...also, the octupus got a racecar!

LOST doesn't begin officially again until tomorrow, but I'm more than a little excited about tonight's pop-up-video version of last season's finale. I honestly don't remember a lot about last season, but I'm sure that won't be a problem.

Over at the A.V. Club, where smugness is a way of life, there's some good old finger-wagging going on, as the loyal commenters are mocking anything at all mainstream - as one pointed out, if LOST had been cancelled after the second season, it would have been considered the second coming of Twin Peaks (nerd confession - I'm not really that much of a fan of TP, but I can sort of respect the weirdness of it). The best post yet, however, comes from one guy ('Legface P. Backshoe,' to be precise) suggesting to another how to impress his wife's LOST-viewing party:

Dude, you should totally dress up as a polar bear and, when the party's in full swing, rush downstairs and kill one of the guests. When your wife is screaming "OH MY GOD! WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!?" just look smug, stroke your chin and say, "Aaah. All will be revealed......"

Trust me, LOST fans eat that shit up.

Just let this serve as a warning to anybody thinking of stopping by Thursday night - I really like Legface's suggestion.

Speaking of the A.V. Club, it was time to bid a fond farewell to the awesome "My Year of Flops" feature (celebrity deaths come in threes, with Brad Renfro and Heath Ledger). "Flops" covered 104 of the crummiest movies ever, and really gave me something to look forward to reading each day. Ah well, that's the Circle of Life...

Blah.

So I'm pretty pathetic today... I'm sick with a vicious head cold that has zapped my energy and and rendered me totally lazy. Husband is out of town for a nerd conference so It's just me and Dog home alone snuggled up on the couch. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday, but I'm starting to get bored. Thus the reason I'm posting... Sorry reader(s) it's true...

Since I got a new camera for Christmas, I've been into taking pictures and actually uploading them. I lost the cord to my old camera so I was really bad about getting my picutres off of my picture card, but that has changed so expect more pictures from now on.

That said, I wanted to share the following picutres from the wedding last week...

To put this into some sort of perspective, the groom is a farmer and the bride is a pharmacist. The sign above her head said "Knapke's Fine Farmacist" and just in case you can't read it, the sign below her says "It's not how deep you plow, It's how long you stay in the field." CLASSY!

So it's true... Husband was not exagerating about the tractor in the reception hall. However, where I come from we would call this "tractor" a lawnmower, but I'll forgive the city boy's definition of tractor.

"If called upon you had to be ready to die in your L.A. Gear high-tops..."

This is from The Onion:

Back In My Day, Being an American Gladiator Actually Meant Something

By Turbo

We were an elite group of highly trained combatants charged with the task of preventing contestants from collecting cash and prizes—and doing so with our very lives. We dominated the cable-televised arena, each grueling event a test of our strength, agility, and heart. The public feared and respected us. We had cool names and we were strong.
We were the American Gladiators. The real ones. Not like these shameless bastards.
This new breed of so-called gladiators has no class. They make a big spectacle of themselves, prancing around their "arena" as if they were actual gladiators. See, we never had to put on airs of greatness. There were no frills, no showiness, just gladiators tackling average Americans on national TV. That's all.
We didn't have to play characters, either. But what do you think this one new guy named Wolf does? He howls like a wolf before each event. What on earth is that? It's an absolute disgrace. I'm just glad Blaze, Laser, Thunder, Lace, Siren, Hawk, Ice, Malibu, Zap, Bronco, Jade, Dallas, and Jazz don't have to see this. They never could have imagined that someone would drag the name "American Gladiator" down so low.
In the glory years of foam-tipped battle, not just any 6-foot-4, 250-pound ex-bodybuilder or semiprofessional athlete could be called an American Gladiator. You needed something more. If called upon you had to be ready to die in your L.A. Gear high-tops. We earned the right to wear the red, white, and blue spandex, and we wore it with honor and dignity.
People may have called us mercenaries or brutes or aspiring actors looking for our big break on a popular syndicated program, but we were never in it for the money. All we cared about was the roar of the crowd as we shot tennis ball after tennis ball at a terrified opponent.
All we needed were those feverish cheers as we used every last ounce of our strength to prevent the contestants, who were in pretty good shape, from knocking us off elevated platforms while they soared toward us on rope swings.
That was what it meant to be a warrior.
Whether defending those cylinders that guys tried to stuff balls into, or knocking contestants off a pedestal with those gigantic Q-tip things, my generation of American Gladiators could do it all. We didn't have to specialize like they do today. When we were asked to do something, we did it, for the glory and the honor that could only be found in Gladiator Arena. We may not have liked standing behind that paper wall, waiting for contestants to come bursting through as they tried to make it to the ultimate $50,000 prize, but we did it because it was our duty. We understood dignity in those days, and we were proud to race along an upside-down racetrack made of Velcro.
Before an event all we had to do was clench our jaws, stare at our competitors, and make a few remarks like, "You're mine!" or "Come and get it!" or sometimes merely laugh maniacally for a few seconds, and they knew we meant business. That's why I don't understand all this thumbs-down business I see the new breed doing today. We didn't need hand signs. No sir. It was our actions while strapped to a bungee cord that proved our valor and nothing else.
Where have all the heroes like Thunder gone? Without fail he would protect the goal, rolling like a champion in his metal sphere. Thunder was a name that inspired awe, a rumbling force that said it was always Crunch Time. Compare that to one of the new names, like Toa. Or Stealth. That's not deadly or honorable.
That's just sneaking around a lot.
Pathetic. I guarantee you won't see a grape-flavored nougat candy bar named after any of these young fools.
It sickens me to see an American Gladiator congratulating contestants after losing to them. It is uncalled for, it is disgraceful, and it breaks the unspoken American Gladiator code. I once punched a guy in the face when he was beating me. I may have gotten disqualified and he may have earned some extra points, but he also got a message loud and clear: Turbo hits hard.
These new bucks—they just don't possess the heart necessary. I nearly died when I saw one of the new gladiators bow out of a match due to injury. They are soft, like children. We would never surrender. We wielded blocking pads with such fury that no one could withstand the cushioned force.
But it's not even about the competition anymore, is it? Not with fancy lights and special cameras and super-famous celebrity hosts Hulk Hogan and Muhammad Ali's daughter. Hell, I didn't even know who our host was until I had been on the show three years. Todd Christensen and/or Joe Theismann, Turbo salutes you.
I'd love to get one last shot out there and show everyone what it means to be a gladiator, but it would do no good. The world has changed. People are happy to settle for silly outfits and large tanks of flaming water and no longer care about brawn, skill, or courage. Still, the fact that these gigantic men and women are allowed in the foam-covered arena at all is an insult to gladiators everywhere, American or otherwise.

Boo, refusal to apply scientific principles!

What the hell, History Channel?

I've been watching this show Monster Quest since it first aired a couple months ago. I'm a bit of a sucker for a good cryptozoology/fortean television program, and, while I'm generally a skeptic, these kind of shows at least get my attention.

The show started off pretty good. They did a forensics analysis of a Canadian hunting cabin that found blood and hair samples that might be Bigfoot - it's not revolutionary here, but it was at least an attempt to find physical, testable proof. There was only a single eyewitness account, and most of the show consisted of physics projections (to show the height and strength needed to tear a cabinet fixture off a wall, as in a photo) and DNA testing.

The second episode was even better, and managed to get photographs of a "Giant Squid" - basically, just by using advanced tech to send a camera deeper down in an area where lots of squid were assumed to be. It's not like the show found a Colossal Kraken, but at least they managed to show that biologists' predictions (that squids grow bigger at greater depths) were right - and honestly, footage of a 20-ft long, fairly intelligent (possible using symbolic communication), predatory (they attack divers) thing with 10 tentacles.

Since then, the show has pretty much taken a credibility nosedive. A show looking for giant north american thunderbirds concluded that...people think things that are far away are bigger than they really are.

An episode about massive, carniverous freshwater fish spent most of the show...interviewing "noodlers" who catch catfish with their bare hands (or, as Kahn Soupanousanphon knows it, "cat-fisting")

Last week's episode was about "rods" - small, cylindrical objects that were caught on video, but not the naked eye. While I spent the hour giggling every time I heard "...and here we see the rod bursting out of the water..." the team of 'scientists' decided that, rather than being transdimensional, precambrian, flying aliens...the "rods" were just bugs flying past the camera lens faster than the shutter speed.

All this does not bode well for science...

But after tonight, I just might need to find a new Wednesday night 10-11pm show. The scientific evidence that there might be a "Dogman" stalking the Wisconsin woods was...lie detector tests of 5 witnesses. Then, just before the credits, they find a hair sample in the woods. They take it to a forensics expert, who reveals...

...
...
...

"this hair has clearly been exposed to the elements."

Get naked and eat cake!

I'm glad Husband told of his own stupidity so I wouldn't have to look like a jerk ratting him out on his inability to pack a simple bag for a one night trip. The no-pants debacle really was the story of the weekend, but Husband forgot to mention the second reason we were in, how did he say it... jesusfarmbeer country. That would be my nephews first birthday!

It was pretty cool. It involved food, drinks, presents, hungover uncles, and two cakes! One cake for the brithday boy and one for everyone else. This is what the baby's cake looked like BEFORE....

DURING...and AFTER...

It all seems like a perfectly useless waste of cake, but it was so cute! Hungover uncle number one (out of three) decided that such passionate enjoyment of cake should not be limited to your 1st birthday and promptly announced that for his 30th birthday he would like to have a party, get naked, and eat cake. Lucky for us we still have 4 years to figure out how to get out of that party.

"Don't you hate pants?!?"

Another (much briefer) lapse in posting, this time because of a combination very busy week and sorta sick me. I'm about halfway through my second bottle of Dayquil (the convenience store in BG doesn't have gelcaps, so I'm stuck with a not-quite-orange-y taste in my mouth.

The Wife, The Dog, and myself got to go up to jesusfarmbeer country for a wedding last weekend - the wedding including 4 different square dances, the groom driving the bride around on a tractor, in a circle, inside the reception hall. Plus, there were three different kinds of Old Milwaukee served at the bar. In cans.

The highlight for me (aside from freezing my royal rastafarian ney-neys off in the 1 degree weather) was forgetting to bring my dress pants with me from Dayton. Now, normally, my suit coat and pants are permanently kept in a garment bag in the closet, since I only wear them to weddings and funerals. Somehow, the pants escaped the garment bag, and are missing (the police say I need to wait 72 hours before declaring them legally dead, so I just sent out an amber alert).

So that leaves me, 45 minutes before the wedding, 2 hours from home, wearing a dress shirt, coat, nices shoes...and no pants. Luckily, the only formalwear store in the county stays open until 3pm, so I sped over there, bought the cheapest black pants I could find in my size (my obese and gangly stature is not as rare up there, praise allah), got the lady working there to hem them, and walked out of the store with my new pair of backup dress pants. So, yeah...

As I prep for the San Fran PCA conference in March, I'm finding several other folks at BG who are interested in comics, which is always good. Now I just have to sit down and write the damn presentation...

Multiple posts in a single night? I must have a lot of work to do!

This is from the International Society of Supervillains (http://www.the-iss.org/), in a preview/warning against/jeremiad aimed at the new movie Meet The Spartans:*

[O]nly you, the viewing public, can stop the horrid wrath of "Epic Movie," "Date Movie" and the like. They are killing America. And people still go to see them! It makes me hurt right in my shriveled black heart. I should be the one killing America.
Let's get this straight right now: A reference to "Superman Returns" or "Napoleon Dynamite" does not constitute a joke. A guy wearing a green crotch sling, who holds up his thumbs and says "It's niiiiiice," isn't a clever spoof of Borat, it's just theft. These movies are the film equivalent of a guy sitting behind your couch and occasionally popping up to remind you of "Nacho Libre" or shouting out "The A-Team!" before ducking back down again. It may catch you by surprise, but so does getting hit in the jaw with a hammer.

If only more of the mainstream movie critics would include hammer-caused-violence metaphors in their reviews, I would know whether to see Atonement. I give Meet The Spartans a pre-emptive 1 SPARKPLUG (out of a possible 4 1/2 SPARKPLUGs)


*Admittedly, as I see the ads for the movie, my inner nerd is just saying, "Thank god Kevin Sorbo was able to find work..."

Wrap your mindgrapes around this

Honestly, I never thought anyone actually attended Cincinnati Christian University - I always assumed it was a tax shelter or a cult.

Regrets are for horseshoes and handbags!

(let's just pretend like I've been posting regularly, instead of completely neglecting my duties as Blogmaster)

• The Official MaximumGuttenburg Readership is increasing at an annual rate of nearly 400%! If these trends continue...Hey!!! Welcome to everyone's favorite midwest CSI, Aaron. So far, the blog's readership is limited to two groups: 1) people who live or lived with me at one point, and 2) people who are married to people who lived with me. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but, you know...


• Now that the '08 Presidential race is heating up, my own vote is for Jimmy Carter.


• I think I had my best Fantasy Football season in a while this year, making it to the league finals with two of my three teams - the third team, which lost in the first round of the playoffs, was still first in points and second in overall record (Brees and Anderson just took the wrong damn week off).


• My Xmas break was less productive then I was hoping for, as my desktop decided to quit working. I'm still waiting on the boys down at UDit to salvage the data, and possibly fix the problem - however, since it's UDit, I'm not holding my breath.


• The Wife and I just went to see Walk Hard:The Dewey Cox Story - good lord, it's funny. I think it's even funnier when you're one of ten audience members in what might be the shittiest movie theater in Ohio (think your movie theater can match? I say thee nay!*)


• Speaking of The Wife, she just got nominated for the an award, and even got to write her own blurb, which she assures me is more than 5 words long. I'll let her explain fully.


• Of course, American Gladiators is back, after a 12-year hiatus. So far, we've gone three episodes and there's no sign of Gem-Gem-Gemini (Plus, they got rid of Atlasphere! What the hell, Universal Studios? Did the cages get repossesed?)

*(This joke 'tis dedicated to Johnnycakes)