A Fine Weekend

So this past weekend I turned 31. Not a monumental birthday by any stretch. Not a milestone or anything. But I had a lovely weekend. My mom came down from DCD to hang out. She's mellowed out a lot, so that has eased the stress on us a lot.
On Friday we went to Benali's and ate some awesome Italian food. I was even serenaded by a very strange couple who were providing the live entertainment that night. Usually the chick from Rook is there with her violin(a crappy band, but she's a good violin player when roaming an eatery). They were called The Tempest Duo and I'm not sure they realized that a tempest is a sudden, destructive storm. Although that could be an accurate description of the music. An even more accurate description would be Trainwreak. The Guitar player was about 100 years old, and looked like the cardigan wearing art teacher you had back in grade school. The violin player was much younger and was clad in a pink double breasted suit coat from 1983. To set the mood of Italian-ness, (please pronounce in your head: EYE-tal-EE-an-ness) they stuck to traditional Irish folk with a few Sting covers thrown in. Between each song, they over-praised each other for several minutes in these low, monotone, smooth and smarmy NPR voices*. The food was really good, and Jackson flirted with the wait staff all night so we got really good service.
Saturday Cody came down and met us at the coffeeshop, where Jackson sucked in the caffeine by osmosis, and went crazy. He also flirted with all the girls, one-upping our poor, single Cody.

I then took Cody to see the Driller, Tulsa's only landmark, since he had already seen Six Flags Over Jesus. We ate yummy Indian food.
Sunday was spent in Stillwater. More coffee and baby activities for mom. Cody came down and we sat around yapping and ate barbecue.
Monday I took mom to the OKC, narrowly missing a giant accident on I-35, a brush fire, and weirdness at the airport.


On the way down there, we saw an SUV with a stencil on the side advertising Praise Moves: The Christian Alternative to Yoga.
Really? Is Yoga that much of a threat to Christianity? Laurette Willis explains that she was really into yoga and fitness until she gave herself to Christ in 1987. People usually don't go born-again until they hit rock bottom, but I have never heard of hitting it with exercise. Getting in shape by stress-relieving stretching is apparently warping the minds of Americans everywhere into believing in Hinduism and it's teachings of reincarnation.
"Sadly, this false teaching leads people away from the necessity for a Savior."
Whew! and I thought I was loosing fat, not my soul. Thank goodness for you, Laurette Willis!

I swear to god...

that this was not staged. I put Jack down on the bed while I folded laundry, and the animals just all showed up.
Notice how the cat, who came up there on her own, looks totally pissed about that decision. Yes Maggie is wearing a sweater. It was cold. Also not how Sadie is looking with extreme envy at said sweater.

Marie Antoinette

Weirdest trailer ever: ------>

I guess Marie Antoinette is partly responsible for a New Order, but it seems odd. Does contemporary music work in period pieces? Sometimes. A Knight's Tale? Yes, but that was essentially a comedy and the music was fun, no matter how bad the movie was(or how much I love it). Buch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Sure. The "raindrops" scene was one of the best in the movie, and it was only used that once. But then there's Orlando. DID NOT WORK. The scene at the end of a floating cherub singing Euro-synth pop just ruined what could have been a great adaptation of a Virginia Wolfe book. I guess it depends on the director. In the case of Marie Antoinette, it is Sophia Coppola, and I have to say that I like her as a Director. Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides were surprisingly well made. She has a great sense of pacing, taking her time getting to the point, and not beating you over the head like her father does. She's also great with awkward silences, making the viewer just as uncomfortable as the characters. But those two were small indy films, and more often than not, when you hand a really good indy director a big-budget Hollywood movie, they can get a little lost (Dune, anyone?). Sometimes they pull it off, like Robert Rodriguez and Quinten Tarantino did, although it took each of them a few tires. Jackie Brown was just plain horrible, and Soderburg did a much better job with the same Author's source material with Out of Sight, just a year later.
And I have to say that I am on the fence about Dunst. Mostly she's cardboard, but then Bring It On comes around and you have to give her props. (You know you love that movie, so shut up) But for every Bring It On, there is a The Cat's Meow, which got horrible performances out of the entire cast(Eddie Izzard as Charlie Chaplin: great casting, bad performance), so it might not be her fault. Spider-Man if fine because all she has to do is look mopey and scream. Who knows. Sophia got good work out of her before, so maybe she can do it again. Schwartzman is in it so it can't be all bad. I love that guy. How he snuck into Hitchhiker's guide is beyond me.

Victory!

I know all of you have been waiting anxiously, and it finally happened. I beat X-Men Legends. I got Magma to do her little thing and I got Wolverine to beat up a bunch of robots. I do have to say that Magneto went down a bit like a bitch for my taste, but it was 4 against 1.
Now I can spend time with my family again. Or start on one of the other games I got for Christmas, or go buy X-men Legends II. Though I think that purchase would have to come with a divorce lawyer.
Now onto the Olympics: I think 24 hour coverage both helps and hinders the Olympics. Back in the day, they were a prime time event only, and only the REALLY cool ones were shown. The rest you had to listed to on the radio, which you can't do now. There isn't even a webcast that I can find. If I want to know how the Hockey games are going from work, I have to check the website every 10 minutes instead of just listening to it live. When I get home, I have to watch a tape, and I usually already know the score, and that takes all the fun and energy out of it. Everybody loves the figure skating, I guess.
BTW (and this will make me sound sooo gay) did anybody see Sarah Hughes? I know she was only like 16 at the last Olympics, but man she put on some pounds! (she's still cute, tho!)
Not like I can talk. 2002.... I think I was just under 200 lbs. Now I am well above. Though I am working on that. I started a new regiment of more stimulants and less food and switching to whiskey instead of beer. Oh, and I joined the Stillwater Y, and it is exactly what you would think a small town Y would be like. I am also consciously eating a third less food. I hope all of this will get me to my target weight by the summer time. Not like I'm one for the beach or anything like that, I just realized one day that I'd like to be around for Jack's High school graduation, and to show up not looking like Gilbert Grape's mother.

The Alternative

Those of you who grew up in Denver in the late '80s/early '90s and were of the counter-culture subculture will remember Teletunes, a now defunct music video show that aired on PBS channel 12 on Sunday mornings. Sunday was a big day for us. For me, Teletunes replaced Dr. Who as the Sunday morning pajama viewing show once I figured out that cool music existed and that there were videos to go along with it. It later became a regular weekly hangover cure once I discovered drugs and alcohol. It was where I saw new videos that MTV just wouldn't play until 120 minutes came along, and 120 minutes only focused on bands that gained national popularity, thus defeating the purpose. Every once in a while they had a cool guest host or interview, as when Robert Smith hosted 120 minutes of Pure Cure on the eve of Wish's debut, but that was about it. Teletunes was local. Local VJs that you might see at Wax Trax, or better yet, knew personally, as was the case with Sean. Local bands and local music featured prominately, and they were the only ones to interview cool bands that came through town, as no good radio was ever around (KTCL and The Peak tried, but failed over time and were eventually bought out, and 1190 was barely audible most of the time due to low band width).
A Sunday morning spent on the couch in my undies working on that 3rd pot of coffee, smoking obscene amounts of cigarettes with no windows open, introducing my self to my roommate's one-night stand as they fled the apartment still in the goth dress from the night before, all while watching Peter Murphy run blindly through the woods or Morrissey run blindly through London are some of my fondest memories.
Now, I finally have a replacement. VH1 Classic (I feel so old) now offers a Sunday morning show entitled "The Alternative" that shows most of the vids I loved during my late teens and early 20s, when I had shitty apartments, 2nd hand furniture, a crappy job, died black hair, a leather jacket, and disposable income that went mostly to comics, concerts, illicit pharmaceuticals, and punk rock t-shirts. Now I watch while playing with my kid and cooking breakfast for my wife, but the feeling is the same. I still drink 3 pots of coffee, I still smoke too much(though out on the deck of my awesome house that I own, and has decent furniture), I still have weird T-Shirts.
And although Morrissey and Peter Murphy are now too old to run blindly anywhere, at least I know that they once could.


PS- Jackson seems to be fond of Renegade Soundwave and Thrill Kill Kult. I still don't know if that is good or bad.

Re-envisioning

So I made this ----->
As an ad for my silly job. I make these all day long, and this one was on a pretty obscure portion of our site. I thought nothing of it after I sent it off to the programmer like my second week here.



The other day, I notice this---->
On the Chinese version of our site. They got this product months after we did, which means they made their little image way later. It is possible that there are only so many ways that one can show visually the concept of sound coming out of a little speaker thing, and it should come as no surprise when similar ways come about. But I'd like to think that since this is the same product from the same company, whoever made the Chinese version was poking around our site to see what we did and followed suit. This means that something I have made has been taken, reinterpreted, expanded upon and remade. That fills me with an enormous sense of pride as an artist. Intellectually, however, I am filled with pity for myself that a silly web image on a Chinese website blew my skirt up so much.

Such it is to be an artist.

Spider Monkey

I made this for my comics page, though I'm not sure where to put it. Maybe in the header. I swiped the idea from R Stevens and his awesome Diesel Sweeties web comic. It you haven't read it, you should. He's funny and there are lots of jokes about pron stars getting it on with robots. That sounds a lot less tasteful that it actually is. His site also got me into Scary go Round as well. SGR is a little bit all over the place but the eventual jokes and witty one-liners more than make up for it.
I added something to NGV5 today that I have never added before: color. I shall use it sparingly, so don't worry. Steve will still be steve, though he and Tonto are getting new outfits. If there is a music performer you'd like to see included in there some where, let me know, and I'll work 'em in. There will be a few spots where I'll need it.
Enjoy.

Then I just sorta zone out..

This----->

Is how I spend at least part of my day. Constantly doodling on either my calandar or in my sketch book. This one isn't very full because HR didn't pass them out until halfway through the month. It's nice because it looks like I'm writing something really deep, or actually working, but then I just have a little drawing of a guy biting a hang nail when I'm done. The rest of the time I'm on the computer blogging or reading web-comics. I'm not lazy. When there's work to be done, I'm doing it. I actually hate it when I have an unfinished project just sitting there. But when I clear my projects, I go back to doodling. It's sad in a way.. I think I must think in doodles... A doodlegraphic memory ala Strong Bad.

Bob Slydell: If you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?

Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door--that way Lumberg can't see me, heh--after that I sorta space out for an hour.

Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.