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...
Karl's Back So, Karl Rove's speech and poll-boost oppotunity for Bush came off just as this White House Briefing column by Dan Froomkin predicted some nine hours earlier. (Thanks to Alibi for pointing this one out.) I'm almost afraid to look for any post-speech polls, especially as too many people will get the message of the speech filtered through his various spin-monkeys. Over a week old, the Eight Big Lies About Katrina is still good rain gear to put on before wading into the GOP bullshitstorm. So, el Shrub appears tieless and open-collared, to perpetuate the myth that he's actually had to work, against a carefully-chosen backdrop - while being carefully protected from any reporters' questions - to pretend he was outraged and to pledge more money (be it more fantasy, deficit-spending cash or money taken from other public programs) in a short-term attempt to boost his flagging poll numbers and a long-term one for he and his party to be able to point to a rebuil
What Would He Do? While listening again to last week's This American Life episode (which I mentioned on Sunday - and I again suggest you give a listen to, especially that it's now available for free listening using Real Player) I was reminded of another aspect of the program I'd wanted to discuss. In one section, host Ira Glass plays a clip from Bill O'Reilly , where O'Reilly starts off by saying something I'd found myself saying late last week, that it wasn't so much a racial matter as one of class . That it was the poor who were left behind, powerless to help themselves. O'Reilly then takes the following lesson from it: "If you're poor, you're powerless. Not only in America but everywhere on Earth. If you don't have enough money to protect yourself from danger, danger's gonna find you. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina should be taught in every American school. If you don't become educated, it you don't develop a
Another Sunday A short walk up the hill this morning to get some fresh bagels, orange and concord grape juice, after which I roused the family to the smell of bacon and eggs. A pleasant start to a sunny Sunday which will, as always, disappear too quickly. I gave some thought to writing something about 9/11 on yet another anniversary, but aside from continuing to be appalled by how it's been exploited almost daily to keep this administration and its policies afloat I have nothing to say. Similarly, while were I sitting down with any of you and having a conversation I'd likely roll on about the lessons of hurricane Katrina, the matter still sickens me. Part of my Sunday morning routine is to listen to NPR programming on WHYY . When it hits noon, we get our first taste of the week's episode of This American Life (it's repeated here Wednesday night at 10), which the people of Chicago get on Friday night. I almost always enjoy this show from start to finish, cons
Odds & Ends I was up far too late into this morning, puttering around on items online and off, and as a consequence despite being the first one up today it was at noon, give or take half a minute. A few items were adjusted on here, including replacing the page I had going on Geocities for my clix trades (Wants and Haves) with a piece on this blog . (I slipped it in as a retcon move, back on September 7th.) It'll be much more accessible to me and easier to edit. That's where the link over on the right now goes. It's just scratching the surface, but it's accurate as far as my Icons extras and wants are, along with what I still want for Fantastic Forces , some of the extras I have for that set, and most of the remaining uniques and LEs I have after the eBay sales and trades. I also wanted to put a line or other separator between posts, as it was looking claustrophobic on successive posts where I wasn't using an image in the top portion of the post. I started wit
Sometimes I suppose one has to laugh "25 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina And Its Aftermath" Most of these I'd heard over the course of the past week, but collecting them creates a minor monument to thoughtlessness, callous, politically defensive spin and sheer ignorance bordering on stupidity. In 2006, here in Pennsylvania, we'll do our part to try to take Senator Rick Santorum (who provided quote #9) out of the political mix.
A Touch of Gray Wizkids has let us see the mail-away Armor Wars LE Clix brick buyers will be able to send for, based on the first appearance of Iron Man . Not a bad looking piece, though a little less bulky in the torso than I'd expected -- but while I read all of the Don Heck issues in Tales of Suspense , too, I tend to more fondly remember the Jack Kirby rendition of Iron Man from the first few issues of The Avengers when I think of early Iron Man. For this earliest version of the character I think that all in all they've done a nice job. If they buy a brick of boosters (12 boosters, shrinkwrapped) and send a store recipt for them in with the coupon, a check or money order for shipping & handling ($2 down here in the states)... in the end the press release is mainly there to show us the sculpt, assure us it will never, ever be distributed via a different program (ironically, this in the same press release that reminds us we'll also be able to buy the 2005 convention
Just in case you weren't sure... It'll be another record proft quarter for ExxonMobil . Oil companies are surely getting a huge return on their investment in this administration. What does it take to get people angry, angry enough to see through the lies and misdirection and vote purveyors of corporate welfare out of office? Angry enough to not give them any peace in the meantime? Jacques Rousseau, energy analyst at investment bank FBR, yesterday explained that most of the extra money that consumers are paying for gasoline is going straight through to the big companies' bottom line. The reason? Prices are soaring because of perceived shortages while the cost of producing the gasoline is little changed. It's a continuing cash-grab as they continue to rake in huge profits and then demand additional funds if they're to be expected to reinvest in exploratory drilling and improvements in infrastructure. These people are reaping outrageous sums of money, and with
Spider-man 3 succumbing to Batman/Superman syndrome? While I've yet to see this confirmed, FreezeDriedMovies is announcing three villains in for the next movie. We knew that James Franco, playing Harry Osborne, was going to be following in his father's footsteps and would be on the vengeance trail against Peter Parker/Spider-man. Moreover, given the personalities and the father/son dynamic in play most of us suspected Harry would change his father's costume and become Hobgoblin rather than try to become his father; his lack of self esteem, if nothing else, would have prevented that. Now we find out that Topher ( That 70s Show ) Grace is reportedly bulking up to be Venom, and Thomas Haden Church is set to be Sandman, both to debut in Spider-man 3 . I suppose I should say some versions of the characters, as odds are one or both will end up being catspaws that Harry's used Oscorp's facilities to bankroll. It's the tidiest way to cram three villains - two of who
New Vision? The details and card artwork for a Feat from November's Armor Wars Heroclix expansion's been revealed... and the artwork on this Nanobots card shows what very much appears to be The Vision. Currently there is still a version of The Vision in the game, as it first appeared in Infinity Challenge it was reprinted (along with the rest of that set's uniques) in Universe . The piece was long left to collect dust due to the lack of move & attack powers and the Damage maxing out at 2. His stats remain wonderfully steady, though. With the addition of Legacy 's Armor Piercing and the Thunderbolts replacement TA card that came in Fantastic Forces , enabling him (as an Avenger) to have a different team ability -- Batman's built in Stealth TA is terrific for this in most cases, protecting him from most ranged attacks) he's a reliable damage-dealer. The current version meets the criteria for this card, and as it's still legal that may be all ther
Curious Rentals From the people who brought you (though you didn't know it) RentMySon , it's RentMyDaughter . Surprisingly, it appears to be legitimate, though the testimonials are a bit thin and I would hardly be amazed to find it's just a well-done gag. I've barely looked over their material. We have two people talking it up for different reasons. One because he rented a child so he could pass her off as his niece and play up the prospective family man role in front of a co-worker, which he claims has resulted in them getting engaged -- I guess they're going to elope and he's hoping to avoid family reunions for the rest of his life. Another claims to have essentially rented an escort for his son for a school dance, which is both sad and likely the plot seed for an upcoming motion picture. I don't know, and I don't believe I really care enough to want to find out if I'm just an easily-gulled rube. It isn't as if I'm looking to use the
Marvel Moguls A piece in Forbes reminded me of something I'd read in a shareholders report (something I happened upon -- I don't own any of those shares) from Marvel concerning their setting up financing for a slate of self-produced films. The characters named as projects are: Captain America, The Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack, and Shang-Chi. Eh. While The Incredibles demonstrated that one can pull off a superhero team mix without bogging down into too much backstory because it's okay to presume the audience has a couple functioning brain cells. Can we expect intelligence to strike twice? Not all of the projects are of immediate interest to me -- fewer once I consider what's likely to happen to them in the hands of some self-styled "visionary" or producer's nephew. It's difficult for me to imagine myself settling in to watch a Power Pack movie.., but who knows? It really isn't
Icons: (A modest) First Strike I've heard it from retailers and at least one wholesaler since the word came down last week: 20%. That's the percentage of a store or vendor's total order they'll have received today from Wizkids of the new Icons set and the related starter sets . That being the situation, a local store ( Comics & More ) received one case today of their five case order, and had to ration the sales. Okay, they didn't have to, but it's a hopping clix venue (almost so many people that they'd have to turn some players away, and we definitely take over the place for a few hours on Monday nights) and to sell more than two boosters to a single person would be to leave some loyal customers out in the cold for a while. So, I went down there on my lunch today and bought a starter and a mere two boosters. Here's what I pulled: Rookie : Bizarro & Superman Experienced : Changeling (2!), Scarecrow, & Wonder Woman Veteran : Cheetah & Dar
Heroclix Trade List (Still extremely incomplete - I have many hundreds of extra clix - updated 10/9/06 ) Working this list into a blog page is far far easier for me to update and maintain than the old Geocities page was -- so here it is. If all's gone well this will be permalinked in my sidebar menu. If you want to take a shot at a trade, I'm game. (Why else would I be doing this?) Check the lists and see if we can make a deal. The most recently released set or two should be at the top, as they're going to naturally be the sets of most immediate interest. As I start to include older sets (mostly extras available for trade) I'll put those sets in alphabetical order. Sinister : Available for Trade : Swordsman R2 E1 V2 Hydro Man R4 E3 V2 Paste Pot Pete/Trapster R2 E2 V2 Mockingbird R2 E2 V2 Jewel/Jessica Jones E2 E1 V2 Beetle R2 E2 V1 Wizard R2 E3 V1 Electro R2 E2 V1 Fixer/Techno/Fixer R1 E1 V1 Jack O'Lantern R2 E1 V1 Sprite/Shadowcat R1 E1 MACH-1/MACH-3/MACH-4 R2 Ni
Maynard G. completes Krebs cycle... Bob Denver's died. I went with the Gilligan shot up front, but I couldn't resist drawing on his pre-castaway role as beatnik Maynard G. Krebs and a loose, technically inapplicable pun from bio classes long gone. He might still be alive if they'd just let the Professor operate.