Sunday Reshuffled Hmm. Plenty to do today -- far more than I'm going to get to, especially with at the speed I'm moving. Checking on my schedule (after answering an email from a friend who... by now is on his way to just such an event) I realized a Heroclix Icons marquee I'd signed up for that I thought was for today isn't until Wednesday night. The one for Monday night's right where I expected, so that's still in place for after work. So! That frees up a roughly three hour chunk of my Sunday evening. So long as I don't blow it watching television I should be moderately happy. Aside from meal prep and a little shopping, we have some items to pick up for Travis for school (some special clothing and a mouth guard for a self defense course that's part of the program), getting Nick in for a haircut that's loooong overdue, he doesn't want but must have, and there's no shortage of other items for me to get to. My wife's been in a bad way much...
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Geek Wars in Spaaaaaaaace! Okay, that's not entirely appropriate considering that most of the selections involve stories that never leave Earth's atmosphere, but I suspect either brain damage or an amazingly tight deadline was behind what Boston.com's entertainment staff cooked up as their Top 50 Science Fiction Shows of All Time . They appear to be approaching it in a hierarchical structure, but that only makes the choices and arrangements all the more baffling. The order seems almost random, but they repeatedly make a point of the numbering. The sound of the barrel's bottom not only being scraped but pierced is heard several times. Their definition of "science fiction" is somewhat elastic, too, as can be seen by the inclusion of items like The Hitchhiker (at #20, no less!), and Xena (at #12!), which makes the inclusion of Batman seem reasonable. They were obviously trying for as eclectic a mix as they could, which led them to include Tales From the Crypt ...
Stay tuned! So, how many of you have been marginally entertained by the way both the news media and government authorities have refused to let up on the mostly non-event that was Hurricane Rita? Oh, I know, I know, there's been some damage in Texas and western Louisiana, and New Orleans is definitely taking another soaking hit from the storm surge, and the storm could dump a couple feet of rain on large areas, but in terms of a hurricane most lucked out and it was a pale event compared to what was predicted in the Katrina-driven, worst case scenarios. The bits and pieces I was exposed to on Saturday looked as if the remote crews were trying to stake out the part of the street where the most water was standing for the reporter to stand in, and the angle that showed the most fallen tree limbs and wind-blown debris. There was the desperate sense that they were ratings-driven to justify their being there -- understandably enough. I hadn't mentioned it here, but in casual conversa...
Another reason to kill all the lawyers Not to lay it all on the legal profession, of course, as it takes clients/plaintiffs, too. In this case, what we have here is on the left, the Jedi Archives from Star Wars Episode II. On the right, we have the Long Room Library at Trinity College, in Dublin, Ireland, constructed in the early 18th century. So far, pretty cool -- that there's a library hall so grand that it would be used as the basis for something in a modern, mainstream epic, that is. The problem? Word that Trinity College authorities have instructed their legal advisors to look into the case. Hey, I'd consider this to be a potentially threatening move, too, so I'm not surprised that spokespeople for Lucas denied any connection as a matter of reflex. They can always "discover" otherwise upon doing research, but the moment someone mentions "legal advisors" and "case", the shields have to go up. The piece, from an online irish architectu...
Armor Wars - second look through a fan's eyes If you're not into the comics the clix are based on don't bother with the rest of the post. I'd given the set a second look based on character selection, responding to a thread over on HC Realms , which is one of those relaxing comics nerd activities that made for some pleasant unwinding time while listening to a good mix of music. As I'd thrown it together for there, I thought I'd post it here, too, since this is my space. As more details are revealed in the set it'll be interesting (to me) to revisit this and see how the numbers shift. Armor Wars - based as best I can solely on character selection and what we've seen of the sculpts. 1-5 ranking, Least to Most appeal: * Iron Man - 5 - We needed a new version, even if I’m not thrilled with E not being Avengers TAed. I have a feeling I'll be flying I.M. over an E War Machine base from time to time. * Titanium Man - 4 - He lost a point for not being the...
Summer Departs, Autumn Leaves Summer's gone, and while it's still in the mid to upper 80s here in Southeastern PA it's still - nominally at least - into one of my favorite times of the year. I'm looking forward to chilly mornings and evenings, perfect for long walks (when the time can be spared for them), as we move through the color displays of the leaves and on towards Winter, each step crunching the fallen leaves on the path.
Armor Wars: The Sculpts (and most of the set) Revealed! Set for release November 7th, the next Marvel Heroclix set - Armor Wars - still has six of the eight official sneak peeks yet to go. Still, the set - at least the sculpts - stood revealed at the recently-concluded Diamond Retailer's Conference, and many fuzzy photos were taken. Please, don't blame me for the quality of the shots. These mock-ups were hastily pulled together for the show, as can be seen by not only the absence of dials but also of flight stands. There may be other mistakes on the dial faces, but at least this gives us the look of the set. Most of the images here are small ones, but clicking on them will bring you to larger versions. As can be seen in the list above - which lists all but one of the figures (Marrina didn't make it for some reason) along with the bystanders and cards - they once again made a nice mix of it IMHO. Also in my opinion, they made a mistake by pulling a theme name that was also...
Looks like Osama to me This is a cloud formation photographed over Spain according to The Sun . Granted, it could be Jesus, but not the whitebread Jesus of the European and American mainstream. Of course, for all I know it could just be someone's nicely done Photoshop, and even if not it's really, ultimately, just our very human propensity to not only mentally impose patterns on random textures but to put a human face on them.
It's an Arrrrrrrrtform! Thanks mostly to Mark Gibson I be rememberin' that today be Talk Like a Pirate Day! I'd be recommendin' the English to Pirate Translater , but it be worth less'n bilge! Lubber in, lubber out I be sayin'! It war a nice idearr, but I be thinkin' they were full o' grog... or bilge! Aye, I shouldn't be so hard on 'em. Pirates don't be havin' the biggest vocabularies, after all! (Sink me, Begad! They're better off than I initially thought. Thanks again to Mark for pointing out a better Pirate Glossary .) At least pirates'll tell you what they're really up to if they're in character and winning the game. Wouldn't it be refreshing if we could make more people be as direct as a pirate for at least one day? Ah... it wouldn't work. We'd still be gettin the same crap. (I wasn't going to write bilge again.)
Isn't it... comforting to know that anyone can put out an album? Some of it's bad taste, most of it's just poor judgement, lack of presentation skills and/or an absence of charisma. Ladies & Gentlemen, The Museum Is Open! It's The Museum of Bad Album Covers . The Singing Postman looks like a failed Mike Myers character, doesn't he? It's great fun to brows e through, though some of the images are disturb ing. Thanks to Crypt Leak for mentioning this to me in an email, and a tip of the hat to Alibi for adding it to her site yesterday, I see. Oh, just so you know, there really are some Heino fans out there, somewhere. No word is immediately forthcoming as to whether or not Heino's fans outnumber David Hasslehoff's over in der Vaterland. Okay... I can't help but reach for the bottom of the non-sexual pile to end with this one...