Monthly Archives: October 2008

It’s that time of year again.

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That time when my wife makes a really cool costume for the kids:
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and my facial hair is sacrificed to the needs of a junior high project:

Meh. It will return tomorrow.

For all of you politicos: I truly have figured out why politicians do that goofy hand-thumb thing. It helps you to accentuate a point without a condescending finger point or an aggressive fist. I employed it in my speech today.
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The fashion show went really well. Three journalists from the outside world attended , as well as a whole bunch of students that had a lot of fun. (Check this weekend’s editions of multiple papers for signs of giant, bearded librarians.)

We raised a lot of money (although not nearing last year’s amount…I think because the teacher wasn’t there to donate to) and I continue my conflicted existence: I think Halloween is one of the dumbest holidays (give me a flipping day off if it’s a holiday) and the fact that I want to be a leader on campus in reaching past ourselves. Mission accomplished. Many teachers also want copies of their intros, just like they asked last year, but I had to admit that some I change on the fly, while I’m emceeing. Like the teachers that dressed as the Spice girls. I had originally written on the index card:

They’ll tell you what they want, what they really, really want
a tasty croissant and a trip to Vermont

I looked down at the card and my brain said, “This is stupid!” Thankfully I was able to gain some guidance from Five Iron Frenzy’s So Far So Bad:

I thought I’d write an epiphany, how something good is changing me, but I guess we dodged some passing fad, it looks like it’s so far, so bad. This song is rad. You could ask your dad. He won’t be mad. This song is stupid.

Love those guys. We of the Flesh Eating Monkeys persuasion opened for them back in ’97, back when ska walked the land and everyone was rocksteady with each other.

And, by the way, the wizard needs food badly.

Slade – I didn’t know that there was a separate campaign mode for co-op in Resistance 2, complete with class-based interactions that morph the objectives based on your different training. Yeah, Thanksgiving intrigues me. (Which, if you are taking notes, is such a holiday that you get two days off.)

Click here for awesome Resistance 2 videos, Slade.

Add tired to the list

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For those of you who know what a grammar freak I am, this should scare you.

I typed up a parent letter that got sent home today. It read “one of the way’s we can…”. Argh!!

And then I just noticed this in my fashion show costume spreadsheet:
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Back to writing those intros…

Guitar Hero: MetallicA….. and Resistance 2 is one week away.

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Finally, it’s a reality…Guitar Hero: Metallica brings the music of one of my favorite rock bands of all time to the gaming systems. Ever since the original Guitar Hero came out I always thought that the franchise isn’t really complete until they pick up some of the greatest and most challenging hits from Metallica. There’s nothing like ripping through songs like “Enter Sandman” and “Master of Puppets”.
The only thing I really hope they include is some sort of bonus tracks for the Symphonic-enhanced versions of their songs. Next up…Guitar Hero: Genesis! (Not likely but I’d be one of the first to pick that up)

*Nathan Hale’s face as he yells, “I’M NOT A FRIGGIN’ ONE MAN ARMY OVER HERE”

Resistance 2 is on the way with a release date of November 4th. I can’t wait for this game to come out, and I can’t believe it’s finally here. With Square-Enix having betrayed their fanbase and crossed the lines by having Final Fantasy on both XBox 360 and PS3, this game is the only thing that PS3 owners can hold over the XBox owners’ heads.

Simplest Solutions and Slade’s Happy Conduit Day

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I’ve been working on the district site and delving into PHP programming. I stressed for an hour as to why my logos were showing up but not my links. I even searched some crazy articles.

Then it hit me after dinner. index.php was what I put up today. index.html was from the weekend. I hadn’t removed it from the server and the browser defaulted to it instead of the .php. I had wondered why it wasn’t updating.

I’m sure this has happened to all of you.

Simple solution: delete the old file.

Also, The Conduit may have a publisher. On the Sega ftp site, they had a folder up for The Conduit, suggesting by their web presence that they will be hosting The Conduit.

Rush: The Music of the Universe

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Mike, you need to watch this week’s episode of Chuck:

  1. Missile Command
  2. You Got the Touch/Transformers theme song
  3. An action montage choreographed to Rush

And I enjoyed Heroes tonight. Finally, a supervillain. “I don’t think I’m better than everyone. I am.”

I’m curious to see next Monday night. Ruing? I think so. SNL advertisements for/against candidates the night before the election. I’d be interested in a slam tally. I wish I could say that the American people aren’t influenced by media, but…

Best quote in the book

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A lot was riding on this. And it all came down to two toilets.

Starclimber comes out in February of next year. It’s a lot of fun, in a “Canadian Victorian space exploration” sort of thing.

Definitely met expectations, unlike:


Check out the full story on Cake Wrecks, my wife’s and my answer to LOLcats in time-burning.
Updates:

  1. Youngest does in fact have croup. A visit to the urgent care late last night resulted in a shot of MGH like her father before her (and nothing like Mohinder). She’s doing better today. Warm showers, cold breathing treatments. Tons of fun.
  2. She’s going even crazier on the tottering/standing thing.
  3. And I now have digital proof about the cuteness: all me

    MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter

  4. I had forgotten about Apple’s original logo until I was looking through a company bio book I have on my shelves:

    Rockin’ the Apple portable in 1989:

    Yeah, I like my Macbook better.
  5. The district site is coming along swimmingly. I spent yesterday afternoon staring at CSS pages. Here’s one of the resources that I used. Feel the power of CSS!
  6. “Just get me back to 1972. I’ll walk from there.” I love pirates who don’t do anything.

Thanks to Mrs. L for her blog recommendation

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I used to go to Mrs. L’s house in high school and would be fed gourmet cake scraps. She whipped up a whipped cake for one of my dates who hadn’t had a birthday cake on her birthday (and making me look much cooler than I was as Mrs. L slaved in the back kitchen).

Well, Mrs. L is blogging about all things cakes (is there anything else to life? I think not.) and she has great recommendations, like Cake Wrecks.

This is a blog that is just as disturbed as I am about the misspelling of ‘congratulations’

(and bad typography)

choking muppets

and a bridezilla that Jeremy and I may have seen before

Wow.

Marc Ecko is a Star Wars Nerd (or at least wants to make money off of them)

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Marc Ecko, purveyor of all things hip and/or rhino-related, has come out with a new branch of his clothing line:


Click here to see more.

My thoughts? Well, for the stormtrooper hoodie, let’s do a comparison:

$98


$10 Wal-Mart

$0.99 (Also from Wal-Mart)
Total cost: $10.99 vs. $98
And yet in both scenarios, you look like a doofus.

But the Mandalorian hoodie? I would walk up to the florist, buy flowers for my wife, and ask, “Will they survive transport? They’re no good to me dead.”

My wife wants this one:

but I told her to hold out for it in pink. And not $98.


This one = what?

HSM3…2…1…BOOM!

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On Friday teenage girls across the nation (and their easy to manipulate boyfriends) will be attending the opening of High School Musical 3: Senior Year. This phenomenon has embodied HSM, HSM2, HSM3, HSM: The Concert Tour, High School Musical: The Disneyland/World Stage Show and HSM: Stage Musical…ALL IN LESS THAN TWO YEARS! I have to admit, I am waiting for HSM: The Flame Thrower and other marketing merchandise. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this feat, it took JK Rowling almost 12 years to write all 7 of her Harry Potter books. Disney has matched that is one sixth of the time. Amazing! For every Harry Potter book you’re getting almost 7 versions of HSM. Because HSM1 was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good.

I am not against Disney making movies. I am not against the idea of a movie about high school musicals (I’m a Theatre teacher who directs musicals…I like musicals). But I am against Disney milking something until it’s dead. Within two months of the release of HSM1, Disney released the rights for high schools around the world to produce their own staged version of HSM. In fact, there were advertisements telling students to ask their high school drama teachers to produce the show. To the average Joe Six-Pack this was not a big deal. But it impacted my world. For the rest of the year I had to hear <whiny teenage girl voice>”Let’s do HSM! PLEASE, LET’S DO HSM!” </whiny teenage girl voice>. I even had a 70 year old woman (substitute teacher) decide to usurp my lesson plans and show HSM. Yeah, working on that study guide for their midterm exam wasn’t as important as the elderly’s love for Zac and Vanessa. But I digress…

I used to work for Disney and I know how they work. They say it’s “not about making money, but giving a high caliber product to their family audience.” (That was taken from my 1st training session as a “cast member”). But milking the same story into 7 different versions doesn’t just extend an overused subject, it completely destroys the magic of the first film. Case in point, HSM won several awards in 2006. Nothing has been won since. In fact, Disney was so desperate to continue the franchise after HSM that it completely ignored its stance on its performers maintaining a wholesome image and allowed Vanessa Hudgens to keep her role despite very racy (AKA naked) photos of herself being released on the internet and later stated that they were intended for her fellow cast mate boyfriend Zac Efron. But who needs standards?

HSM is not “the great American Musical.” I know that. But when there are so many great works of film and television, it seems like a direct slap in the face to the consumer when Disney milks these franchises for all they are worth. I am still waiting for a similar parody by South Park that will mirror what they did to Spielberg and Lucas for what they did to Indiana Jones.

Btw, didn’t Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale’s character) have a “break a leg” moment at the end of HSM1? Why was she still trying to breakup Gabriella (Vanessa) and Troy (Zac) in HSM2? Disney had told me and other audience members that people apparently don’t learn from their mistakes. How pessemistic. I’m sure Sharpay will figure it all out in HSM3.

Also, the TV, film and stage franchises of HSM are just the tip of the iceberg. Checkout the DVDs, the Ice Tour, Book series, and 5 video games. Thankfully, HSM: the Reality Series (Get in the Picture)failed after one season (11 episodes). God is still looking out for us.

24 Hour Comics Day

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I first heard about this from Scott Kurtz, but I’ve also followed up on Scott McCloud and some other artists.

24 Hour Comics Day is where a group of artists/storytellers get together in one location and bust out 24 comics, one per hour. (I wonder if that’s how so many Marmaduke comics get made. Can you imagine if Gary Larson had done this?)

I can predict that they’d get pretty loopy pretty quickly. Here’s my attempt at the comics:

Hour 1

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Hour 2

Click for full view

Here you can see the loopiness set in. I crunched 23 comics into one. There’s a ninja dinosaur bowling, taunted by a zombie robot, while being encouraged by a manga Cheshire cat. Yeah, we moved our drummer today. I got kinda tired. Maybe next year I’ll be more prepared, with the Wacom tablet instead of a Sharpie and a piece of printer paper.

Do my longtime readers remember my stealth plane?