Category: Media

This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.

Ivan With The Head Of A Bear
How’s this for a bold, principled statement on a controversial topic:

“Jack Frost” is the best MST3K episode of all time.

Yes, better than its cousin, “The Day The Earth Froze.” Yes, better than “Manos, Hands of Fate,” largely because (let’s face it) “Manos” is just plain painful for most of its running time. Yes, better than “Gamera vs. Gaos.” Yes, better than “Prince Of Space.” Need I go on?

Let the evidence speak for itself, then.
- “I thought Jerry Garcia was Father Mushroom.”
- ‘No, not a princess. You are a queen!’ “In that you look like Freddy Mercury.”
- “M is for the many times you beat me. O is for the other times you beat me…”
- “Jack Frost opened fire on a stand of willows today…”
- “I’m bacon! Baconbaconbaconbacon…”
- “Bob Keeshan is Mr. Natural.”
- “Michael Nelson is Lord of the Dance!”
- “So I guess instead of vacuuming this house, you Zamboni it.”
- “Hello, this is the sun. Your call is important to us, so please stay on the line…”
At any rate, until today I had to make do with an old VHS copy, but no longer. I now own this fine bit of televised hilarity in DVD form!

You may now bask in the glory of my awesomeness. Thank you.
29 February, 2012
Toys Will Be Toys

Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.

I dare you to find another photograph featuring a Zentraedi Officer’s Pod, a cast-iron “rubber” duck, and a black LEGO minifig.

Context will arrive in the form of Thursday’s Quacked Panes comic.

30 January, 2012
Dragonsinger

I wondered what it would take to kick me in the ass enough to bring me back here again.

When I was thirteen, Mom gave Sis & I to a nice couple from church named Ken and Virginia Savage for the duration of a summer or so. They lived in Soap Lake, WA and made annual road-trip pilgrimages back to Kansas City and to Omaha for the purpose of visiting relatives and important church sites. It was right around the time of that year’s trip when, while we were at the grocery store, I spotted a book cover near the checkout counters and decided that I really wanted that book.

Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

That little story, read out-of-sequence from the rest of its series, helped ruin me for lesser books. If it doesn’t involve friendship, wonder, perseverance against the odds and the bad opinion of people who shouldn’t matter, risk, reward, at least one proper brawl, and considerable doses of humor… then what’s the point of your book, I ask. I read the hell out of that book, and it survived up until just a few years ago… so I replaced it with another from the same printing.

I love quite a few books, but Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonsinger” will always hold a peculiar and special place in my heart. Only a few others share a similar prominence: Raymond E. Feist’s “Magician” volume, for instance, and Julian May’s “Intervention.”

Folks might look at a guy funny for listing McCaffrey as one of his favorite writers, but I can live with that. And, true, there are things about some of her books (parts of the Pern series in particular) that it doesn’t pay to examine too closely. In later years, I think she lost a bit of her storytelling verve and took to treating bad guys and good guys alike a bit too much with kid gloves; consequences became gentler than one might expect. That was her choice to make, of course, and it’s my choice to leave off the reading of certain novels.

Today’s a sad one, for today we all learned that Anne McCaffrey is no longer with us. This avid reader, at least, is largely so because of her talent and because of a very nice couple who indulged a spoiled little boy all those years ago in Soap Lake.

22 November, 2011
Monthly Posting?

I swear to you, my intentions did not include ending up making only one post per month.

Say! I looked at the lava dome of a volcano a couple of weeks ago! See? I even took Explorer Duck along with! Excitement! Explorer Duck has since gone back home to her owner back in Pennsylvania, as my house was her final stop in the worldwide tour.

My daughter turns 18 on Monday. I guess I may have to stop calling them my “kids” now, though they’ll always be my “rugrats,” which admittedly makes no sense to anyone but myself. So be it; I’m a known weirdo anyway.

So far, the new webserver is working beautifully. It’s faster, it’s running a much newer Linux OS than the old one, and most importantly it costs $40 less per month. I should’ve done this years ago.

The job is… crazy. We just added three new clients and two new Kaseya management add-ons, so I’m never bored. Then again, I’m also never going to get caught up. Sigh.

My personal life is largely drama-free, and I count that as a very good thing. I get plenty enough excitement from my job and the day-to-day challenges of life without adding interpersonal conflicts, you know?

Once I get my head a bit more above water, maybe I’ll start looking at ways to spruce things up around here. For now… I’m just hanging in there as best I can.

22 September, 2011
Planes. Trains. No automobiles.

I ignore this journal for weeks on end, and then I decide to post an epic. Go figure, eh? (more…)

2 September, 2010
Music Meme: 5 Songs
I picked this up from this guy, who acquired it from that guy… and so on. And I (block)quote:

1. If you’d like to play along, reply to this post and I’ll assign you a letter.
2. You then list (and upload or link to the video, if you feel like it) 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Then, as I’m doing here, you’ll post the list to your journal with the instructions.

I was given… “H”. And since I can do this, I’m embedding tracks in WordPress. Hah!
- Home By The Sea / Second Home By The Sea (Genesis) – I love this piece. I just plain love it. Especially the various live renditions with the dual drummers. This sort of thing is what I love about Genesis.
- Hallo Spaceboy (David Bowie w/ Pet Shop Boys) – Two great tastes that go great together.
- Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (Daft Punk) – Let’s be honest: They’re probably never going to top this.
- Hyperactive (Thomas Dolby) – This is one of those love-it-or-hate-it songs from Mr. Dolby, and I happen to love it. I can see why some people don’t enjoy it as much, though.
- Heat (Jethro Tull) – Speaking of love-or-hate, this is from the Tull album which is the most “electronic” they ever released, and it drove the die-hard fans batty. One of the things I like about it is that nearly the entire album could be used as the soundtrack to a cheesy 80’s spy caper flick… especially this track.
And there you go. Anybody want a letter of their own to run with?
10 August, 2010