My Condensed Review of "The Avengers"

SMASHing.

Still Resolute?

(Note: Take two on this post. I tried to post it yesterday, but for some reason Blogger didn't want to post it.)

“So, how’s that resolution thing going?”

Well, so far this year I haven’t been doing too well with the resolutions, I must admit. Let’s go over them one by one to see how I’ve been doing for the first couple of weeks.

Floss daily - last night I woke up around two in the morning and realized that I hadn’t flossed before going to bed (just a couple of hours earlier). I dragged myself out of bed and flossed. If I hadn’t, that would have been the first time so far this year. So far, mission accomplished!

Tweet daily - I’ve missed once - and that’s because I couldn’t figure out a phrasing I wanted. However, I’d tweeted twice the day before and I’m calling it even. Mission accomplished!

Upper or full body workout - Utter failure here... let’s move on.

45 minutes of cardio or something - I’ve skipped a couple of days, but I’ve walked around for a bit so at least I’m doing something here.

Clean up my share of the house - umm.... the less said, the better. Moving on...

Eat more greens -Success! I’ve been eating more. Not every meal, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve increased my veggie intake. Mission accomplished!

Work in the garden - My schedule on weekends has increased so I haven’t done as much as I should, but I can do better and am planning on it. I just need to work harder on getting out there and working harder.

Daily comedy building exercises - Success!

Weekly cultural excursions - Didn't do it the first week because my schedule was a little wonky, but I did go this week. Partial success! Which, of course means, partial failure!

The Weekly Quest - kind of a success. I’ve been taking opportunities to go places that I wouldn’t have gone a year ago. In only a couple of weeks I’ve been to areas of Los Angeles I haven’t been to in the previous ten years. So, while I haven’t been doing a set quest that I plan out on Sundays, I’ve embraced the idea of just heading places to go there.

Creating an performing a stand up routine - I’ve teamed up with a couple of friends and we’re working on our materials. Partial success - the other part will happen when I step onto a stage.

Write a weekly blog post - Take a look at the date on this post... At least I’m posting in January and not July.

Twelve Resolutions for 2012

Well gentle readers, obviously I haven't been around much of late. I've haven't forgotten to post or even that I've been too busy to post. I haven't posted because: 1) I'm lazy & 2) I haven't really felt like I've had anything to say, well, anything interesting at least.

Is all that going to change? Am I going to start post with any sort of regularity? Honestly, probably not. I am going to try though. Somebody once said that you need to shoot for the moon so that even if you miss, you'll still be among the stars. I'm only hoping to get off the ground.

While considering my two reasons (laziness and boring-osity) for not posting and for my life in general, I've decided that something has to change... me. I have to take steps to becoming something better than I am right now. So, here are my twelve resolutions for 2012:

1) Floss daily - okay, so I was having trouble starting this list and I went with my usual. I put this on my resolution lists most years and it lasts maybe two months, if I'm lucky. This year, though, I resolve to actually Floss daily for the entire year and I really mean it... just like every other year.

2) Tweet daily - I think it's important to be putting out some kind of daily bit of humor or interesting information, just to keep my mind active. Also, at 140 or whatever characters, this seems like a low impact blog.

3) Upper or full body workout once per week - I'm going to hit the whole laziness thing pretty hard in my resolutions. Shoot for the moon... stars... off the ground... you get the idea.

4) 45 minutes of cardio or cardio equivalent exercise every day - again, battling laziness.

5) Clean up my share of the house once per week - this is like the flossing thing. Who knows, I may actually do it this year.

6) Eat more greens - just a good idea, really.

7) Work in the garden one morning each week - I like it, but lately I just haven't been putting in the effort, I really need to get back out there. The grass in the back yard is knee high and I'm pretty sure most of the sprinkler heads are broken. If I turn on the sprinklers, I'm sure I'd see fountains that rival the Bellagio's.

8) Continue doing daily comedy building exercises - I started doing this a few weeks ago and while I have to admit that I've skipped more than a few days, for the most part I've been doing it. The comedy building exercise I'm doing comes from Judy Carter's Comedy Bible. I'm not going to explain it here, since I feel that if you are interested, you should buy the book.

9) Weekly cultural excursions - I need to see more things out in the world, open my eyes to other people's forms of expression. To this end, once per week I want to go and see improv, stand-up, movies, storytelling, art galleries, performance art, live music, and everything and anything else that Los Angeles has to offer... well, not everything else, I'm probably not going to want to see anything that is too depressing.

10) The Weekly Quest! - on every Sunday, I want to challenge myself to a quest that I have to tackle that week. My Holy Grail of the week will probably seem tame to some, but will probably be a challenge to me. I'd like to give you examples of what I have in mind, but it's Monday and I'm only going to be coming up with them on Sunday... and it's only 2011, not 2012.

11) Create and perform a five minute stand-up routine - while this sounds like a weekly quest, I think it'll take more than a week to get my butt up on stage and perform five minutes of comedy by myself.

12) Write a weekly blog post - This is a key part of why I'm doing all of the above (except maybe flossing or eating greens). I'm making a change to my life and I want to document my change into the 30th most interesting man in the world - or at least the 800th most interesting man in the San Fernando Valley or wherever I end up.

Jeez, that's one big, unedited ramble... I hope it makes some kind of sense - and even more I hope that I actually do 90% of it. Well, if I don't do it, you'll know it because my next post will probably be dated six months to a year after this one.

My Condensed Review of "Thor"

Ab-dequate.

My Condensed Review of "Persons Unknown"

Diverting jaunt.

Sunday newspaper comics that I skip

Cathy, Prickly City, Peanuts, Marmaduke, Rose Is Rose, For Better Or For Worse, Family Circus

Why do I mention this? On Sundays I have all the time in the world to read the comics, and I still don't bother finding the time for these. What went wrong?

Cathy lost any relevance to humor or reality back in the Eighties. Prickly City has never been funny and the politics of the strip are only annoying. Since Peanuts and For Better Or For Worse are repeats of old strips I've got a "been there, done that" feeling. I liked them when they first came out, but I'm done with them. I'm not the audience for Marmaduke or Family Circus, they skew to the extremely young or slow. I actually think that Rose Is Rose is a clever strip and I hope that they continue to make it, I just feel sorry for the main character.

I think that there are a lot of great comics out there- important comics that delight me or make me consider different viewpoints on the world around me. Candorville, La Cucaracha, Zits, Baldo & Doonesbury may not hit the mark for me every time, humor-wise, but I like their viewpoints and messages. On the other hand, Pearls Before Swine is the best current comic in any newspaper in the land.

My condensed review of Harper's Island

Wonderfully histrionic.

My condensed review of the first episode of "Justified"

Quirky.

My condensed review of the new products shown at CES this year.

meh.

Quote

"It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide"- Magersfontein Lugg

NaNoWriMo

It's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo to its friends) again and I'm jumping on the bandwagon again this year. It has only been a few days, but I'm keeping up. If you don't know, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days- that's 1,667 words per day. There is a strategy involved, to make it easier, which you can find in the book "No Plot? No Problem!" by Chris Baty (the founder of National Novel Writing Month).

By the way, I've done this before, successfully- and by that I mean that I got the word count, but the novel I wrote is utter crap. Just a few days into the latest novel and I can say without hesitation that the new one is crap too. However, I will also say that this one is less crappy then the earlier one. Maybe in ten years, or ten more novels, I'll be writing the greatest novel ever, but I doubt it.

Anyway, the process is fun and I think I'm learning a lot. If you've got access to my Twitter feed (which should be somewhere on this blog page), you can keep up with my current word count this month.

the anti-"jump the shark"

There really needs to be a phrase that's the opposite of "jump the shark".

"Jump the shark", if you don't know, is when something happens that causes you to realize things are never going to be as good as they used to. The opposite would be when be when something happens on a series that makes the series dramatically better.

When Michael Emerson joined Lost, it crystalized and clarified the drama, he gave the show something it needed. At that point, Lost stopped being a rambling drama that didn't seem to be going anywhere. Suddenly, the "Others" stopped being strange weirdos and started being interesting. The "Others" even started dressing better.

In the seventh episode of Fringe, they introduced David Robert Jones (played by Jared Harris). Up until this point, they were vague about something called "The Pattern". It really felt as if the writers didn't have any more idea what was happening then the viewers. The enemy had a face. The writers weren't wandering aimlessly from incident to incident, they had a focal point, a direction. The episodes became markedly better written. The characters were actually striving for something.

The reason that I'm bringing all this up is this- I've just watched the first season of "Lie to me" and I really like the show, but I really think that they need to have a Michael Emerson or David Robert Jones. I really like "Lie to me", but Tim Roth's Dr. Cal Lightman hasn't really found a match- the Joker to his Batman. Somebody to battle through the show's future seasons. I just hope that they don't do a "House" like thing and make his enemy a bureaucrat that battles over petty crud- "Fringe" tried that with Michael Gaston's Sanford Harris and it was utter crap. Nobody ever wants the enemy to be red tape or bureaucracy - unless it's a comedy.

Do you really want it?

I was rolling the question "Do you really want it?" around in my head this morning. There wasn't anything that I really wanted at the time, that wasn't the point. I was thinking about how wonderful spoken English is. Every time that I rolled the question around, I emphasized a different word- and that changed the context completely.

Let me show you what I mean (the capitalized letters represent the word that is accented):

"DO you really want it?" - I question if you want it.

"Do YOU really want it?" - I think that you are acting on the behalf of somebody else.

"Do you REALLY want it?" - I don't think you want it enough to do what it takes.

"Do you really WANT it?" - It isn't something that you should want- like a monkey's paw.

"Do you really want IT?" - I think you really want something else, you just aren't saying what.

Yeah, I know, there are thousands more interpretations that can be inferred - context would help, but that's not my point. My point is that spoken language can be pretty cool.

Porn 'Stache

I had a horrible slip when trimming my beard this morning- in the end I had to trim around the screw up. Now I'm trying to decide whether I want to cut everything off or just start growing the beard out again. Heck, I may even keep the mustache...but I doubt my dearly beloved will agree with that (she hasn't seen it yet).

From Some Psychotic Ramblings

Tomatoes: Fruit or Vegetable

The culinary world says, "Fruit!"

The U.S. Tariff codes say, "Vegetable!"

The botanical elite say, "Ovary."

Tomayto, Tomahto - I don't care, I just grows 'em and eats 'em.

Here's a picture of yesterday's crop from my backyard

From Some Psychotic Ramblings

Rocket Fizz

From Some Psychotic Ramblings

On Sunday I noticed a new store had opened up in my neighborhood - Rocket Fizz! They sell classic candies, soda pop and faux vintage tin signs.

Once per blue moon, if not less often, I head down to Eagle Rock (about twenty minutes away) to go to Galco's Soda Pop Shop. I'll pick up thirty to forty different sodas, and cart them back home to sample over the next months. Seeing a new soda store so close to my house set my heart a flutter. Yippee!

First the good - Rocket Fizz has a great selection of sodas. I think that Galco's may have more, but there were enough new drinks for me to try that I was quite happy. Also, they had many classic sodas that I've enjoyed over the years, staples for my soda lifestyle. Even better then the soda selection was the candy selection- Whoa- all of the greats were here, Zotz, Pop Rocks, Abbazabba, Chuckles. Enough variety that I could add another hundred pounds to my girth without repeating a single one. I'll be making as many trips to this place as my dearly beloved will allow (remember, I am supposed to be getting trimmer- she's my food cop, and she tries to keep me honest - I have no will power except for hers).

Now the bad - Rocket Fizz isn't really set up for buying more then a couple of six packs of soda. Galco's does it right, with the shopping carts and huge boxes. This is really too much of a slight to Rocket Fizz, I don't think that they meant for it to be a place you go for stocking up for the summer (or winter) - they want you to visit far more often then that. In the future, I'll be hitting Rocket Fizz for my personal use, but I'll still want to hit up Galco's when I want to stock up for a party, or buy bulk in a new ginger ale or something.

And, in the something else category - Galco's prices are all over the place, some sodas are as cheap as 90 cents and some are downright expensive ($3 and up). All of the sodas at Rocket Fizz are priced at $1.89 each. If you know which sodas are expensive, you can save a lot of money at Rocket Fizz, but if you don't know that the soda you are picking up can be bought on the cheap at Vallarta or Vons, then you could be paying a lot more then you need to. Buyer beware and all that rot.

From Some Psychotic Ramblings

Rocket Fizz

2112 Magnolia Blvd.

Burbank, CA 91506

(818) 846-7632

Game Update

I just wanted to keep you up to date on where I am on my video game completion list- I've installed The Orange Box on my PC. For those that don't know, this means that I'll be playing through Half-Life 2 (plus the first couple of "episodes" associated with Half-Life 2).

As far as consoles go- I've played quite a bit of the PS3 Ratchet & Clank game- it's a fun game that I enjoy playing, but I can see why I stopped playing it on the first go-round. The game play is very repetitive and generic. You really just jump around and shoot things- every enemy has a pattern used to destroy it, and once you've figured out that pattern, you just repeat it over and over and over again until all of that enemy type are destroyed. I've stopped thinking of the enemies as separate villains and started to consider them by the specific moves needed to eliminate them quickly. Is this a problem? Not really, but I think that I would have enjoyed this a lot more if I were younger. I guess I'm just too old.

Games

I'm a bit of a video gamer- but I never finish anything, boredom always sets in at some point. This past weekend, I decided that I want to actually finish what I've got rather then move on to other games- I give it a week, I've little patience for something that should be fun. The moment a game isn't fun, I'll ditch it at the used video game store.

First up on my pile of games- Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. The reason I didn't finish it the first time was that the game's combat sequences were really annoying- of the "We limit your ammo" type. Constantly shooting five or six shots into the same few pirate models stops being fun very quickly. On this run through I've gotten achievements for killing a nation's worth of pirates, and more still seem to pop up. I'm getting better at shooting them in the head, which is the only way to lessen ammo worries. Shooting them in the belly or genitals seems to have very little effect. I guess pirates are like zombies- only real way to kill them is the brain. How grisly.

Next up on my game pile is going to be Half-Life 2, which I stopped when my computer died, and never installed on my new machine and then...Bioshock- which I stopped because the atmosphere was getting me down, even though I liked the game play.

I'll let you know how things go.

My Condensed Review of True Blood's First Season

Piquant.

Twilight - my thought on this fine franchise

100 year old guy dates underage girl...I think that's called statutory rape.