Thanks to Danny's help, I added Gravatar support to the comments. All you have to do to have your own avatar show up is sign up at Gravatar's site and make sure you use whatever email you used to sign up there to comment here.

It appears that The Dark Knight has taken over the world, having pulled in $158 million for the opening weekend. Dang. In honor of this I made a new poll asking what you think is the best live action Batman movie.

As far as The Dark Knight goes, what is there to say that hasn't been said? I thought it was amazing. For me, it somehow even managed to exceed the insane amount of hype it's been (justly) receiving the past several months. The performances were great. The Joker was absolutely insane. Unlike a lot of people, it seems, I didn't have a problem with Bale's "Batman voice." If you saw the film on a regular screen, do yourself a favor and check it out on IMAX. It's incredible.

For those who are curious, I was pleased to see that the majority of voters enjoyed Indy 4. I'm still surprised at the dogpile that the film has received, especially on the internet. I honestly don't know what people were expecting. Perhaps some things are best left in the past, but I'm still happy we got to see Doctor Jones put on the fedora one more time.

I'm leaving for Comic Con in a day and half. Oh man, I'm pumped.

edit: Per Kyle's suggestion I've added Mask of the Phantasm.

I bought Beck's latest album last week and have been listening to it repeatedly, trying to develop a firm opinion of it. I don't have much time, but I wanted to at least write a few words about what I think.

It's really pretty good. I love the production style that Danger Mouse brought to the record, especially on Chemtrails and Walls. There's enough going on to keep things interesting, but not so much that it's overproduced, leaving a rough, edgy quality to it that I love. A few of the songs on the album are a little forgettable, but the two tracks I mentioned are amazing, and the rest of the album is generally solid as well.

Right now I think I place Modern Guilt at about the same level as Sea Change, which didn't wow me at first, but grew on me over time.

Here, then, is my ranking of Beck's albums in order from greatest to least:

Mellow Gold
One Foot In The Grave
Odelay
Mutations
Midnite Vultures
Sea Change
Modern Guilt
The Information
Guero
Stereopathetic Soulmanure
A Western Harvest Field By Moonlight
Golden Feelings

So, it seems the first big storm of the season is heading towards the Gulf of Mexico. At the moment, it is called Tropical Storm Dolly, but they are saying there's a chance it could be Hurricane Dolly by tomorrow. The path seems to be taking it to southeast Texas, so Houston doesn't seem to be in the main line, but apparently we are still in the "forecast cone," meaning we will likely see heavy rain and/or winds Tuesday and mostly Wednesday. Although we are hoping we don't have the heavy winds, we could really use the rain. Last summer it rained nearly every day for about a month. This summer, our grass is dying because it is so dry. So, we'll see what happens tomorrow!