Zombies are coming

So like every good former (or closeted) goth/industrial kid out there, I love October. This is for many many reasons. Not the least of which is that the oppressive heat associated with Oklahoma has usually subsided, allowing me to venture outdoors without copious amounts of nasty, greasy sunblock and a sweat towel(being fair-skinned and overweight is a real bitch in the summertime*).
Another reason is Halloween, obviously. Halloween has taken on... not really new meaning, but perhaps renewed meaning now that I have kids and can vicariously live through them. We get haunted houses and candy and t-shirts with skulls on them and trick or treating in the neighborhood and the Zoo and the Mall and where ever else. Watching them have so much goram fun stabs me with nostalgia. Even when their whims don't coincide with my own. Jackson has tired of Star Wars, I am sad to say. Maybe because my own obsession started when I was his age and has yet to abate, I see SW going out of favor and being replaced by Super Mario with a little twinge of sadness. Mario is awesome and all, don't get me wrong, but I was never as into him as Jackson is now, and certainly not at the expense of Luke and the boys. I was all excited when Lego Star Wars III was going to come out because I really wanted to play it.** Jackson was underwhelmed, and we ended up getting Mario Kart instead. Which is also awesome, and a lot of fun with all three of us boys playing, but still.
So anyway, October. The main reason I love October is because of TV and movies. On the silver screen, we get an onslaught of horror movies to veg out on before all the Oscar contenders come in and make us have to think. Now that the torture porn genre is finally giving way to more traditional horror and comedy horror is on the rise, I actually have something to look forward to this year. On TV, all the American shows are starting back up, all the English and summer shows are winding down, and we get a whole mess of premiers and finales all jumbled up together.

I am extra excited this year because we get a new season of The Walking Dead.


I have high hope for this season, even given all the Hoopla over the summer of the showrunner, Frank Darabont getting fire or quitting or whatever. I have high hopes for three reasons:
1) Because Robert Kirkman is still very much involved. It is his baby, and hopefully, he won't let it go astray.
2) Because the webisodes were fucking awesome.
3) The cast and crew seem to think this season is going to kick ass, and I believe them.

They are also going to air an after show hosted by Chris Hardwick following each episode, so that sounds cool as well.


Happy hunting.

-JP

*In the winter it's okay because I have a layer of blubber to protect me from the elements, much like a polar bear or seal.

**We all know the prequels are crap for the most part, but we can also agree that the Clone Wars TV show is effing awesome, right?

A letter to Jackson on his 6th birthday.

Well, buddy. This has been a heck of a year!
You finished up your last year of pre-school, and have open up like a flippin' lotus flower. Last year you played by yourself in the corner at play time. You participated when called upon, but were not likely to initiate much. This year was a complete reversal. You made friends, did great work and even asked to be on the soccer team. And that brain of yours! So smart.
It has been a bit trying to find you a new school. We thought you were going to Eisenhower because you aced the test and a lot of kids from Channing go there. Then they ran out of room. Same story with Zarrow, and with TPS reconfiguring everything, we didn't know if you were going to this new school they came up with or if we could afford a private school or just regular public school, which would have been fine. So finally we found out that you made it into the dual-language school, and I think you will do really well there. You have a really good grasp of language and grammar, so you should do fine.
Your brother sure is something, isn't he? He got to go to your school this year, didn't he?
He's got big shoes to fill.
You found out that you're going to have a sister this year! You should be happy. You have been lobbying for one ever since you found out Joe was going to be a boy. It's been awesome seeing the two of you wrap your heads around you mom's pregnancy. There was on night when this happened:
Jackson: Mom? Can I listen to your tummy?
Jen: Sure.
You put your head on her stomach and listened.
Jen: What do you think she's doing in there?
Jackson: Just swimming around... I wish I could control her mind.
And then you walked off.
This is what I love about you. Your imagination seeps into every day occurrences. I hope you keep it up.
You got glasses this year, adding to your Nerd cred.
You have been helping your brother a lot. Just kind of teaching him about the world and what not. He really looks up to you, but I think that once he figures out what his "thing" is, he'll be a force to be reckoned with.

This next year will see you starting at a real 5 day a week school, welcoming a sister, and mentoring your brother. It'll be a good one. Crazy but good.

I love you.

-Dad.

Pottery

As anybody who knows me knows, I am a very big fan of British film, TV and literature. Actually, anybody who even vaguely knows me, or has read any of my blog posts over the past year or so would know that.
So here's the deal: I don't really care about Harry Potter. There. I said it. Feels good, actually.
Let me qualify this a little. I think Harry is fine. I love that a very English character has made it on a world wide level. Some may argue that Doctor Who did this way back in the '60s, but his following was always more cerebral and cultish rather that the all encompassing brand that is Harry Potter.
I put my time in. I read all the books. Or, more accurately, I read the first three, and listened to the rest as audio books. I thought they were okay. Not the best, but mildly entertaining. They are kids books*, but I don't really care about that because I read a lot of books aimed at younger audiences. Still read the occasional Hardy Boys book if you insist on knowing what kind of Nerd I am. So I give the HP books some slack. Perhaps because of over exposure, or because the blind fanaticism leaves me feeling a little icky(which is no small feat given my love of Sci-fi, and the fact that I have been known to frequent the conventions), or perhaps because I think that while good, the franchise isn't as wonderful as all the hype would suggest, but these days I'm more meh than anything else about it.
Maybe that makes me a poor Nerd, but I have to pick and choose what I can be fanatical about.
I don't have enough disposable income for everything. My kids still gotta eat.

-JP

Tardises? Tardi? Everywhere!

So I've been all about Dr. Who my whole life. I've written about it a lot here, so you all know that.
But something is happening. Something awesome.
It seems the whole world is jumping on board. I know this because it has reached rural Oklahoma.
Observe:



Is that not awesome? The fact that people(nerds) from all over the world came together to get this girl a Tardis of her own is just adorable.

On a similar note, I have fulfilled a lifelong dream to make a door in my house into the Tardis door. I've wanted to do this since I was seven, but never had the guts to ask my parents if I could. Now that I have kids of my own who are following in my nerdy footsteps, and a wife who is awesome in that she will indulge me in my eccentricities, I was able to get it done. It is by no means perfect and i have a little more work to do on it. I fucked up the lighting on the panels because I was working on it upside down for no good reason, and my brain didn't reconcile that fact, but it still looks cool. And I have to make the "pull to open" sign, but on the whole, I'm pretty happy with it:

Thoughts on the new Beastie Boys album

So I've stuck with these guys since I was 11 years old, and had saved my pennies to but a cassette of License to Ill. It was one of the first pop albums I found out about completely on my own. Through most of my youth, I mooched off of my older and wiser brother's musical tastes like a lot of younger siblings did. When I was 10, my Mom remarried, and for reasons that have nothing to do with anything relevant, my brother went to live with my dad, and I went to live with my mom. So I was kind of on my own to a certain extent.
As is every suburban kid's God given right, I lived in the basement of our house. I was lucky in that I had my own room, and my own living area, where my step dad eventually put a TV complete with cable. I think this was done specifically so that I would leave him alone. In the '80s, he was a very "beer and football" kind of a guy, where I was more of a "Dr. Pepper and Dr. Who" kind of a guy. So with a cable enabled TV and the '80s beckoning to me from the family room, I watched a lot of Bullwinkle, Robotech and MTV.
Naturally, MTV shoved the Beasties into my face, and I thanked them for it. I've kept up with them ever since, buying every album as it came out. This, in contrast to MTV itself, which I abandoned long long ago. I was one of the few who embraced Paul's Boutique whole heatedly, and Ill Communication and Check Your Head defined my High School years just as much as Nevermind or Pretty Hate Machine or The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste did. That was one of the wonderful things about the Beastie Boys. You could be a punky, little industrial boy and still be a fan. It was allowed because they were really doing their own thing. Sure, it was and still is deeply rooted in hip-hop, but the Beasties always managed to zig when everybody else zagged.
Their previous album, The Mix Up, an all instrumental done mainly I imagine because of MCA's throat cancer diagnosis, while not as good as the previous collection of Jazz-Funk tunes, The In Sound From Way Out, was nonetheless very good. Perhaps because I knew all about MCA's condition, the lack of lyrics added a slightly somber note to that album, and I could never get as into it as I could most of the others. It's like I could picture MCA back there on bass with a bandaged neck, and it just made me sad.
Now that I've had a few weeks to process this thing, I feel like Hot Sauce Committee is the exact opposite. This album exists to let everybody know that everybody is healthy and ready to party. A very nostalgic album, this thing could have been the follow up to License to Ill and nobody would have noticed. It isn't full of knock-outs, and I think they resort to their occasional use of a heavy, constant beat with almost whispered spoken word lyrics over the top a little too much, but what is good on this album is VERY good and very well made. Nothing seems over-mixed, which was the problem with a lot of To The 5 Burroughs, nor under mixed like the Check Your Head era. This is a party album, pure and simple. Just watch the 30 minute video for the Make Some Noise single if you had any doubt.



-JP

Brit Week.

Is there a correlation between the premiere of the new season of Doctor Who and the Royal Wedding?
I think the hype around the new Who just a week before the wedding may have been a plot to get people used to seeing British people adorning their TV sets. Also to remind everybody that they aren't all stodgy uptight pricks, but some are actually pretty cool. I think that may also be why they devoted so much air time to the Beckham's red carpet entrance.

Hmmm.....

What's my deal with the Swedes lately?

Maybe Sweden is having a Renaissance of sorts. Or it could be that they were always good at film making and I just never noticed. I do have great respect for Ingmar Bergman and Max VonSydow, but I always attributed that to a pair break out geniuses. In the last few months, and without any known intention, I have been watching an awful lot of film and TV that is either Swedish or based on Swedish work and in one case, I watched a Norwegian horror movie about Zombie Nazi.


First off was Let the Right One In, a fantastic Vampire movie about a 12 year old kid who befriends a thousand year old Vampire child. It's based on a book by John Ajvide Lindqvist, and I am tlod it is really good, though I haven't read it. It is on the list, though. This one was remade into an American version, but I haven't seen that yet, either. I already have some problems with it, though. For one thing, a big part of the Swedish version was the the weather, which was treated as almost another character. The story is set in a suburb of Stockholm, I assume because it would be the perfect place for a vampire to hide out. The Sun is hidden half of the year and behind clouds the rest. Everybody is already all pale and beautiful and creepy looking. They set the American version in New Mexico. I'm sure it gets cold in New Mexico, but not that cold, and not for that long. And to my knowledge, the sun still comes up in winter there. Maybe they were trying to steer clear of comparisons to 30 Days of Night, which I guess I can see. But if you want beautiful, creepy pale people in North America, just set the thing in Calgary. Problem solved.



Next was all three of the "Girl" movies(Dragon Tattoo, Played with Fire, Kicked the Hornet's Nest). Or as they call them over there, The Millennium Series. These were I resisted reading these books for a long time, because everybody else was, and my punk-rock sub-conscious told me that anything more than 5 people like has to be crap, so I didn't. The last time I jumped on a bandwagon like that, I ended up giving JK Rowling like a thousand dollars over the course of 10 years and counting. But I suppose I will relent with these books, if only because the movies were so very very good. Packed with style and attitude. They are making an American version of these as well, and I think I should probably knock out the novel before those are released so I can be an even bigger elitist and bitch about them with more gusto.


And Now I'm on Wallender! This is a weird crossroads, actually. In addition to all the Swedish media I've been obsessed with, I've been equally obsessed with British crime dramas. I've always been a big fan of all things British, especially their film and telly, but lately it's taken a more hard-core turn. After the new Sherlock, aired I got all goose-bumpy and re-watched Life on Mars.
Not the American version that not even Harvey Keitel could save.
Not good enough! So I watched the Red Riding Trilogy. Which was awesome, and I totally understand now why they picked Andrew Garfield for Spider man, because that kid is really good. Still not satisfied, I watched the first season of Luther. Also fantastic, and has a lot of Dr. Who cameos, but I suppose that with England having only a finite number of actors, you see the same people over and over if they are any good. Luther is one of those shows that keeps you thinking for a few days.
The thing with Wallender is that it is a re-make of a Swedish crime drama. I came at this one backwards, seeing the English language version first. But thank God the Brits got to this one before the Americans did. They went ahead and set it in Sweden. Where it takes place. Weird, I know. I have great respect for Kenneth Branagh, and I think he does really well when he gets to just act. He's really good in this. and the production does a really good job of pulling off the fact that everybody is in Sweden but speaking English.
I should also mention The Killing here. Though it is Danish and not Swedish, it might be important to note that the Europeans have suddenly become very very good at writing police procedural stories. They write characters that are incredibly real and believable. It is also note worthy that they manage to maintain this level of craftsmanship over several stories and arcs. Americans are having a tough time with this. Too many shows have an awesome first season and just crumble under their own weight after that(Lost? Heroes?). Some manage it just fine, like Mad Men or Breaking Bad, but what does it say when the best dramas on TV are nowhere near the networks? Not that there aren'y some jewels. I dearly love Castle and Lie To ME, but imagine what those shows could be if they didn't have to pull any punches?
They'd be awesome.

Some Tattooed Bastards probably owe me $35

The back story: So my work used to own this parking lot. It was 6 blocks from the office, but it was free. Any of you who live or work in a downtown area can appreciate how useful free 9-5 parking is. Its in a not too awesome part of town on the other side of the tracks both literally and figuratively. There used to be a bridge over the tracks, but that got knocked down for being unstable, and there are currently no plans to replace it. There was also a free shuttle, but the city stopped doing that because of budget cuts. For the longest time you just had to walk the six blocks, and hope you didn't get stopped at the tracks by a train for 10 minutes. There always seems to be a 2 mile long train coming through town right at rush hour, and I can never figure out why they would schedule it that way.
Then the company sold the parking lot. They'd owned it since the dawn of time, and the area is slowly being gentrified, so they probably made a pretty penny off it. There were only like 10 of us cheap skates that still parked there any way. For a while the people that bought it let us park there for free anyway, but then they didn't. There was plenty of free on street parking around the lot, so a few of us just started parking on the street in front of the lot which happened to be across the street from a Tattoo Parlor.
The Indecent: For over a month we parked in a little line, happy as clams. Last Thursday, I got about half way home when I noticed a funny sound my car was making. I got out and my tire was flat, and apparently had been for a while, as it was totally shredded. I didn't think anything of it, as the car is a POS and crap just falls off it all the time. Friday morning, I drop it off to get a new(used) tire. $35. No biggie.
So I get to work, and one of the other guys in my department who had been parking in the same spot, asks me if the Tattoo Shop guy talked to me. No. No, he hadn't. He explained that as he got into his car the night before, the big burly tattoo shop guy came up to hes car and asked him to not park there anymore. See, according to this guy, us parking across the street was chasing off all his business.
I guess people were having trouble finding parking in the abandoned warehouse district of north Tulsa, and were just driving onto the next shop. Never mind that the area has plenty of parking all over the place, or that his shop doesn't even open until 1:00pm, is closed on Monday, and the area doesn't have another shop within 5 miles, or that 90% of their business is by appointment only. Tattoo guy even points out that the spots we all were parking in is actually a bike lane, but that he hack-sawed the no parking sign so his clients could park there. Seems a little weird, also probably a felony, but okay, I guess. I mean, it's on street parking. First come first serve. That is the law of the concrete jungle. At this point I hadn't put two and two together. Then coworker #2 showed up. He asks if I noticed any glass or anything around our cars last night. No, why? Because he got a flat last night. Rear passenger side, just like mine. Luckily, he caught it in time, and put his spare on before he left.
It was then that we all realized that we might be dealing with a bunch of assholes. We got confirmation of this when coworker #2 called me from the tire shop on Saturday to say that there was no hole in his tire, just that somebody let all the air out.
I think somebody owes me $35.
The rear passenger tire would be the easiest to deflate without being seen. If these dicks are so busy tattooing and expanding their business, when did they have the time to pull an immature stunt like this? If they are so worried about on-street parking, why do they all park their hoopties right in front of the place, and not up the block? If not being able to park right across the street for a few hours of their work day is what is ruining their business, they have WAY bigger problems. And what the hell, man? You could have just told me, like you did coworker #1. I may have argued with you, but at least it would have been civilized. Big tough guy has to deflate some tires like a in 4th grade bully? LAME. It makes me want to park right in front ALL THE TIME now, but who knows what they'll do to my car if I do.
Well there may be some fun and interesting ways to retaliate, since I can't prove anything. I won't throw a brick through the window or put gum in the locks or anything that would bring me down to their level. I could rally the power of the internet and have a bunch of people leave bad reviews on Yelp and Google, but that seems really dishonest. There is a number to call if signage in in Tulsa is in need of repair or update, however.
Let me know what you think.

-JP

Holy Shit, I've been plagiarized!

So a few years ago, the Tulsa World did a little contest where they asked readers to tell the paper what they'd do if they were king or Queen of Tulsa for a day.

We used this nifty Illustration I did for all of the branding.--->

Super prominent on the rules page.

So today, we get an invite to a conference put on by a group called
Social Media Tulsa. This is their logo:












See what they did there?

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I'm glad my stuff is good enough to steal, but on the other hand, 'come on! This is pretty damn obvious.

The image is copyrighted by the Tulsa World, and the matter has been sent up the chain of command, so we'll se what happens from here.

Also, I love how they stole our image off our website, then use it in an invitation to us about attending a social networking conference.

Classy.

-JP

UPDATE!

They sent an email, and the response was along the lines of: We pulled the image off the web and didn't do our homework on where it came from.

They pulled the logo from their website, and are in the process of taking it off of everything else.

So the company that specializes in web related networking didn't do their homework on where an image from the web originated? Riiiight...

UPDATE 2!(3/2/11)

So after apologizing and promising to either remove or replace all existing instances of the work in question, they announced on their blog the other day that they had made a mistake, and are rectifying it with the unavailing of a brand new logo:



See what they did there? Totally different. If this is what they call a total redesign, we have problems. Perhaps they should look up what actually qualifies as a derivative work and even then they will see that our portion of the copyright still holds. Contact has once again been made and we will see what happens next.

UPDATE #3

So they finally made a change good enough to not be plagiarism(at least not of me).
Behold:

So yeah. I guess that's done.

-JP

Plausible.

So we cuddle up on the couch to watch some Mythbusters*. Everybody gets under their blankets and we start the show. Jackson says he's thirsty, so I get up and get him a drink. Just as I sit down, Joseph says his drink is empty, so I get up and go get him some more milk. Less than a second later, Jackson says he's hungry and wants a banana because the Mythbusters are testing something banana related. Joe says he wants a PB&J. There are no bananas so I ask Jack if he wouldn't mind sharing the sandwich with Joe. He says that's fine. So I make the sandwich, even cutting the crusts off, and slice it into two triangles. The wolf them down in about a second. They both say they want some more. But Jack wants his cut into dinosaur shapes and Joe wants squares. After I lose that argument, I go in to make two more sandwiches. I run out of peanut butter on the second one, and have to root through the pantry to find a new jar. It's organic, natural peanut putter, so I have to stir it up to mix in the oil, a lengthy process. I make the sandwiches, cut one into dinosaurs with this thing which is basically a cookie cutter for sandwiches, and the other into squares. I come back, plates in hand and Joe has fallen asleep. D'oh!
Not wanting to waste the food, I go see if my pregnant wife wants the sandwich squares. Not really, she says, and I spend a few minutes convincing her to eat it. I leave the sandwich with her, and go check on Jackson. He had dropped the plate, and the dogs snatched up half of his sandwich. So I go check to see if Jennifer had eaten the sandwich she said she didn't want less than a minute earlier. Gone. The whole thing.
So I had to make sandwich #4. Jackson ate all of it, which equaled two whole PB&Js and a whole glass of milk only an hur and a half after dinner. I guess he'll sleep well tonight.

*I'd like to thank the Mythbusters, as Jackson can now use the word "plausible" correctly in a sentence. He's 5.

-JP

TV is crap.

Can we play a video game?
No. It's way too late.
Can we watch a show?
Well, Okay, but it has to be a science show...
Let's see what our options are on Discovery/TLC (The Learning Channel)/Science Channel/PBS/History Channel, etc...
Looks like we have:

-I Have Too Many Fucking Kids
-You look Stupid in Those clothes
-We Suddenly Have a Boner for Alaska for Some Reason
-Rednecks in the Wild
-Ken Burns' Watchmakers Documentary, part 17
-Rednecks in the City
-Stuffy English People doing Stuffy English Things
-Hitler Hitler Hitler
-Look At Me, I Work in a Bakery
-Sell Me Your Shitty Junk
-Look At Me, I Have a Fucked-up Personality Trait

I guess we'll just put in a DVD.

2010 Year in Review

I just read over what I wrote last year, and I had a very optimistic outlook for 2010. Turns out I was right to hold such an opinion.
2010 was pretty good. Way better than 2009. I was also a holding pattern of sorts.
We had some up times and some down times, like everybody does. Anyway, here goes:

In 2010:
- I celebrated my 35th Birthday
- Jackson, his 5th
- Joseph, his 3rd.
- Jennifer turned whatever age she is now.
- My mom got married.
- My mom's husband almost died due to complications from a surgery to remove some cancer.
- He got better.
- I got a raise and moved up to the 7th floor of our building to work with and around the print designers.
- Because of this, I was able to quit the coffee shop. I kind of miss the social aspect of it, but at 35, I have no business mopping floors for minimum wage. None whatsoever.
- Then, because of the departure of a colleague, at the very end of the year they moved me back down to the 5th floor to take over some of his work flow. Yay for me!
- We did NOT move. This is actually a big deal. Jackson is 5 and has lived in 5 houses. Though one for only three weeks.
- Jackson really came out of his shell this year. He's in his second year at Channing, and is much less shy, and has really started interacting with the other kids more. He used to just watch. Not in a bad way, he preferred to watch the other kids play rather than participate. He way better about that now.
- Jackson also got glasses. His Nerd cred is rising. Thank goodness Nerds are hip now.
- Joseph's health really improved this year. He hasn't missed a beat. In fact, I think he is making up for lost time, because that kid is never not moving.
- LOST ended, and along with it, one of my main obsessions over the last 5 years.
- Jackson and I were trapped in the Denver airport for two days.
- I lost 36 lbs.
- I gained 6 back. Don't worry, I'm going to take care of that pretty quick here.
- The new Doctor Who is awesome. The most entertaining yet.
- Jennifer took on a second job to get some Christmas scratch at a little boutique in Utica Square. They like her and have asked her to stay on for a while, so I think she will until something else comes along.
- I got the boys a wii, and we have been having a great time on it.

2010 is gonna be off the hook. I can just feel it. We're going to have a good time.

I hope you do as well.

-JP