going to get up, and make myself somewhat presentable, and then go downtown to finally check out the modern wing of Art Institute. I should be happy, relaxed, thrilled, etc. And I'm not upset, or sad, or anything like that. I guess I'm just not as happy, relaxed, etc. as someone taking a vacation day should be.

Well, I'm going to do my best to enjoy my freeform day, and tomorrow? I'm going right back to my patterns, habits, an rituals.

JLA vs. Avengers

2010-02-28T10:48:00.002-06:00

First off:

A thousand pardons for the long absence. I guess I haven't felt very....bloggish? This month? I've been busy.

Now to get this out of the way- the Saints won! Which brings my playoff record to 6 and 5! America!

Next off:

I am a Star Trek youtube

And now to the point of this blog entry:

JLA vs. Avengers

Recently, DC Comics has introduced a new roster for the Justice League. In a few months, after their "Siege" limited series, Marvel Comics is introducing a new roster for the Avengers.

The premise of both teams is very similar. The Justice League are Earth's greatest heroes. They get together to tackle massive threats that no single superhero could handle themselves. The Avengers are Earth's mightiest heroes. They also band together to confront threats that no single hero could defeat him or herself. From a marketing standpoint, these books allow you to see all of your favorite superheroes in one comic. So, if you can't afford to buy Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman's solo titles, you can just buy Justice League and see them all there. Or, for Marvel, you don't have to buy Thor, Captain America, or Iron Man- you can see them all every month in Avengers. Team books like these almost function also serve a function as a gateway drug. Maybe you're not all that familiar with Spiderman, but you love Iron Man. So you pick up Avengers because Iron Man is in it, and you find that, hey that wisecracking Spider fellow is tons of fun as well! This causes you to pick up some Spiderman comics as well.

Now, superhero team rosters change in comics change about as often as the seasons. Sometimes, a single hero leaves, or is added to a team, and almost as frequently, a roster changes almost completely. Sometimes, new roster additions work out. In the 70's, the X-Men almost completely re-did their roster when they got rid of old stalwarts like Beast, Ice Man, and Angel, and brought in new characters like Storm, Nightcrawler, and of course Wolverine. And it worked out great. Other times, new rosters are terrible. In the 80's DC tried to make the Justice League more "Street level" by moving them to Detroit and adding characters like Vibe, Vixen, and Gypsy. None of these characters are Earth's greatest anythings and while they may be fun characters, they didn't really end up working out for the most part.

Where am I going with all of this? Basically, I think DC is screwing the pooch with their new JLA roster, and I think Marvel has put together possibly the best line up of Avengers that they've had in maybe a decade. To me, both these titles need to be comprised mostly of their company's marquee characters. For DC, this means Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. After that, if you want to add some B-Teamers like Firestorm, or Zatanna, or somebody new? Go for it. But I think you need to have those five guys. Nobody picks up a Justice League comic to read about M'Onel, Congorilla, or (shudder) the Guardian. Seriously, Congorilla is gonna fight Despero? The Guardian is gonna stand toe-to-toe with Prometheus? Give me a break.

On Avengers, I expect to see a Captain America, an Iron Man, a Thor, and a few other classic characters. Marvel's new Avengers roster (the three characters just mentioned plus Spiderman, Wolverine, Spider Woman, and Hawkeye) is great. It's a blend of old and new Avengers, and all Marquee characters. It's an all star team. I'm excited to see those guys get together to fight Kang, Ultron, Korvac, or whoever.

I know, I know, it's the writing, and the art that make a comic really great. And I know that there have been great runs on Avengers and Justice League that didn't include lots of alpha characters (or any in some cases). And I know that when you keep those characters apart for awhile, it makes it better when they all get together again. And I know variety is the spice of life.

But I really believe that when a comic reader picks up a comic that is billed as a superhero all star book they want to see marquee characters.

But honestly, when was the last time you really enjoyed JLA? For me, it was Mark Waid's Tower of Babel arc. Which featured Superman, Green Lantern, Wonderwoman, Batman, and all the rest of those guys. To me, DC needs to let one of their two big writers (Grant Morrison, or Geoff Johns) onto Justice League. They need to pair that writer with an amazing artist. Then they need to give that writer access to all of their big guns.

Superman.

Batman.

Wonder Woman.

Give me that book. I will buy that book every month. Hell, I'll buy two! Come on DC! Marvel's got Bendis and John Romita Jr. writing an all star Avengers book! The least you can do is give me an all star Justice League!

Superbowl Prediction

2010-02-01T11:34:00.002-06:00

Apparently, the Superbowl is this weekend. I guess.

The Superbowl is the NFL's championship game. In it, the two teams that were best at football in a given year play each other for the right to have one of their players say "I'm going to Disney World". Then that player gets to go to Disney World.

Traditionally, the Superbowl is watched during the commercials for Puppy Bowl. Unlike Puppy Bowl, where the object is for puppies from shelters around the country to be as cute as possible, the object of the Superbowl is to not suck at football so one player on the winning team may win the aforementioned trip to Disney World.

Anyway. If you've been following my blog, you know that I am currently five and five in my NFL playoff predictions, despite having no knowledge of, or interest in football. Therefore, if I make the correct prediction for the Superbowl, I will have a winning playoff record.

This year, the Saints are playing the Colts.

I pick the Saints to win because I think that a party in New Orleans (home of Mardi Gras, jazz, cajun food) sounds like more fun than a party in Indianapolis (I can't think of anything fun about Indianapolis to list in this space). Way more fun.

So yeah. Go Saints!

More Football

2010-01-21T16:33:00.003-06:00

I reversed Week 1's result completely in week 2 of the NFL playoffs! I went 3 for 1! Which bring my total record to .500! So, here are some completely arbitrary NFL predictions from someone who doesn't know about, or car for football:

Jets/Colts- New York=Deal with the devil. Colts= team with the "Cut that meat" guy on it. I pick the Jets.

Vikings/Saints- I pick the Saints as it will lead to a God vs. the Devil Superbowl where New Orleans represents the forces of God, and the Jets represent the forces of the Devil.

Engage!

2010-01-17T15:25:00.004-06:00

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone (since we've been dating for three quarters of a decade), but I asked Chelsea to marry me and she said yes.

I actually ordered the ring about a month ago from a jeweler in New Mexico. I ordered from this guy after Chelsea and I did some research into diamonds that were mined in an ecologically responsible, and humane way- meaning basically, no Debeer's blood diamonds. So we found this guy in New Mexico who made rings with Canadian diamonds, and as an added bonus, did some pretty kickin' Celtic inspired designs on the band.

I ordered the ring in December, but it took a month to put it together. I kept imagining dwarves (Tolkien type dwarves) in their forges under a mountain hammering out a ring with the mithril they'd mined that day. Anyway. Eventually, the ring shipped. I followed it's product on FedEx's package tracking system as closely as I would normally follow a Red Sox playoff game. In particular, on the day it was due to arrive, I was checking FedEx maybe every ten minutes, and thinking "Oh God, what if it gets lost? What if it ends up at the wrong place? What if the FedEx truck gets attacked by dinosaurs?" You know how it is.

So the ring arrived, and I immediately made the decision not to wait. I didn't plan a dinner, or a trip, or anything fancy. I decided that Chelsea had waited long enough, and been patient enough that she deserved to be asked as soon as possible.

At the end of my work day, I went down the escalator. Chelsea was waiting at the bottom, reading "A Game of Thrones" by George RR Martin. I asked her how the book was, kissed her cheek, dropped to one knee, and asked her to marry me. She started tearing up, said "Oh my God" about 7 times, hugged me, and said yes.

And that is how it happened.

NFL Playoff Picks and Predictions from Somone who Doesn't Follow Football, Know Anything About Football, or Care About Football Part 2

2010-01-12T12:19:00.002-06:00

Man, I did not do well in my predictions in week 1.

I went one for three, with the Jets/Bengals game being the only one I called correctly.

So, what have we learned? Teams deals with the Devil are a good parameter for making sports predictions, food preferences, presence (or lack of preference) of characters from the Wire, and the fittingness of team names are bad parameters.

With these lessons learned, here are my predictions for week 2. Please keep in my mind that I still do not care about football, and still have relatively little knowledge of it:

Cardinals/ Saints

The Saints are from New Orleans which is a city that is karmically due for something great to happen. Therefore, I pick the Saints. Because of Karma. Incidentally, I'm christening this game The Catholic Bowl as it pits Saints vs. Cardinals.

Ravens/Colts

Here's the most important question in regards to this game: Could a raven take a horse in a fight? I would say no. Now, a raven would have a huge advantage over the horse in that it can fly, while the horse cannot. But, a horse is a large powerful animal while ravens are small and have hollow bones. So, while I imagine the raven would be able to avoid the horse's crushing blows for awhile, in the end, I think the horse would win. I predict that the horseys will beat the Ravens.

Cowboys/Vikings

Vikings are from Scandinavia. Cowboys are from America. In a fictional war between the US, and the countries that make up Scandinavia, I'm pretty sure the US would win. Therefore the Cowboys will win. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Jets/Chargers

As the only game I called correctly last week was the Jets/Bengals games, I pick the Jets to win again. Do not bet against a team or city that has a deal with Satan.

NFL Playoff Picks and Predictions from Somone who Doesn't Follow Football, Know Anything About Football, or Care About Football

2010-01-08T11:19:00.004-06:00

According to espn.com, the NFL playoffs are apparently this weekend. If you know me, or have read this blog for an extended period of time, you're probably aware that despite coming up in a football family, my general feelings towards football range from apathy to out-and-out hatred depending on my mood on any given day. I'm really just more of a hockey/baseball/quidditch kind of a guy.

Anyway, for fun, I've decided to make NFL playoff predictions this year, just to see how I do having next to zero knowledge about the teams, and the players, and only a vague sense of the rules of football in general.

So here we go, "NFL Playoff Picks and Predictions from Somone who Doesn't Follow Football, Know Anything About Football, or Care About Football, Week 1":

Jets/ Bengals

As we all know,the city of New York rests upon a gateway to Hell, and all of the teams who play there have various deals with the devil that ensure their unlikely success in their sports endeavors. Also, the Bengals uniforms look silly. Therefore, I predict the Jets will win this game.

Eagles/ Cowboys

Let's make this a cheesesteak versus brisket competition. As in, which do I prefer. I do love a good, smoky brisket. But I think I like a cheesesteak just a little bit more. I think the cheesesteaks will win this game. Sorry, brisket.

Patriots/Ravens

Oh! The Ravens are from Baltimore! Which is where "The Wire" is set! Is McNulty on the Ravens? If so, then the Ravens will win this game, because that guy is awesome........I just googled it, and McNulty is not on the Ravens. Plus I'm from New England, so the Patriots will win.

Packers/Cardinals

Why is there a team in Arizona called "The Cardinals"? Do they even have Cardinals in Arizona? Shouldn't they be the Cactuses? Or the mismanagement of limited water resources? I'll pick the Packers because their name seems more appropriate.

There we go! I won't watch any of these games (since I'm sure there are some hockey games on this weekend, or maybe a special about how Laffy Taffy is made) but I'll be sure to check the scores on Monday morning. Wish me luck!

The Gym in the Morning

2010-01-07T16:07:00.003-06:00

For most of the time I've been working out regularly (which has been for a few years now), I've gone to the gym in the evening after work. I went at this time because it was convenient, and while I thought that getting up extra early to go the gym in the morning was a good idea, I was never good at the part where I had to actually get up before the sun to subject myself to the physical pain of a workout.

As part of a whole parcel of resolutions for 2010, Chelsea and I have been trying to hit the gym in the morning. Why? Well, there are a few reasons. For one, I won't miss any workouts. I end up postponing workouts, or missing them entirely because I often have things I have to go to at 6 PM, meaning I won't have time to make it to the gym. Chances are, I will never have a rehearsal, show, or social event at 6:30 AM that will cause me to skip a workout. Next, believe it or not it's a nice way to wake up. You know that pleasant little spike of endorphins you get after a workout? When you work out in the morning, that little endorphin spike helps wake you up. Also, I like having that extra hour after work to do errands, make dinner, or do whatever else I may want to. And the biggest reason? I don't know about your gym, but mine if a frakking madhouse from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM everyday. Especially at this time of year when all of the people with fitness resolutions show up for a month and a half or so. I'm not generally crazy about crowds, and I also hate waiting, so the less crowded morning gym is pretty great for me.

Here are some general observations about the gym in the morning:

1. The same trainers who are there at 6 at night are also there at 6 in the morning. I've never given it alot of thought, but personal trainers must have really odd schedules. They've gotta be at the gym when their clients are, right? So if their client is in at 6 AM they're there. And if their other client won't be there till 6 PM, then they'll be there at 6 PM too. Maybe they go home for awhile during the day and get some sleep.

2. Morning gym people are a little more hardcore then night time people. Obviously. I mean, most people like to sleep. It takes a special kind of person to get up and lift weights, and go to Spinning Class, and do some Yoga before putting in a long day at their job. But there seemed to be alot more triathletes, alot more distance runners, and alot more people with muscles coming out of their muscles there in the morning than at night. In fact, this morning, in the midst of a snowstorm, I definitely encountered two folks who were about to go running outside. When I got off the gym floor (roughly 45 minutes later) they had returned from their blizzard run.

3. There are more women in the weight area in the morning than at night. In the evening, there tend to be a ton of meatheads floating around the free weights. I say "floating" because most of the dudes spend more time talking with each other about real estate/babes/sports/their hair than actually lifting. Regardless, I think many people, especially lady people feel intimidated by these dudes and keep away from the free weights. The morning meathead population is significantly smaller than the evening meathead population, meaning that more women hit the weights.

Overall, despite difficulties getting myself out of bed, I'm enjoying my morning workouts. We'll see if I can keep this up.

Space Robbers: Best of '09

2009-12-31T10:29:00.002-06:00

I don't generally use RobberBlog as a place to toot my own horn, but I'm going to now.

Check this out.

Apparently, the comedy reviewer from TimeOut Chicago came to a Space Robbers show at some point over the Summer, saw our show, and decided to put it on a year end "Best of" comedy in Chicago list.

I have now been playing with Space Robbers for over six years, and I am still so proud of the work we do, and so happy to perform with Jim Fath, Nick Johne, Melissa Cathcart, Barry Hite, and everyone else who has ever been a part of the cast, or ever sat in with us, and it's nice to see a mention like this. It's always nice to see that someone appreciates your work.

So, congrats Robbers!

Rob Space!

Christmas Haul

2009-12-28T11:23:00.002-06:00

In case you were wondering, I got home for Christmas just fine. Despite all of the warnings of holiday travel Doom from the Weather Channel, I got to the airport, and my flight (as well as most of the other flights leaving on Christmas Eve Day) were listed as "On Time". So I made it home exactly when I was supposed to.

I had a nice, though too-short Christmas break with my family in Newburyport. Here for your perusing pleasure is what I got for Christmas this year:

1 New HD TV
1 Crock Pot
1 Coffee Maker
1 French Press
1 Coffee Grinder
1 Long sleeved Boston Bruins shirt
2 packages of socks
1 New Super Mario Bros. Wii
1 Pair of Boots (LL Bean)
1 Newburyport Christmas tree ornament
1 Winter hat (w/ a baseball cap Brim!)
1 Boston Bruins Hat
1 Dropkick Murphy's t-shirt
1 Oven Mit
1 box of handwarmers (the general theme of this Christmas was "Sean Must be Cold always- we must remedy this")

and lots of other things too. In other words, I made out like a Bandit.

Christmas Travel

2009-12-23T12:00:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve day and like millions of other people around the world, I will be flying home. Specifically, I'll be flying from Chicago, Illinois to Boston, Massachusetts. I'm really excited to go home. I'm excited to see my family. I'm excited for Christmas.

But, I am kind of panicking a little bit. I mean, I'm not freaking out. I don't do that about things like travel. But I am a little stressed looking at the weather reports. Apparently, there's a pretty massive Winter storm en route to the Windy City as we speak, and I'm already starting to see friends' facebook statuses saying things like "flight canceled" and "looks like I'll be spending the night at the airport".

You know what worries me the most? I have had, in my life, incredibly good luck with flights. My longest delay ever was about two hours (side note- I am furiously knocking on wood as I type this). You would think that my good flight luck would ease my worried mind, but you'd be wrong. See, I'm the type of person who works under the constant assumption that my luck is about to run out, and EVERY time I fly, I think, "good gods, this will be the flight I end up missing CHRISTMAS, A WEDDING, FIRST CONTACT WITH AN ALIEN SPECIES, etc.". Of course, that is exactly what's going through my head now: visions of myself spending Christmas in the airport with some other weary travelers.

Hopefully, all of my worrying will end up amounting to nothing.

Till next we meet, oh friends and enemies, Merry Christmas!

2010 Will Be Amazing

2009-12-18T09:59:00.002-06:00

2009 was a lousy year for me. Not only was 2009 a lousy year, but it was the lousiest year I've had since maybe 2001.

But, it's December 18th. There are only 13 days left in this crummy, crappy, very bad year, and then guess what happens?

It becomes 2010.

I have already decided that 2010 will be amazing. This is not just some random thing I'm saying- I have some things going on that I can't really mention just yet that will make next year better- guaranteed.

I guess in a way, I should be thankful for 2009. I learned alot about myself. I learned alot about what I want out of life, who I want to be, what I want to do, and what I don't.

But with the dust of aught nine shaken from my boots, I am attacking '10 with the following philosophy-

Be better today then yesterday.

What this means to me, is that I will strive every day in the coming year (and for all future years) to be stronger, smarter, faster, more productive than I was the day before. I will be better at my job, a better boyfriend, better at the gym, a better improviser, and generally a better person than yesterday.

So, welcome 2010. I think you and I are going to get along just fine.

Top Chef 6 Finale

2009-12-11T09:14:00.002-06:00

First off, this girl is amazing, almost as hot as Chelsea, and should probably receive the Congressional Medal of Nerd Freedom.

Now, let's talk about Top Chef Season 6. If you haven't seen the finale, you should probably stop reading now, because I'm going to spoil the crap out of it for you.

This was, at the end of the day, easily the best season of Top Chef ever. Obviously, the talent level was higher than it's ever been. I think if you put any of the top four from this season (Michael V., Bryan V., Jennifer, or Kevin) in any other season, they would have won EASILY. Maybe Blais and Stephanie from Season 4 could have given one of them a run for their money. But, the talent level was super-high. Kevin said it on the finale, and it's most definitely true, but any one of them could have won the whole shebang. I know some folks are pissed that Kevin lost because he was super-friendly, made really awesome, simple food, and has a pretty kick-ass pig tattoo. And yes, Kevin did kind of get screwed on the sous chef front when he got stuck with Preeti. With that said, Michael V. deserved to win. While he's had some spectacular failures throughout the course of the season, he's had some amazing successes too. The dude was, without a doubt, the most creative guy on the show.

Besides the fact that the contestants kicked ass this season, the show really stepped up it's game too. Except for maybe the cowboy challenge, there weren't a ton of silly dumb challenges, and there were a ton of really cool, high skill level challenges. I mean, the B'Ocuse D'or Challenge? How crazy awesome was that? And, unlike Top Chef: New York (which was easily my least favorite season of Top Chef) which failed to use New York City to it's fullest extent, Season 6 used the crap out of Las Vegas.

Oh, and let's talk about the judges. Thomas Keller? Are you kidding me! The best chef in the US was a judge this year. Not to mention all of the other stellar judges they used.

I think this was the season that Top Chef really fully transitioned from being a reality show featuring cooking to a Cooking show. This is not the Real World. This is not a show where people stop being polite and start acting real. This is a completely badass cooking show. My hope is that going forward, all future seasons of Top Chef will be able to live up to season 6.

My Wine Epiphany

2009-12-07T14:55:00.002-06:00

Did you ever have one of those moments where you see something, like a movie, or play, or TV show, or do something, like paint a picture, or volunteer at a shelter or whatever, where you found yourself thinking "I want to dedicate a significant portion of my time, effort, and money to this activity/thing."?

I've had a few in my life. Here are some of my past epiphany moments:

September 1991- I read X-MEN #1. This was my comic book epiphany.

December 1996- My first ever play. My algebra teacher, Mrs. Darrin, cast me as a narrator in my high school's production of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". This was my theater epiphany.

September 2000- I audition for UMass Amherst's Mission IMPROV:able- and get in. Possibly my most important epiphany- my improv epiphany.

Sometime in 2004- While watching "Good Eats" on Food Network, I realize that food has the ability to be really, truly incredible. This is my food epiphany.

And of course there have been others- many of which I only vaguely remember.

Last week, I had my most recent epiphany.

We'll call it the wine epiphany.

Now, before we get started, I like wine. I've been drinking wine since at least 2001, and I could probably hold my own in a conversation with a wine snob. I know all about grape varietals, and the major wine producing regions of the world. I know how to read a wine label and figure out if something is decent or not.

With all of that said, before last Wednesday, I would've considered myself a casual drinker of wine, at best. In my pantheon of beverages, wine probably would not have cracked the top ten, other members of which include beer, whiskey, milk, and apple cider.

So what happened?

I went to a wine tasting at the urging of Chelsea, my lovely ladyfriend. I didn't really want to go. Going to the wine tasting would mean that I would miss my daily gym time, and I've always assumed that wine tastings were mostly good for watching snobs gather and try to out-snob each other. But, there were a few factors that convinced me to go:

1. It was free. We were going as guests of our dear friends Mel and Bill, and we weren't going to have to pay a cent to get boozed up.

2. I tweaked my shoulder lifting a grocery bag last week, and really should have rested it before working out.

3. Sometimes when you're in a relationship, it's important to do something you might not be crazy about because it will make your partner happy. As my partner (Chelsea) is awesome, I like making her happy.

4. Did I mention it was free? Free booze?

We got to the store (called Just Grapes) where they were doing the tasting, and it was really, really crowded, which of course, made really uneasy as I have some social phobia issues. We went inside, checked our coats and bags, grabbed our glasses, and started wandering around the stations to taste what the wine people had to offer.

As we drank each glass (and I think we tried somewhere from 16 to 20 wines all in all) we talked about their tastes, textures, etc. My lexicon in this conversation consisted mostly of words like "good" and "bad". Bill, and Mel's was much more varied, Mel especially. Some of the wines tasted "earthy", or "tannic". Others were "peppery" or had a "mineral-y after taste". For some reason all of this detailed vino-talk started filtering into my hollow noggin' as we went along. I did start to notice some of the finer subtleties of the wine, and I realized that wine, that frequent companion of food (one of my other major life passions), has so much in common with said companion.

Wines, like food, has alot going on. There are things to think about in every glass.

That realization, the realization that wine was every bit as complex and interesting as food led me to where I find myself now in regards to it.

I want to know wine. I want to understand wine. I want to dedicate a significant portion of my time, effort, and money to wine.

So I will. I already went out and bought a 900 page book about wine and a little notebook to scribble down thoughts about various wines. That's my first step. From here? Who knows? I can't wait. Wine, here I come.

If I Were Santa Claus....

2009-11-29T10:18:00.003-06:00

Obviously Santa Claus is pretty good at what he does. But if I was Santa, I would do things just a little bit differently. Here for your reading pleasure, are the changes I would implement should I ever become Santa Claus:

1. Velociraptors instead of reindeer.

2. Good kids would get toys. Bad kids would wake up with a horse's head on their bedspread.

3. Lord of the Rings style elves would replace the classic tiny Christmas elves. That way, if the North Pole ever got invaded by orcs we wouldn't have too much to worry about.

4. Instead of cookies, I would encourage families to leave a well-balanced meal that included a lean protein (like fish or chicken), green vegetables (like spinach, or Kale) and a healthy starch (like sweet potatoes or brown rice). Also I would encourage them to leave bourbon to wash all of that down.

5. My Santa outfit would look like this.

6. When not manufacturing, or delivering toys, I would put the vast resources of my toy shop towards developing green energy technology, vaccines for deadly diseases, and bringing Firefly back to television.

7. Mrs. Claus, rather than staying back at the Pole and baking cookies, would travel with me on my sleigh and act as my bodyguard in case the Easter Bunny or whoever tried to pick a fight. Also, she would look like this.

8. I would assemble a crew of other legendary beings and use our different magical powers and skills to stage a daring heist of a prominent Las Vegas casino. The crew and their unique skills are as follows:

Santa Claus- Break-in specialist
Hercules- the muscle
The Tooth Fairy- handles finances
Mother Nature- Demolitions expert
Kermit the Frog- the brains behind the operation

9. Every now and again, I would pick a random kid and give them everything listed in the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in lieu of actual presents.

10. And of course, instead of a sleigh, my flying velociraptors would pull the Highwind from Final Fantasy VII

I'm Thankful for Friends-Giving

2009-11-27T09:36:00.002-06:00

Except for the very first year I lived here, I've spent every single Thanksgiving in Chicago with friends rather than family.

At first, this was mostly a matter of financial necessity. It's 'spensive to travel around the holidays, and I just couldn't afford to fly home for both Thanksgiving AND Christmas. So, I spend Christmas with the Kelley's and Thanksgiving with my extended family here in the Windy City.

Over time, Friends-giving has become so much more than just a throw together event for Thanksgiving orphans with no where to go, or not enough money to get home. It has become an event in which we (my urban family) celebrate our non-blood bonds with games, drink, conversation, and food. Amazing, incredible food. I really think last year Matt Hicks summed up the whole feeling of the event when he said "Friends are the family you choose."

This year, the family we have chosen ballooned to a record 19 people. At Mel Franke and Bill Stern's place we feasted on turkey, potatoes, apple pie, baked Alaska, pork belly, stuffing, corn pudding, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, pumpkin orzo, and more other foodstuffs than I could possibly recount here. We played Apples to Apples, Beatles Rock Band, Left/Right/Center, and many other games. We ate, drank, played, and enjoyed each other's company from 10 AM till midnight.

It was wonderful.

So this year, I'm thankful for friends. I'm thankful for the friends who I made at UMass who moved with me to Chicago, I'm thankful for all of the new friends I've made here, I'm thankful for my friends in New England, my far flung friends at every corner of the country and the world, and I'm thankful for each and every person with whom I shared a wonderful meal yesterday.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Random Ruminations

2009-11-19T12:10:00.003-06:00

Random thoughts for today:

-I will never, for the life of me, understand why female fashion models need to be incredibly tall and incredibly skinny. You would think women's fashion designers would want models that looked like women- not malnourished teenage boys.

-I will not spoil the season 3 finale of Mad Men. But I will say that it was probably one of my five favorite episodes of any TV show ever. Here are the four others (in no particular order)

Battlestar Galactica: The Pegasus Trilogy- technically three episodes (Pegasus, and Resurrection Ship part 1 and Part 2) wherein the crew of the Galactica meets, and confronts the crew of a bigger, batter Battlestar (the Pegasus), and goes after the Cylons Resurrection Ship.

Star Trek the Next Generation: All Good Things...- Probably my favorite series finale of all time. Captain Picard proves humanity's mettle.

The Simpsons: You Only Move Twice- In which Homer goes to work for the delightful, yet villainous, Hank Scorpio.

Firefly: Objects in Space- Firefly started to get really good right at the end (and this was the last episode filmed) before it got canceled.

-Speaking of TV, Top Chef was great last night. Thomas Keller was a judge and that pretty much made my entire day.

-the sure-to-be God-awful "New Moon" opens in movie theaters across the country this week. I've never liked Twilight, but I was generally able to ignore it like a light rain in the past. At this point, I'm really sick of it. I know, I know, it's harmless, it's getting kids to read, it's turning teen girls into genre nerds, bla, bla, bla. I've decided Twilight is the new boy-bands. Remember in like, 1999 when boy bands were pretty much everywhere? N'SYNC? 98 Degrees? The Backstreet Boys? And remember how awful they were, but how it took like, a decade for them to really go away? That's how I feel about Twilight right now. I know that eventually it will go away, but I'm not looking forward to 5 to 10 more years of it.

-I've got Google Wave and I've been playing with it for about two weeks. It's got some bugs to be worked out, but it's pretty great overall.

I kind of hate "People of Wal-Mart"

2009-11-09T09:08:00.003-06:00

I've seen alot of e-mails, blog posts, facebook/twitter statuses and other notifications telling me all about this website in the last two months or so.

If you haven't seen it, the site is called "People of Wal-Mart". The premise of it is pretty simple- folks around the country who happen to be at Wal-Marts snap candid photos of ridiculous looking people they see within said Wal-Marts, then post those pictures online for the whole world to see, and laugh at.

I won't lie: the first few times I went to People of Wal-Mart, I did laugh. There are a ton of pictures of people wearing ridiculous outfits, driving silly looking vehicles, carrying crazy looking items, and just generally being all kinds of wacky.

Here's the thing. The more I went to "People of Wal-Mart", the more I realized that the site is kind of mean spirited. Actually, it's really mean-spirited. "People of Wal-Mart" is basically a clearing house of public embarrassment.

I mean, what did most of these people do, exactly, to deserve public ridicule? They went shopping, and looked kind of abnormal. They didn't hurt anyone. They didn't mock anyone. They didn't commit any crime. They just looked kind of silly. So we, as a society, posted pictures of them online so the whole world could throw proverbial tomatoes at them.

The other thing that bothers me is that the site implies that people who shop at Wal-Mart tend to be more ridiculous than average. Let's think about this for a minute. Wal-Mart is a giant chain store that specializes in having everything under the sun for dirt cheap prices. Their bread and butter customer-wise are people who don't have a ton of money. So, People of Wal-Mart is implying, to me anyway, that people without a ton of money are somehow more deserving of ridicule than people with lots of it.

If you read my last entry, you know I'm not really super-crazy about using comedy as a means to put down the powerless and people at the bottom of society's barrel, and I think that's exactly what people of Wal-Mart does. It serves as a place to make fun of poor people who can't, or won't defend themselves against said "fun". Maybe I'm uptight but that bothers me.

On Comedy, Hallowe'en and Dressing up as a Nerd

2009-11-02T11:19:00.004-06:00

All Hallow's Eve has come and gone once again. This year, Chelsea and I (pictured above) went as Steampunk Sky Pirates. Awesome, right? I decided my character was a disgraced Civil War veteran who turned to air piracy as a way to make ends meet at the latter part of an alternate, quasi-futuristic 19th century. Making the costume, and wearing it were a ton of fun. I spent 2 hours just dismantling my gun (a Nerf Maverick), painting it, and putting it back together again.

So Halloween was great.

What I want to talk about today is a random observation that I made this year during Halloween:

For God knows what reason, I saw a ton of people this year dressed as "nerds".

I say "nerds" with the quotes because most of the people I saw dressed as "nerds" looked kind of like this guy:

In other words, most of the "nerds" wandering around on Halloween were dressed as awful, horrible, infuriating stereotypes.

Now, you're probably saying one of a few things to yourself. Here are those things you're saying coupled with answers from me:

Your Comment: But Sean, don't lots of people dress up as lots of awful stereotypes for Halloween? Including things like jocks, and cheerleaders? Why are ridiculous nerd costumes any different?

My Answer: First off, I think dressing up as any stereotype is dumb. When you take any group of people, whether they are nerds, jocks, firefighters, or whatever and you say "you all dress like this. You all wear thick glasses, pocket protectors, and carry around inhalers" you are marginalizing, and dehumanizing those people. Have you ever seen someone dress as an awesome nerd? Or to put it another way, have you ever seen a nerd costume that wasn't meant to be funny? But cool? No? Me neither.

Second off, dressing up as a silly nerd sucks because most nerds get made fun of enough as it is. Despite all of the talk about "geek chic" in the last few years, nerds are still not cool, or even accepted by most people. We still get made fun of, mocked, belittled, beaten up, and generally made to feel small and worthless on a daily basis. Unfortunately, that's just part of the nerd experience.

As a comedic performer, I think comedy it at it's absolute best when it's used to satirize people in power who abuse said power. I think it's at it's worst when it's used to put down folks who are already at the bottom of the social barrel.

Your comment: You're taking this too seriously. It's all in good fun!

My Answer: Yup. I sure am. And nope, it isn't. I wear glasses, use an inhaler, play Final Fantasy games, and performed in an Improvised Star Trek episode over the weekend. I am a nerd. I've also been mocked, belittled, beaten up, and made to feel small and worthless throughout my life for being that way. If I'm taking this too seriously, that's why.

Also, I am not a stereotype. I do all of the things mentioned above but I also like working out, cooking, theater, pro hockey and baseball, and I wear my pants at my waist and not hiked up to my chest.

And seriously, have you ever met a nerd or geek who is really like the dude in the picture above? Have you EVER met someone who fits that stereotype to a t?

Your Comment: But it's funny!

My Answer: If something makes you laugh, it must be funny, right? At least to you?

Sure. Kind of. But here's my question to you- does the fact that you laughed at a guy in a nerd costume, or a joke about mentally handicapped people, or a sketch mocking someone who lives in a trailer park, make it okay? You're still doing something that is probably going to be hurtful. We're not talking about something that's funny because it's true. We're talking about something that makes you laugh because it somehow makes you feel superior to a whole group of people.

Here's the thing, and this is my final thought on the subject, when you dress up in a ridiculous looking nerd costume, you are doing something to make people laugh. But you're trying to make people laugh at a group of people who get laughed at all the time for pretty lousy reasons. When you wear a nerd costume, you're not laughing with nerds for all of their foibles and eccentricities as a culture, you're laughing at them. You're using comedy not as a means to raise people up, tell a story, or point out something that's wrong with society. You're using to tear a group of people down.

What's more, you're using it to tear a group down that includes, me, my girlfriend, and a pretty decent portion of the people who I love in the world. So, if you could maybe not wear a nerd costume next year, I'd be pretty happy. Thanks.

What Ever Happened to Trick or Treat?

2009-10-26T15:44:00.002-05:00

I'm going to warn you right now: at some point in this blog I'm going to use the phrase "When I was a kid", and I'm probably going to sound like a curmudgeonly old man.

I love Halloween. It's probably my favorite holiday of the whole year. It's definitely in my top five (along with Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, Earth Day, and Talk like a Pirate Day). I love that Halloween is a time for scary things. Ghosts, skeletons, monsters, demons, vampires, etc. I love costumes, I love running around in the dark, I'm indifferent to most candy, but that doesn't detract from all of the other great stuff.

With all of that said, Halloween is supposed to be scary, right? Haunted Houses? ghosts? Seances? Right?

I mean when I was a kid (there it is!) I lived in South Hampton, New Hampshire. The town was mostly forest with just a smattering of houses here and there and no streetlights. So every Halloween, we would dress up, get in my dad's car, and drive from scary, dark house to scary, dark house. More people in that small town then you can imagine had set up Haunted Houses in their homes. I remember one lady actually had some real lamb's eyeballs (preserved in formaldehyde) that she took out and showed to us. And while kids certainly dressed up in all kinds of costumes, at least 50 percent dressed up as something scary.

What brings all of this up?

Well I was walking back from the gym yesterday and I happened upon Southport Ave.'s annual Trick-or-Treat Festivities. There were a few things that bothered me:

1. Every kid I saw was dressed up as a superhero, or a princess. I saw Iron Mans, Wolverines, Cinderellas, and Yodas, but no ghosts, witches, or vampires. I only saw one skeleton.

2. It was the middle of the day. It was a beautiful, sunny day yesterday. It was noon. These are completely wrong conditions for Trick-or-treating. It should be dark, and preferably kind of windy. And there should be a full moon.

I mean, I get it. People don't want their little kids to be freaked out by anything. They also want their kids to be safe. And they want them to have fun.

I guess I just have a hard time reconciling my own memories of Halloween being scary AND fun with broad daylight trick-or-treating. I also tend to think kids can handle alot more than their parents give them credit for scary-stuff-wise.

But then, I don't have kids of my own, so what do I know?

Morning Person/ Night Person

2009-10-20T17:09:00.003-05:00

I've been a morning person for most of my life. I like getting up early and getting as much done as possible between 7 and noon.

But, I also like late night. Like, midnight to morning. In college I was, and sometimes on weekends I am, very much a night person.

For the most part, I like both times of day for different reasons, but they have one very important thing in common that I love very much:

In the early morning, and usually late at night- it's very quiet. People are sleeping, or inactive. And most of the people who are out and about are awesome. Who gets up at 5 in the morning? Or 4? People who are crazy about their jobs, or exercise, or farming. Who stays out till the darkest parts of the night? Band members, and actors, and social miscreants.

In other words, people who have awesome stories to tell.

I want to be one of those people who exists predominantly in the quiet times of a day.

Predictions for Popular Halloween Costumes: '09 Edition

2009-10-16T16:33:00.002-05:00

Last year, I made these predictions for Halloween costumes I thought would be popular in '08.

Here are my predictions for Halloween costumes that I think will be popular this year:

-Rorschach from Watchmen
-Zombie Michael Jackson
-Kid in a Balloon, or kid not in a Balloon
-Tea Party-er
-Regular zombies
-Sarah Palin (again)
-Jon or Kate, and possibly their eight children
-Captain Kirk
-Sexy

And here are costumes that I hope I see:

-Padma Lakshmi
-A Large Hadron Particle Accelerator
-Borat (oh man, remember how funny it was a few Halloweens ago when EVERYONE dressed up as Borat? How great would it be if everybody did it again?!?!?)
-Okay, not really Borat. That was pretty dumb the first time around.
-former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill
-Namor the Submariner
-Lt. Reginald Barclay
-Sexy Yoda
-Dustin Pedroia
-Zombie James Joyce

Even More Adventures in Cooking and Eating

2009-10-12T11:36:00.002-05:00

Infrequent blogs are a result of general craziness in life. Sorry.

With that out of the way- here are some thoughts, stories, and comments about what I've been eating and cooking lately:

1. Polenta- I made polenta for the first time ever recently and was very, very pleased with the results. I cooked it in chicken stock, so it was both creamy, and flavorful- kind of like grits on steroids.

2. All things pumpkin- It's technically Autumn (though it's already starting to feel Winter-ish) so that means it's pumpkin flavored food and drink season. I made my first pumpkin pie of the year a few weeks ago (it didn't turn out well) and followed it up last night with an attempt at pumpkin dumplings. The dumplings were tasty, but their texture was somewhat slimy. I was proud of myself though, because I made the pumpkin puree myself instead of buying it in a can. Next time, I'm going to add some more flour to see if that will help the texture.

3. Chelsea the baker- I do most of the cooking in the house, and until recently, Chelsea's culinary function in our household has been two-fold- she is the victim of the things I cook, and she is our resident sommelier. As of two weekends ago, Chelsea has decided that she will, going forward, also be our resident baker. So far, she has made some ginger cookies (which were delicious) and chocolate chip cookies (which were even more delicious).

4. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver- I've recently started reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which features the true story of a family who decided that for 1 year, they would eat (mostly) either things they grew themselves, or things grown by people within the county in which they lived. As an amateur gardener, cook, and environmentalist, it's a pretty fascinating read. Also, there are recipes!

5. Eating food from the garden- I'm pretty sure I mentioned the fact that our little urban garden was nearly destroyed about a month ago by some construction workers who were re-siding our building. Well, last weekend, we harvested what was left. We got- a small amount of jalapeno and Hungarian hot peppers, a ton of rosemary, some basil, and a few (mostly green) tomatoes. Last night, we fried the green tomatoes, and cooked a roast chicken filled with rosemary. Both were pretty tasty. I'm actually eating a sandwich made with the chicken right now.

6. Fast food- As I've been busy I've been eating too much of it lately. Too much Subway, too much McDonald's and even too much Taco Bell. I need to lay off the junk.

Star Trek on the Brain

2009-10-03T09:15:00.002-05:00

On October 17th, the improv show "The Improvised Star Trek" will be opening at midnight at iO Chicago. I am, of course, in it. In celebration, here are some fun Trek videos, none of which were made by me, but all of which I enjoy watching:

She Worf

The Wrath of Kirk
Star Trek Episodes Guide Song
Darmok and Jelad
Deep Space 9 was amazing
A Fistful of Datas
Voyager was awful

Lobsters

2009-09-24T16:59:00.000-05:00

And now....

Lobsters

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

2009-09-18T11:44:00.002-05:00

I love theme parks. I love roller coasters, and haunted houses, and fried dough. And no, I don't see anything wrong with a 27 year old man loving all of those things.

I also love Harry Potter. I love all of the books, and my apartment has two copies of each of them. And no, I don't see anything wrong with a 27 year old man loving a series of childrens' novels about wizards.

So, it should come as no surprise that I'm very excited by the "who put this peanut butter in my chocolate" combination that will be Universal Orlando's Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which is set to open next year.

I think everyone who reads and loves Harry Potter has thought about how neat it would be to visit Hogwarts- to take a stroll around the lake, grab a butterbeer in Hogsmeade, buy some gag gifts as Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, etc.

From everything I've read, the Harry Potter fan in me is very excited. It looks like Universal has gone through a ton of work to make the Harry Potter experience as authentic as possible for the millions of fans who are sure to stream into their park once the Wizarding World opens.

But, I have to be honest, the theme park fan in me has some concerns.

First off, this park is going to be jammed, for years. There are going to be tons and tons of lines, and despite the incredible advances in queue technology of the last decade or so (FastPass, I think, is one of the ten greatest inventions of all time), they are going to be LONG. Every visitor to Hogwarts is going to have to be ready to sit alot, and wait alot.

The second concern I have springs somewhat from the first. The Wizarding World doesn't look like it's going to have all that much to do. There are only three rides, and only one of them is new. Universal re-purposed two of it's old rides from it's old land "The Lost Continent". They slapped some new Harry Potter paint on them, and re-named them, but in reality, they aren't new. And that one new ride? Well, it's gonna have some long ass lines.

Sure, the lines will get shorter as time goes along. And sure, more rides will probably be added in the future. But in the meantime, it looks like a trip to the Wizarding World is going to involve a whole lot of standing, and not a whole lot of fun having.

With that said- it's still motherhugging Harry Potter, and I'll still head down there as soon as I can.

The Lasting Legacy of Grant Morrison's X-Men

2009-09-07T08:26:00.002-05:00

As a comic book fan, I spend a good deal of time perusing comic book message boards, though I seldom participate in the discussions that take place within. As a (nearly) lifelong fan of the Marvel Comics cornerstone series "X-MEN", I seek out, on said message boards, discussions of the title characters of said series, the X-Men, a band of mutant superheroes dedicated to protecting a world that fears and hates them for being born different.

It should come as no surprise that amongst long time readers of "X-MEN", certain topics of conversation are broached again, and again. Some of these discussions include:

-Dazzler- Great character, or completely awful relic of 1979

-What place does Magneto, the Mutant Master of Magnetism, have in our modern world?

-Who is the best blue furred or skinned character on the team? (Choices include: Beast, Nightcrawler, Archangel, Mystique*)

and of course:

-Grant Morrison's run on "X-MEN" the best of all time, or a stain on the history of the book?

It is that last question that I would like to discuss here as it is probably the one that perplexes me the most.

First, some background on the question for non-comic book readers who may chance upon this entry.

Though they had been around since 1963, the popularity of the X-MEN really took off in 1975 with the release of Giant-Sized X-Men #1 which revamped the team to include such fan favorite characters as Storm, Nightcrawler, and the ol' Canucklehead himself, Wolverine. Throughout the 80's, under the constant direction of writer Chris Claremont, the X-Men soared to new heights of popularity as story lines like "Days of Future Past", and "Dark Phoenix Saga" altered the landscape of not just the Marvel Universe, but of comic books in general. In 1991, Claremont left the book, and while the X-Men continued to be one of the most popular properties in comics throughout the 90's, the stories grew stale, and the X-Men nearly became creatively irrelevant. Stories, and story themes were re-hashed over and over again. Elements from classic stories like "Dark Phoenix Saga" were brought back again and again. If new elements or characters were introduced, they were vaguely defined, and generally forgotten after one storyline, or even one issue. Despite their popularity, the X-Men languished.

It should probably be noted that the 90's were a very difficult time for comics and that it was not just "X-MEN" that had this problem, but the comics industry in general.

In the early aughts, Marvel editorial, under the direction of new Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada, decided to do something to try to inject some creative juice into the X-Men franchise. Marvel brought in Grant Morrison, a somewhat unorthodox Scottish comic writer who was coming off of a very successful run on DC Comics Justice League of America.

Grant Morrison did exactly what he was charged with doing. He gave the X-Men a creative shot in the arm, and much like Claremont had done in the 70's and 80's, Morrison set the pace for the X-Men heading into the new Millennium.

But, much like the humans who occupy the world of Morrison's X-Men, many X-Men readers fear and hate change. They wanted the comfort of re-reading what had come before over and over again. They wanted the comfort of nostalgia, rather than the thrill of new direction.

It is for this reason, to my mind, that we are still having this debate today. While some (like me) have already canonized Morrison's run as one of the greatest of all time, others still see it as a travesty that would best be forgotten. To these folks, the anti-Morrisons, I present the following list of the positive changes that have been wrought in the X-Men franchise by Morrison's run:

Cyclops is re-established as one of the most complex, interesting characters in superhero comics- The classic complaint about Cyclops as a character is that he is a one-dimensional character. He is called a boy scout, a Captain America clone, a milquetoast. This school of thought on the character is most clearly evident in the X-Men films were Cyclops is portrayed with little personality, and mostly comes off as kind of a jerk. Morrison's Cyclops was far from the sop that many perceive the character to be. Under Morrison, Cyclops returned to his status as a supreme fighter, a brilliant tactician, and a complete emotional mess. For every battlefield success Cyclops had during Morrison's run, he had a personal meltdown off of it. He led the X-Men to victories over Cassandra Nova, the U-Men, the Omega Gang, and Magneto, but he also had a telepathic affair on his wife, and devolved into a drunken pile at the Hellfire Club. Subsequent writers have taken these themes and built upon them, and now Cyclops is one of Marvel's marquee characters.

The Fall of Jean Grey and the Rise of Emma Frost- Much like Cyclops, Jean Grey has always been portrayed somewhat one-dimensionally. She was the good girl, the Matron of the X-Men. Of course, she was also the nigh omnipotent Phoenix, a character whom, like her namesake would frequently die, and rise from the ashes. Emma Frost on the other hand, was everything Jean was not. As the scantily clad White Queen, Emma had been an enemy of the X-Men. She was everything Jean was not. Where Jean Grey was reserved, Emma was wild. Where Jean was supremely confident, Emma was a confident shell with a nougat-y, emotionally broken center. When Jean is killed at the end of the series, she is replaced by Emma as the X-Men's mother figure, and while Jean is still one of the greatest characters of all time, Emma is a much more dynamic, interesting character, and her presence on the team has led to much more complex stories.

Bring on the New Bad Guys- For many years, the ranks of the X-Men's villains went without new blood. Over and over again the X-Men did battle with Magneto, the Sentinels, Apocalypse, and the Brotherhood. New villains were introduced, but they never seemed to really catch on in the imaginations of the readers or the writers of the series. Remember, for instance, the Neo? Neither do I. Morrison created a host of new villains for the X-Men to fight including the super intelligent bacterium called Sublime, the body part salvaging U-Men, and of course, Professor Charles Xavier's bizarre twin sister, Cassandra Nova. On top of this, Morrison re-invented old villains. The Sentinels went from towering monoliths to wild monsters made from recycled machine parts, and Magneto pulled off his most daring attack on the X-Men by disguising himself as the mutant healer Xorn and infiltrating the team**.

A Return of the World's Weirdest Teens- The X-Men, when they debuted, were not like other superheroes. They were weird. Beast had giant hands and feet, Cyclops had uncontrollable beams that shot from his head, and Ice Man looked like he was made of snow. Over the decades, the X-Men became less bizarre, and more akin to traditional superheroes. Morrison brought the weird back. As characters go, the best example of this may be Barnell Bohusk, the mutant known as Beak. Beak's powers aren't particularly impressive, he looks like a weird semi-featherless bird. But in his bizarre appearance, he fits thematically with the whole point of X-Men, a group of rejects who have banded together to save the world in spite of it's contempt for them. Morrison also brought back the school aspect of the X-Men. The halls of Xavier's Mansion were filled with characters like Beak. There was Dust, an Afghanistani mutant who could turn into a sandstorm, Glob Herman, a giant walking pile of protoplasm, and Martha Johanssen, a floating brain in a jar. The X-Men are not just superheroes, they are weird superheroes.

The Return of the Unexpected- As I stated, the X-Men had become stale by the turn of the millennium. Morrison added an element of danger to their lives. In his first story arc, "E is for Extinction", he killed off millions of mutants living on the fictional island of Genosha. This was clearly a brave new world for the X-Men. In this world there was real danger. People got hurt. People died. Characters made mistakes, sometimes with horrifying consequences. If an entire nation could die in an instant, then truly, anything could happen.

There are, of course, many other aspects of Morrison's run that have made a lasting impact, but I think the above are the most important ones. There are also aspects that have not made a lasting impact. Morrison wrote "Planet X" as the ultimate Magneto story. He killed off the character with the idea that in our modern world, a character who had so frequently been used as an allegory for leaders like Malcolm X had more relevance as a concept than as a living figure. Of course, Magneto was brought back to life mere months after his death in "Planet X" in one of the most ridiculous, nonsensical resurrections in comic book history.

With all of that said, Grant Morrison's X-Men brought Marvel's merry mutants back from the precipice of 90's blandness and gave them a new, vibrant life. In the years since his run, the stories that have been told have been (by and large) bigger, bolder, brighter and infinitely better.

Fight or Flight Response

2009-09-04T14:01:00.002-05:00

My favorite teacher I ever had was Mr. Kevin Collins. I took American Literature, and Contemporary American Studies with Mr. Collins.

I remember once, whilst passing out a test to my class, he started talking about test anxiety.

Mr. Collins had a theory that test anxiety came from fight or flight response. He told us that man had evolved on the plains of Africa, and had developed a biologic instinct to either fight, or run away when we sensed danger.

The problem with tests is that you can't really fight them, and you can't really run away from them, so when you sense the danger of a test, your body doesn't react in a way that is at all helpful. Instead, your heart starts beating faster, you start to sweat, you can't think and you get this awful feeling in the pit of your stomach.

Obviously, most adult stress causes the same reaction. If you have a problem that causes your gut to sense danger, like being in front of people, or the possibility of being fired or whatever, your body tries to either fight the problem, or run away from it, and it can't really do either.

I should state that hearing this theory immediately prior to taking a test did not improve my score on said test.

How to Know Who Will be Eliminated from Top Chef

2009-09-03T14:59:00.004-05:00

After watching all but the first season of Top Chef, I've gotten pretty good at figuring out who is going to be sent home from week to week just based on little clues in the structure of the show. Here are some ways to tell who is going to be packing their knives, and heading home from episode to episode:

1. If a contestant starts talking about how much they miss their kids, or how worried they are about a sick parent, there's a pretty good chance that they're going to go home. If they show a picture of the chef with their kids or parent, it's over.

2. If a contestant who has gotten very little face time throughout the course of a season is suddenly shown ALOT on an episode, than they're pretty much done.

3. If a contestant gives a speech about how regular people don't want to eat really high end food, or weird food, or molecular gastronomy stuff, and then makes something really boring like a pasta salad, they're usually going home.

4. Actually, if a chef makes any sort of traditional salad (Waldorf, pasta, garden, etc.) they're going to be in some trouble.

5. If a chef at some point starts bragging about ignoring the rules of a challenge, they almost always be in the bottom four.

6. If, while at judge's table, a chef starts ranting about how wrong the judge's are in their poor assessment of said chef's dish, they will not be facing anymore Quickfire challenges.

7. If the judges start talking about how someone under-seasoned something, that person is dead-in-the-water. Underseasoning= Pack your knives and go.

8. I call this the "Season 5" rule. If Tom Colicchio does not like dish, and Toby Young is crazy about it, then that dish's chef is done for. Tom > Toby.

9. If someone runs out of time, and doesn't get a sauce, or garnish on the plate, they will be going home.

10. If a string of three or four women have gone home for three or four straight episodes, and the bottom four are three women and one dude, that dude will be the one who ships out.

Big Fish Story

2009-08-30T08:45:00.002-05:00

My dad caught a 200 pound yellowfin tuna. Here is a picture of him, and some other dudes with the big fish.

A List of Unnecessary Things

2009-08-29T08:16:00.003-05:00

If you've read this blog, you know that I like to write out lists. Here's another one:

A List of Unnecessary Things.

Keep in mind while reading this that there is still no cure for AIDS, or cancer, the rain forest is still being cut down at an alarming rate, and many cities in the US can't currently afford to hire new police officers or firefighters because they are so strapped for cash.

Then remember that people spend sometimes obscene amounts of money on:

-Windshield wipers on headlights of cars! I guess they'd be headlight wipers.

-Doggie Yoga! Because your dog always wanted to do mountain pose. Apparently.

-Garlic presses! Alton Brown has proven how useless these things are.

-The forthcoming James Cameron film "Avatar"! 220 million dollars to make something that looks like a hippie version of Halo? Thanks James Cameron.

-Anything that was ever featured on an infomercial!

-Blu-ray DVD players! You know in like, 2 years we'll all be downloading movies directly to our TVs, right?

-The Chicago Cubs 2009 roster! Is anybody on that team earning their money? The Mets and Cubs have the second and third highest payrolls in baseball respectively. Neither team will get a sniff of the playoffs this year.

-Hummer limos! Every time my girlfriend sees one she starts shouting obscenities at it.

-The V-22 Osprey!

and finally,

-Pugs. God I hate pugs.

Top Chef Season 6, Thus Far!

2009-08-27T16:28:00.002-05:00

I am so happy with Top Chef, Season 6 thus far. Here's are some reasons why:

1. Vegas Baby!

-One of the coolest parts of season 4 of Top Chef was the degree to which the show utilized the city of Chicago. A challenge at Soldier Field with Paul Kahan of the Publican/Blackbird/Avec? Awesome. A Deep Dish Quickfire? Even awesomer. The cast of the Second City ETC stage as guest judges? The awesomest.

By contrast, season 5 which was set in New York, didn't really use New York itself after the first episode (which had an awesome hot dog Quickfire, and a cool neighborhood themed elimination challenge).

So far this season, we've seen Las Vegas used to a great degree. Craps tables, showgirls, bachelor/ette parties? That's Vegas Baby!

2. High Stakes!

-This season the stakes are higher than ever! (If Bravo isn't already using that sentence to advertise the show, then they should). So far, we've seen the added component of huge cash prizes thrown in for the victors of the Quickfire challenges. For a chef, most of whom toil in obscurity and don't make a ton of money, fifteen thousand dollars is a huge prize. I can't wait to see what other great prizes the judge's throw at the contestants.

3. Product over Process

-Season 5 of Top Chef was a disappointment for me in that it seemed to emphasize personality over cooking chops. Every week, we so Leah and Hosea hook ups, Stefan fights, and Carla weirdness, but not a whole ton of really good cooking. This season, while there don't seem to be any Carla's among the cast, we are seeing some really kick ass cooking from some of the contestants. I wanted so badly to jump through my TV last night to devour Michael's nitro-gazpacho. There are at least 4 chefs who so far are really kicking ass, Jennifer, Kevin, and the two brothers, Michael and Bryan. However, there have been a bunch of other really great performances as well with just a few duds.

And while personality may be entertaining, this show is about food, and the cooking and eating of food, and I would much rather see some really awesome food than two okay but not great chefs snogging on the couch week after week.

On the Passing of the Liberal Lion

2009-08-26T10:21:00.001-05:00

I was saddened this morning to hear that Ted Kennedy had succumbed to brain cancer. Despite what his critics say, as a Senator, Ted Kennedy did more for my home state of Massachusetts, and more for working people in the United States than anyone in the last 40 years.

Here is a link to one of Kennedy's greatest speeches from the 1980 Democratic National Convention.

Rest in Peace Edward Kennedy. You have left the world a better place than you found it.

Tapestry

2009-08-21T16:37:00.003-05:00

One of my all time favorite episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is titled "Tapestry". In the episode, Captain Picard sustains what for most people would be a relatively minor injury on an away mission. However, Picard has an artificial heart because of an earlier injury that he received while fighting a group of Nausicans in a bar during his days in Starfleet. The minor injury damages Picard's fake heart, and he "dies".

When he passes, he comes to a place that resembles Heaven, but instead of encountering St. Peter, or Charon, or whoever, he encounters Q, the nigh-omnipotent alien who has plagued him and his crew since the first day Picard stepped aboard the bridge of the USS Enterprise.

Q gives Picard a choice: he can allow himself to possibly die on a table in Sick Bay on the Enterprise, or he can go back to the day of the bar fight, and undo the event preventing him from ever having an artificial heart in the first place.

Picard chooses to undo the event, and...

Wakes up in a new version of his present where he is not Captain of the Enterprise, and is instead a man who has lived a life of mediocrity, as Q explains to him:

"That Picard never had a brush with death, never came face to face with his own mortality, never realized how fragile life is or how important each moment must be, so his life never came into focus. He drifted through much of his career, with no plan or agenda, going from one assignment to the next, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves. He never led the away team on Milika III to save the ambassador, or took charge of the Stargazer's bridge when its captain was killed. And no one ever offered him a command. He learned to play it safe. And he never, ever got noticed by anyone."

Picard, of course, realizes his error, and goes back again to fix his mistake. In the meanwhile, the medical team on the Enterprise saves his life, and he goes back to the present having learned some valuable lessons.

I always found this episode inspiring and terrifying. I wonder sometimes if I play too safe. I wonder if I should be taking more risks, throwing caution to the wind.

I do know that much like Captain Picard, I find that living a life of mediocrity completely, and totally terrifying.

Advice

2009-08-20T16:15:00.002-05:00

I'm in a major advice taking phase of my life. I am as they say, up the creek of life sans paddle. So I've been asking lots of people for advice in order to find a paddle, or even better, some sort of motor to stick on the back of my little life canoe. As I am sure anyone who has ever asked for advice knows, lots of people will give you advice that is in no way shape or form helpful. Here are some of my favorite common responses to requests for advice:

"It could be worse!"

Of course it could be worse. It could always be worse, unless you were dead. At that point it couldn't be much worse (unless someone dug up your grave, and posted your body up in some sort of grim effigy in your family's front-lawn- see! It can always be worse). It could also be better, and while I worry about it being worse, and while I'm glad it's not worse, my main goal is to make it better.

"You're over-reacting."

What am I supposed to do? Under-react? Saying "You're over-reacting" is a way of saying "You're problem is worthless". You're basically writing off the way a person feels by telling them that. I will say that sometimes that's exactly what a person needs to hear, but even then it's still a pretty obnoxious thing to say. Also, I'll take an over-reacter to an under-reacter any day of the week.

"You just need to put your nose to the grindstone, and keep your head down."

This is actually two pieces of advice "Put your nose to the grindstone" usually means that a person thinks you need to work harder, and "keep your head down" means you should try to avoid notice. The implication of stringing these two phrases together is that if you work hard, and keep your mouth shut, your problem will work itself out. The problem with this advice is that A), it presumes you're not doing these things already (and your friend who offers you this advice is kind of a jerk for thinking that), B) presumes that the best solution to a problem is to apply more force when sometimes there may be another solution (like finesse, or sabotage), C) is just kind of another one of those catch alls that people say when they can't think of a real solution, and D), assumes that it is always best to be meek.

"Maybe you just need to try harder."

This is a close cousin to "nose to the grindstone". The thing is, this one's kind of true. I mean, you can always try harder, unless you try so hard it kills you. Then you need to worry about someone digging up your corpse and posting it in effigy in your family's lawn. Once again though, the implication of this is that you probably aren't trying very hard, which while true is just a jerk-ish thing to say.

"I told you so."

Not advice at all, but something that know-it-alls like to say when they are approached for advice. I told you so is a phrase that people use to feed on the misery of others. It's a way of saying "I, oh advice-asker, am wise- for I have been able to avoid your problem, whilst it has clearly consumed you, as it did Obi Wan's apprentice."

"Have you tried prayer?"

The first thing that I feel when I'm told to pray is hopelessness. If someone say "Ya better pray" they're basically saying "Your situation is so hopeless that your only hope lies in a deity who may or may not be real interventing divinely into your situation." It's also a way of saying "You're completely screwed". With that said, I have been known to pray in times of desperation.

Things I'm Enjoying Now

2009-08-18T12:16:00.003-05:00

Here are some of the things that are helping me maintain my sanity (which, it should be noted, I am losing):

1. The TV show Mad Men- I'm only a few episodes into season 2, so don't tell me ANYTHING about Season 3, or the rest of season 2. My favorite character is Harry, the media buyer with the thick glasses. Why? because he seems really nice, but he's not a pushover. I think I want to model my professional career after his.

2. Arnold Palmers- See previous blog entry on Arnold Palmers

3. DC Comics' "Blackest Night", and Marvel Comics "Dark Avengers/ X-Men Utopia X". There's nothing like a good superhero epic to escape your worldly concerns for a little bit.

4. Not the Red Sox. Seriously guys, you're killing me. Shape up soon, or else we're in deep shit.

5. Beating "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" after 40+ hours of gameplay spread over 5 months, I finally beat the damned thing. Order is restored in the Kingdom of Hyrule.

6. Anticipating Season 6 of "Top Chef". Viva Las Vegas!

7. Joe Abercrombie's "First Law" trilogy of fantasy novels Terry Prachett+Quentin Tarantino+Conan the Barbarian+Lord of the Rings= "The First Law". I will be buying Book 3 soon.

8. The gym. I'll be miserable all day, but workouts always make feel 100 times better. After getting up to 174, I'd gotten a little soft. I'm back down to 170 and am shooting to get my weight somewhere from 160-165 before bulking up again in the Winter. At 174, I had gained 40 lbs in 4 years.

9. This video. Yo Joe!

Dream News

2009-08-14T12:11:00.002-05:00

Almost all of the news we read and see tends to be bad. News outlets just tend to focus on depressing things to attract viewers, or sell papes. With that said, if I could choose a bunch of headlines that I wish I could see in a newspaper, or on a web site, this is what they would be:

*Dragons Real! Dragons Discovered in Cornwall, UK
*Glenn Beck Admits to Being a Douche and Lying About Everything
*All Players on Montreal Canadiens, New York Yankees, LA Lakers suspended after testing positive for Steroids
*Daily Consumption of Fried Chicken Found to Make People Smarter, Taller
*Barack Obama to Fight Osama Bin Laden in a Bare Knuckle Boxing Match
*Mysterious "Spider Man" Reported to Be Stopping Crimes in NYC
*Mad Scientist Holds West Coast for Ransom Using Weather Control Device
*Dunkin' Donuts to Give Away Coffee, Donuts for Free to Anyone named "Sean"
*"Firefly Back in Production!" Reports Creator Joss Whedon
*Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis win first Nobel Prize for Baseball

Chicago Comic-Con

2009-08-11T16:26:00.002-05:00

I went to Chicago Comic-Con over the weekend. Chicago Comic-Con, previously called Wizard World, is a massive convention dedicated to comics, toys, video games, and all sorts of other nerdaphernalia.

For a few years, fate has conspired to keep me away from the con. Last year it fell at the same time as my vacation, for instance. This year, I was determined to go.

So, while most everyone else was at Lollapalooza enjoying the musical stylings of bands I've never heard of, I was knee deep in discount comics, and girls dressed up as Black Canary.

What's more, as most of the people I socialize with were at the aforementioned 'palooza, I went to the event solo.

What was great?

The costumes. I love seeing people get dressed up for Cons. Some day I'll work up the courage to dress up myself. And you know what? For every overweight dude in a home-made Green Goblin costume walking around, there was a hot woman dressed as Supergirl. I know, where do these hot female geeks come from? Where did they learn to sew? The best costume I saw? Some dude built a 20 foot tall Sentinel costume.

Panels. Cons are a chance for nerd consumers to convene with the producers of nerd media. So, I went to panels that discussed Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and Battlestar Galactica. The BSG panel was my favorite as it mostly consisted of Edward James Olmos (the Old Man himself!) telling stories about BSG, and decrying racism and war.

Stuff. Oh man, if only I had like, 2 thousand dollars to blow. I would have bought so much stuff. Comics, toys, video games, pin up drawings, swords(!), I wanted all of it.

And not so great?

Pro-wrestlers. I actually love pro-wrestling. I grew up on it. But there were like, 30 wrestlers at the autograph booths, and mostly old wrestlers like Ted DiBiase, and Gregg "the Hammer" Valentine. Like I said, I love wrestling, but this wasn't WrestleCon, it was Comic-Con.

No booths by the major comic companies. While they all had panels, none of the major comic companies had booths set up. No Marvel booth. No DC booth. Not even an Image or Dark Horse Booth. I always love the booths that the companies themselves put up, but there were none to be seen.

Geek negativity. I've mentioned this before, but alot of geeks just LOVE to hate things. And they love to complain about the things they hate. The real kicker for me was when I heard one 300 pound guy in a Nightwing t-shirt decry the Marvel panel, Marvel comics in general, and the women at the Con whom he found unattractive. The man in the mirror indeed.

Other random thoughts:

Cons are fun, but they can also be kind of sad. Alot of wannabe comic writers and artists come to cons to try to make connections in the industry. Most of them fail at this. I saw one guy get up at the DC Nation Panel, and try to get his portfolio reviewed. After politely telling the young man that they don't do portfolio reviews at Cons, the guy said that he had come all the way here, and that this was his life, and could you please look at his stuff? I'm pretty sure they didn't. I saw another dude at a few panels who would get up, ask a legit question, and then hawk his web site. Most of the time people booed him.

Edward James Olmos is awesome.

Most of the wrestlers didn't wear their old costumes, but for some reason the women who were there from American Gladiators did.

"Kick Ass" looks awesome. Mark Millar showed a bunch of clips of "Kick Ass", the film based on his comic, that looked really great. I'm excited to see it when it comes out.

Whoever planned Chicago Comic-Con needs to make sure not to schedule it so close to San Diego Comic Con which happened last week. San Diego is a much bigger deal, and because it was so soon after, Chicago didn't really get any major announcements this year like they usually do from Marvel or DC.

Arnold Palmer

2009-08-10T14:34:00.004-05:00

I love Arnold Palmers. I think that it's probably the perfect Summer drink. Half Ice Tea. Half lemonade. All delicious.

Here for your Reading pleasure is the Sean Kelley version of an Arnold Palmer:

Tea-
8 Bags English Breakfast Tea
Water

Basil-Lemonade-
6 Lemons
1 Handful Basil
1 Cup Sugar
2/3 Cup Water

Put 8 teabags (I like English breakfast tea, but you can use whatever kind you like) into a pitcher. Set the burner on your stove to "High" and put 1 teapot filled with water on it. When the teapot starts whistling, pour the water on to the teabags in the pitcher. Let it steep for a good 5 to 10 minutes.

Meanwhile... juice six lemons, and put the juice into pitcher with the tea.

In a pot, boil together 1 cup of sugar, 2/3 cup of water, and a handful of basil (let's call it a clutch of basil for fun). When the sugar and the water have completely combined, strain out the basil leaves, and pour the syrup into the pitcher.

Let the pitcher cool to room temperature, and then put it in the fridge.

After an hour or so, remove your pitcher of Arnold Palmers (or is it singular? Pitcher of Arnold Palmer) from the fridge, and pour some into a glass over ice. Enjoy.

Pied Piper

2009-08-08T21:54:00.001-05:00

You can now follow me on Twitter!

And I've joined forces with some of the Chicago improv community's most prominent geeks on the Nerdington Post!

That's it. You're Out of Here Connecticut

2009-08-06T12:16:00.004-05:00

Okay. I've been putting off this conversation for a long time. I didn't want to be the one so say it really, but somebody has to be the bad guy, and it looks like it's going to be me.

Connecticut? Yeah, I'm talking to you Nutmeg state. I'm kicking you out of New England.

Why?

Well, most of you isn't very New England-y, now is it?

I mean, what defines New England? Puritan work ethic, Catholic guilt, rocky shores, snowy Winters, white chowders, and an undying love for the Red Sox that borders on religious fervor.

The way I see it, you don't have most of those things.

What defines Connecticut? New York. Connecticut, at least Western Connecticut, has become nothing more then a giant suburb of New England's arch-nemesis, New York City.

You didn't think we saw you pal-ing around with NYC and New Jersey at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, did you? But we did. We saw you slurping down Manhattan Clam Chowder with a Yankees hat on your head, and an Eli Manning jersey on your torso.

You bastard. We did everything for you. We were friends. We were family. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and... Connecticut. We started the Revolutionary War together! And Transcendentalism! We were all part of New England. Well, no more. You're out.

So go play with Rudy Giuliani, head to a Bon Jovi concert, eat a floppy piece of pizza. We don't need you anymore. Maybe if the Eastern part of you wants, it can become part of Rhode Island. Rhode Island knows how to be loyal.

But you Connecticut? You're dead to me.

Changes!

2009-08-05T16:59:00.001-05:00

This is kind of a test post. I've signed up for a Twitter account, created a feed from this Blog to the Twitter account, and synced up Twitter with my facebook account. So I'm going to see what happens now when I post a blog entry.

Adventure!

Fraud!

2009-08-04T16:20:00.002-05:00

I got my monthly credit card statement yesterday.

It included something of a surprise.

Apparently, I bought several hundred dollars worth of prescription medication from England a week or so ago.

Having never been to England, and knowing that the my prescription medication generally costs me around 40 dollars every two months, I determined that someone (possibly in Europe) had somehow procured my credit card number.

I called my credit card company, and they reversed the charges. They were incredibly nice and understanding about the whole thing- which surprised the hell out of me.

Still. It was weird to have something like that happen to me.

Before they are Hanged

2009-08-03T14:14:00.001-05:00

I'm currently reading "Before They are Hanged" by Joe Abercrombie. It's pretty great. If you can imagine what Conan the Barbarian would have been like if Quentin Tarantino had directed it, and toss in some British humor, you have a pretty good idea of what this book, and the trilogy it belongs to, are like.

What I really want to draw your attention to is not how awesome the book is, but how awesome the cover is. The picture of the cover above may not look like much, but those rune-ish symbols all over the cover actually glint in the light which creates a pretty neat effect when you move the book around. I'm not usually a huge fan of trade paperback covers, or trade paperbacks in general, but this one is a huge exception.

Late Night Drive By Douche Bag

2009-08-02T08:54:00.002-05:00

Last night, as I walking home from a friend's birthday party in Roscoe Village, I heard someone shout this:

"Papi!"

At first I didn't get why he said that but then I realized that A) I was wearing a Red Sox hat, and B) the guy was talking to me.

So, I turned the look at the dude and he said

"Steroids!"

I said

"Yeah, I know, but almost everyone in baseball was doing steroids in '03"

to which the guy shouted "Get a grown man's voice."

Oh great, the guy had moved on from making fun of my baseball team to making fun of me personally, and implying that I don't sound like an adult man.

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't want to punch the guy in the face, but rather than doing that, or hurling a series of nasty insults (for instance, I really want to make fun of the guy's pink shirt), I continued walking.

Then I heard the guy shout

"Your vagina's pretty!"

I kept walking. It took alot of willpower to keep walking, but I did.

Anyway, what gets me is that this probably the 800th time since I moved to Chicago that some drunk a-hole has decided to try and pick a fight with me in the wee hours of the morning. What I don't get is why? Why would anyone pick a fight with a stranger? Why would anyone decide to make a random judgment about someone whom they have never met, and verbally abuse them? Why would they risk that that person might get really mad and beat the shit out of them (this wouldn't be me. I'm a "discretion is the better part of valor type)?

The only answer I can think of is that deep down, in the farthest regions of their hearts, these guys are just total douche bags. These are the types of dudes who think that kicking puppies in hilarious and got through middle school by stealing other kids lunch money. These are the dudes in the office who never make a fresh pot of coffee, never unjam the printer when they print job jammed it, and sexually harass female employees when they think they can get away with it. These are the guys at a baseball game who swear and spill beer all over the place, even though there's a girl scout troop sitting directly in front of them.

These are the a-holes who make everyone everywhere go "You know what? I hate people."

So, hats off to you douche bag on the corner. You made me mad enough that I wrote a blog about you. Here is my blessing to you:

May your beer always be stale
May the chick at the bar who your flirting with always turn you down
And the next time you make fun of some dude on a corner, may he turn around and punch you square in the jaw.

The KHL

2009-07-30T16:34:00.003-05:00

Reason # 132,433 why hockey is better than your favorite sport:

There is an evil Russian hockey league.

The biggest bad guys in hockey for the last 50 or 60 years have been the Russians. Sure the Flyers have fielded some evil teams over the years, but were they really more evil than the Red Army team- the hockey equivalent of Ivan Drago?

No.

No one out evils the Russians.

And the KHL (Kontinental Hockey League) is evil.

First off, it's mostly run by petro-billionaires. Russia is rich in natural gas, and oil, and most it's super rich made their money off of the Earth's delicious blood. When they're not threatening to cut off Europe's gas supply in the middle of Winter, the Petro-rich get their jollies by owning hockey teams.

Oh, and they hate the rule of law too. The KHL is constantly threatening to ignore NHL contracts to try to lure away the NHL's top players- particularly their top Russian dudes (Malkin, Ovechkin, etc.). The KHL, because it's evil, wants to wipe the NHL off of the face of the Earth.

Also, much like the former Soviet Union from which it was birthed, the KHL wants to conquer Europe. They have aggressive expansion plans which would involve them moving into a number of former Warsaw Pact countries.

So how does this make the NHL better? Well every good hero is defined by their villains. The other big pro leagues don't have evil counterparts. The NHL does.

Thoughts on Comic Con

2009-07-24T10:28:00.003-05:00

First off, I'd like to apologize for my sporadic posting of late. Both in my work, and non-work lives I have been busy. Expect sporadic posting to continue for the near future.

Now, with that out of the way, here some thoughts on Comic Con-

Every year, the nerd world throws a whole bunch of parties called "Cons" (short for Conventions), and Comic Con in San Diego is one of the bigger ones. Comic Con is a chance for nerds the world over to crawl out of seclusion and get together to argue about the important issues of our day (like do you like Beast of the X-Men better in his Lion form, or his Ape Form?), trade wares, and dress up as our favorite characters from speculative fiction. It is also a chance for big nerd companies like Marvel Comics, Pixar, and whoever else to make major announcements about upcoming products. Now, the mainstream media tends to cover cons with a tone of playful derision- "Hey Look at the Nerds! They're dressed up in silly costumes! This one is Batman! But he's fat! And this chick is Wonder Woman! But she's fat! And I have no idea who this dude is supposed to be, but look how fat he is!". This isn't cool, but it's not like geeks and nerds aren't used to being teased. While I can't be at San Diego Comic Con, I WILL be at Chicago Comic Con in a few weeks. What's that you say? Chicago Comic Con is at the same time as Lollapalooza this year? Hmmmm. Let's see. Would I rather go hang out with a bunch of pretentious hipsters while listening to some bands I've never heard of, or go to a panel on the return of Captain America? Easy decision if you know me.

And what isn't awesome about Comic Con this year?

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I'm not really crazy about Twilight. Despite my general appreciation for Vampires, I really don't think they should sparkle. Anywho. Along with the usual "Look at all of the Silly Nerds!" coverage we've been getting from Comic Con this year, the msm (mainstream media) has also picked up on the fact that the Twilight movie people (I hesitate to call them "stars", or "actors", but I will acknowledge their status as people) were there! And they talked about the new movie! And showed some clips! To me, a panel on Twilight doesn't really belong at something like Comic Con. Twilight is not nerdy. It isn't geeky. You cannot "geek out" for Twilight. You may be "obsessed" with Twilight or could be a "huge fan" of Twilight, but Twilight is not a geek thing, and thus you can't be classified as "geeking out" for Twilight. I can just imagine walking through Comic Con, having just passed by two large men dressed as Kling-Ons shouting "Kaplah!" at one another whilst play-fighting with bat'leths, when 300 screaming tweenage girls come roaring past me because they find out that the kid who played Cedric Diggory is going to be looking all emo and stuff at a panel about sparkly vampires. I imagine that night that they would probably all go to a Jonas Brothers concert.

Uhhh. I'm shuddering just thinking about it.

I mean, sure, Twilight is speculative fiction, technically. But it's Spec Fic that the geekfolk hate, by and large. And it is harmless. It doesn't hurt anyone. It doesn't make anything awesome, less awesome. But I still don't think it belongs at a Con.

What Kind of Music Do You Like?

2009-07-20T22:40:00.002-05:00

Now that is a really good question. Rather than explain what kind of music I like, I'll show you. Here are ten videos of ten different songs I love by ten different artists.

1. The State of Massachusetts by the Dropkick Murphys

2. Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen

3. Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash

4. The Irish Rover by the Pogues AND the Dubliners

5. Tangled Up in Blue by Bob Dylan

6. Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones

7. Thunderstruck by AC/DC

8. Faraway Boys by Flogging Molly

9. Fell in Love w/ a Girl by the White Stripes

And of course....

10. Paradise by the Dashboard Light by Meatloaf

Fahrenheit ???

2009-07-17T13:53:00.000-05:00

If Kindles replace books- I don't think they will, but if they did- do you think Ray Bradbury would re-name Fahrenheit 451? Because Kindles probably burn at a higher temperature than books.

Porron

2009-07-14T16:19:00.003-05:00

Whilst watching a marathon of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel (which has, along with Bravo, surpassed Food Network as my new go-to place for food programing) I happened upon the episode in which Senor Bourdain visits Spain.

In the episode, Tony goes to a social gathering in the region of the country called Catalonia. Apparently, in Catalonia, they sometimes drink wine out of a vessel called a Porron which is pictured above.

A Porron, apparently, shoots a jet of wine directly into a person's mouth, and is usually passed around a party of people like a doobie in a dorm room.

While drinking from a Porron looks messy as hell, I'm pretty sure I want one. And I'm pretty sure that if I had one, I would bring it to every outdoor party that I went to, and get, as the French say, shit faced drinking from it.

Side Story:

When I was in high school, for two Summers I went to a theater camp run by a company called Theater in the Open, with whom I was later an apprentice member. My first year at camp, there were two girls from Barcelona who barely spoke any English, but who were awesome never the less.

In the "getting to know you" phase of camp, we were all sitting in a circle, and each person was saying where they were fun. When someone said "are you from Spain?" to one of the two girls, she replied very emphatically- "No, we are from Catalonia". Apparently, much like the Scottish, or the Governor of Texas, the people of Catalonia don't tend to think of themselves as citizens of the country that their home falls into the borders of. They think of themselves, not as Spanish, but as Catalonians- which I think is kind of awesome.

Geoff Johns has Still Got it!

2009-07-09T16:45:00.002-05:00

To avoid spoilers for this weeks Green Lantern #43, please avoid reading now.

That is Black Hand.

Black Hand is a Green Lantern villain. Throughout most of his history he was a pretty lame, second rate Green Lantern villain, which is saying something considering Green Lantern's "heavies" are also-rans like Evil Star and Dr. Polaris.

Over the last few years, Green Lantern has been going through something of a Renaissance. Despite the title's focus on Hal Jordan (easily the most boring of the four human GL's), the book has been great for a while now. It was especially great during the Sinestro Corps War.

Now, you may remember at the end of that event, there was a little... let's call it a "teaser" for a sequel event called "Blackest Night". One of the images in that teaser was a hand coming out of a grave with a symbol on it that looked an awful lot like the symbol that Black Hand wears on his chest.

Green Lantern #43 was a prequel issue to "Blackest Night". It featured Black Hand's origin, and may have been the most effed up comic I've read since "Preacher" ended. The comic included the following:

-Black Hand sleeping a grave and kissing a dead body.
-A flashback to Hand's childhood where he killed the family dog, stuffed it, and brought it into his bedroom.
-Adult Black Hand murdering his own family.
-Adult Black Hand killing himself. Graphically.
-Scar (the evil Guardian of the Universe) barfing up a Black Lantern ring.
-Dead Black Hand putting on said barfed up ring and becoming the first Black Lantern.

Pretty screwed up, right?

I loved it. This was the best issue of GL since Sinestro Corps War. I am now suitably excited for "Blackest Night". Thanks Geoff Johns (writer of Green Lantern)!

Embracing Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness

2009-07-07T14:34:00.002-05:00

One of the universal truths about exercise is that it hurts. It hurts while you're doing it. Every time your foot hits the ground while you're running, or every time you hit the climax of a rep whilst lifting a weight, you can feel it. My gym teacher at the Immaculate Conception School, Al Mozier, used to tell us that this was "the good hurt" as opposed to "the bad hurt" that happens when you fall and injure yourself.

The soreness you feel while exercising is good. It means your body is getting stronger. Pain, as they say, is weakness leaving the body.

As a regular exerciser, I'm familiar with the pain that comes during exercise, and I'm also familiar with the pain that comes after:

Delayed onset muscle soreness is the technical term for the feeling of dull achiness that you feel in your muscles roughly 24 hours after they have been used. Once it sets in, whatever muscle you have been using ends up feeling sore for roughly 2 to 3 days (sometimes more) afterward. Because of DOMS, I'm sore somewhere pretty much all of the time. Right now, my abs, lower back, and hamstrings are all sore from a workout on Saturday. Probably before bed tonight, my chest and triceps will start to feel sore from a workout yesterday.

Of course you don't want to over work yourself. It's just as important to rest properly after working out as it is to work out in the first place. You also don't want to hurt yourself by using bad form in an exercise, or trying to do more than your body is capable of. That's how you end up hurting yourself in a bad way.

But, much like the pain that occurs while exercising, DOMS is a good hurt. DOMS means that my workout was successful- I broke down something in my muscles, and now my body is working to make itself stronger, faster, and better. Sure it may hurt a little more when I walk up stairs for a few days after a leg workout, but it's worth for the gains in strength and speed that my legs will make in that time.

Choke!

2009-07-04T18:30:00.002-05:00

Oh!

I almost forgot!

While I was at the Museum of Science and Industry I kind of sort of almost died.

While we were eating delicious hamburgers in the museum Food Court, I started to feel a little asthmatic, and so I reached for my asthma inhaler. I used it, and in addition to asthma medicine, a tiny solid object also shot into my airhole.

An hour or so earlier, I had chewed a piece of gum. There were no garbage receptacles in the area, so I put my gum wrapper in my pocket till I found one. I of course, forgot about it. My asthma inhaler has no cap right now (I lost the cap to it at some point), and the balled up wrapper managed to find it's way inside the inhaler.

I promptly started wheezing loudly, and choking. Fortunately, my bodies natural response was to cough really hard, and one of those coughs sent the wrapper shooting out of my mouth, so everything turned out okay.

Crazy though, right?

Harry Potter Exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry

2009-07-04T07:49:00.002-05:00

Chicago has lots of great museums, and I've been to most of them. However, before yesterday, I had never been to the Museum of Science and Industry. I always wanted to go it's just....it's way down on the South Side and it would take me forever to get there using mass transit.

So what did it take to finally motivate me to get down there?

An exhibit featuring tons of props from the Harry Potter movies. I know, I know, I'm 27 years old, it's kid's stuff, bla bla bla. It was awesome.

The thing that most impressed me with all of the props and costumes that they had on display was the immense attention to detail in everything from the Quidditch World Cup programs to Dumbledore's Yule Ball robes. They really gave you a sense of the lengths that the filmmakers have gone to recreate the world that JK Rowling has created.

While we were there, we checked out the rest of the museum as well. The highlights, for me, included the trains room, the fairy castle, and the hall of whispers- but nothing in the museum was cooler than the U-505. That's right- the Museum of Science and Industry has on display the only German U-Boat that the Allies managed to capture in World War II. It is huge, and totally awe inspiring.

Alice in Wonderland

2009-06-30T15:20:00.002-05:00

I'm pretty excited about this.

I love "Alice in Wonderland". It's so awesomely weird and cracked out. I will say though, that there is one thing about "Alice in Wonderland" that I have never really understood.

Why doesn't Alice freak the fuck out?

Let's say you're a pre-teen girl living in 19th century England, and one day you follow a rabbit to it's hole. Being a kid your curiosity overcomes you, and you climb down the abnormally large rabbit hole. At this point, you begin falling down a weird tunnel full of floating furniture.

Don't you think at this point Alice would start crying, or screaming or something? No. She takes it all in stride. Through all of her adventures in Wonderland- a world populated exclusively by the mad and the criminally insane, Alice keeps her cool. Okay, so she sheds a few tears. But don't you think when she meets the giant hookah smoking caterpillar, or encounters the disappearing cat (both of whom talk, or the homicidal queen, she would MAYBE lose it just a little? Or run and hide? Or scream for her mother?

No. Alice reacts to most of the things and people she encounters in Wonderland with a bemused grace.

Which to me says that Alice is the crazy one. Maybe that's the point. Maybe Alice belongs in Wonderland because to her, the batshit crazy stuff she encounters in Wonderland just seems a little weird, and even normal in some cases. Giggle-worthy but not freak-out worthy.

Vacation: A Recap

2009-06-29T11:00:00.003-05:00

Okay, so right off of the bat, let's get the negative parts of my vacation recap out of the way.

First, it rained pretty much the whole time we were in New England. I think we got about four hours of sunlight in our 8 days in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

Second, it was a hectic trip. Unlike last year, there was no leisurely lounging on the beach with a good book. Oh no. We spent time in West Dennis, MA, Martha's Vineyard, Newburyport, MA, Duxbury, MA, and a few other places. The whole week was stuffed to the gills with activity, and travel.

Now, here are some of the good highlights of the week:

-Chelsea's cousin's wedding was beautiful. The wedding took place at the Lighthouse Inn in West Dennis, MA. The Inn is built around (you guessed it!) a lighthouse, and everyone stayed in these quaint little cottages on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Despite the rain, the wedding took place outside. The ceremony was simple, but really nice.

-Martha's Vineyard is still a pretty neat place. I know, I know, it's a playground for tourists and the rich and famous, but the Island is amazing. Imagine the most idealized version of a New England that never was- that's the Vineyard. While there, we ate some great food, and hung out with a bunch of people who took major parts in Chelsea's life.

-It's always good to come home. I always feel a little more centered when I come back to Newburyport. I got to see a bunch of family members, and take Chelsea on a whirlwind tour of our historic downtown. AND I got to see my baby sister Molly play in two softball games- including the championship game! Which her team won!

So, all in all, it was a good trip. We didn't really get to take out time with it like last year, but it was still a good re-charge for our lives which have been very busy and stressful of late.

Now, back to the grindstone.

Things I Learned from "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"

2009-06-28T16:27:00.002-05:00

On the last night of my vacation, I saw "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen". The movie was awful. There were a few decent action sequences, and yes the effects were mind-blowing, and yes Megan Fox is center-of-the-Sun-hot, but there wasn't a whole lot beyond that.

Here are some general observations I made while watching the movie:

-Apparently, no one involved with "Transformers" has any idea what pot does to the human body. When Shia the Beef's mom eats a pot brownie, she becomes extraordinarily energetic and giddy. Pot is a downer and tends to have kind of the opposite effect. I would also like to state that the Beef's mom was probably the best actor (or, the only decent actor) in the whole movie.

-Someone needs to send George Lucas this message "Mr. Lucas, you no longer have a monopoly on racist CGI characters. Michael Bay has just out-racisted you." Two characters in the film (who wikipedia.com tells me are named Mudflap and Skids) might be the most offensive movie characters ever. They have big ears, big lips, talk in exaggerated slang, and one of them has a gold tooth. Also, they are lazy and dumb. Why Michael Bay thought that this was okay is totally beyond me. It should also be noted that they are only the most egregious example of racism in the movie, not the only example.

-It used to be that all movies had a "good girl" and a "bad girl". While the bad girl was always hotter than the good girl, the male protagonist would inevitably end up with the good girl by the end of the movie. In 2009, all movies now seem to have a "bad girl" and a "badder girl" and the hero ends up with the "bad girl" by the end of the film. This happens in "Revenge of the Fallen".

-Apparently, in Michael Bay's world, all 18 year olds are incredibly hot and look like they're 28.

-In the America of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" all politicians are stupid, and evil, and all soldiers are chivalrous and smart. Also, the lower a soldier's rank in the film, the braver and smarter that soldier is.

-In the world of "Transformers" it is totally acceptable to use the body of a fallen comrade as battle armor.

-This was marketed as a kid's movie. It is not. There is a ton of swearing, tons of violence, tons of sexual innuendo (including dog sex), and the aforementioned racism. While I think that no one should ever see this movie, I would like to stress to any parents who stumble across this blog entry- do NOT take your kids to see this film. Not only is it awful, but there's a ton of stuff in the film that no little kid should be subjected to.

We're On Vacation, and We're having Fun

2009-06-23T14:16:00.002-05:00

FYI oh ye loyal readers of robberblog (all 6 of you), there probably won't be many entries this week.

Chelsea and I are currently back in the Motherland (Massachusetts) visiting family, attending a wedding, and eating our combined body weight in clams.

So far, we are having a great time despite the fact that it has been raining the entire time we've been home.

Monkey Robot

2009-06-19T08:59:00.001-05:00

God bless you Japan:

Monkey Robot

Celebrity Crushes

2009-06-18T15:11:00.005-05:00

Just like any other person, I have some celebrity crushes. Here are a few.

Jessica Biel (Jessica, I forgive you for dating Derek Jeter. We all make mistakes):

Christina Hendricks (How you are hotter on "Mad Men" than you were on "Firefly" is totally beyond me. Thank you for bringing voluptuousness back):

Christina Ricci (I have had a crush on you since I saw you in "The Addams Family" when I was in the fourth grade):

Dr. Crusher (no, not the actress who plays Dr. Crusher- Dr. Crusher):

Jamie Eason (cute as a button and built like a tiny brick shithouse):

Jessica Rabbit (so she's a cartoon character? big deal):

Angelina Jolie circa 2002 (why 2002? Because she was hotter when she was crazy. And she was hotter when she had some more meat on her bones. She's too calm and too skinny now.)

Tina Fey (geek-a-licious):

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (the best reason to move to South Dakota- House Rep. Herseth Sandlin)

Giada De Laurentiis (and she can cook!):

On Drinking a Gallon of Water....

2009-06-16T16:35:00.003-05:00

I read way too much about health and fitness.

Recently, I was perusing a health and fitness web site, and I read a fairly lengthy article about drinking water.

After reading said article, I realized that I have never really thought very much about drinking water. I know that I need to drink water to live, and usually, when I'm thirsty, I do have a sip or two, but beyond that, the drinking of water has never really crossed my mind.

Well apparently, it should have.

After reading through this article, I read through about 6 more

Here are some things that I've learned:

*Most people are under-hydrated- meaning they don't drink enough water.
*The average person with a normal level of activity should drink about a half gallon of water each day.
*If you drink alcohol, soda, or coffee, you're going to need to drink more water because each of those beverages, despite being made of liquid, will actually dehydrate your body.
*If you exercise regularly, you will need to drink more water.
*If it's really hot and/or arid where you live you will need to drink more water.
*The more hydrated your body is, the clearer your urine will be.
*If OVER-hydrated, you can get really sick, but it's apparently better to be over then under-hydrated.

I read a few articles pertaining to water and physical fitness that recommended that folks who work out regularly should drink up to a gallon of water daily. So, as of yesterday, I have been trying to do just that.

Day 1 of drinking a gallon of water was kind of tough. I felt full all day, and kind of bloated and gross. Getting through my gallon started to feel like a chore.

Day 2, so far has not been nearly as bad. I'm not sure why.

I will provide more updates as this experiment continues.

High Speed Chase

2009-06-15T10:06:00.003-05:00

I've seen alot of crazy stuff walking home late at night. Break-ups, fist fights- I once saw a SWAT team surround a gas station across the street from the Holiday Club (a bar that I hate).

I live in the third largest city in the US, so I guess that none of this should come as any sort of real surprise.

Now, I have a new crazy thing to add to this list.

Saturday night, I saw in with Whirled News Tonight as part of a charity show called "Too Soon" which was raising money for suicide prevention. Our show was at 2:30, and when it got out, I walked up Halsted Street on my way home.

Halsted Street is kind of crazy on it's own. It's the center of Boys Town, Chicago's gay neighborhood. There are tons of gay bars on the street, and at 3 AM on Sunday morning, there were still plenty of people on the streets partying it up.

So anyway, I was heading up Roscoe when I heard a siren (a cop car siren) and the sound of a car tearing down the street. I looked ahead, and saw screaming down Halsted. At Roscoe and Halsted (I used to live on that corner) the car turned VERY abruptly and nearly smashed through the front of Roscoe's- one of the bigger clubs on the street. It didn't, but it did crash through a large potted plant, and a street sign. As the car reversed, the street sign yanked off one of the cars rear wheels, and when freed, the car careened down the street with only three wheels- leaving a trail of sparks in it's wake as a cop car sped after it.

I walked up to inspect the damage and was somewhat surprised (and relieved) that the guy somehow managed not to hurt anyone when he smashed into that street sign. As I said earlier, there were a ton of folks on the street, and I think it was a small miracle that no one got killed.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

2009-06-14T18:36:00.003-05:00

If there's one thing I'll say about God, it's that the dude had it right about Sundays. Sundays should always be a day of rest and recuperation.

After a looooooooong week (including a 2:30 AM improv show for charity last night), I had a pretty restful, awesome Sunday today.

I:

got a haircut
read 70 pages in "Gardens of the Moon"
took a walk in the park
went grocery shopping
re-potted some tomatoes and marigolds
cooked delicious Grecian style lamb balls
played some Wii

And that's what I call a pretty great Sunday. Oh, and the BoSox took two of three games from the Phillies.

Gloat 2

2009-06-12T09:08:00.001-05:00

Make that 8 and 0!

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP CAROLINE!

BUM BUM BUM

GOOD TIMES NEVER SEEMED SO GOOD!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Phew.

That felt good.

Suck it Yankees.

Gloat

2009-06-11T16:15:00.000-05:00

The Red Sox are 7 and 0 against the Yankees so far this year.

I'd like to take just a moment to gloat.

HAHAHAHA!!!! THIS IS AWESOME! GO RED SOX!!! WOOOOO! EAT ANOTHER CHEESEBURGER SABATHIA!!!!

There, I'm glad I got that out of my system.

PANTS!

2009-06-10T10:20:00.004-05:00

At the end of the month, Chelsea and I are going to Cape Cod to attend a wedding. Chelsea has purchased a lovely dress for herself, and over the weekend, we began the process of buying me something to wear that would complement said dress.

We went to six different clothing stores.

We failed to find the type of pants that we were looking for.

The first problem is the color of pants we were looking for- dark brown. Apparently, most stores don't carry chocolate brown pants. They carry lots of black pants, navy blue pants, jeans, and khaki pants, but brown pants? Just not in fashion right now. This was kind of unsurprising.

What was surprising, to me, was our inability to find ANY pants in my waist size.

See, depending on the time of year, my waist size tends to range from a relatively svelte 31 inches to a hefty (for me) 33. Right now I'm closer to 33. At every store we went to, the breakdown in pants availability by size went something like this:

Under 30 Inches- 3 or 4 pairs
30 Inches- 3 or 4 pairs
31 Inches- No pairs
32 Inches- 6 pairs
33 Inches- Maybe 1 pair
34 Inches- 6 Pairs
Anything Over 36 Inches- Like a million pairs

Now, I know we have an obesity problem in this country, but seriously department and other clothing stores of America- What the fuck? Skinny dudes need to wear pants too! Are there really so few guys with waists under 35 inches? Are there really so many with waists over 35?

Of course our quest for pants will continue. We're going to go to some of the big fancy shmancy department stores downtown this weekend, so hopefully we'll be able to find some narrow-waisted geek pants at Macy's or Nordstrom's or one of those other places.

Still though- who would've thought pants shopping would be so frustrating?

Raindrops on Roses

2009-06-09T12:14:00.003-05:00

Here are a few of my all time favorite things:

Series of Books:

A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin

Movie:

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (I count the whole thing as one big 13 hour movie)

TV Show:

Battlestar Galactica

Video Game:

Final Fantasy VII

Beverage:

Cold whole milk

US President:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Current US Senator:

Ted Kennedy, but Jim Webb is a close second

Member of the current Boston Red Sox:

Dustin Pedroia

Food:

Fried clams- maybe. I like lots of types of food and this changes monthly

Historical Era:

The 19th Century

Dinosaur:

Stegosaurus

Comic book writer:

Grant Morrison

Greek God or Goddess:

Athena

Mythological hero:

Cuchulain

Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode(s):

All Good Things pt. 1 and 2

Favorite Star Trek villain:

Gul Dukat (DS9)

Name of a roller derby team:

The Boston Massacre

Color:

Green

Color other than green:

Red

Book in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" Series:

"A Storm of Swords"

Temperature:

72 degrees Fahrenheit

Season:

Autumn

Megafauna:

Elephants

Offbeat episode of Star Trek the Next Generation:

A Fistful of Datas

Kids book:

Mike Mulligan and his Steamshovel

Young Adult book series:

The Chronicles of Prydain

Medieval Weapon:

Morningstar

Hot Dog Topping:

Mustard

Museum in Chicago:

The Field Museum

Ride at Epcot Center:

Soarin'

Book of the Bible:

Revelations

Berry:

Straw

My Dream Gym

2009-06-08T14:15:00.002-05:00

I really like my gym. It's clean, it has lots of equipment, and I get a big fat discount for being a performer. From general observation, I think it's safe to say that it's nicer than most gyms. But- that doesn't mean it couldn't be better.

When I'm working out, I spend alot of time thinking about just why it is that people like me (scrawny asthmatic nerds) don't go to the gym- and for the most part wouldn't even DREAM of going to the gym. The reasons are legion, and I won't list them all here, but I will say this- gyms tend to cater towards a specific type of person.

Different gyms actually cater towards different types of people. There are gyms that cater to hardcore athletes, and bodybuilders. There are gyms that cater to the casual fitness enthusiast (like Curves), and there are gyms like mine that cater to Yuppies (mostly).

I would love to see a gym that caters towards people like me. This is what my dream gym would look like

First off, imagine the nicest gym you've ever been to. This gym would be like that. Tons of weights and cardio equipment, and Olympic sized swimming pool, a clean locker room area, big classrooms with lots of different classes- the works. In this way, it would be like many gyms. The difference would be primarily the atmosphere. At most gyms, the big common area TVs are set to jock shows- usually either ESPN, or a business news channel like CNBC. My gym would have these TVs set to geekier programming like the Sci-Fi Channel, Comedy Central, or the Discovery Channel. The music that plays at most gyms (in my experience) tends to be the kind of stuff that gets your heart pumping- dance music, or heavy metal. My gym would also get your heart moving, but instead of the usual fare, would feature Classical music, or punk rock depending on the time of day. Another difference- theming. Different area of my gym would have "themes". Like the lobby, instead of just looking lobbyish would have a "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Theme" where the interior would be designed to look like the inside of Captain Nemo's Nautilus with portholes looking out onto the swimming pool, and a giant automated harpsichord that would play music whilst guests made their way from the front desk to the lobby. Once a week, the gym would have a symposium on a fitness related topic that would be free for members. The topics of the symposium would change week to week, and would help educate the membership. I would also have an "adopt a workout partner" program where members could sign up to try to find another member with similar goals to themselves so that they could help each other along.

One of the big reasons that people don't go to gyms is intimidation. It's tough for a geek to motivate themselves to get to a gym when they know that the place is probably filled with muscular jocks. So, the advertising for my gym would really stress that this was a gym for "everyone else". The jocks have their gyms. This would be a gym for geeks, nerds, spazzes, and anyone else who wants a fun, non-intimidating place to work out.

Paintball

2009-06-08T09:24:00.002-05:00

I played Paintball for the first time ever last Saturday. 13 of us (mostly UMass alums cum Chicagoans) went to the Challenge Extreme Park in Joliet early Saturday morning, and spent the next 7 to 8 hours shooting each other, getting shot at, and having what I would call a grand ol' time. At the end of the day, I think I'd have to say that it was the most fun I've had doing anything in a while.

Initially, I had my doubts about how much fun the day would be. Prior to the day, I had some misgivings about paintball. They were as follows:

1. Getting shot at didn't sound fun.
2. The pictures I'd seen of paintball welts looked painful- like this one:

3. Most of the people I've known in life who were really into paintball were kind of...oh what's the word...douchey.
4. I didn't think I'd be any good at it.

But, over the course of the day, I learned that:

1. Getting shot at was kind of exciting. I mean, it's paint, not bullets.
2. The paintball welts, while they look kind of nasty (and kind of badass, actually) only hurt for a minute. Except for the one on my throat. I got shot on the throat and that hurt like hell.
3. Sure there were plenty of d-bags wandering around the park (the people who walked around with paintball guns that looked like M-16s mostly) but I was shooting at, and being shot with friends. And that was great!
4. I wasn't amazing at paintball, but I was alright. I got a couple of people out, and even managed to shoot a guy through a tiny space on his barricade.

Other highlights-

The park itself was vast, and awesome. It included a central hub (called Central Park) that connected to a variety of themed courses including:

the Town of Bedlam- an abandoned town
Armageddon- a post-apocalyptic landscape
The Mounds- A bunch of small hills covered in tall grass
the Speed Course- a large open hill with "bunkers"- stacked wooden pallets scattered all over

Plus others. I think the Speed Course was actually my favorite. While it wasn't as visually impressive as some of the others, it made for a quick, intense, fun round of paintball.

In the end, I still kind of can't believe how much I enjoyed paintball, and I kind of can't wait to play again.

Misapplication of the words "Geek" and "Nerd"

2009-06-05T11:59:00.002-05:00

I wanted to briefly make mention to this blog entry that I wrote last year.

I bring it up because I still can't get over how often people misapply the words "geek" and "nerd" usually in reference to themselves. In this blog entry, I mentioned how some folks use the terms "geek" or "nerd" when what they really mean is "obsessed". As I stated, nerdery and obsession are not the same.

Here are a few examples of possible ways people can misapply these terms to themselves:

EXAMPLE:

A Girl: Ohmigod- I totally just saw Adam Lambert from American Idol at Starbucks! I am totally geeking out right now!

American Idol is not geeky, or nerdy. It's actually incredibly mainstream. No one is going to get beat up for listening to Kelly Clarkson. What the girl SHOULD have said instead of "I am totally geeking out right now" is "I am totally freaking out right now!". "Freaking out" would more adequately describe her reaction. If she was "geeking out" she would be reacting to something geeky.

Like this:

A Nerdy Girl: Ohmigods- I totally just saw Nathan Fillion from Firefly at the comic bookstore! I am totally geeking out right now! (Puffs on inhaler)

Okay, now THAT is geeky. First off, she said "Ohmigods" which is probably a Battlestar Galactica reference. THEN she talks about Firefly, a cult sci-fi show that was only on for one season. THEN we find out she was at a comic book store. That is an acceptable use of the phrase "geeking out".

EXAMPLE THE SECOND:

A Dude: Hey brah! Did you see that touchdown pass that Tom Brady threw! It was totally sweet. I am SUCH a nerd for football!

What? A nerd for football? To use football terminology, isn't that like saying "I'm such a Bears fan for the Packers"? You can't be a nerd for football. You can be a fan of football, you can be obsessed with football. You can be a nerd who happens to like football. You can't be a nerd for football. Also, no nerd, or geek would call their friends "Brah". A real nerd would probably be more likely to say:

A Real Nerd: Greetings good sir! Dideth thou see yon jousting victory by the brave knight Thomas? I be such a nerd for re-enacting!

See, now this guy is clearly a total nerd. Many geeks love the Middle Ages, and this one is clearly at some sort of Renaissance Faire watching folks in costumes fake fighting one another. This guy has actually gone so far as to try to speak Middle English.

So, friends, you can see from these two examples what I'm getting at. I'm all for geek pride. I like that geeks are accepted more now than they probably ever have been in history. I do think that there are arguments to be made about what does and does not qualify as something nerdy. But cool kids? Please stop misapplying nerd terms to yourself about any random thing. Those words have meaning, and they don't apply to you.

E3

2009-06-04T15:19:00.002-05:00

E3 is this week. E3 is where they announce all of the cool new video games that will be coming out over the course of the next year or so. As a Nintendo Wii Owner, I am most excited about:

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Super Mario Brothers Wii

Beatles: Rock Band

Lego Harry Potter: Books I-IV

Kingdom Hearts 3 (Wii Exclusive)

Some sort of new Zelda game

A Boy and His Blob (I probably won't buy this game, but I think it's cool that it exists)

Monado- An RPG for Wii! Please don't suck!

Other games that aren't for Wii that I'm kind of excited about anyway:

Dragon Age

God of War III

Castlevania

Last Guardian

Elevation

2009-06-03T11:06:00.003-05:00

So...what is she selling us? Really? She's selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She's a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that "Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!" Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, "Hell...I could do that. I ain't gonna...but I could--if I wanted! Now where's my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?" Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better--teach us--and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. "You're doing just fine. You don't even have to chop an onion--you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing...Just sit there. Have another Triscuit..Sleep...sleep...

-Anthony Bourdain on Rachel Ray

I'm terrified of a small handful of things- getting old, the potential death of loved ones, climbing really tall ladders on windy days- but there are two things that terrify me more than anything else:

Complacency and his sister mediocrity.

You know what the most terrifying phrase in that above quote from Anthony Bourdain is? "Aspire to nothing". That phrase gives me goosebumps. I worry that someday I'll be so ground down by life, that I will cease to aspire, that I will stop wanting to be better.

I have always believed that the purpose of humanity, the reason why the Flying Spaghetti Monster put us here on Earth, was to constantly improve. The purpose, to me, of humans is to elevate the human condition. Each generation of people should strive to improve how we live; how we eat, how we work, the condition of the Earth. On an individual level, we should always be working to make ourselves smarter, stronger, more creative- better.

We should never settle for crap. We should never settle for complacency. We should not settle for over cooked, mass produced Applebee's hamburgers and Twilight novels when we could be eating homemade burgers with lettuce we grew ourselves and reading Rowling, Tolkien, Pulman or Nix. I mean, you don't need to re-invent the wheel, but please do more than indulging in the bland. We should all try to live life to the greatest extent that it can be lived.

Sometimes, when I someone tells me how much they loved last night's episode of "Two and a Half Men" and how excited they are to go to the Olive Garden tomorrow, I just want to grab them and scream "You're missing it!" "It" being "all of the wonderful things in the world".

That's not to say that it's never okay to watch a bad movie, or eat a Big Mac. But you shouldn't live off of it.

I say all of this because lately, I've felt...I think stagnant would be the right word. For a few months, when I got home, I would watch TV, or cruise the internet (doing nothing really), and go to bed. I kept telling myself I would do things- write more, read more, travel more, do more, when I had time. Well, I did have time. I was just filling it with nothing. I realized a few weeks ago that I could easily let myself be like this forever, simply going through the motions of life. My Summer resolutions list came about in part because of this feeling. Let's call it ennui. Now, I'm trying to get myself back on track. Out of my rut. I'm trying to write more, cook more, build more, love more, live more, etc- to suck the marrow from life's bones. I will constantly strive to be better.

I mean, I've only got so much life to live, so I might as well live as much of it as I can and leave the world a more interesting place.

Oh Dear God...

2009-06-02T15:32:00.003-05:00

Clearly, the Red Sox new merchandising director is the devil. Or Strawberry Shortcake.

Summer Resolutions

2009-06-02T11:41:00.002-05:00

Here are some goals I have set for myself for the Summer:

Write for at least 1 hour everyday-

Progress thus far- Last week, I wrote for one hour on Thursday night, and last night I wrote for one hour. I need to make this a regular, daily habit. Once I do, I will start to write for longer than an hour. To help me with this goal, I'm trying to write a short story.

Spend less time doing things without purpose-

Usually, when I have down time, I spend it either watching TV just because I have nothing else to do, or surfing the internet (and visiting the same web sites over and over again) because I have nothing else to do. The thing is, I don't have nothing else to do. I have lots of things to do. I could be cleaning, cooking, or working on my short story. I don't want to spend all of my time on idle things. I want to spend it doing things with purpose.

Summer of a Million Fantasy Novels 2-

Much like Summer of aught seven, I'm going to try to read as many fantasy books as possible. So far, I've read "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss, and "Assassin's Apprentice" by Robin Hobb, and I am currently reading "Iron Council" by China Mieville.

Eat More Delicious Food-

As always, one of my goals is to eat many new, and exciting things.

Save Money-

Try to put as many of my meager funds as possible into my savings account.

Spend time outside:

For this one, I need nature to start cooperating. Start shining sun! Chase the rain away!

That's it for now, but I may add more as Summer progresses.

Shelves! The Musical

2009-06-01T09:18:00.003-05:00

Okay, maybe not a musical, but my weekend was very shelf oriented.

When I first moved to Chicago, I brought a bag of clothes, a bed, and a steamer trunk filled with random things I thought I would need (like a toothbrush). I brought exactly one book. That book was "Crossroads of Twilight" by Robert Jordan which I read on my Amtrak ride from Boston to Chicago.

Nearly 6 years later, Chelsea and I have accumulated many, many books. We are both prolific readers, and we tend to buy books rather than borrow them. Several months ago, we ran out of space for these books. We had three bookshelves, and unfortunately, they just did not have enough space to contain every piece of literature we owned.

Since that time, we had started stacking new books wherever we could. This made parts of our apartment (specifically our multi-function office/library/walk-in closet) very cluttered. VERY cluttered.

Over the weekend, Melissa Cathcart (of Space Robbers) and her husband Jay Olson came to our rescue.

You see, Melissa and Jay are in the process of moving from an apartment to a condominium. In their old apartment, they had a very large entertainment center that had all kinds of shelves on it. They were not planning on bringing this entertainment center with them, and offered to give it to us (Thanks Melissa and Jay!).

So, on Saturday, with help from friends with a car (Bill Stern and Melissa Franke- yes we do now a ton of Melissas) we transported the enormous piece of furniture from Lincoln Square to our humble home in Wrigleyville.

Once it was put back together, Chelsea and I picked books, DVDs, action figures, and some other things to display on it.

And it also gave us all kinds of new, empty space on our old bookshelves.

Sunday I got to do one of my favorite things in the world- sort through and re-organize our bookshelves.

Here are some things I learned about Chelsea and I by going through all of our books:

-Approximately one third of all of our books are either science fiction or fantasy books.

-Two theater majors accumulate alot of plays.

-Encyclopedia sets need quite a bit of space.

-We probably still need more bookshelves.

That's right- even with all of the new shelf space, I think in roughly a year we're probably going to need more. I have no idea where we would put another bookshelf (the kitchen?) but I know we'll need one.

Ah well. When that day comes, I'll get to do even more book sorting-through. Huzzah!

UP and other goings on

2009-05-29T10:48:00.002-05:00

*Wednesday night, Chelsea and I got to go to a free screening of Pixar's UP.

It's Pixar so it goes without saying that the movie was great. It may not have been the bold artistic achievement that WALL-E was last year, but it was definitely one of the funniest, and most heartfelt movies that I have ever seen.

Also, we saw it in 3D which was awesome. I love that 3D has made a comeback. You definitely lose some of the vibrancy in the colors when you watch a movie in 3D, but the amount of depth and dimension that is added more than makes up for that.

*I'm trying to write more. I sometimes forget with all of the improvising that I do that I really love writing as well. My goal is to write for at least an hour a day if I'm home. I'm going to start out small and try to write a short story. I started it last night.

*Chelsea ordered, and received, the first season of HBO's "True Blood" in the mail yesterday. I will probably not see her outside of the living room for the next week as she works her way through the show again.

*I have another busy Saturday lined up. Tomorrow morning I'm going to a cookout, then I have a show a Space Robbers pick up show at 8, a birthday party for a friend immediately after that, and an Our Feature Presentation show at midnight. Incidentally, this will be the last OFP show in this run. In preparation for all of this, I plan on spending tonight doing nothing.

I am not Cool

2009-05-28T15:00:00.002-05:00

Sometime ago, I got a phone call from brothers. Tommy is two years younger than me, and is in Law School at Suffolk Univeristy. Jack is 12 years younger than me and goes to the Immaculate Conception School (K-8).

Jack: Hey Sean, it's Jack.

Me: Hey Jack! What's up?

Jack: Sean, you're cool right?

Me: Uhhhh. No. Not really. Why do you ask?

Jack: Tommy said that you were a nerd, and I told him "No Way".

Me: I don't how to tell you this Jack, but Tommy's right.

Jack: No way! You're totally cool.

Tommy: See Jack, I told you! Sean's a nerd! I'm a nerd! We're all nerds! (I should briefly note how angry Tommy sounded on the phone here)

Now, I certainly appreciate the esteem that my youngest brother has for me, but I felt that I had to be honest with him about my coolness.

I am not cool. I never have been, and I never will be.

In the halcyon days of my youth, I will admit that I aspired to coolness. I thought that some day, if I said my prayers and ate my vitamins, maybe I too could be cool. I, Sean Kelley, could grow out of the geekish trappings of child-self, and become a James Dean! Or a Dean Martin! Or some other great bastion of cool!

Alas, it was not to be. I was born with un-cool genes, and I still have them.

Here is a list of just a few of the million or so things that prevent me from achieving coolness:

1. I break things. In particular, I break tons of: glasses (plural), glasses (singular), electronics, plates, books, toys, clothing, and hearts. Okay, maybe not hearts. If I was a heartbreaker, I might be kind of cool.

2. I fall pretty much constantly, especially on the El.

3. I arrive early for everything, and not like a little early. I arrive HOURS before I should.

4. My interests include (but are not limited to) going to comic book conventions, watching Discovery Channel specials about ants, sabremetrics, and the history of pre-Christian Ireland.

5. My ideal Friday night consists of performing improv comedy before heading home with Chelsea to drink wine, and play "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" on my Wii.

6. I can name every single member of the X-Men in order of when they joined the team.

7. I will watch "The Wild Wild West" whenever it is on. I do not like it. But I cannot stop myself from watching it.

8. I perform long form improv comedy- which is easily one of the most obscure art-forms a person can perform.

9. I'm terrible at catching things thrown to me through the air. When tossed a baseball, rather than catching it, or trying to catch it, I will usually curl up into a ball like an armadillo.

10. My favorite beverage is milk.

Here's the thing: I don't want to be cool. I haven't really cared about being cool for the better part of the last decade. Why? Well, I've known cool people. I've interacted with them, and I found them lacking. Cool is...well...cool is boring. Also, alot of cool people are douche bags.

To paraphrase Milton, I'd rather reign in a nerdish hell then serve in Cool People heaven. At least in nerd-hell, I can run around falling, and breaking things without worrying about it ruining my "reputation".

Trust/ Don't Trust- Fantasy Novel Edition

2009-05-27T11:07:00.002-05:00

Recently, I've begun "Summer of a Million Fantasy Novels 2!" wherein I try to read as many fantasy novels as possible over the course of one Summer. The original Summer of a Million Fantasy Novels occurred in 2007, followed by last year's Summer of a Million Steampunk novels.

In celebration of Summer of a Million Fantasy Novels 2!, here is a list of people you should and shouldn't trust, as compiled by someone who has read too many fantasy novels.

First up, never trust:

Royal Advisers- Generally speaking, a royal adviser is someone who has worked their way into a King or Queen's inner circle in the hope of usurping the throne. Royal advisers are almost always secret practitioners of dark magic, and may or may not have made a deal with some sort of demon or devil in their attempt to become more powerful.

Step-mothers- In the world of fantasy, step-parents in general are not to be trusted, but step-mothers tend to be particularly nasty. They are generally obsessed with their own beauty, and will stop at nothing to harm those who may threaten their status as the fairest in the land- including their own step-daughters.

Uncles- Fantasy uncles, especially uncles who's older brother is some sort of royalty, are always evil. While their brother is older, stronger, and wiser than them, they are generally slier, and much like the evil adviser, will probably try to overthrow the king to claim the throne as their own.

Ugly People and Creatures- While the leaders of the forces of evil tend to be either formless, or incredibly sexy, the rank and file of an evil army tend to be hideous, or terrifying in appearance. Ugly people, and creatures like orcs, trolls, ogres, zombies, and goblins tend to ally themselves with evil to spite the beautiful world which has scorned them.

Sexy Women- Good women in fantasy are pretty, or cute. Evil women are smoking hot. Never trust a woman in a fantasy novel if she's hot- especially if she's hot, and the author has chosen to describe her as "scantily clad" or as having a "heaving bosom". Hot chicks are almost always in league with the forces of darkness.

Organized Religion- While organized religion in the real world tends to be a mixed bag of morality, fantasy religious orders are universally evil. Organized religions in fantasy worlds will generally try to topple a government so they can start up their own religious fascist churchocracy, and if they can't do that, they'll forcibly convert, or kill whoever gets in their way.

Always Trust:

Talking Animals- The forces of nature are generally the hero's side in a fantasy novel, and they tend to manifest themselves in the form of talking animals. Every good fantasy hero worth his salt has a talking animal to help them through hard times. Usually, said animal is also adorable.

Thieves- It may seem counter-intuitive, but thieves can be trusted in any fantasy novel. Fantasy thieves break the law only because they have fallen on hard times, not because they are evil. Normally, by the end of a fantasy novel, the thief has changed his ways, AND his thieving skills have been put to good use by pilfering some magic bric-a-brac or another from the forces of darkness.

Crazy People You Meet in the Woods- All villages in fantasy worlds have a crazy person who lives in a shack in the woods. While this person may SEEM crazy, they are ALWAYS an extremely powerful good wizard, or the greatest warrior in the world who disappeared years before and was thought dead. The crazy person in the woods will be integral in training any hero who comes along.

Europeans, and Creatures who Look European- When the armies of evil attack, the armies of good rally to fight them. The armies of good are usually composed of men (who look and act European), elves (who look and act snooty and European) dwarves (who act like blue-collar Europeans), and any other race that acts like they belong in Europe circa 1242 AD.

Beautiful Princesses- While fantasy novels are RIFE with evil queens, there are almost NO evil princesses. Princesses, while they may be spoiled, are always good. If they are spoiled, they will have been brought low by the end of the book and learned a lesson in humility. At this point they will marry the hero of the story with whom they will sire whole litters of new heroes and princesses.

Polytheists- While organized religions tend to be evil in fantasy, druids, shamans, and other people associated with Earth-based pagan religions are almost always good. Polytheists in fantasy are in touch with nature, and so they get their marching orders from the same place that the aforementioned talking animals do.

Murmadep

2009-05-26T14:58:00.002-05:00

It would be something of an understatement to say that I am not feeling very sharp right now.

In fact, "sharp" is only one of a whole host of words I would not use to describe my current state of mind.

Others would include:

Clear-headed
Alert
At-the-top-of-my-game
Awake
Fiery
Witty

and so on.

Let's rewind for a moment to see how I got to my current muddled-ness, shall we?

Friday: At 3 PM, I got to leave work because Monday was a holiday and we tend to get a few extra hours off before long weekends. I walked over to Millennium Park, plopped myself in the grass, and read 60 or so pages of "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss. At 5, I met with Chelsea and headed home for a dinner of delicious Papa Romeo's pizza.

Ah, but dinner was merely a prelude to what the night had in store for us.

You see, one of the days contained within last week happened to be my dear chum Pete Aiello's birthday. To celebrate myself, and a dozen or so Friends of Pete headed out Friday night for two rousing hours of Whirlyball.

What, you may ask, is Whirlyball? Well, do you like Bumper Cars? Do you like polo (or polo-like sports?)? If you answered "yes" to both of these questions, then Whirlyball is for you. The game of Whirlyball is polo played with bumper cars, and it is, to quote the bard, "Wicked Fun".

It also hurts the day after. Both Chelsea and I woke up the next day with bruises in our seatbelt areas.

But Saturday brought with it good to weigh out the bad of bruised waists. For one, I made delicious blueberry muffins from scratch for breakfast. For another, I had three improvisational shows Saturday night- I sat in with Whirled News Tonight, and played with Mike Helicopter, and Our Feature Presentation. All of the shows were good, and both the 8 and 10:30 shows were packed. Chelsea surprised me by bringing a small group of friends with her to OFP, which kind of sort of made my weekend.

Sunday was used in it's traditional role as a day of rest. Chelsea and I (really more her than I) planted our garden. Specifically, we planted tomatoes, hot peppers, basil, and a few other herbs. We also cleaned the apartment which up until that point had been in desperate need of a bath. It got one.

Memorial Day was spent in good company at Adam and Leanne's Barbecue. Festivities included eating grilled meats, eating grilled vegetables, drinking alcoholic beverages, and eating grilled fruit. It rained, but our spirits were not dampened as the festivities moved indoors where we socialized, ate, and played Rock Band.

All of this fun left me weary this morning at my job, and somewhat muddled in the head, as I stated prior.

In other news, I finished "The Name of the Wind" this weekend, and loved it. I started "Assassin's Apprentice" by Robin Hobb.

What is it about Dragons?

2009-05-22T10:47:00.002-05:00

Confession time:

I think dragons are kind of awesome. I mean, who doesn't? What isn't cool about a giant winged lizard monster that breathes fire and hordes treasure? Admit it- as a kid, you probably went out looking for dragons in the woods at some point or another. I bet some of you did it when you were older. And why not? Dragons are the Cadillacs of mythical monsters, the beluga caviar of fantastical beasties, the....you get the idea. Dragons are great. Griffins, and chimeras are cool and all, but they're just not dragons.

As far as dragons go, I have to admit that I prefer mine of a certain type. I don't like wimpy dragons. I don't like friendly dragons like you see in kids cartoons. I like fierce, giant monsters- creatures as old as time, and vaster than your imagination. Think Smaug from "the Hobbit". That's not to say I don't love different types of dragons. I'm certainly open to some interpretation. I'm just not crazy about Pete's Dragon type dragons. Dragons should not be friendly, or dumb. If they are, they're not really dragons- they're Barney the Dinosaur with fire breath.

I will say that when it comes to fantasy novels, or movies, if you see the word "Dragon" in the title, you should probably spend your money on something else. Dragons are extremely cool, but they're also extremely cliche. Usually, the presence of the word "Dragon" in a fantasy novel title implies that the story you're reading is pretty typical- a group of companions finds a magic doodad and beat a big evil monster or king, and there's a dragon or dragons mixed in somehow. As proof, just go watch the movie "Dragonheart". It's terrible. So is "Reign of Fire".
Ugh, why can't Hollywood make a decent dragon movie? That's probably a post for another time. And yes, I know "Reign of Fire" doesn't have the word "dragon" in the title.

Still, despite their current status as "huge-overused cliche" dragons just can't stop being cool. They're such a huge part of our mythologies- both eastern and western, and feature too prominently in too many cool stories. Dragons- love them and fear them.

Even More Pet Peeves

2009-05-21T11:27:00.003-05:00

Here are a few random things that annoy me:

1. When I'm reading a fantasy novel, and it turns out that what you thought was a fantastical world is REALLY Earth in the distant future- I'm looking at you Shannara and Pern books. Science fiction and fantasy should rarely, if ever, mix themselves up.

2. When I'm reading a fantasy novel and it turns out that rather than writing something original, the author just aped "Lord of the Rings" but gave everything different names. I'm looking at you AGAIN Shannara books.

3. I just swallowed a hair. It was in my water glass. God I hope it's one of mine. Swallowing hairs also annoys me.

4. Scott Walker. Fuck that guy.

5. The way facebook is constantly changing it's format. I don't mind the changes themselves, it's the frequency of changing that burns my biscuits (mmmmm, biscuits). If you make a change, oh ye facebook gods both major and minor, please give me AT LEAST a month to get used to them before you go moving everything around.

6. Glenn Beck. I can't, for the life of me, understand why anyone takes this yahoo seriously. I mean, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are d-bags, but Beck is a d-bag and a total moron. And he cries alot.

7. Guys at the gym who spend like, half an hour at a single station. Really? You need to do bench-presses for a half hour? And you're not going to do anything else? Just bench-presses? You know, you could switch it up, and do flyes or something. No? Okay....douche.

8. The fact that it's beautiful outside and I am inside.

9. American Idol. I had never seen a single episode of American Idol till this year, but I happened to be a home a bunch whilst Chelsea made her way through the season. Here are the things I hated:
I) Booing the judges when they gave the contestants constructive criticism
II) Paula Abdul
III) The fact that America chose a John Mayer/Jack Johnson/ Jason Mraz clone over a dude who could really fucking sing. Seriously America, WTF? Then I remember that America once picked Taylor Hicks, and almost picked Clay Aiken. I love you America, but your taste in music is awful. More awful then my own which is saying something.

10. Sales tax in Cook Co. 10.5 percent. Holy crap that's high

So, What Now?

2009-05-19T12:02:00.002-05:00

So the Big Bad Bruins were felled by the boys from Carolina.

What now? What do I do with myself for the remainder of the NHL Playoffs? Do I stop paying attention? Do I like any of the teams who are left? What do I want to see happen?

Well, I refuse to root FOR anyone. I will not support any pro-team that is not based in Massachusetts. To me, you root for the hometown team. Period. That's it. There's not debate- you just do it, and you don't root for some other team just because your favorites assed out.

With that said. I will root AGAINST the Hurricanes. I'm still mad at them. They beat my guys. What's more, Scott Walker sucker punched one of my guys in the face, skated around the ice with a shit eating grin on his face afterward, and scored the game winning goal in OT in Game 7 at the Garden. I hate that guy now. I want him to explode.

So, I hope the Canes lose. Fuck those guys. Also, I hope that Lucic beats the crap out of Scott Walker next year at the earliest possible time.

I will also root FOR hockey. I love hockey. I want it to grow and succeed. To that end, I want the Penguins and the Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Final.

I want the Penguins because it will only do hockey good to have Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin playing on the NHL's biggest stage. Get those superstars out there. Show America what they can do. I want the Hawks out there because they're young, and fun to watch- and their long suffering fan base deserves it. This has been kind of a dream season for long-suffering Chicago puckheads, and I would love to see a Stanley Cup appearance for my current place of residence.

I don't want the Canes in final because I hate those guys. Plus, does anyone outside of the Research Triangle really care about the Canes?

I don't want the Red Wings in the final because THEY'RE ALWAYS IN THE FINAL! Give somebody else a turn Red Wings.

So yeah. Because I can't root for the Bruins, I will root for hockey, and against Carolina.

Advice to Recent Graduates

2009-05-18T08:51:00.002-05:00

Very briefly- we (the Bruins) lost game 7. It sucked, and I don't want to talk about it. Congratulations Carolina. I hope Pittsburgh destroys you in the second round and explodes Scott Walker.

Now.

It's mid-May, and seniors across the country are graduating from college. It's a tough time to be graduating as the economy is still in rough shape, but eventually, most of these college kids will get jobs.

To you, oh recent college graduates, I offer this advice when you find yourself a paid position within a company:

Don't be a dick about coffee.

Most offices offer some type of free coffee. You may not be aware of this, but there are some rules of etiquette involved in the preparation and consumption of said coffee. To that end, here are some of said rules:

1. Don't leave an empty coffee pot on a turned-on burner. It can damage the coffee pot, and it's a waste of electricity.

2. If you pour yourself a mug of coffee, and you either empty the pot, or leave just a tiny little bit of coffee in the pot- MAKE A FRESH POT OF COFFEE!!!!! This takes like two seconds to do and your fellow employees (me) will appreciate it.

3. If you spill coffee all over the place, clean it up. Also, try not to spill coffee all over the place.

4. It is not okay to take a whole pot of coffee for yourself from a communal coffee area. Leave the pots on the coffee machine.

5. Make sure that you put decaf, and regular coffee in their appropriate pots or carafes. No one wants to accidentally drink the wrong kind of coffee.

6. If for whatever reason something is wrong in the coffee area- like the machine is leaking, or there's no more coffee grounds, or some d-bag has taken a whole pot of coffee for themselves, inform someone in a position of coffee authority IMMEDIATELY.

7. Be as quick as possible when you prepare your coffee in the communal coffee area. I....I mean...people don't like to wait too long to get their coffee.

There you go. Follow these rules, and the people you work with won't think you're a total jerk.

Game 7

2009-05-13T09:44:00.002-05:00

Last night, the Big Bad Bruins beat the Hurricanes in Game 6 down in North Cackalacky.

You know what that means:

Game 7

At the Boston (TD Banknorth)Garden.

I'm excited, and terrified.

Let's go Bruins!

NHL Map

2009-05-12T13:22:00.000-05:00

this

Any state in red on this map that has an NHL team should have it taken away.

Also, the amount of blue on this map made me happy.

Hockey!

Sportstress

2009-05-11T15:16:00.002-05:00

I had kind of a rollercoaster weekend when it comes to the teams I have a rooting interest in.

Friday night was awful. While sitting in a bar with my beautiful girlfriend and her parents, I watched the Celtics get plastered on one TV by the Magic, and then 15 minutes later watched the Bruins roll over and die while playing the Fightin' Research Triangles- giving said Research Triangles (or Whalers, or Hurricanes) a 3-1 series lead.

I improvised angry for most of my weekend shows after that.

Fortunately last night was a little better. The Celtics got the better of the Magic when Glen "Big Baby" Davis scored at the buzzer- which was super exciting. Then, the Bruins plastered the Whalicanes 4 to zilch. I attribute this to the fact that my mom was at the game, and my mother is good luck. Finally, the Red Sox beat the Rays to close out the evening.

The funny thing about the Bruins victory last night is that it seems that 'Canes fans have gone a little nuts and are blaming the refs for their 4-0 loss and not the crappy, chippy game that their team played. Honestly, they should be thanking their lucky stars that Scott Walker didn't get suspended for sucker punching Aaron Ward. I don't dislike 'Canes fans, and I'm actually impressed that a sub-Mason-Dixon NHL team seems to have such a dedicated fan-base, but honestly dudes, enjoy being up 3-2 and get over yourselves.

Blogs

2009-05-06T15:55:00.001-05:00

Dear Blogs that I link to from Robberblog that haven't updated in a while,

Update! I'm going to purge my link list soon of any blog that hasn't been updated in two months or longer. I'm looking at you I heart Bacon.

Thanks,

Sean

Star Trek- The New Movie, and in General

2009-05-01T11:22:00.001-05:00

I could list you about a million things that make me a geek or a nerd, but one of the big ones is my pure, undying love for all things Star Trek. I am a Trekkie. Not only am I a Trekkie, but I have been a Trekkie since I was 10 years old. And I don't just like Star Trek- I LOVE Star Trek. Star Trek matters to me.

Not to beat a dead horse by bringing this up again, but as a young kid, I used to get beaten up, and made fun of pretty routinely from the time I was in first grade through the time I was in eighth grade. Other than my brother Tommy, I didn't really have a ton of friends. Without a whole lot of folks to talk to, I lost myself in imaginary worlds. I read X-Men Comics, and Lloyd Alexander novels, I watched SeaQuest, I played Final Fantasy Games.

And I watched Star Trek. I've seen every episode of Star Trek The Next Generation at least 5 times. I've also seen every episode of the original series, and (the HUGELY underrated) DS9, and most of the episodes of Voyager, and Enterprise. In high school, I drew alot of things, my most common doodles were little Starfleet ships fighting Borg Cubes, Romulan Warbirds, and Klingon Birds of Prey. I didn't want to be a firefighter, or a lawyer when I grew up. I wanted to be in Starfleet.

In a lonely childhood, Star Trek was a ray of hope for me. The future presented in Star Trek showed humankind at it's best. Rather than being consumed by war, or destroyed by pollution, or dehumanized by technology, humanity as presented in Star Trek had overcome it's flaws, and was free to explore the universe- to see what was out there. Star Trek says "This is what you can be". Early on in "Star Trek" the film, Captain Pike is talking to a young Kirk in a bar in Iowa, and he says "I dare you to do better." Star Trek dares each of us who loves it so to do better. To be better.

And it was exciting! And heartbreaking! And smart! And sometimes a little cheesy, but that was okay. Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Picard, Sisko, Kira Nerys, Ensign Ro- these were some of my heroes as a kid.

It is with that incredibly intense sense of nostalgia that I went into watching the new film "Star Trek" from JJ Abrams. My own expectations were more than likely impossible to meet, coupled as they are to my own memory of the wonder that I felt when watching all things Trek as a child.

So, how was the movie?

Here's my short spoiler free review:

A critic called the film "Star Trek for people who hate Star Trek" which probably couldn't be more wrong. Oh, I'm sure casual movie goers will enjoy this film, and I'm sure alot of old time Trekkies will hate it (of course some old nerds hate pretty much everything), but this film is a LOVE SONG written to Star Trek fans, and Star Trek. Sure, it's a big action movie, but it's also a smart, emotional Trek film. This is Star Trek with a brain, a heart, and a budget.

Now the long, spoiler-laden version:

Please don't read this if you haven't seen the movie. I really, really don't want to ruin it for anyone.

Star Trek opens with one of the most heart-wrenching, tear-inducing sequences that I've ever seen in a movie in my life. Under attack from the time traveling villain Nero, newly minted captain George Kirk rams the starship Kelvin into Nero's ship to allow his crew, including his in-the-process-of-being born son, to escape. As he dies a hero, he can hear his son being born over his communicator. With his last words, George Kirk names his son- James Tiberius Kirk. The scene is visceral. You could hear people in the theater tearing up, and even weeping as we witnessed the birth of Kirk.

The next phase of the movie deals with the childhoods of Kirk, and on distant Vulcan, Spock. We see how each of them suffer in childhood- Kirk lacks direction, and Spock is torn between the human and Vulcan worlds.

When we next encounter these characters, they have become young adults, on their way to Starfleet, and this is where the movie really picks up.

As our two focal characters, Chris Pine, and Zach Quinto are excellent. They put their own spins on these classic Trek icons. All of the actors in the film are excellent. Simon Pegg and Karl Urban as Scotty and Bones McCoy respectively are particular standouts. I promise you will laugh out-loud at almost everything Scotty and Bones do and say in this film. Eric Bana is also excellent as the villainous future-Romulan Nero. Oh, and let's not forget- Leonard Nimoy is good as always playing Spock. Everyone's great though- hell, even Chekhov is great! Each character is given at least a moment to shine. Sulu fences, Scotty does crazy tech stuff, and as I said, even Chekhov gets his moment in the son.

The film is a re-boot, but not a re-imagining if that makes sense. Nero's trip through time alters the Trek timeline we know and love and creates a new timeline- a strange new world, where no one has gone before. The effect of this, is that all bets are off. To signify this, mid-way through the film, the Romulans destroy the Vulcan home world with their terrible Next Generation era weaponry. The problem with most prequels is they lack the element of the unknown. In "The Phantom Menace" you know what happens to young Anakin Skywalker. By changing the timeline, the people making Star Trek have essentially given themselves a clean slate to work on, without totally erasing what's come before by doing a re-imagining.

"Star Trek" is LOADED with homages to what has come before. The big one, obviously, is Old Spock who assists the crew by coming from the future to help them save the past (which is still the future for us). There are others. There's a mention of Admiral Archer's beagle, that weird creepy bug from Wrath of Khan, Kirk bedding a girl from Orion, the list goes on. The fanservice isn't blatant, but it's there. It was so neat to see the film with a bunch of Trek nerds who got all of that little stuff.

Visually, the film is beautiful. Since Star Trek was originally filmed on a low budget in the 60's, it's vision of the future is...well, kind of dated. This movie makes the future futuristic again. The ship looks magnificent. For some reason, I especially liked the engine room, which actually looked like the engine room of a ship, but with a warp core, and whatnot. The Romulan villains look grungy, and evil. The uniforms on the crew look crisp, and not-even-a-little cheesy despite their use of solid primary colors.

This film was a return to form for Star Trek. Hell, it was better than a return to form. "Star Trek" essentially serves as an origin story- a new beginning as this new-old crew begins it's continuing mission to seek out new lifeforms, and new civilizations. I want more. I want more of these movies. And I want them now.

The Diamond Age and Conformity vs. Rebellion

2009-04-29T10:22:00.002-05:00

"Which path do you intend to take, Nell?" said the Constable, sounding very interested. "Conformity or rebellion?"

"Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded – they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity."

Taken from Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age, or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"

I like this quote quite a bit. That's all.

Plants!

2009-04-28T11:52:00.002-05:00

Last Summer, Chelsea, being the industrious woman that she is, decided to grow an herb garden. She grew rosemary, thyme, and chives. All Summer, we had fresh herbs for our food, and in the Fall, we dried what was still on the plant, and had dried herbs all Winter.

Like many folks, Chelsea, myself, and the cats share an apartment with no yard. So, we grew our little herb garden on our...well, it's not really a porch. Let's call it an enclosed ledge. We grew our herb garden on our enclosed ledge. The thing is, the ledge has WAY more space, and so over the Winter, we've been talking about expanding beyond herbs to grow vegetables, flowers, and even more herbs.

To that end, over the weekend, we traveled to the Garfield Park Conservatory for something called "The Green and Growing Fair". Whilst at the Green and Growing Fair, we watched presentations on composting, square foot gardening, and a whole host of other helpful things. We also picked up a bunch of literature.

After that, we went on to youtube, and watched a bunch of videos about city gardening, gardening without a yard, container gardening, etc., and planned out our NEW for 2009 improved garden.

This year we'll be growing rosemary, thyme, cilantro, basil, tomatoes, flowers, and bell peppers. Next weekend, we'll be picking up the equipment we need (pots, dirt, etc.) before planting the week after.

I'm really, really excited. When I was little and living in New Hampshire, we had a vegetable garden in the backyard where we grew green beans, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini and many other vegetables depending on the year. I used to love tending the garden with my dad, and sneaking down to pick and eat fresh green beans when no one was looking.

I'm already thinking about the salsa I'm going to make with some of the things we grow. mmmmmmm.

Death to Flip Flops

2009-04-23T10:50:00.002-05:00

I think I would seriously consider supporting any politician running for office if they promised to introduce legislation banning the manufacture and sale of flip flops. It wouldn't matter if I disagreed with him/her/it on all other political issues, as long as they promised to be a tireless crusader against the blight called "flip flops" forever.

It's not sandals I have an issue with. Sandals are fine. I totally understand wanting to have your feet exposed and free on a hot day whilst also having some sole protection. Plus, sandals have been around forever. I mean, if they were good enough for the Roman Empire, they're good enough for me.

Flip flops though, are the evil bastard cousin of the sandal.

What are the sins of the flip flop? There are a butt-ton of them, but here are a few.

First off, most of them are cheap, and shitty, and they tend to look cheap and shitty. I know, I know, there are some high quality leather flip flops out there, but for the most part, people tend to wear the crappy five dollar mystery-material flip flops that you buy at Wal-Mart or CVS. So, they're ugly. There's that.

I also hate wearing any piece of footwear that constantly feels like it's falling off my foot. When you wear flip flops, every time you pick up your foot, they...well...flip, and flop off of your foot. The feeling is maddening. I prefer my shoes, sandals, whatever to maintain constant contact with the bottom of my foot. It boggles my mind that most people don't seem to feel this way.

For my money, the biggest problem with flip flops is the infernal sound they make.

POK POK POK POK POK- goes the foot of the flip flop wearer. POK POK POK POK is the sound that echoes in my nightmares. POK POK POK POK POK....POK POK....POK POK POK POK POK ....GAAAAAAAAAGH! Cease with the endless pokking! Don't you hear it? The Pokking of the flip flop? My own personal beating of the "Tell Tale Heart"? The sound that I'm sure demons make when they mate in hell? How can you bear it? KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!

Okay. Deep breath Sean. In.. Out.. and I'm back.

In conclusion, flip flops are hideous, and should be destroyed.

Endangered Badasses

2009-04-22T11:54:00.002-05:00

In celebration of Earth Day, here is a list of 3 badass, rough and tumble, take-no-guff-from-nobody endangered species:

1- Amur Leopards

Amur leopards are a critically endangered species of great cat from the Russian far east. Despite having huge claws and fangs, these badasses are facing extinction due to poaching, deforestation, and a Russian government which is generally apathetic towards environmental issues.

2- Blue Whales

The Blue Whale is the largest animal on Earth. A baby blue whale is generally the size of a small bus. The Blue Whale is so large, that it has no natural predators, and was nearly driven to extinction by the whaling industry before Blue Whale hunting was banned in the 60's.

3- Sea Otters

I know, I know, it's hard to believe that something that adorable could be both endangered, and a badass, but it's true. Sea Otters are badasses because they're highly socialized, intelligent, and are a keystone species in their habitats. They're endangered because for a long time, they were hunted for their pelts. Recently, they've staged something of a recovery, though they still have a long way to go.

A Great Patriots Day OR Suck it, Montreal!

2009-04-21T15:50:00.003-05:00

Patriots Day, for those who may be reading this who do not hail from New England, is a holiday celebrated once a year in Massachusetts and Maine. Patriots Day is largely celebrated with sports. Specifically, the world famous Boston Marathon is run on Patriots Day, and the Red Sox play a game super early (around noonish) to commemorate... well Patriots.

Yesterday was a truly outstanding Patriots Day for 3 of the 4 major Boston area pro teams. The exception interestingly enough, was the Patriots who only play football in the Fall, and early Winter.

First off, the Red Sox finished a sweep of the Baltimore Orioles at Fenway, winning 12 to 1. After a kind of shaky start, the BoSox are shaping back into something resembling form.

Next, the Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens up at the Bell Centre to take a 3-0 lead in their opening round playoff series. If the Bruins win tomorrow, they move on to the next round. Two things happened in this game that I thought were awesome. 1- Patrice Bergeron got into a fight, and won! that caused the announcer to shout "Concuss that!" which I thought was awesome (Bergeron missed most of last season with a pretty severe concussion). 2- Michael Ryder, who was cast off by the Canadiens after last season, scored the game winning goal for the B's.

Finally, the Kevin Garnettless Celtics beat the Bulls to even their first round series 1-1.

Hooray Sports!

Bullies (again)

2009-04-20T14:35:00.002-05:00

As someone who was picked on pretty constantly from the age of 7 to the age of 17, I take the subject of bullying pretty seriously.

I just read this story in the Boston Globe.

My heart goes out to this poor kid and his parents. If you know a kid who is getting picked on, and suffering in silence, please do something. Tell his parents, his teachers, somebody anybody. Remind that kid that he or she's better than that. Help them.

What's the Last Good....

2009-04-17T16:20:00.003-05:00

Meal that I had:

Dinner Wednesday night: Steak with a little lemon, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and an arugala salad with Balsamic Vinegarette

Movie That I saw:

Super Size Me

TV Show that I saw:

Season 1 of Mad Men

Book that I finished:

"Faithful" by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King

Comic Book that I read:

Green Lantern Corps was really good this week

Walk that I took:

At lunch today I walked around the loop. It was beautiful out, and I'm happy to report that women seem to be wearing skirts again

Sports moment I watched:

The Blackhawks scored an amazing goal last night 12 seconds into overtime in their first playoff game against the Calgary Flames

Time I randomly found myself thinking that smoking maybe isn't so bad after all:

Watching Mad Men on Wednesday night

Beer I drank:

Miller Lite

Web site I visited:

The Brothers Brick Legos!

Suck it Canadiens

2009-04-16T15:45:00.002-05:00

I hate the Yankees more than any other professional sports team on the planet.

But, I hate the Canadiens the second most.

Tonight, the playoffs start for your Eastern Conference best Boston Bruins against the hated Habitantes.

I want the Bruins to embarrass the Habs tonight. When this 4 to 7 game series is over, I want their to be nothing left of them. I want to cast out all of the old bad memories of "Too Many Men on the Ice" and Ken Dryden and all of the other shit that comes with a B's/Habs playoff series.

Let's Go Bruins!