Please hook me up with one of these.

Erika and I just returned from an exciting weekend in the city of Chicago. We were visiting our dear friends Melanie and Andrew, who are expecting a baby.

In addition to staying up chatting until the wee hours every night and enjoying Melanie's great cooking, we took a day trip to the city for some shopping and sightseeing. While Erika and Melanie visited H & M (a clothing store Erika loves), Andrew and I went to Chicago Comics, the most wonderful store ever. They have an amazingly extensive collection of graphic novels and indie comics. As a general rule, if you can't find it at Chicago Comics, you can't find it anywhere. I bought Chester Brown's Louis Riel. If you are ever in the area and have an interest in comics, I must recommend going.

Andrew and Melanie are movie buffs like us, so last night we went to see Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind at the cheap theater. We all agreed it was excellent.

Today we drove back to Kirksville, dodging storms all the way. Somehow, we managed to spot storms on the right and left of the highway, but stayed dry for most of the trip. We arrived at Kirksville just before a thunderstorm hit. So ended our journey to Chicago.

The votes are in and Quentin Tarantino is our first Chester of the Month. Resevoir Dogs. Pulp Fiction. Jackie Brown. Kill Bill. The guy makes some very violent and very well done films. He also has appeared in several flicks including many of Robert Rodriguez's films and has written films such as True Romance and Natural Born Killers. The guy is probably the ultimate film geek which is why his films appeal to film geeks so much. The man is definitely worthy of the title of Chester. Be sure to nominate your choice for next month's vote.

Hey to all that are interested, I will be off wok all day tommorow and are open to any gunboundedness that is also open. Let me know if you are up for games. As a side note - I hate latin music. Nothing inherently bad in latin music, I just don't like it. And guess what is playing in our apartment - that's right. Anyway, it is all good, Meredith tolerates my talk radio and Jack Johnson.

The more I use Bloglines.com, the more I like it. I made my subscriptions available, so if you want to read them, click here. This link could give you a good feel for what the service is like. I'm also trying out the blogrolling feature over at the Cabin (it's on the left, under my categories). I really like the auto-discovery tools. They're not 100% accurate, but they're very good. If you try it and like it, let me know. If you know of something better, do tell.

I took the geek test and got 31.2% - Total geek. Who can beat that?

via Metafilter

BBC NEWS | England | Devon | Ghostbusters say 'docks haunted'

PETER
For whatever reasons, Ray, call it fate. Call it luck. Call it karma. I believe that everything happens for a reason. I believe that we were destined to get thrown out of this dump.

RAY
For what purpose?

PETER
To go into business for ourselves.

Here's a link I thought Brendoman might like: linux.dell.com.

This site is dedicated to providing any information that may be useful regarding your usage of Linux on your Dell equipment.

Now that you don't have school to worry about, and you can't have much data on that new hard drive yet, isn't it a good time to consider installing Linux on that Dell laptop? This community can help you do it. They've got a blog and resources just for putting Linux on a Dell laptop. You know you want to.

Yes that would be today, saturday. Well for me on the proper coast atleast.

Yesterday I saw The Day After Tomorrow. I enjoyed it. It was really good. Aside from all the political crap in it, the special effects were pretty cool, along with all the cheesy dialog, and almost dieds. So I hope this right here doesn't spoil it for you, but this is the typical American disaster movie. The disaster wins, but there still is a happy ending.

I also saw a mighty wind. That movie is very enjoyable to watch. I kind of like folk music now. I also saw Megiddo on TBN, it was weird. It was about the end times, but I am not so sure what view they tried to fulfill. I think it was Historic Premillenial, but I think that they were trying to make everyone happy, so they really just leaving a lot of the Bible out.

Anyways that is it for me. I don't have much else to do or to talk about.

PEACE IN

Wikis' Winning Ways - TechUpdate - ZDNet

For those of you wondering what a Wiki is, this is a great article that will give you an overview. After you read it, you can check out our (and your) own wiki.

Hopefully you're not using MS Internet Explorer anymore. If this didn't convince you to switch to Firefox or Mozilla, then perhaps this will:

101 Things you can do with Mozilla that you can't do with IE

via linkfilter.net

map of springfield

Someone with a ton of time on their hands managed to complete what many thought was an impossible task. Check it out.

I got some reports from people who were unable to comment on the brendoman.com blogs because of MT's comment throttling feature. I disabled it, so things should work fine now.

My favorite band, They Might Be Giants, will be playing the Blue Note in Columbia on July 13. Email me if you want to go, too. I'm excited because I've never seen a proper TMBG show. I did see them live during my freshman year of college, but they weren't the headliners. They played at the very end of the night, after the Urge and they didn't get a very long set. It was funny to watch people leaving the stage area after the Urge finished and the geeks just started coming out of the shadows and up to the front. Big Wreck also played at that concert, and I thought they were pretty cool.

Kevin went off today after Moore made this comment:

"(The mainstream media have said), 'Oh, this is a Michael Moore-Harvey Weinstein publicity stunt. They're real good at generating publicity.' Really? Yeah, like when this happened with 'Kids' and 'Dogma,' all that publicity, all the controversy really made the box office soar for those two films, didn't it? They both died."

Here's a bit of what Kevin had to say in response:

Excellent point, Mike. It's not fair to let the readers believe Lying Liars When They Lie. So with that record-straightening spirit in mind...

"Dogma" (budget $10 million; box office gross: $30,652,890.00) did not "die" at the box office.

"Canadian Bacon" (budget: $11 million; box office gross: $163,971.00)? THAT "died" at the box office.

He also says some other stuff, but in the end says he still respects Moore as a filmmaker. I think in the era of "blockbusters" most people don't realize that a lot of those movies don't even make their money back. A lot of the low budget movies, even though they don't make nearly as much money as the "blockbusters", make a ton of profit. Also, these movies are released on a fraction of the screens that the larger films are released on.

Wired News: A Feel-Good Disaster Movie

I want to see The Day After Tomorrow, despite some of the poor reviews. It's a popcorn movie. Also, Jake Gyllenhaal is in it. Anyway, I think I'm going to see Shrek 2 first. I'm going this afternoon.

Right now I am watching some weird John Wayne movie on AMC where he is supposed to be Mongolian. I watched Return of the King last night. That movie rocks even on a TV. Of all the special features on the disc, I enjoyed the National Geographic documentary the best. It compared figures and events in history to figures and events in LOTR.

I just got an e-mail saying my Punky Brewster Season 1 set is on the way, so I am one happy guy right now. It'll be interesting to see how the show has held up over time. I can't even explain how much I loved this show when I was a kid. It was the first non-cartoon I watched on a regular basis. My dad taught me how to tell time by showing me when Punky Brewster was on.

Okay, so the way they make John Wayne look Mongolian is by giving him a weird mustache and dying his hair black. It's pretty funny.

I was wondering why I was getting tons of e-mails and comments about the Batman Begins script. This is why. We rule.

1. Wal-mart was named for...
Today I was talking to Danny's mom, getting ready to go to this beloved store when, all of a sudden, it hit me. Sam Walton began Wal-Mart, hence the name. I'm so stupid.

2. 'Windshield factor'
Until my senior year of high school, every time I heard the weatherman speak of the 'wind chill factor' on the local news, I thought they were talking about the temperature of your car's windshield. Apparently, it has less to do with glass that you never touch in the winter and more to do with the wind as it blasts your face.

3. Premium Night
Sodexho, Truman's food service provider, used to serve us 'steak' and baked potatoes (and sometimes unidentifiable seafood) in the dorm cafeteria on what I thought was a random schedule. Hence, each time I would stumble upon a Premium Night menu, I was pleasantly surprised. The last week of my dorm life, I realized that Premium Night took place on the first Tuesday of every month.

4. 'Back burner'
As a communication major and English minor, I really should think about the origin of words. But, alas, I am just not curious. Honestly, why didn't I figure this one out earlier?

5. Hastings jingle
The purveyor of all things media used to run commercials touting it was "your entertainment superstore". Unfortunately, I was once singing along to a jingle and couldn't hide my lack of understanding: "Hastings-You really tamed this superstar." Before you mock, remember, it's not the only commercial that doesn't make sense.

Ïf you were really brave, you would tell me your own tales of stupidity.

Also, check out this guy's list of mispronounced words.

Today I called SBC and found out how to configure my router to work with the DSL modem. So now I've got internet on my laptop and on my PC in the basement. Hoorah.

I've tried a ton of rss reading apps and until now they've all had one or more of these problems:

1. Doesn't remember what I've read.

2. Doesn't play nice with Firefox. Tries to open links in IE [shudder] or opens links internally with browser based on IE (hello pop-ups). No quick way to load a link in a new Firefox tab.

3. Doesn't work.

4. Costs money.

5. Not available on Windows and Linux.

6. No auto-discovery.

But today I was looking for new prospects and I saw a link for Bloglines. I've tried NewsIsFree.com and I wasn't impressed, but I decided to give Bloglines a try. So far I really like it. It doesn't have any of the problems listed above. It's web-based so you can use it on any platform. It's layed out really well and it uses JavaScript commands (like Gmail) so you're not constantly reloading the page (like Hotmail). It's free and there are no ads that I know of. The best part is that you can download a tiny little extension for Mozilla / Firefox called Mozilla Toolkit. It puts a small icon in your browser that notifies you when a feed has been updated. It also lets you choose how to load links ('new tab' is an option) and it gives you some right click options for subscribing to feeds (including auto-discovery).

If you haven't found a feed reader that you like or you read blogs from a couple of different computers, Bloglines is worth a try. If you need some feeds to get started, here are the feeds to most of the blogs at Brendoman.com. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that you can import and export lists of subscriptions (*.opml).

I got a Gmail account, thanks to Blogger. brendoman AT gmail.com is mine! I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it, but it's cool to have 1 GB of storage space on the net that I can send stuff to. I don't have invites yet, but I've already promised a couple people so there is already a list.

I just got an e-mail from Ticketmaster saying that They Might Be Giants are playing at The Blue Note on June 13th. I'm going to be in California. So that's a slight bummer.

Update: I'm dumb. I checked the Blue Note website and it's on July 13th, which means I can go. Woo! We should make this a group outing!

From the funny old booklet department: How To Make Friends by Telephone

I just finished reading these remarks by Al Gore about Bush's international policy. I was very surprised to see such bold and impassioned remarks from someone who, four years ago, seemed so lackluster and bland. I can't help but wonder if, now that he is not campaigning for president, Gore feels free to express his true views and opinions. Had I seen this side of him four years ago, I would have been much more enthusiastic about supporting him. I wish that politicians had the boldness to say such things during elections. Instead, candidates of both major political parties fight for control of the middle, uncontroversial position, so that they can pursue their own agenda once elected.

Please remove your links to my blog.

I think it's too easy for university people to follow a trail to my blog, and I'd like to feel free to blog saying anything I'd like.

Oh man it was a long weekend! But a fun one. Saturday was International Meat Day, which I know you are all aware of. Ric and I had to go to a graduation party in Laguna Beach. Of course, we were given skimpy directions and ended up in a beautiful neighborhood that wasn't anywhere near where we were supposed to be. We called up and said we were looking for Las Brisas, and the wife says, "Oh! That's a restauraunt! That's my fault, sorry!" So, a Thomas Guide search later, we were going to park and found that we needed to pay the meter with ONLY quarters, and had to circle back to the nearest fast food place to get some change. Thus, my first meal on IMD was: popcorn chicken from KFC. Decent taste, nothing special. We eventually got to the party and they were offering a vast selection of sausage, sausage, or sausage - all of which had funky flavoring. I wouldn't touch them.

Later that night we got together with Gron and Justin and Michelle for dinner at Ruby's. Boy did that food bite. Greasy as heck. Anyway, the highlight of that night was when we realized Albers was there with his family, only a couple of tables away. Once we clued in Justin and Michelle as to who he was, they started having loud conversation about how having an abortion was the best choice they ever made. Everyone cursed up a storm, and Albers definitely noticed. Ha ha ha. There was also a creepy couple who watched us from across the way because they couldn't make decent conversation with each other.

Later that night we watched the Book of Mormon movie while drinking. It was so bad I just fell asleep.

Sunday we had a surprise birthday party for Jon and Wes. I extended my meat day to a meat weekend because the food was so bad on Saturday, and let myself have some tasty grilled chicken. We had a fun time with the games, including "Pin the Lei on the Pinup Girl" and a watergun competition for the guys. Good times, good times. You can see the pictures HERE.

(This is the article I wrote for the June church newsletter.)

On my recent vacation I stopped by the Truman State University campus and visited some teachers and people I used to work with. One of them, a secretary who didn't know me well, but knew I was a minister, asked me this: "What do you think about them taking God out of everything? No prayer in schools . . . what's the world coming to?" I'm not sure if she honestly wanted to know what I thought, but I didn't tell her. We had one more stop to make, we were running behind already, and I wasn't about to try and start a discussion then and there. But it is something I've been thinking about, and my thoughts may surprise you.

Read more »

I'm posting this on my Linux computer, using w.bloggar. No, I didn't port it over, but I did get TightVNC to control my computer at work (which wasn't too easy since I have firewalls at each end). So now I can fix work computers while I sit at home in my pajamas eating fistfulls of Cheetos.

Marilyn, since I think you are the only person who knows about this journal, I am updating this especially for you! It was great to see you at the wedding. So, my topic for today is about traveling. This seems to be the great summer of travel for Lucas and me. In all, we have 3 weddings, 1 family reunion, 1 fourth of july celebration, 1 visit to fayette, 1 weekend of graduations, 1 trip to North Carolina, and Lucas has a trip to St. Louis for Nathan's bachelor party. I do like traveling, so this is good news for me! However, it is bad news on the job search front. I had an interview today at Hy-Vee (weee, exciting!), but am not hopeful about it because I told him I couldn't work any weekends until the end of July. He pretty much said he couldn't hire anyone who can't work weekends. Which, actually, is fine with me, because the position available was in the meat department, and I wasn't really that excited about looking at raw meat all day. Or for any length of time, really.


So, the job search continues...

I just found this wonderful website: FactCheck.org. It appears to be a nonpartisan site that checks out the claims made by our nation's leaders. Right now, the site seems to be devoted mostly to debunking or verifying claims made in Bush and Kerry's political ads. This site is a refreshing voice of reason in a time of distortion and manipulation. I particularly recommend the article that analyzes an ad that brags about Bush's record on education. It debunks claims about Bush's success with the educational system of Texas, as well as highlighting the major criticisms of No Child Left Behind.

Also, if you are of the Conservative persuasion, there are some criticisms of anti-Bush ads, as well.

I just realized I forgot to post about this one. Shrek 2 was: not as funny as the first, but funnier than most comedies out there. I prefer the humor here to that of animated features such as finding nemo. Shrek 2 was full of energy, jokes, color, and fun. I think where it wasn't as fun was just that it lacked real adventure, like the first. But it was a fun time on a bad day for me, and a good show for people of all ages. I swear, the sad look on the cat was hilarious. I get that look from people who want something in my office all the time.

So I've made going to the library to surf the Net and check e-mail part of my daily routine. I've come to two conclusions though about using the internet at the library.

1. Library computers suck. They also use terrible resolutions that you can't change.
2. Internet Explorer sucks. Gabe was telling me about an episode of The Screensavers that Wil Wheaton was on and someone called in about an Internet Explorer problem. Wil replied, "Go to the address bar in Internet Explorer, type in www.mozilla.org....." I thought that was pretty freaking funny.

So anyway, I spent like 2 hours on the phone with Dell tech support last night. My hard drive is shot. The data is lost. They are sending me a new one though. I should have it on Friday. I'm never buying a Dell again.

Caught this on Sarah's Downloads over at Tech TV:

YahooPOPs is hotmail popper for yahoo. It enables you to use your yahoo mail account with your e-mail client. No more going through the browser to look at your yahoo mail.

I don't use yahoo mail, but my parents do and I have been trying to get them to switch to a e-mail client for years. I hope this works well. I will be testing it this week.

My confession is that...I am playing basketball. Yes I know. I dislocated my shoulder back in the day, and the doctor told me not to play ball until it had surgery on it, but I did. And dang it I feel good. And isn't that all that matters. Ok maybe not.

Anyways, my internship has kept me plenty busy. I work from 8:30 to 5 and then I also have meetings and such that keeps me busy outside of work hours. So yes, I am working and I am glad that I have this internship. Hooray.

Anyways I still hate the lakers, and a lot of other people do as well

I finished my article about church and state / theocracy. I'll post it here as soon as I can, but in the meantime, check this out:

Would you like to live in a Christian nation with government similar to the early United States? Well, here’s your chance!

ChristianExodus.org. Apparently a group of people are planning on moving en masse to a single state for the purpose of withdrawing from the US. The candidate states are Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina.

I think this is a little scary. What do you think?

(via metafilter)

Christopher Nolan, the director of Memento and Insomnia, is currently making a new Batman movie, which promises to be darker and more true to the Batman comic books than the last two movies (which had more to do with the 60s Batman TV show than with the comic books). The official movie site has posted some pictures.


The new Batmobile:



Christian Bale as Batman:

Okay, so my mom told me she had an extra DSL modem. She didn't. So today when she got her new work computer I had to move the DSL modem back upstairs. She won't let me try and get the router working again. So I'm reduced to using library internet on a piece of crap computer. This one is a Dell Optiplex GX110. Whoah mama...

Anyway, I'm slightly perturbed that my ROTK DVD has not arrived yet since I pre-ordered it like 3 weeks ago. Hopefully it will come in today's mail. I'm buying my tickets today for my trip. Not much else is going on.

Like Gore in 2000, Kerry's trivial inconsistencies and missteps are inflated, while Bush's lies continue to be ignored. From FAIR:

"In 2000, journalists seemed to be tailoring their coverage to a well-defined theme: "The story line is Bush isn't smart enough and Gore isn't straight enough," explained pundit Cokie Roberts (Washington Post, 10/15/00). The coverage so far in 2004 suggests that Kerry is now getting the Gore treatment (Daily Howler, 5/4/04)."

Personally, I would like to see an open, honest engagement of the real issues facing our nation. This constant bickering over character issues and trivialities distracts from the issues that truly matter. Unfortunately, this is simply the reality of election-year politics, when the objective is to sell personality, not policy.

Recently I started picking up the pace on my Linux hobby. Originally I hoped that I would spend a few weeks learning the ropes and then I would be able to recommend Linux to my friends as a better, cheaper alternative to Windows (like I already do for Firefox). As it turns out, it really is hard to learn.

Read more »

I was surfing through the archives and found this page. It made me laugh.

Our fundraiser is going really well! We're up to $66.76 in the account, which is $70 in donations minus the Paypal fees. I haven't gotten any info about the discount yet so I don't know if we have enough or not. I think we are pretty close though.

Today's Penny Arcade Comic is about Troy. I really liked the movie, but the same thoughts about Legolas and the Hulk went through my head while I was watching it. Yeah, I'm a geek.

Speaking of geek, I realized today that I am currently the total geek stereotype right now. I'm posting this from a computer in my mother's basement and the highlight of my week is going to be the release of the ROTK DVD tomorrow.

Geek and proud, baby.

Okay, I think I have my travel plans figured out for next month. Once I have my flights booked I will be e-mailing my itineraries to people who need to know.

June 8th: Fly into LAX
June 12th: Drive with friends to San Diego
June 16th: Take train back up to Fullerton
June 18th: Birthday
June 19th: Benefit Concert, details still being worked out
June 22nd: Fly to Phoenix
June 29th: Fly back home

So there it is. I was going to stay in L.A. for the 4th and head up north to visit my brother, but I don't think I can afford to stay that long and my brother is super busy. I'm excited for the trip though!

Our dogs are turning out to be quite the cold-blooded killers. Not satisfied with devouring four baby birds, they managed to catch and kill a rabbit that had the misfortune of becoming trapped in our fenced-in yard. It was late at night, and we had just let the dogs out in the yard one last time before going to bed. We investigated a terrible screeching that we heard from inside the house, and found the dogs standing over the body of the poor creature. So, at 11:30 pm, we ended up having to dispose of a dead rabbit and give the dogs a shower on the deck (to wash the blood off). I don't know how our innocent little puppies became such ferocious predators.

I would put a direct link to the TMBG video, but it just opens up in the main menu. Not much else is going on with me. This is probably the highlight of my day. I'm working on finalizing my travel plans for next month.

My sister sent me this Commentary.

I find it perfectly appropriate that there is now a computer program to scientifically evaluate the five-paragraph essay. After all, that form of writing has more to do with following a predetermined pattern than it does with effective communication. I am reminded of someone (whose name I can't recall) who told about a teacher who was simply ecstatic because, after 20 years of teaching the five-paragraph essay, had actually found an example of one written by a professional in the real world. That's one in twenty years of teaching.

In the fall I was observing an area English teacher for a couple of months, and she had me going through some essays written by students. She had already put grades on them. I was surprised at how little the grades on the essays had to do with their quality. Most of them had very poor grades. When I saw one that earned an A, I decided to read it so I could determine what the essays were being evaluated on. The student followed the five-paragraph form to the letter ("say what you're going to say, say it, then say what you said"). The essay was simple, very repetitive, and said very little. This was the A essay. As I read the rest of the essays, I found one that was well-written, demonstrated a clear understanding of the material, and effectively expressed the author's ideas (Yes, this student had the nerve to place more than just one single idea in an essay!). It pained me to see that this essay, which failed to follow the five-paragraph format, earned a C.

Since Kristen asked:

We "met" this morning when my supervisor basically started addressing me without letting the other ladies know what was going on. She started by asking how I could've handled it better, and I honestly didn't know. I never went through training for this crap. I said that I'd been treated badly by the lady every time she came in, and my supervisor was still trying to point out my mistakes (while admitting that she hadn't even listened to the entire conversation - yeah, that makes sense!). So finally, the other two caught on to what we were talking about and suggested ways to approach evil students, and we all agreed to back each other up when a "situation" arises, and if anyone feels incredibly uncomfortable, they can pass the situation on to someone else and leave the room to calm down. We also want to document these kinds of occurrences, so I'll probably adapt my summary I posted here for a more G-rated audience and hand it in.

Overall, it was okay, but in the next week or so, I still want to meet with both supervisors to discuss other issues that have left me hating the thought of going to work lately. I did tell you all that I am not supposed to play WebBoggle at my computer even during breaks, didn't I? Or that when a supervisor (who is unobservant and can't see that you've got TEN MILLION things to do) asks me to do a frivolous errand, I should always find a way to get it done (this was passed to me as "advice from an older working lady to a younger working lady" when for the first time ever working here, I said, "I don't think I have enough time"). Or that it's okay for everyone to joke around, but whenever my supervisor (the biggest joker) is suddenly in a sensitive mood and wants to be treated as a supervisor, it's suddenly disrespectful???

i guess i still hold resentment because he was ingraffia's favorite.

How utterly evil!

Click here

or maybe here

After a brief stay in Macon, MO, we drove up to Kirksville to see Erica and Kyle, some friends from college. We dropped by a Campus Christian Fellowship service and saw some people we hadn't seen in 2 years. We also found a babysitter so we could go out to dinner with Kyle and Erica at Il Spazio. We all got fire-roasted pizzas. The strangest one on the menu was the Spam and Dorito pizza. We decided to split one to see if it was any good. We thought that even if it wasn't it would give us a good story to tell. Here it is:

I thought it was good, but I think I was the only one. Here's a picture of Sara and Erica:

But my favorite part of our stay in Kirksville was helping Kyle set up his new blog. He has some very interesting and thoughtful posts, and he's got some good ideas about using blogging as a tool in a high school English class.

If we start getting some referals from Wikipedia, this might be why. I made an edit to include brendoman.com as an example blog. Sure, anyone could do it, and maybe it's just shameless self-promotion, but then again, we are a good example a one of wikipedia's categories: a collaborative blog.

So here's what has been going on with me:

Friday: Saw Mean Girls with Paul, J.D., and some kids from J.D.'s church. I was surprised at how good this movie was. Tina Fey did a great job on the script. It was pretty honest, had a good message, and many funny moments.

Saturday: Watched some Freaks and Geeks episodes with the commentaries on. John Daly, who played Sam, is all grown up. It's funny to hear his post-puberty voice. Somehow the hard drive on my laptop crashed and I get the blue screen of death every time I start my computer. I then drove to St. Louis to pick up my mom at the airport. Did I mention I've lost roughly 8 pounds on the South Beach diet? My mom's plane was 2 hours late. Got home at 1 AM.

Today: Slept in. Had a really good breakfast with my mom in Quincy. Went grocery shopping. Watched 80's movie marathon on AMC. Lucas, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles. I'm in heaven. My mom found an extra DSL modem she somehow had. Hooked up the second modem to my PC downstairs. And here we are......

Erika and I watched the movie version of A Chorus Line last night. Big mistake. Erika had seen the musical performed live once before, and loved it, so she's been wanting to watch the movie together. What we didn't know was that when it was made into a movie, somebody thought it would be a good idea to add additional characters and subplots, alter the story, and change the music so it has more of an 80s rock feel to it. The result was a truly awful movie.

We looked up A Chorus Line on The Internet Movie Database and found comments from people with experiences similar to ours (my favorite comment on there was "One Singular Disaster"). We learned two valuable lessons from this experience:

1) Just because a musical or play is good, that doesn't mean its movie adaptation is.
2) Always check reviews before ever watching a movie neither of us has seen before.

Yes, this is real. You can buy it here.

via Ship of Fools

Here is a film I am rather excited about. It is written by Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite comic book writers, and directed by Dave McKean. For those who don't know, McKean is arguably the most creative and original artist working in comic books today (although he hasn't done much with comic books lately). You can see examples of his art here. He is a painter, photographer, musician, and now, film director.

I am very interested to see how this film turns out. Neil Gaiman has experience with screenwriting, so I have no doubt the story will be good. I'm very curious to see what McKean is like as a film director. He has directed a couple of short films, but this is his first full-length feature. It's a low-budget film that relies heavily on computer editing and effects, which sounds like it could be either good or bad. I have confidence in McKean's photographic abilities, though, and can't wait to see the result.

I've been wanting to do this for a while, so last night I finally got a netcam set up and called into The Screen Savers with a question. The show is usually live, but yesterday they played an old episode on TV and recorded one that will air on June 11. So be sure to tune in. By then it will be called G4TechTV. My question is on about 45 minutes into the show. I'll post again soon to tell more about the process and show a picture of my netcam setup. And after the episode airs I'll upload a video of my segment. Not only did I get to have my face on TV and get my question answered by Patrick and Kevin, they're also sending me a free t-shirt for calling on a netcam.

I've been wanting to do this for a while, so last night I finally got a netcam set up and called into The Screen Savers with a question. The show is usually live, but yesterday they played an old episode on TV and recorded one that will air on June 11. So be sure to tune in. By then it will be called G4TechTV. My question is on about 45 minutes into the show. I'll post again soon to tell more about the process and show a picture of my netcam setup. And after the episode airs I'll upload a video of my segment. Not only did I get to have my face on TV and get my question answered by Patrick and Kevin, they're also sending me a free t-shirt for calling on a netcam.

Andy Kaufman Returns

Wow, this is amazing! Andy Kaufman has returned from the dead and he is spamming my comments. Let's see what Snopes has to say about this. If Andy Kaufman were to come back, it would not be with some lame press release and blog. Come on people.....

Defamer: George Lucas Takes Time From Ruining Star Wars To Mess With His First Movie

Okay, not only is he jacking around with the Trilogy,