In the Not-Too-Distant Future

So, tonight's the night. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Super Friends Club (MST3KSFC for short) is hosting their third MST3K Drink & Draw, which is pretty much what it sounds like.

At 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific, you point your Netflix machine here and draw whatever madness pops into your head as you watch the silhouettes of a dude and some robots take a part a truly terrible movie, in this case, 1997's Future War. Then you post it on the Internet. Simple.

Oh, and you're supposed to drink while you do it. I have part of a liter of Hawaiian Punch chilling in the fridge just for such an occasion. My life is like a rap video.

Anyway, so it's on like Donkey Kong tonight. I made a poster for the event based on this "cyborg" from the film:



So yeah, join in! I'll be posting my stuff on Twitter/Facebook, much to the annoyance of the three people who haven't hid my feed yet. Make sure to let me know if you'll be playing along, too. I would love to see your stuff.

If you just want to see what others are drawing and/or drinking, you can follow along on Twitter using this hashtag (or follow MST3KSFC founders Jen and Chris for the hilights) and check the Flickr group pool for goodies.

Anyway, hope to see you there. I'll be in the front row, next to Tom Servo, being a smart-A.

How We Met (The Truly True Story)

Candace recently blogged about our "how we met" story over here. The only problem is that it's totally inaccurate. Like, total lies. The real story is much more epic and has 300% more battles. And a car chase. And I'm pretty sure that I wasn't wearing a Hanson t-shirt when we first met. I'm pretty sure I answered the door shirtless, my pectoral muscles and perfectly-honed six-pack aglisten with perspiration and desire. My body was emanating a musk as intoxicating as it was animal. My flaxen hair hung loose about my shoulders like drapery framing a chiseled face full of ruggedness and handsomeness and ... Oh, wait. That's a passage from that Harlequin Romance novel I was working on. I had to shelve it because I ran out of synonyms for "heaving."

In any case, her story's full of holes, mis-rememberings and some flat-out lies. Allow me to set the record straight.

Our story begins in 1999. As Prince suggested, I was partying like it was 1999. Which it was, so that worked out pretty well. I had just returned from covert operations in Bangladesh and was looking forward to some downtime after thwarting a horrible terrorist operation using only my mind and a sock full of thumbtacks. It was pretty awesome. Especially when I blew that thing up and it was all like "KA-BOOMMMM!!!" And I was like, "Hope your fire insurance is paid up," as I walked away in slow-motion. Here's where that car chase comes in, as well as a pretty sweet musical montage of me sneaking into the Pentagon set to the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog." More stuff blows up while I ride off on a super top-secret experimental hover-bike. In slow-motion. Roll credits.

Anyway, I was back, and single and definitely ready to mingle. And I'm sitting there, chilling, unwinding, y'know and my brother Bryan comes in and says, "You know what you need? You need to go see a movie that will really take a crap on the most beloved sci-fi franchise in the last lifetime. For like the sixth time. Shall we see The Phantom Menace again? Ammon's in town."

To which I responded: "Okay. Cool. Maybe this time I won't want to kill Jar-Jar."

"Let's not get carried away," Bryan said. And thus it was on. The date was set, the die cast, the uh, metaphor was uh, slung? I dunno. We went to the movie and I met Candace.

From here, the story's pretty close to what she said, only substituting the Hanson shirt for my rippling muscles as I previously mentioned. Did I mention they were aglisten? Because they were. But the part about the licorice box? I have no idea what fantasy novel that concept trotted out of. Seriously, she was all over me like an applique sweater on a fourth grade teacher. I was like "Um, I'm trying to eat my Red Vines here, lady." And she was all, "So, have I told you what classes I'm taking next semester?" And I was all "Um, like three times. Now if you'll kindly excuse me, I have to watch as George Lucas kills my enthusiasm for Star Wars with midichlorians. Dang, girl!" So yeah, not necessarily love at first sight. Though I did think she was super cute. Just a little too, I dunno, forward?

At the time I was playing in a band called the Asthmatics and our house was a hub of activity that summer, so we had a few chances to see each other again and all of the sudden we were sitting on the couch in her parent's basement, making out watching Willy Wonka. Seriously, I thought she really wanted to watch a movie about a kid who inherits a crazy candy factory, but all of the sudden she's all over me. And I didn't want her to feel bad, and she was so dang cute, so I kissed her back. It was the gentlemanly thing to do. And I may be a lot of things, but one thing I am not is ungentlemanly.

I distinctly remember stopping her mid-make out and saying "Are you sure you want to make out right now? The creepy tunnel part where he sings 'There's no earthly way of knowing / Which direction we are going...' is coming up and I really like that part." And she was all "Listen. Do you want to make out or what?" And I was like, "Um yeah because you're super cute and I think we're gonna get married but don't be surprised if you catch me sneaking a peek every now and then because I really love this movie." And she said "Just shut up and get to kissin', hot stuff."

And that is the true story folks. Only I left out the part about when the psychic robots dinosaurs kidnapped her and sent her into the future and I had to rescue her using only my mind and my mighty, glistening pectorals and I blew up the psychic robots dinosaurs' hideout and it was all like "KA-BOOMMMM!!!" And I was like, "You just got extinct-ed," as I walked away in slow-motion with Candace in my arms and we sped off in my spaceship.

Also, I beat her at tether ball every time; I don't care what she says.

Anyway, so I love Candace. Or: "I so love Candace." Or: "Love Candace, so I." Or whatever. She's funny and cute and awesome and smart and she smells nice and even though she sometimes confuses her rich fantasy life for reality, she's still the bestest thing that ever happened to me. Seriously, without her, I'd most likely be living in a box somewhere. And not even a cool box. Like a store-brand Cap'n Crunch box or something. For reals.

Saturday Night Is Alright For Sleeping

So, I finished posting last night and decided that I wasn't all that tired. So, I decided to stay up and watch Saturday Night Live. I figured it had been a while, so... why not?

Bad call, man.

What happened to this show? Now I don't want to get all "back when I was a kid," on you, but man, SNL, well, it sucks now. I know that I was probably spoiled by the amazing mid-to-late-90's cast (which were filled to the gills with some seriously heavy hitters), but come on, this is just... it's just not good comedy. It's not even good drama.

It made me feel like some ancient dinosaur person because not only was I getting pretty tired as I was watching it, but I just didn't get any of the skits. It was like they were speaking in Esperanto or Martian or something. I flipped through the channels during commercials and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation gave me more chuckles than the entire episode of SNL did. And it made more sense, too, which is saying something, because that movie is batcrap insane.

I am leaning toward laying blame at the feet of head writer Seth Myers (he's like a mini-Jimmy Fallon, all teeth and smarm with no comedic chops to back it up, always too willing to laugh at his own jokes) because it's not like there aren't funny people on the show: Poehler, Armisen and Forte are all very funny people, but man, this is just some dreadful stuff. It's like a caricature of a caricature of a caricature of SNL. Depressing.

I Need To Finish Book Seven So That I Can Start Book Seven (or) A Book Report

We bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at Target yesterday afternoon (sorry folks, but the only midnight release I ever attended was for Pearl Jam's Vs. album way back in prehistoric times. Hooray for grunge!). I'm excited to read it, but I feel no real compulsion to tear through it. I'd rather savor it, because let's be honest, I most likely won't be reading them again anytime soon and once it's over, it's over. They're great books and all, but... well, it's time to say "goodbye." At least until Sadie's ready to read them.

I will say this, though: I am deathly afraid that I will wait for a little while to read it and some poo-poo head will spoil it. So I guess I do have a weird compulsion to finish it.

Dang it.

At least I'm not a total bad sport and just reading the last four pages in the store like some old fart yesterday. Yeesh. Some people...

Anyway, I can't really start it because I am still working through book seven of the Dark Tower saga, which is no small feat. The thing is like... over an inch and three-quarters thick. And this is the little mass market paperback version. If you can lift the hardcover, then you are the rightful heir to King Arthur's throne and some crazy lady will come out of the water and give you a sword and you can usher in a new age for Avalon. The unsold copies were used as bricks. On the pyramids. My copy is 1045 pages long. I'm on page 459, so... almost halfway?

So far it's a bloody, profane epic, full of, well, everything a blue-blooded American boy would like: gunslingers, robots, werespiders, time travel, stacked dimensions, tough characters, high stakes and blood blood blood. It's the very grown-up cousin to the Harry Potter series, both of whom look to old Grandpa Tolkien, though King's books moreso. It's not a large leap from Aragon/Strider to Roland Deschain, Sauron to the Red King. Heck, this book even has a sad little misshapen being following the fellowship as they quest deep into the heart of evil. Sound familiar, my preciousss?

But where the Lord of the Rings saga always showed war as a horrific, terrible thing, the Dark Tower books wallow in the violence. It's like Peter Jackson lost the job of adapting Tolkien's masterpiece to Sam Peckinpah's reanimated corpse. And it works, for the most part.

It's in no way perfect, but King's love for these characters, this story as well as story and characters in general (the whole thing is a treatise on creativity, in the end, and links all of his work together as one cohesive universe), oozes off of every page. It's like King made a list of everything he's ever loved about fiction and found a glorious pulp story to hang it all on. It's not for everyone (it's a pretty solid "R," make no mistake), heck, I'm not even sure it's for me, but it's a significant work and, in the end, I think I'll be glad I worked through it. If only to have read a book where the plot from Seven Samurai is reworked with cowboys and robots. Yeah. You read that right.

In other news, I can't believe I just posted a huge book report on my blog. [sigh] I am such a nerd.

A Quick Word From Carl

His confidence is bizarre and otherworldly! He's Carl! A half dinosaur, half beaver, all awesome little fella!

From Marcos Perez's Carl Is the Awesome minicomic. Funny stuff, even if it gets old after a bit.

Them's Good Eats

So as Candace said over on her blog, we went to the zoo yesterday. Unfortunately she... well, she lied a little bit. She does this a lot. Like, all the time.

Yesterday I asked her where babies come from. She told me Sears. So I called Sears, just to see what the going rate was for a baby. In case I wanted another one sometime in the future. You know, so the other ones don't get lonely. The lady (she sounded kind of mean) told me that they didn't sell babies and then got all mad when I asked her if they had layaway and if there was a list I should put my name on for when the next shipment of babies came in and while she was at it, could she check to see if they have any Wii's in stock?

I have to appear in court next Thursday and I still don't know where babies come from.

[sigh]

Maybe I shouldn't have skipped the sixth grade. I knew that would bite me in the butt someday.

Anyway, so she was all "the dinosaurs were animatronic." This is just not true. Those things were real. For really reals. And I have photographic proof! Well, sort of.

See, here's me and Sadie, minding our business on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon and all of a sudden this T-Rex comes out of the brush:

Sadie notices it first. For a huge apex predator those things are remarkably silent. They're like 50-foot tall ninjas.

So we turn around and there he is: Tyrannosaurus Rex, King of the Lizards. Dude is looking at my kid and I'm all, "Oh hecks no, sir. You should seriously consider stepping off. Like. Right. About. Now."

And he keeps glaring at Sadie and I swear he said something anti-Semitic and I have Jewish friends, so I'm all "Oh yeah. Now it is on."

And it was on.

I was all, "Sadie, go stand by your mom. This could get ugly."

It did. Needless to say, those things are just chock full of blood. It was kind of gross, which was probably why Candace didn't take a picture. I can think of no other rational explanation. A few karate kicks to the throat and a swift kick in the you-know-wheres and it was all over.

As I stood over my fallen foe I remembered I was supposed to say something clever like in the movies so I was all, "Who's extinct, now, Rexie? You are. Extinct, that is. As in 'dead'. Yeah. You are. Ex. Tinct. I was like a huge meteor whose impact created a large cloud which made the plants die which made the herbivores die which made you extinct. Only instead of a cloud it was a karate kick and instead of herbivores it was your thingies. Yeah. Nobody messes with my gals, Rex. Nobody."

Yeah, I need to work on that. My banter. It's not that good.

So anyway, tonight we grilled up some dino-steaks. They were tyranno-licious.

The end.

It's A Love Story, Really

Oh man, I so want this. 184 pages of prehistoric monkey boy and big red dinosaur awesome, all gloriously reproduced from the amazing mind of Jack "King" Kirby. Freaking rock. One click and... "Hello, Wish List."

We Are Going To Rock

We are going to blow out the speakers on the stereo.
We are going to tear the roof off of this sucker.
We are going to party like it is going to be 1999.
Or 1899 for that matter.
We are going to dance until our legs fall off.
We are going to party like it was going out of business.
We are going to sing songs that haven't been written by anyone on this planet, we will sing them so loud the moon will cry because its ears hurt.
We are going to kick this party out the door and then invite it back in, only to kick it out again.
We are going to throw the kind of party that you can only experience in history books.
We are going to rock like Napoleon Bonaparte.
We are going to rock like Pablo Picasso.
We are going to rock like Vasco da Gama.
We are going to party until the sun burns up.
We are going to party until we run out of music.
If there is a world record for rocking, we will break it to pieces.
We are going to rock like electric robots on fire.
Our party will rock so hard that the crust of the earth will rupture, spilling out massive amounts of molten hot awesome that will burn us all to cinders.
We are going to party like astronaut explorers being ripped apart by a black hole.
We are going to party like hypnotized donkeys.
We are going to party like breakdancing kung fu masters.
We are going to rock like Godzilla, Bruce Lee and Frankenstein teaming up to beat the living bejeepers out of Dracula, the Mummy and the Wolfman.
And Mothra.
And Martha Stewart.
And that one guy with that beard that comes out to here.
And Keanu Reeves.
We are going to kick this party like it is a bad habit like heroin or listening to Rush Limbaugh.
We are going to rock like 76 electric guitars wailing in the darkness of a scorpions heart.
We are going to rock like kittens drinking a saucer of milk.
We are going to rock like rattlesnakes who have grown to an unimaginable size.
We are gong to rock like Batman and Superman got into a fight over who their favorite Spice Girl is and they didn't speak to each other for weeks.
We are going to explode the sun with our rockingness.
Our party will become the legends of future civilizations.
Our ability to rock is second to none.
We will not be out-rocked.
Everything must be rocked.
The ottoman.
The electric can opener.
The other can opener that you have to turn with your hand.
The butter knives.
The bones of dinosaurs.
The unicorns of Norway.
The pet rock collection.
The stained glass windows depicting how we rock.
The entire set of Franklin Mint commemorative plates.
Potsy, Mouth, Richie and especially the Fonze.
They must all be rocked.
We are going to rock our faces right off of our heads and it will be so much better than that movie with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage.
We are going to rock like tube socks made from electric eels with electric eyes and electric toothbrushes.
We are going to rock with the combined power of all of Jack "King" Kirby creations.
Which is a lot of power.
We are going to party like pirates on the high seas of love.
We are going to rock like it is the law and we must obey it.
We are going to rock like the Pythagorean Theorem.
Like the Berlin Wall.
Like a baby's scream.
Like a bobcat's tail.
Like the wild blue yonder.
Like a special effect.
Like the moon on the water.
Like the ocean's tears.
We are going to rock so hard, Bigfoot will come our of hiding and regain his rightful place as King of the World.
We are going to rock because we know of nothing else we do as well.
We are going to rock because we like - no - love it.

We are going to rockrockrock.

Oh yes, indeed.

...If I can just find that Paula Abdul cassette.

I Don't Know Much

But I know this much: if and when it comes down to it, we must triumph over the dinosaurs. I suggest we defeat them with astronauts. Who have laser guns. And jetpacks. And bazookas. Yeah, that should do the trick.

The Door To This House Remains Open

(or) The "Thingie" Thing

As you get older, you start to look back on stuff you did in your younger years and say, "what the heck was I thinking?" For example, one time, when I was in second grade, I drew a, well, a "thingie," (pronounced: "a weenie") on an illustration of a dinosaur on some hand-out they gave us in the library. I remember thinking it was hilarious and the kid next to me thought so too. This was in Utah, too by the way. Lehi, Utah. I got caught and kind of got in a lot of trouble. I can only imagine how horrified my poor parents were, which sort of adds to the funniness of the story in retrospect. Such was the beginning of me doing stupid stuff for laughs.

I'd like to say I outgrew this sort of stuff, but well... you all know me. "StudipStuffForLaughs," has become my other middle name. Besides, you know, Dylan. It's sort of become my schtick, if you will.

I'm turning 30 (30? Really? Already? Weird.) tomorrow and I still sort of think that the whole "thingie" thing is kind of funny. Candace & I went out on a date tonight (it was fun, by the way) and, somehow I brought this up and we were both laughing pretty hard about it. Is that wrong? Should I not find this funny any more?

Because I still kind of do.

So there it is: I'm 30 years old and I still think dinosaur genitals are sort of humorous.

Dinosaurs Would So Eat Us If The Terrifying Things Were Still Alive Today

So I haven't posted in a while. Well, I've posted, but not posted posted. You know what I mean. Anyway, there are some reasons why this is. Mainly because there's nothing really going on that is in any way post-worthy. Also, I just thought it would be funny to post old pictures of weird looking guys saying funny things. And also that awesome Fatlip video.

So lately I've been spending my time looking for a job with approximately... zero results. I've been rethinking my strategy and have come up with a better way, I think, to go about looking for a job. I'll post more on it when it's more complete, but I think it will definitely get better results than what I've been doing, which is basically sending things electronically. You know, resume's and samples. It's a lot easier to delete an email than it is to throw out a cool resume/work sample packet you got in the mail, and a lot less impressive to view something on a computer screen at 72 dpi than it is to hold something in your hand.

Which got me thinking. As much as I love the internet and technology - and trust me folks, I love the internet and technology but not as much as you you see... always and forever, always and forever... - it's no substitute for the concreteness of holding something and being able to manipulate and interact with it physically rather than through the interface of a computer. Which is why I've always been a lot more drawn to print work than motion or interactive, as impressive as that stuff is. I'm far too tactile to spend hours working on something that isn't, at least as far as my 2007 narrow definition is concerned, "real." That is, something I can't touch. Like Woody Allen said, I don't like anything I can't reason with or fondle.

There's a lot of talk about society becoming paperless, and while I think there are definitely things that can benefit from the translation to a digital form (newspapers, namely), but some things, like books or magazines or posters, just need to be hefted or touched in order to really work. There's something missing when I browse a magazine's website or try to read anything of any great length on a computer screen (Like this post, for example). The smell of the paper, its texture and sound. These things can't, and shouldn't, be replicated in digital form. To do so would be to cut off an important piece of the experience, a part that is intricately linked.

Call me old school, but I still miss CD packaging now that most of my music comes through the internet. Shoot, I still miss LP's. Are we throwing things away that still work? Or is this just the sound of nostalgia creeping in as the world moves on? Will I be caught huddling in a corner with all my obsolete junk when the technological revolution goes marching by or will I be there, marching along into the future? Can't I have both? Please? Can I march with at least some of my junk?

Also, dinosaurs are freaky scary. Can you imagine seeing one? I can imagine there were a lot of messy cavemen undies when our sloped-foreheaded progenitors were confronted by one of those shocking creatures. Even the small ones would be enough to do me in. They were chicken-sized. Can you imagine being attacked by a chicken? With teeth? How about a tyrannosaurus? 40 feet of pure flipping-my-wig terror. When you're roughly the same size as something's teeth, it doesn't exactly inspire anything but dread. And a gigantosaurus? A GIGANTOsaurus?! I don't even know what that is exactly, but it doesn't sound too promising.

Anyway, I'm out. 8:30 church comes pretty early. Especially if you've been having nightmares about being attacked by dinosaurs all night. Which I will be. Peace.

I Have Always Been, And Will Continue To Be, Obsessed With This Logo

Look at that thing. Isn't it beautiful?

Netflix Round-up

Quick catch-up on our Netfix activity. Picking up from my last post on the matter we have:

The Brothers Grimm was a lot better that I thought it might be. Heath Ledger was especially good, as was actor who played the sadistic Italian. You know, the head nihilist guy from the Big Lebowski, that guy.

Candace watched a couple without me, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and In Her Shoes, mainly because I've been working a lot of nights lately. Not, I repeat, NOT because they are girl movies. I would have gladly watched them with her had she wanted me to. So there.

Watched Citizen Kane for the first time in a while, and of course, it's brilliant. Interesting sidenote: I had no idea that the White Stripes song, "The Union Forever" was about Citizen Kane. Go figure.

Got Bad News Bears but the disc was scratched and the two minutes we saw were just foul and not at all funny, which is a shame, because Billy Bob's one of my faves.

Finally, Elizabethtown. I was really nervous about this one. Entertainment Weekly was not very enthusiastic about it and I'd heard mixed reviews here and there. I dunno, I really enjoyed it. Not Cameron Crowe's best work, but still, it was funny, moving and beautiful. What more do you want? I mean, besides cyborgs with laser eyes and a couple bloodthirsty dinosaurs, of course.

We have The Corpse Bride here and Walk the Line up next, bot hof which I've been dying to see, especially Walk the Line. Candace & I went to see the last Harry Potter (which, by the way, was friggin' ACES! Loved it to little bitty bits!) at the cheap theater here in town and they showed a preview for it. I just had to lean over and tell Candace that I thought that "Johnny Cash was one cool sonuva." She simply nodded. That's my gal.

Up next in the queue:
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
The Work of Director Spike Jonze
Guided by Voices: Watch Me Jumpstart
and...
Sliding Doors

On the Comics Tip

As 7Soldiers has been running late (hopefully Klarion #4 is out this week), comics have been a little light as of late. Mister Miracle #1 was a decent read. A little underwhelming at first glance, as I was really looking forward to this series especially, but time will tell if I end up digging it a smuch as I did Guardian.

Gødland's shaping up to be lot more enjoyable than I thought it might be. Still haven't read issue 2 thanks to the slacker kid at the local comic shop (not really "local" as I have to drive a half hour south to get there, but you get the drift) who still hasn't ordered it after a month and a half. The villains so far, Freidrick Nickelhead and Discordia, have beena hoot and the main character's shaping up to be pretty interesting. There was a moment in the last issue (#4) where he's fighting a giant robot in the North Pole and starts wondering why he can't stop engaging in stereotypical superhero battle banter. I keep waiting for it to get too cut for it's own good, but it hasn't yet, so I guess I on board for the forseeable future. Oh yeah, and Scioli's art of Kirby-riffic. Marvel is smoking some serious crack to not take him up n a Black Bolt mini.

Bought the current run of Waid's Legion Of Super-heroes off a seller on ebay, so I'll review those when they get here.

But the comic I dug the most as of late is this bad boy here:

Seriously, genius stuff that reminded me why I've been fascinated with the Marvel Universe. Devil Dinosaur, Moonboy, the Hulk and a couple of sucky Celestials - what more do you need?

Of course, the mention of Celestials sent me on a fact-finding mission to decode the bits of remembered Marvel history I've accumulated over the years. I tore through the Wikipedia entries fo Kirby's 70's work at DC (the Fourth World books, Kamandi, O.M.A.C.) and Marvel (Eternals, 2001, Machine Man) and somehow stumbled on this brilliant site:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/7160/wicksint.html

Wow. Some serious stuff goin on there. I spent s good part of a weekend hacking away at that. Got through the Middle Ages so far, but just a genius compiling of the insane morass of Marvel chronology. Like I said, this is whay I read comics, all the passing references to stuff it seemed like you should know (Celestials, High Evolutionary, Watchers etc.) that mad eyou feel ike you were somehow on the outside of an inside joke. Dang, I love comics.