Jeeves, More Ice Cream And Root-Beer!

Okay, this weekend was cool.

This was the four-day weekend I have previously touted as “Xmas: Reloaded”.(okay, five-day weekend, as we took an extra day off). My wife and I got our paychecks as well as our year-end bonus checks, so we were rolling in the dough.

Okay, to be fair, we didn’t go crazy with our temporary wealth. Not right away. We got bills paid, repairs on our SUV, important stuff for our house, etc. Then we got a completely new computer (because our old one was too old for high-speed connections), printer, desk, etc. This was mostly done so that we can now do some of our work from home… but the first thing we did was spend a whole evening looking for crazy Japanese game-show clips on YouTube. Good times. Jaw-droppingly absurd good times.

All this barely dented our money supplies, so we went shopping. A butt-load of new clothes, DVDs, books, and video-games later, and we STILL have a ton of money. Nice.

And before you think we’re being selfish and greedy with this money, consider that as long as my wife and I have been together (8 years in September), we have never been able to spend any large amounts of money frivolously for ourselves. There has always been an emergency or something hugely pressing and important within our families around this time of year. This year, we’re doing extremely well (knock on wood), and so we could afford to cut loose finally and enjoy ourselves.

So, we got to live like the idle rich for a few days, and believe me: we totally deserved it.

When He Laughs, Will It Sound Like The Crypt-Keeper?

One Halloween, when I was a young Dummy of about 10, I dressed as Ghost Rider. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the home-made costume scanned into my computer yet, but a 10-year old made it. How good could it have been? There were construction-paper flames taped onto a store-bought full-head skull mask (that had white hair, no less). And I was a fat kid, too.

Damn, I wish I had a scanned picture to show you.

Anyway, have you SEEN the movie trailer for “Ghost Rider” yet? Seen in 3 dimensions, in full color and moving, GR looks suddenly like the worlds most bad-ass biker tattoo come to horrible, almost laughable life. All of a sudden, the character looks rediculous to me. It’s a FLAMING SKELETON riding a FLAMING MOTORCYCLE. Up the side of a SKY SCRAPER. I was excited about the movie, until I saw the damn thing in motion. Now, I’m wrestling with myself over my opinion of the character. Thanks a lot, Hollywood.

In all fairness, I haven’t read a comic book in a long time, so maybe my mindset isn’t into seeing something unbelievable being made to look real. Then again, I just saw “Superman Returns” not long ago and I fully accepted a guy in tights flying, so who knows. Either way, I’ll probably go see the movie when it comes out.

How’s about everybody else? What do you think of GR’s Hollywood look?

America’s Very Own Mythology

America, as a country, is young. Compared to other countries on Earth, we’ve only been around for a few minutes, really. Empires have been known to rise, flourish, and fall in shorter times than we’ve existed.

And here we are, without any mythology to compare to the rest of the world. What I mean by this is that many countries and areas around the world have this mythological heritage, based on a significant period in their history, that they can claim as their own. The entertainment world continues to draw on these archetypes to this day. The United Kingdom and surrounding areas have valiant knights battling dragons. Japan has the fearsome samurai, stealthy ninjas, and their own dragons, imps, and demons. China has Shaolin warrior monks riding giant kites into battle.

I was thinking about these things the other day, and about how America doesn’t seem to have it’s own myths. But it does have it’s own, I quickly realized.

The wild West. Cowboys and indians. Stagecoaches, gunfights over card games, all that stuff. That’s our legacy. That’s our American myth.

Begin Aging Process Now

Well, it’s happened. That moment I knew would eventually come has arrived.

A popular song from my youth is on the oldies channel.

My wife and I were driving around the other night. We don’t listen to the oldies channel often, but for the hell of it we had it on.

And there, sandwiched between “Calendar Girl” and “The Twist”, was Toto’s “Africa”. I distinctly remember playing with my Voltron toys in my childhood bedroom with that song on the radio and it was only a year or two old.

What the fuck? Am I really that old? Could it be?

A Kick In The Pulp-Lover’s Gonads

A Disney-fied “John Carter of Mars”?

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Three letter word

As I’ve mentioned previously, Miami Vice (the TV series) is a guilty pleasure of mine. It’s one of the reasons that “Vice City” is my favorite of the Grand Theft Auto games, and it’s got an ass-kicking synth-y theme song. I grew up a cop’s son, and we watched the show every time it was on. I liked the show, it was comedy for my dad: how the hell could a vice cop afford Ferraris, Armani suits, and a swank sailboat? My dad drove a Ford pick-up, wore jeans and t-shirts to work, and we lived in a tiny little suburban house. Tres chic!

Anyway, as I watch the show on DVD from the comfort of luxurious Dummy House, I have come to a conclusion: “Pal” must have been an insult at some time in the 80’s. At least, that’s the conclusion that one could come to after listening to Don “Sonny Crockett” Johnson and Phillip Michael “Ricardo Tubbs” Thomas. Whenever they’re face to face with a “scumbag” or “sleazeoid” (actual police terms, I believe), they always use that term: “pal”. It’s like a drinking game almost.

Crockett: “Listen here, pal. You were busted with half a key of Colombian flake. You’re looking at hard time, scuzzbucket.”

Criminal: “Scuzz… what?”

Tubbs: “You heard him, slimeball. We’re talkin’ 25 years, pal. In the slammer. You know why they call it ‘the slammer’, pal?”

Criminal: “Wow, your suit’s so shiny.”

Crockett and Tubbs: “Shut your face, pal!”

Etc.

I guess it sounded so much tougher in those pre-”NYPD Blue” days. That show made it OK for TV cops to run around without pants, shouting “asshole!” and “douchebag!”, which I don’t remember my dad doing at all.

Well, not pants-less, anyway.

(EDIT: Since this post, 2 people have found my blog by searching the web for “Colombian flake”. What’cha up to, pals?)

That Mucinex Guy Can Go To Hell

Mucinex is a fine product and all, but they’ve given a face to my enemy. I will forever now think of him when my nose, chest, and sinuses fill with cement, and I wake up the neighborhood hacking and coughing in the middle of the night. You phlegmy bastard.

Anyway, feeling much better now, thank you. The cough is all that remains, which is hell when your job requires you to talk… a lot. Watched plenty of TV, read “The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril” (good book, a lotta fun for pulp fans, although I think there was a lot of historical innaccuracies done for artistic sake… but I won’t nit-pick). Even managed to get my video game systems (XBox, GameCube) out of the pawn shop (long story, involving ungrateful in-laws and should-be-illegal electric bills, caused by said parasitic in-laws). Of course, those systems are classified as “last generation” now, but since I have exactly 795 unfinished games (and the in-laws have moved out), I’ll be busy for a long while.

And, of course, our upcoming year-end bonus is coming very soon, so that “Xmas Reloaded” thing is gonna happen shortly. I hate to be materialistic, but life is good.

2007: The Story So Far…

-Wife lost wallet with full cashed paycheck.
-Bronchitis fills my chest with cement.
-As soon as benefits kick back in, I use 2 sick days.
-Days spent coughing up my lungs, watching Roseanne and Miami Vice on DVD (it’s a guilty pleasure, alright? I broke down and bought it for cheap)
-Nights spent trying to sleep without coughing
-New Captain Spectre strip finally up. Happy New Year.