May 31, 2005
Another Alias mystery solved
Look out, because this post includes season-ending spoilers! From Alias!
So in the last moments of the show, just as Alias's fianc? is in the middle of a totally awesome season-ending revelation, they get hit by a car. It's super-fast -- from "whoa there's a car" to impact in about 4 frames. Using TiVo to take a closer look at those frames, we discover that the car in question is a Ford Explorer. Not at all unlike the ones that come standard issue from CTU. The ones you might see driven by...
...24's Jack Bauer.
Coincidence? No, stupid! Obviously, Jack met up with Alias's mom (because they both had to travel the countryside as fugitives, and you end up meeting a lot of people that way. They probably ran into the Incredible Hulk, too.) Naturally they hit it off. And, um...obviously for some reason they decided to kill Alias and her fianc?. Well, I haven't worked out all the details yet. But it was Jack for sure!!
May 30, 2005
Jesus is our mascot?
I'm thinking my next blog should be a big anti-religion crusade. If I was running that now, this story about a New Jersey Baptist-deacon-cum-lawmaker trying to get the Devils hockey team to change its name would certainly be mockworthy.
May 25, 2005
Another great screwball comedy setup
Six alleged gang members ran a drug den in the apartment of a senile elderly woman, even eating her free senior-citizen meals, police said."...
"The woman, who has since been moved to another home by social workers, once managed the building and befriended the gang several years ago, owner Marino Sandoval said.
"They turned her into one of them ? they literally made her like a gang member," he said.
We'll call it Granny's Posse. I see Dame Judi Dench as the old lady. Call Vince Vaughn and Jeremy Piven. And I'm assuming Rob Schneider. And we're going to need Method Man and Redman, so we can capitalize off the How High DVD sales, which I assume are excellent.
May 24, 2005
San Fran is kool
We're already contemplating the diets we'll need to go on to work off all the good food. Tomorrow: kite flying in Golden Gate park. See ya!
May 20, 2005
Pitia-bull
It is my sad duty to announce the crippling defeat of the Pitts Theology Library "Papal Bulls" by the Pediatrics "Didn't Bother to Think of a Mascot" at this year's Emory staff fest volleyball tournament.
Though the other team was clearly intimidated and/or (mostly or) annoyed by the fact that we had matching t-shirts, they handed us our asses mightily. Lousy child-healing bunch o' rassa frassa...
May 18, 2005
In the business, we call it "retirony"
On this week's 24, Tony Almeida's ex-wife Michelle -- who left him because he went to prison saving her life (essentially for committing all the crimes Jack Bauer committed in the first season, but without being the star of the show) -- suddenly and improbably came around.
In a touching moment, they decided to both quit working at CTU, just as soon as the latest nuclear crisis has been solved. Then, as Tony walks out the door to help Jack hunt down terrorists, Michelle says to him -- and I quote -- "be careful."
Is she deliberately trying to kill him? She's probably a mole, right? And she realizes that the surest way to kill a law enforcement official is to dangle a happy retirement in front of him, and watch him walk into bullets. He gets kidnapped at gunpoint within the hour. Amazing.
It all makes me flash back to the first episode of the season, when we made bets on how much time would pass between the introduction of Jack's new girlfriend, and her inevitable kidnapping. (Less than 45 minutes, as it turned out.) For some reason, she still hasn't revealed that she speaks a foreign language and is therefore evil. But it's only a matter of time.
May 15, 2005
You know the Washington Post has finally hit rock bottom
...when they're quoting me.
"With God as my witness, I WILL DESTROY THE 2WENTY."
Arlington software engineer James Furdell, 29, posted those words last summer on his blog at Furdell.com. The object of his unbridled wrath: Regal's pioneering pre-show, "The 2wenty," which runs for 20 minutes before every movie on 5,300 screens nationwide.
"I really like watching movie trailers," Furdell said when reached by phone. "But those prepackaged commercials are just more offensive to me for some reason."
So far Furdell's threats remain unrealized, as evidenced by a recent screening of "The 2wenty" at the Regal Cinemas in Rockville.
Ahh, but little do they know that they're just playing into Phase I of my plan... Media Saturation.
May 13, 2005
You will believe a girl can store nuts for the winter
OK, so nobody read She-Hulk like I told you to, and so it's been put on hiatus after 12 issues (but is coming back in November... so read it this time).
Fortunately, the writer (Dan Slott) and artist (Paul Pelletier) have teamed up for a four-issue miniseries in a similar vein: take some fourth-string Marvel characters and write the hell out of them. GLA (for Great Lakes Avengers) is comedy in a much darker vein, but so far a great read.
But most importantly, it marks the triumphant return of the ultimate Marvel superhero of all time...
Squirrel Girl.
Yes, Squirrel Girl. This plucky heroine, who possesses all the powers and abilities of... um... well, squirrels, first appeared in the Winter 1991 issue Marvel Super-Heroes.
Er, and, only appeared.
SG was actually created and drawn by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, whom we can only assume was trying to get back at Stan Lee for stealing all his thunder. Because, really Squirrel Girl's powers, along with her buck teeth and unfortunate choice of eye shadow, made her a long shot to ever appear in comics again, outside of the ones I make up in my brain.
Although she did do a good job taking down Dr. Doom, in one of his most humiliating defeats.
"Get these INFIDEL RODENTS off of me!!!!" Hilarious. I don't think that scene's going to make it into the Fantastic Four movie this summer. We'll have to wait for Squirrel Girl: The Movie, which, judging by the way Hollywood works these days, should be coming out around July 2008.
It appeared Squirrel Girl would fade into D-list oblivion until GLA came along. What a surprise; Andrew and I weren't the only ones who remembered her. Not only do Squirrel Girl and her squirrel pal Monkey Joe (yeah... don't ask) make appearances, they also serve as de facto narrators to all the carnage, much to my delight.
(Heh. "Owww! My scalp!" Hilarious.)
And it all leads up to GLA #3, in which SG finally, finally, gets her first cover appearance. And it's a doozy.
Yikes! Scary Squirrel Girl! Avenger of the Night! And she's about to lay the smack down on Batroc the Leaper, the French supervillain with exceptional leaping abilities.
(Again, don't ask.)
At any rate: this cover makes me inexplicably happy. I think it's because I identify more with the never-see-them characters who don't get any respect. There are 400,000,211 comics out right now featuring Spider-Man... enough already! It's more fun to read about Squirrel Girl at this point.
So, in conclusion: Squirrel Girl. Get her comic today. See the movie in 2008.
May 8, 2005
May 4, 2005
Cute.
Slate has an article suggesting that Michael Jackson should have named his chimp "Asta" after the dog from The Thin Man, as I did my cat. They link to an Asta fan site. Apparently he was also in Bringing Up Baby...who knew.
May 1, 2005
Maybe the funniest baseball thing I've ever seen
Last night: Nats vs. Mets.
The weather: scattered showers.
The grounds crew at RFK Stadium: completely incapable of getting the tarp out on the field.
Probably a number of factors contributed to the problem, including "they were too hella-slow rolling it out," and "they didn't hire enough guys to pull it." Whatever the cause, they kept getting stuck in the outfield, and weren't able to pull the plastic over the entire infield.
During the first rain delay, it took 10 minutes to pull out the tarp; by the time they finished, the rain had, of course, practically stopped.
During the second rain delay, it took 30 minutes to pull the tarp out.
Kimberly and I knew they weren't going to be able to resume the game, because by the time they finsihed the puddles were literally a foot deep on the infield. But we had to stay to witness the spectacle of the overmatched ground crew desperately tugging on the tarp as a few thousand remaining fans yelled at them to "PULL! PULL! PULL!" When they started playing the Rocky theme, that seemed to provide the inspiration necessary to finally (almost) finish the job.
Of course, after all that, the game was called eight minutes later. Apparently, both teams filed a protest.
What a mess. But that's what's great about baseball: you never know when you're going to see something ridiculous that nobody's ever seen before.