Please forgive me for posting this.

And, you know, for laughing at it.

But it pretty much sums up the whole movie.

MILLION DOLLAR BABY IN 5 SECONDS.

(yes - spoilers - *sheesh*)

An interesting little meme that I wrote for Facebook today.

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note -- upper right hand side.

Okay. I'm shooting from the hip here. 15 in 15 minutes.... and.... go!

TIGER TIGER (also known as The Stars My Destination) by Alfred Bester - Science Fiction - It's more than just a 50s Sci Fi knock off of the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. An epic adventure novel about a man so blinded by revenge that he will stop at nothing - even evolving. Best buddhist book on the list.

BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM by James M. McPherson - U.S. Civil War - Easily the best book about the U.S. Civil War ever written. McPherson plays "follow the money" and shows what one of the bloodiest conflicts the world has ever known was REALLY about. Shook me to the core.

BLITHEDALE ROMANCE by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Fiction - What if intellectuals bent on leaving society behind moved into Melrose Place? My most favorite Hawthorne novel and the best love-quadrilateral ever written. What a wonderful, guilty pleasure.

THE MICROBE HUNTERS by Paul de Kruif - Non-Fiction - A book with so much heart that you can't help but smile as you read a history of Microbiology (of all things). If only all books of science could be written this well. So effin' good.

THE SNARKOUT BOYS AND THE AVOCADO OF DEATH by Daniel J. Pinkwater - Juvenile - Pinkwater was my favorite writer as a boy and this book says it all. A bizarre book about two of the most unlikely heroes - Walter Galt and Winston Bongo. And, yes, The Avocado of Death.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte - Fiction - Oh god, of all the books on the list, I wish that I could go back and read this book again for the first time. Don't see the movie. Don't read the jacket cover. Just settle into your favorite chair on a cold rainy day and read about one of the most F*CKED up love stories ever written. Srsly. F*ck yah!

CREATURE TECH by Doug TenNapel - Graphic Novel - Not since A Canticle for Leibowitz has a book come so close to making me a Christian. TenNapel's opus is about a scientist who become shackled with a symbiotic alien parasite while trying to track down a madman in possession of the Shroud of Turin. Better than Lewis' Out of a Silent Planet and filled with action, adventure, and a scientist who is forced to question his lack of faith. Brilliant.

BEAU GESTE by Percival Christopher Wren - Fiction - This book has it ALL! Everything! Romance. Adventure. The French Foreign Legion. A Jewel Heist. Ghosts. But lord, I don't do it justice. If I could write books, I would want to write a book like this.

HOMAGE TO CATALONIA by George Orwell - Memoir - Europe's answer to John Steinbeck enrolls with the Communists to fight the Fascists in Spain. Orwell shows British grit as he writes a truly literate war memoir. Anarchists and Communists fighting side by side against a common enemy - who would have thunk it.

TENAHU by Ursula K. Le Guin - Science Fiction - Lost in the myriad of amazing novels by Le Guin is this short feminist powerhouse about dragons and a burned little girl. The novel is a triumph in simplicity and often overlooked because the Harry Potter wizard (that an entire generation fell in love with) is now aged and impotent. Better than the Left Hand of Darkness, this novel is a work of unparalleled greatness.

GOOD BEHAVIOR by Donald E. Westlake - Mystery - I love me a good heist novel and nobody wrote them better than Mr. Westlake. All of the John Dortmunder novels are fantastic but everything just clicks in this caper from Andy Kelp to Murch's Mom. You can read any of Westlake's Dortmunder novels but this is my favorite.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN by Richard Matheson - Horror - This book is just subtle enough that most people have no idea how scary it is. But give this book to any man and he'll tell you that it's the most frightening tome ever written. It's more than just a little dude fighting a spider. Ignore the cover. Prepare for a terror. I'm getting the chills just writing about it.

THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY - G.K. Chesterton - Fiction - Sometimes it isn't "what", it's "how". And sometimes you can see where a book is going yet still enjoy how an author takes you there. Chesterton's best novel is full of adventure, paradox, and philosophy as he takes a mystery novel and applies it to the all power Sunday (maybe God, maybe not). Chesterton was always about re-defining genres with his crooked little smile and with Thursday, he authored a novel that defies description.

V. by Thomas Pynchon - Fiction - I guess we all have our favorite Pynchon novel and this one is mine. Anyone who says Pynchon was merely trying to steal Nabokov's prose is full of dog shit and V is the best book about women ever written by a man. I love this book from Profane to Stencil. Pynchon at his best. (at least until I finish Gravity's Rainbow.)

THE TRACK OF THE CAT by Walter Van Tilburg Clark - Western - A gothic western about three brothers going one after the other out into the cold to track down a mountain cat killing their cattle. But it's more than just a who is hunting whom. This is a novel about family that you hate and guilt you can't escape. Cold, bleak and so very well written.

And that's it! 15 books in 35 minutes. I think I went over time a little bit. Please, share with me your favorites. And feel free to point out the ones that I forgot. OH! Like God Emperor of Dune by Herbert. What a great f*ckin' book!

Oh. My. F*cking. GAWD!

Thank you San Diego Comic Con!

If you didn't seen Kenny Brawn-Brawn's early test footage for Thor at San Diego, let me be the first to say, all doubts and fears about this project have been removed from my mind.

HOLY SH!T - this looks awesome. I want to watch this movie right now. Seriously. Right - now!

If you click on the link, prepare yourself. It's short. And it gives just a brief hint of one scene. And the special effects aren't finished. I don't even think that's Chris Hemsworth at the Nordic God. This clip was clearly made by Ken-Dawg and his production team to show Marvel at the direction that they were going for the movie.

It doesn't matter though.

Does contain a minor spoiler so be warned. But if you do click - you gotta watch to the end. Srsly.

Man, but I would do ANYTHING to watch this film right now. *single tear of joy*

Puff!

Yah you!

Let's go get us some lunch.

I know where you want to go.

For some reason, people can never picture me getting into fights. Maybe it's because my friends see me as more of a lover than a fighter. I don't know. But make no mistake about it, I take Mixed Martial Arts and hand to hand combat very seriously. Very. Seriously.

That's why I own all of Master Terry McMillian's defensive arts DVDs. If you've never watched one, you'd be amazed at how much you can learn from just one three minute clip.



(Special thanks to chaos_dwarf for the clip.)

DISCLAIMER: I like Judd Apatow movies. I don't know if I would say that I love them, but, yes, I do like them. I felt that both The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up had brilliant parts that made up for the fall apart endings, but I enjoyed them both. All this being said, I was pretty excited to see Funny People this weekend.

What follows is my stand up comedy, mostly spoiler free review of Funny People. Click if you dare. Go on. I dares yah.

Shocking.

You Are a Werewolf

You are moody and easily provoked. You are highly loyal and protective of those you love. While you can be intense at times, you are generally a laid back person. But if a fight comes your way, you will fight 'til the death if necessary. You seem normal to most people. No one understands how different you can be. It's like a switch flips for you sometimes - and then you're a completely different creature.

When you work with the undead on a day to day basis, it never hurts to have a little luck on your side.

Still, no one at my office relies on luck to get them home at the end of the day.

Now, I don't think anyone fears for his life working with undead clients. We've been hired to perform a service and eating/draining/turning/humping/selling/killing us isn't very cost effective. (Sorry. I'm an accountant. I tend to think this way.) Besides, most of the undead clients have completely assimilated to living with ... uh ... the living. Most of them.

But no zookeeper salts and peppers his skin before working with tigers. Jesus, could I be any more condescending? Zookeepers? (Yeah like I'm the guy in charge.) Maybe a better way of saying it would be like this: the best way to avoid a mistake made on an impulse, is to avoid temptation.

So most of the people that I work with who have a heartbeat are spelled or carry or wear something that will allow us to focus on doing on our job and not wondering if the client likes white or dark meat. We have amulets and charms and blessed chains and glamour spells - anything that would send a message that we know what we're doing and we wouldn't go down without a fight. Or at least that we'd go down with something more than a blood curdling scream.

Above is a picture I took with my phone of my favorite - a bronze medallion with Pius XII on it.

It used to be my grandfather's and I'm anything but Catholic, but as far as invocations go, the medallion is nothing short of a lens, taking anything I put into it and multiplying it by a factor of four. It allows me to sit down with anything from a werewolf to a man possessed by an Assyrian demon and conduct myself in a professional manner.

I have a bunch of protective objectives, ranging from magic bread (don't ask) to a three way mirror (again don't ask), but my bronze Pope on a Rope is something I love and wear regularly. My friend Gary tried it on and he couldn't do anything with it which shouldn't make it cooler, but it does.

Like I said, it's really unlikely that anything would ever happen to me at work. Still, it never hurts to have a little something extra.

Look.

If you spend millions of (albeit stolen) dollars to fund an operation to overthrow the civilized world, taking months to plan and properly coordinate your scheme to enslave humanity, and then the costumed nut job that foils your plans just happens to be riding one of these....



... well, let's face it... this guy is just rubbing your nose in the fact that he's waaaaaaaaay ahead of you.

I mean, it's one thing to foil your weeks upon weeks of planning with high tech weaponry and unmatched martial arts. I can totally understand that. Hell, I don't know anything about Karate, or Kung Fu, or Feng Shui. That's why I hire ninjas and motorcycle gangs. So, yah, if the guy shows up on some magical speed bike straight out of Star Wars, well f*ck, I can sympathize if your get your ass kicked. Been there, had that kicked.

But if it's simply a matter of him calling the cops and showing up to gloat while sitting on top of an elephant as they haul you away to some maximum security prison, well, our costumed zoo keeper there is just trying to break it to you gently that your in the wrong line of work.

Seriously - jesus - he bested your plans and he did it while riding a f*cking pachyderm. This is really nothing more than him telling you that your being sent back to the minors which is where, I am sorry to say, you rightfully belong.

:-(

AQUAMAN CAN TALK TO FISH!

Or so he says. I mean, let's be honest, we kinda have to take his word for it, don't we?

Picture if you will, a murder scene. A brother lies on the living room carpet, long dead. Forensic scientists scratch their own heads as well as each others, completely baffled. A man and a woman argue and point at each other accusingly, each blaming the other.

And then in walks Aquaman. With an air of confidence, he walks through the crime scene, stepping over the body, and over to the fish tank. He removes the lid and sticks his head in the tank, obviously communicating with the guppies and the colorful tetras. The investigator and the forensic scientists all exchange looks and even the man and the woman have stopped arguing to watch.

Finally the King of Atlantis pulls his head out of the tank and points at the woman.

"Red Tail Glory says the woman did it."

The police quickly grab the woman as she screams that she's innocent and she didn't do it.

Aquaman smiles and nods before walking out of the room.

Yes, they say Aquaman can talk to fish, but - in truth - we kinda have to take his word for it. Don't we?

Let's just open this morning's issue of the Interwebs and see what everyone is talking about.

Sam Raimi to Direct Warcraft Movie Wow. Really? Don't get me wrong - it's probably the granddaddy of all movies based on (*snicker*) a video game, but, wow, really? Is it just me or did we not see Sam already direct this movie and it was called Army of Darkness? So... after Spidey 4, unless those Blizzard boys turn out to be a bunch of pedo lovin', cat killin' ass-hats, prepare for a World of Warcraft movie filled with aggro jokes, big busted night elves, and Ted Raimi playing the part of Leeeeeeeeee-roy Jenkins!



Early Reviews Say GI Joe Movie Might Not Suck I'll believe it when I see it; however, it might be possible that Transformers 2 set the bar so low that Joe had no where to go but up. Still being a Heinlein fan and remembering that the original Starship Troopers was all about the super armor, I'm holding onto a single shred of hope. Still, I hold out yet more hope for the big budget, gay porno based on the movie called BLOW JOE!



Amateur Star Gazer PWNS Too-Legit-To-Quit Astronomers I freakin' L-O-V-E stories like this. Mr. Wesley, after watching some sports, headed out to take one last look at Jupiter before bed and just happened to notice that something HUGE had smashed into the giant planet. Don't get me wrong - I know - it's a big sky and there's lots to look at, but NOBODY with a decent telescope was watching Jupiter that night? I find it hard to believe. You may start your conspiracy theories.... ... ... now.

Leonardo DiCaprio Talks, Laughs, and Sleeps With teh Fishes The happiest hetero in the Hollywood is trying to get AQUAMAN out of the water and into the movie theatres. I know, I know, wasn't this a joke on Entourage? Yes, yes it was. And even on Entourage once Jimmie Cameron jumped on board, it went from being a joke to something that everyone wanted to see. So, the real question is, does Leo have the connections to make everyone take my favorite Clown Fish Hero seriously? I say, not without the script. Aquaman alone doesn't sell tickets.



Twilight Fans are the New Trekkies Careful kids. Nothing can kill a project faster than rapid fans. Just ask the Brown Coats. And being one of the them I can say, yes, sometimes you can have too much enthusiasm. That being said... hope everyone enjoys SDCC.

Earlier today while I was hard at work today, and by hard at work, I mean reading craigslist ads and those adorable yahoo questions, I stumbled across the above beauty.

At first I was going to just pass it on by when, by chance, I read one of the answers.

Oh. I see.

So I decided to post my own answer via my blog.

Here's what you say when a guy says GO MAKE ME A SAMICH.

"First, go into the other room and make that man a nice, delicious samich, just how he likes it. Then, I would recommend you f*ck the cute 18 year old bag boy from the local grocery store - yes, right on top of that perfect samich.

"Afterwards, you can let it slip to the 18 year old boy that the man in the other room raped your imaginary daughter and is also a profane troll on http://www.icanhascheezburger.com.

"I recommend you cry softly.

"Then, I would tell the athletic 18 year old that the only way you'll truly be happy is if he takes the samich and goes into the other room and chokes the husband/boyfriend/some guy with it.

And that's what I would say....

Or maybe I would just say, "you know, I would recommend that you walk right out the front door and never see that sexist sack of crap ever again. Cause there's no funnier comeback than that. I mean, do you really want to make the sexist ass-hat a samich only if you have a funny comeback to go along with it? I say, f*ck him. And f*ck his samich... and preferably with a hawt 18 year old bag boy from Safeway."

I am one spoiled son of a bitch.

For the second time this week, Gan took me to another sneak preview. This time, she took me to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer over at Mall of America. After swinging home and feeding the cat and letting the dog out, I headed over to teh Mall to wait in line. Gan showed up a little later and we found ourselves in center seats.

And although, as I said, I am quite spoiled, for the most part, the following review is spoiler free.

Gan did it again. Somehow she ended up with a couple of free passes to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. So last night, my girl took me to the movies and this was truly an act of love. I mean, how else could you explain my love sitting in line for two hours to watch the sixth film of a series that she was almost completely unfamiliar with. I have only one word for that and that word is love.

Which I feel is a perfect lead into my review of Harry Potter and the HBP.

(It's almost silly to say, but this review has spoilers - you have been warned.)

Which is scarier: These fantastic impersonations of Christopher Walken or ... you know... the real Christopher Walken.


Asian People Doing Christopher Walken Impressions - Watch more Funny Videos

As a fan of Evard Grief and using the word "FAEN" for... well... everything, I highly endorse this educational film by Lasse Gjertsen.

I understand the world mourning Michael Jackson and that nice man with the beard that sold stuff on television. Really, I do.

However, I was shocked to the core to learn that Pina Bausch had died on Monday.

Without a doubt, Bausch was an true original - a choreographer and a dancer who married moments of frantic fluidity and acts of focused, unwavering passion. As an artist, she was completely exposed and fearless and while her peers attempted to capture her smooth desperation of movement, she was unmatched.

Here's a video clip which can't capture the power of seeing her live. She used the whole stage and often layered her dancers' performances like symphonies of movement. Cameras too often tried to focus in on the action of her work, often missing the importance of the relationships between the people on the stage.

Inspirational.

Unique.

Completely peerless.

And one of my biggest heroes.



Rest in Peace, Ms. Bausch.

If one city could be made of complete, concentrated awesome that city would be Halifax, Nova Scotia.

This is brilliant.

I didn't even see the Wolverine movie and this is brilliant.

It's missing at least one butt shot, but the rest is dead on.

And surprisingly spoiler free.

Poor Alf. Man... we've all been there.

Annnnnnd here comes Mister Meatloaf.