Date:	2009-09-10 15:32
Subject:	moving
Security:	Public
Mood:	jubilant

So this Saturday is the big move. Well, it is an intra-city move so I guess by definition it isn't really a big move. But we're moving into our first house and not another apartment, so that's big. And we've accumulated a lot of stuff in the two years we've been in our present apartment, so in terms of the actual number of boxes, pieces of furniture, and assorted sundries to be hefted onto and off of the moving truck, this is definitely the biggest move. Fortunately we've got friends and family aplenty to help us out, and hopefully many hands will make light work and then it'll be on to the "relaxing with a beer" phase of moving day.

Goodbye, Brighton. I'll miss the excitement of East Ave and living fifteen minutes or less from literally everything in Rochester. But hello, Penfield!

Needed to do a date compare between a VB datestamp on our web front-end and a timestamp from our UNIX-based pbx. Here's a handy little function to convert a date to UNIX format:

Function convertToUNIXtime (strTime)

if IsDate(strTime) = False then
vTemp = "Error: provided value not a valid date"
else
vTemp = DateDiff("s", "12/31/1969 00:00:00", DateSerial(Year(strTime), Month(strTime), Day(strTime)) + TimeSerial(Hour(strTime), Minute(strTime), Second(strTime)))
end if
convertToUNIXtime = vTemp

End Function

So this Saturday I get to marry my best friend and most favorite person in all the world. Yeay! It's been a hectic couple of weeks (and life will continue at an absurdly rapid pace until the wee hours of Sunday morning), but I can't wait.

And then we're off to Toronto. We're going to Italy in October for our "real" honeymoon, but we wanted to do something special right after the day. We've been running like crazy for a while (Dar even more than I), and I think we earned it. So Monday night we're going to celebrate our love with front row center seats to "Evil Dead: The Musical!". OH HELL YES

Charlton Heston has died. He checked out at age 84 after a long illness. So it goes.

The news was all over the internet this morning, so I was already aware of his passing when I wandered over to my favorite movie site, CHUD.com, and saw a headline that made me do a spit-take with my morning coffee. Best. Headline. Ever.

SOYLENT GREEN IS CHARLTON HESTON

We went to see Tool last night in Hamilton, Ontario (it lies somewhere betwixt Niagra Falls and Toronto).

Awesome. Just awesome. I am for the most part way past my arena-rock concert days, but Tool put on a show that was well worth braving the pot-addled adolescents who apparently never heard Jeremy Piven's sage advice to John Favreau on concert-attendance attire. (Boys and girls, please: Don't be that guy)

I had a slowly building sense of dread before Tool took the stage. We got there about an hour before the concert was scheduled to start (and scarfed some surprisingly tasty arena-vended pizza slices) and Copps Coliseum was virtually deserted. Tools first show in Hamilton had sold out so absurdly fast that they added a second date, which was last night. We feared we were the only ones who had miseed out on the first batch of tix and were attending this second show, and as the ATROCIOUS opening two-man band took the stage. They were called Big Business...sort of a depressingly frenetic Nerd Core Thrash Metal duo consisting of a drummer and bassist/singer. Bleh.

And then they were done and it was 9:00 and Tool was due to take the stage and the venue was still only about half full. And then, lights went out and every single of the coliseum's many entrances exploded with a throng of the black t-shirted masses. By the time Tool struck their first note, the colliseum was full--it was pretty nifty to watch.

As for Tool, they played damn long (two hours) and damn well. The multimedia stage show was stunning (they used not only many background screens but the STAGE ITSELF was a video monitor--I think they were rear-projecting on it from underneath because it was a crisp clear image and none of the band members were casting a shadow on it from above). The music was so very Tool, with many of their already lengthy hypnotic tunes extended out even further in an impressive display of jam band virtuosity, like the world's angriest Phish tribute band. I was so blown away that I can't even be upset that they didn't play Aenima.

Buried a few paragraphs down in this post from James Gunn, the writer/director of Slither (and husband of The Office's Pam, Jenna Fischer) is a link to www.luciferthemovie.com

Go to Gunn's blog post first, read the very brief background on Lucifer the Movie, and then follow the link to the movie site and watch the trailer.

See, it's like this: Sometimes I think I'm a gigantic dorkus. I think this not for any one reason, but for a collection of many reasons: because I read comics and and Terry Pratchett novels and play oodles of video games and because I did a little happy dance when I saw the teaser trailer for Fallout 3 and because I watch Battlestar Galactica and Lost and Heroes and because I own the extended editions of all three Lord of the Rings movies and because along with Science Fiction classics on DVD like Blade Runner and 2001 I also own Dreamscape and Logan's Run.
Plus Darlene helpfully points out every once in a while that I'm a big dork (she says it without a hint of disapproval and she loves me anyway, so I don't mind).
But no matter how gigantic a dorkus I may be, I can't hold a candle to the guy who created Lucifer the Movie (or rather, spent his entire five million dollar fortune creating the trailer for the non-existant Lucifer the Movie). So bad it's almost good -- in fact, I'm willing to bet that if there was dialog in that trailer, it would have elevated the whole thing into SUPERMELY AWESOMELY BAD territory. Thank you, Lucifer The Movie guy, for making the rest of our lives seem that much more cool by comparison.

Just when I thought Colonel Tigh being a Dylan-loving cylon was the strangest thing that could ever happen in the universe, along comes the morning news with a trump:

New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine was in critical condition Friday but expected to recover after his SUV crashed into a guard rail while heading to a meeting between Don Imus and the Rutgers women's basketball team

Goodbye, Mr. Vonnegut

Awesome

Comics: I've been sick for the past couple days, which sucked mostly except I got to burn through some new comics collections. Actually, it was the all-Brian K. Vaughn show. RUNAWAYS VOLs 1 & 2 and Y: THE LAST MAN (volume whatever we're up to...eight, I think. Subtitled Kimono Dragons, which is both clever and awesome).

RUNAWAYS 1&2
Great art. Solid story that never quite managed to become great for me but was never short of very good. Does get bonus points for giving me not one but two of the biggest belly laughs I've had in recent memory. For those who have read it, one came from the superhero MMORPG Alex was playing at the beginning of Vol 1, and the other from the absolutely brilliant full page flying-carpet panel in Vol 2 (pigeon in the face works on so many levels!)

Y: THE LAST MAN. KIMONO DRAGONS
Still my favorite comic that is currently in production. Funny, poignant, insightful, ocasionally brutal. Plus monkeys! KIMONO DRAGONS keeps the rythm of the story going, drops some interesting back story on a few of our characters, and gave us some very interesting news about the nature of the plaugue that killed all the world's men. This is all clearly leading up to a specific end point, which is one of the things I'm really digging about it. Like Sandman, this whole thing is one big story, with a beginning middle and end. Hopefully Vaughn still has time to tie up the final issues now that he's writing for tv.

Speaking of television, almost all the shows are back from hiatus! And 24 has started up again! The quick run down:

PRISON BREAK
Despite a huge cast of people who mostly don't seem to have any reason for being on the show any more (Dr. Sara, the prison-guard-turned-bounty-hunter-now-turned-inmate, black-guy-on-the-run-with-his-daughter, and even T-Bag), and despite Unable-to-button-his-shirt Man (a.k.a. Linc) being the single lamest character on tv, I'm still watching. If nothing else, I want to see Haywire reach the shores of Holland, damn it!

24
This week it was a little slow, and I'm still having trouble buying that the guy who was pulling the puppet strings on President Evil last year was Jack's brother. I definitely don't want this to be another year of THE BAUER FAMILIY POWER HOUR (Kim isn't on the show any more for a reason, people). But overall, 24 continues to be awesome, breakneck-paced 24, which is all I ever want it to be.

HOUSE & BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
No, these two shows don't have a single thing to do with each other. Absolutely nothing. Except that they're the two best shows on television. And by best I mean not just awesome, but CONSISTENTLY awesome. Well written, well plotted, well characterized, fun and interesting to watch. And yes, Dr. Gregory House is the single most awesome character on tv. He's the Anti-Linc.

HEROES
Well, they've got an invisible guy now. That's pretty cool. I bet he hangs out in ladies locker rooms a lot. This is still a good show, but it's inconsistent and it's another cast that is way too large (like PRISON BREAK and also LOST, which by the by is still on hiatus for another 300 weeks) they need to kill off four or five main characters and tighten things up. I'll keep watching as long as Hiro is still on it.

And finally, just saw this news item. This sounds a little familiar:
Ron Koslow (creator of the late-eighties tv show BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - the one that starred the chick from The Terminator) has a new show in development. It's called TWILIGHT. Here's the summary: a drama about a vampire/private eye who's dealing with the fallout from being immortal, his foes in the vampire world and a budding love for a mortal.
Man, that is a great idea for a television show! TWILIGHT sounds like a kind of generic name though, perhaps they should go with something like...I dunno. SAVIOR maybe, or MARTYR. Or ANGEL. ANGEL might be a good name for a show about a vampire private investigator grappling with fallout from being immortal, his foes in the vampire world and his love for a mortal woman.
Sheesh.

There are two things I find fascinating about this article. One is that they repeatedly make such a fuss over the fact that the girl really was a virgin, as if it would be OKAY for her father to shoot her in the face four times if she had been sexually active.

And the kicker comes right at the end. Apparently in Jordan, murders can receive UP TO fifteen years in jail? WOW! Fifteen years max? That's awesome. I know where I'm going on vacation next time I need to kill somebody.

This was news to me, but then again I live under a rock. It's a nice rock, though. Central air and all that. Comfy lichen.

New passport requirements in effect today
Effective Jan. 23, 2007, all passengers traveling by air to or from the U.S must hold a valid passport. This new requirement applies to everyone, including U.S. citizens traveling to and from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean.

Everybody knows that 24 star Kiefer Sutherland's father is actor Donald Sutherland.

BUT...

Did you know that Thomas Douglas - Kiefer's maternal grandfather - was the Premier of the Canadian provence of Saskatchewan from 1944-1961? And as such he was the leader of the first elected socialist government in North America and is the man credited with creating Canada's socialized medical system?

Well, now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

Oooh, can I work here?

It has been rumored for countless millenia. It has been whispered about in the darkest corners of the halls of power. Hell, I've probably been talking about it on this blog for at least two years...

It is now actually going to happen. Not in a theoretical sense, mind you, but in an actual "this is the street date" sort of way.

What the hell am I talking about? April 10, 2006: Twin Peaks Season Two!!!

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas (mine was mostly work-filled and lonely, but Darlene comes home tonight!)

Brian K. Vaughn, creator/writer of the comic Y: The Last Man (and Runaways, which I've heard great things about but I've yet to read it...I suppose I should start now that Joss Whedon is taking over the series) has signed on to the TV series Lost!

http://bkv.tv/pages/blog/2006/12/lost-putting-tv-back-in-bkvtv.html

Okay, okay. Uncle! I give in. Every since it was first announced over two years ago, I have thought that a live-action Transformers movie was probably, at best, an ill-advised venture. I mean, c'mon! They're giant alien robots that turn into cars!

But now the trailer has emerged online and I must say that this movie looks AWESOME in a dumb, explosion-filled kind of way.

Upon further reflection...I mean, c'mon! They're giant alien robots that turn into cars!

This is EXACTLY the material that the technically proficient but soulless Michael Bay should be making. He botched Pearl Harbor in a big way (it's Titanic with planes!) and The Island is supremely silly, but the man knows how to blow things up. And if there's one thing I know, it's that where Giant Alien Robots that Turn into Cars go, epic explosions are soon to follow.

Dar and I watched Feast the other night. Project Greenlight III, which chronicled the making of Feast, was definitely the most entertaining reality series I've ever seen.

The actual film...not so great. Which is not to say that it wasn't without great moments - Gulager is definitely a talented director, and I can't believe he hasn't gotten another gig since Feast came out. There are some hilarious and incredibly gory scenes, both independantly and in giggle-inducing icky tandem. But he was working from a script that is mostly incoherent and chock-full of one dimensional characters spouting uninspired dialogue. Speaking of...the dialogue is very poorly recorded and mixed. No matter how high I cranked the volume, some of it was just too muffled to understand. Not that it matters, really. I don't think anybody is watching FEAST for the nuanced character development.

And as Dar pointed out, it was still better than Superman Returns.

Create your own friendquiz here

My spam-filter is about 95% effective. I'm glad it isn't 100% effective, 'cause I think the Engrish in most spam mails is way more entertaining than more the of jokes circulated via email. Exhibit A: my buddy Mr. Wing, who is totally going to hook me up with 172 million if I email him my bank account number and all my personal information.

I am aware that this is certainly an unconventional approach to starting a relationship. I am Mr.Brown Wing,the personal account officer to the great late diseased who has an account in one of the top banks here in South Africa.