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I don’t know why the fuck I’m wide awake at 7am on a Thursday, but I haven’t been sleeping all that well this week because of the god damn crushing amount of grad school work I have to do.  I have three papers due on the 16th and one final next week, plus a page reaction on Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.  So, I guess its more accurate for me to say: I don’t know why the fuck I’m blogging right now when I should be putting a dent in those things.  Ah, build up to it I guess. 

• [TV]: So, Fringe is filming at Brooklyn College on Friday. I was going to go and I’m  on the list of extras, but considering the shit I just complained about above, and the fact that my iBook is going senile, I’m not.
• [Comics]: Comic Foundry is done after the next issue.  It seems like most of the blogosphere is crying out in agony over this fact.  Considering, this was probably the one publication for those of us who like the independent comics as well as the super hero comics with excellent writing literally cover to cover, we have reason to be upset. Plus, as an alternative to the very much so irrelevant Wizard line of publications, its just sad that there will be one less publication continuing to make that irrelevancy evident. Though there is one dissident, James Sime proprietor of the fine Isotope Comics shop in San Francisco, who didn’t care for the magazine.   I don’t know, I thought the covers were excellent modern NY magazine style, which is exactly what that magazine is, its a New York publication and considering Tim works in magazine art production here, it makes perfect sense to me that the magazine would and should look like that.  Though, of course, James is a guy who wears Electric Blue alligator suits and whether that’s awesome or taste-deficient is entirely up to your own perspective. So, yeah…I’ll just shut my mouth about that.
• [Comics, Part II]:  I hear nothing but awful things about X-Men: Noir.  I’m still going to get it because I think the story sounds neat but when I hear Greg Land referenced in a lot of the reviews it makes me cringe.
• [Holiday reading]: I went to the Graphic Novel reading at KGB Bar on Sunday night, and was wonderfully entertained by Kevin Colden, and Matt Thruber, but I really went to see Jonathan Ames.  I’ve heard a couple of Moth podcasts of his storytelling, and thought he was hilarious. Having read The Alcoholic, and thought that was okay, I enjoyed his performance and afterwards, I walked to the Strand bookstore and picked up his book Wake Up, Sir! and Duane’s The Wheelman. For a grand total of six bucks, I love that store. So I think combining these two books with the giant Infinite Jest should keep me pretty occupied in the six week holiday break between semesters.
• [Music]: So, I got Chinese Democracy last week, and to be honest, considering I was all of eleven when the last Guns N Roses album came out, and hadn’t really developed my musical taste I found the album not my taste at all.  So, yeah, pass.  Also: Its a sad fucking day when Coldplay and Lil Wayne get the most Grammy nominations when Coldplay has been virtually unlistenable for at least two albums and Lil Wayne, is just god awful. 
• [Social Butterfly]: That’d be me.  Why I’m stressing out with this grad school stuff now, because of all the wonderful parties next week. The final Media Meshing is next Thursday, I have a Fancy Party at Bekah and the Kilby’s household on Friday and the St. Bonaventure Alumni Holiday party is Saturday. So, I think this weekend I’m going to have to engage hermit mode yet again so I can hang next week.
• [Blogging]: For a while now, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to cobble all of my bloggy things (Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr) into one place and this place would be right here.  Instead of piece-mealing widgets with RSS feeds from Tumblr and the others, all of the content that I post on those sites would feed into this place, so readers wouldn’t have to click on the probably way-too many blogging sites I use for various purposes. Matt Fraction recently did it, and I want it to kind of work like that, but not blatantly rip-off his design.   I still have a bit of a ways to go, (I should register my own website and put it together with Wordpress). So any recommendations towards how to get this to work, I would great appreciate. 

COMICS: If Pushing Daisies is cancelled it may go straight to comics. I’m conflicted with this. Yes, I think its great that people who are into the show can now go to comics to see the story finished (like Buffy and Angel), but I also see the point where its unfair treatment of the medium as Heidi’s pull-quote suggests that these creators with failed TV Shows can just fall back on comics and then turn around and run back to NBC or whomever when their next idea springs up. The whole thing just rings both nice and disengenious, its as if Fuller is saying, “I’m just going to run over here and work out the last of my creative bones on this story and then go back to TV so K, THX and BYE comics for playing.”  Also? “The Loeb Factor,” ooof, that’s a low-blow.

I kind of feel bad though, I really like the show, I think its the most original TV show out now.  But I haven’t been watching it since I have grad school on Wednesday night, and miss the show in its entirety in my commute back from Brooklyn.  I guess its time to dive into the DVR pool.  Its way overdue, I think.

COMICS [AGAIN?!]: John Rogers reacts to the cancellation of Blue Beetle.  Sad, I always loved this book, it was one of those books that made teenager comics fun again. I guess Robin was supposed to fill this purpose but that thing has been written like shit since the very beginning.  Not the case with this book, it was a different setting, a different cultural group, and for me was like Invincible for DC Comics when it desperately needed a book like that.  Following that, I think Booster Gold took up that mantle and ran with it too as a pure fun good old fashioned super-hero comic book (there aren’t enough of these).

COMICS [TAKE 28!]: Tonight, is the good Queen of the Comics Blogosphere, Heidi MacDonald’s birthday. Yes, drunken twittering will probably be taking place at all those in attendance to celebrate.  Everyone pay tribute.

Okay, now for something else: Mystery Science Theatre 3000 celebrated twenty years last week with a DVD release.  I have such fond memories of MST3K from my childhood this made me jump with joy.  My brother and I, when I was twelve and he was six, having just moved to CT and honestly being bored with life in general there (this trend would continue, at least for me, through the ten years we spent there), and MST was one of those things my brother and I shared.  We loved it, and would select movies from our personal collection to do some “MSTing,” ourselves. We did such classics as The Creature From The Black Lagoon and Peter Cushing’s movie Doctor Who and the Daleks.  It was great fun, and one of my most cherished childhood memories, and I have that show to thank for that.

My Dad had to inform me that my college basketball team won last night in the season opener, and I had no idea they were even playing.  This is beginning to make me quite sick.  My Dad, who didn’t even go to the college I went to, is a bigger fan of the basketball team than I am.  Over the last couple of years, he’s always been the one to tell me whether the Bonnies have won or lost.  And every time, I’ve been completely aloof that they were even playing.  I attribute my Dad’s passion for the basketball team to the game I brought him to freshman year. The Game of what would start a fairy-tale climb to the Tournament: the Temple game.  This was a historic game, that we beat the then (I think), #16 team in the nation, by a three pointer at the buzzer.  Over the years, the team got gradually worse. As freshmen, my class was spoiled and by senior year we were wrapped in scandal and not even in contention for anything.  So I lost interest, mostly in disappointment of the team.  But not my Dad, so this season I resolve to pay more attention.

• MUSIC: My close friend, Lizzy Grant has a new video up named “Kill Kill.” Liz is a girl I’ve known since she was a baby, and I was about four. Every time I see one of her videos, it just makes me smile with glee at her career, she’s wonderful. You can listen to the album on her website;
• COMICS: Laurenn McCubbin got married last weekend, and she set up a lovely flickr set of her wedding. I love the outfit theme throughout and everyone looks amazing.  Congrats to Laurenn and Alex, and many happy years to come;
• COMICS [cont'd]: Also, I’m quite liking the NEW KRYPTON arc in the Superman books. Didn’t think I would but its definitely interesting now after reading the second issue; 
• BOOKS: I finally buckled down and picked up David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and it has just grabbed me by the lapels and thrust me down for a wonderful read; 
• MOVIES: I saw Zack and Miri Make a Porno last night.  That was absolutely better than I thought it would be.  Yeah, it has that Apatow tone to it but I think that can mostly be attributed to the people in the movie having appeared in at least one Apatow film. However, Kevin Smith’s writing is more what I’m into (probably doesn’t help that we share the same birthday and he’s exactly ten years older than me. So using that logic, there simply must be some kind of astrological effect on what’s funny to us), we were just rolling around in laughter throughout. Elizabeth Banks and Seth Rogen’s chemistry clicked and their onscreen presence was absolutely perfect.  I also couldn’t get enough of Brandon Routh (of Superman Returns) and Justin Long’s gay porn star relationship, that was laugh-out-loud hilarious;    
• POLITICS: Nothing to report, and thank God for that; 
• PERSONAL: This week marks my four-year anniversary in New York, so sometime this weekend I’ll have a post reflecting back on these four years. While I’ve been working on it, I must say its been a total trip.  

Bare with me a second here, my brain feels like its been raped by a rhinoceros.  I had a very nice time last night at a party in Gowanus.  This is what I looked like as The Spirit.  Today, I will endeavor to do the stuff I have to without getting out of bed. My commitment to this mission is strong, as my battery was dying on my ever-approaching actual death of the iBook G4; I stretched out, unplugged the battery charger from the desk and plugged it into the A/C jack, without getting out of bed.

l use my Tumblr blog as my kind of digital scrapbook full of bits of news, pictures and whatever else I happen upon on a day to day basis and below are some of the neater things I’ve bookmarked.   I use it mostly because I can post with a send from my cell-phone, but I’m sure all this will change once I get an iPhone. 

• Duane Swierczynski (hey! spelled it right on the first pass!) is giving a kind of DVD Commentary on issues he’s released.  This is interesting for those of you into comic process and how the whole thing works. 
• Kevin Church manages to relate David Mamet to Grant Morrison. And its a damn interesting way of thinking about comics.
• Apparently, Sarah Palin offered up her daughter to baby-sit Tina Fey’s kid.  If this is true, it is by far funnier than anything SNL has done in at least ten years.

• First and foremost: it’s Tommy’s birthday today.  So, we’re headed up to Connecticut to celebrate. 
• Comics: my last post on Chino the Comic Book Street Vendor was linked at The Beat. I’ve heard someone say, somewhere, that you’re officially part of the comics blogosphere when Heidi links to you. I dunno, I suspect that’s probably BS, but its cool of Heidi anyway. 
• Panel of the Week: comes from Rogue’s Revenge #3. Yes, I know this probably gets the ire of all the shouting heads on the internet complaining about the level of violence in DC Comics and others, but to be honest this is sweet sweet revenge for me.  The justifiable execution of a character who facilitated the killing of a character that was pretty close to my heart.  So, sorry for the image and naturally, copyright DC.  
•  
• Movies: I saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which I guess was forgettable.  I like Mila Kunis, and I like Kristin Bell at her sarcastic snarkiness best. I especially like the scene where she calls out, while in bed, that fucking retard British guy who hosted the VMAs.  Whatever his name is: I don’t care.
• That’s all for today, nothing in music, and nothing in politics for a change.  I’m going to get drunk in CT, and hopefully not get in a fight with a guy who can bench five hundred pounds three times like last time.  

• “I feel like something just took a shit on me,” I said this while walking out of a London theatre after seeing the musical Mamma Mia. This is what I said (well, twittered) the other day when I saw they were making a movie out of it.  I was vastly unpopular with my opinion of the musical in the group of people I was with while in London in 2002.  I was the only one who disliked the play to the point of violence.  I mean I had nothing nice to say about it.  Abba, though they are largely considered to be rock legends, though I don’t care for their exceptionally dated music; the story of this musical, (like most musicals, unfortunately) was amateurish at best. It was cliched, tired and probably written by  someone with the mental capacity of a five year old. The fact that Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan are starring in the movie says to me that they have given up on their careers.
• George Carlin died Monday, far be it for me to do anything remotely original, and since everyone else is blogging about it, I had to chime in.  It started at the age of eight, where I liked his character from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, I asked my Dad who he was and soon after I viewed one of his stand-up shows on HBO. It was too Advanced for me at that age, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized that Carlin, on a subconscious level, had got me to start thinking about words, and what they mean. It was this sketch that Jason Aaron blogged about that opened my eyes to this thought. Carlin had an influence on me early on at that age, to not beat around the bush with my opinions but to cut through the bullshit, be direct and that is personified by that sketch.
• Music: My Morning Jacket’s “Evil Urges,” is so supremely, well, anti-My Morning Jacket but some weird distant cousin of the Flaming Lips, that there were points in this album where I wasn’t sure whether I was actually listening to My Morning Jacket.  Though, I do like this completely different change from their last album, “Z”.  Yeah. I like this album.  Weezer’s “Red Album” is like a rock opera, their attempt at doing their own “American Idiot,” and its weird and interesting in the fact that Rivers Cuomo gives up lead vocals on a pair of songs.
• These are the comics you should be buying today, as recommended by me to the Tony Harris Ships & Giggles Board.

• I like what Karina has to say on that movie with nothing but 50 year old cougars. Friday night, while heading to the bar like any self-respecting male I lingered by the 86th Street movie theater where a line of girls were no doubt waiting to see the aforementioned movie. There was at least one guy in this line that could be construed as being straight, I shot him a dirty look and got thisclose to saying: “You should be ashamed of yourself.” I’m not into making a public (well, depending on whether you define the internet as public, but I feel out on the street is more public) ass out of myself, but I should have said it. Oh well, fuck it, I’m a pussy. Meanwhile, Mom thought the movie was better than the new Indiana Jones, and you know what’s really scary about that? I’m kind of teetering towards believing her.
• My brother is in Egypt, I’d link pictures and whatnot because I’ve received about eleventybillion of them and he’s only been there one day, but he’s the private sort and I must respect that. Though, yes, I don’t think I’ll let it rest that he’s there. That’s just too fucking cool to let go.
• I’m not going to be at this, this or a wedding this weekend. But I’m lying about not going to one of these.
• Barack Obama has won the nomination! Yes! Huzzah! Horray! No sarcasm involved here, this is unbelievably great news. Though I’m still going to be shocked and awed by the level of retarded people who call this country their home as much as I do who will vote for a guy who talks about moving forward rather than going backward in reference to himself. That says to me, as clear as day and sorry to be morbid, passing on to another plane of existence. Seriously, he will be 72 years old when (and if) he takes the office of President. This is, literally and figuratively no bullshit: a fight between the old guard and the new guard. I just hope people realize that there is nothing, nothing a seventy-one year old guy should be able to say what’s good for me and my generation’s future when his own direct and immediate future won’t have to live with the results. For longer than what, ten years max after taking office?
• Has anyone heard the new Weezer album? I like their new video.

I’m gonna toss this one up there to whoever reads this blog (not alot of you) to try and figure out a good name for my weekly segment of miscellaneous shit that I’ve liked. It should be something particularly themed towards the title of this blog but I feel like such titles as “The [insert date here] Throw-up,” or something like that is pretty general and boring, but I tend to go with my first impulse until something better comes up.

My favorite comic from last week was Batman: The Man Who Laughs, written by Ed Brubaker with wonderful art by Doug Mahnke, Patrick Zircher and Aaron Sowd. I had heard it recommended through a variety of people, and until this past Saturday found it to be largely out of print. I found the single copy in a box at the Midtown Comics near Grand Central while shopping with my friend Brian. It revolves around Joker’s first appearance in what is Batman Year Two, I guess.

What I liked about this book was the along side approaches. Similar to Year One, with Gordon handling the police procedural side to things and Batman doing, well…what he does. What I inevitably felt out of this style was that there wasn’t that much difference between the two. One walks the straight line and one uses his own devices, and how they deal with this force of chaos known as the Joker.

Inevitably, I felt myself wondering (as I’m sure alot of readers will) what The Dark Knight would borrow from this book, if at all.

Laurenn McCubbin found a article in the Huffington Post by The Wire creator, David Simon regarding the storyline no one (so he says) seemingly noticed in the show’s final season. Seems like he’s mostly tooting his own horn with this, but I definitely feel like I appreciated the newspaper angle taken by this season. Now his points, though I probably didn’t realize them earlier, seem way more obvious now.

Wrapping up this week’s series of unconnected what-have-you, I give you the Pineapple Express trailer.

In the craziness that my life has become, I haven’t had much of a chance to write about what I’ve been liking. Its been mostly my shilling of the stuff I’ve been writing for other websites besides my own.

So, in my meanderings of the internet, I give you a new segment here: my weekly throw-ups of stuff I’ve liked.

This week’s favorite new comic was David Lapham’s Young Liars. I’ve never read Lapham’s Stray Bullets, regardless of how much of a indy hit it was. What I liked about this was it portrayed a group of characters that were so easily identifiable to me, because they are in or around my own age. Sure there are characters floating in the 25-27 range in other titles but most of them are involved in tales of the extraordinary like Phonogram. That’s what has piqued my interest with this comic, the fact that Lapham is using a set of characters under-utilized in comics. Modern kids, which is (I guess) what he’s known for.

Frank Miller has been blogging from the set of his directorial debut Will Eisner’s The Spirit. He even blogs like he’s writing something from All Star Batman.

In the mean time, Watchmen director Zack Snyder, has posted character pictures and yeah I’m a bit disappointed in them but quite honestly I’m not expecting that much from the movie. I’m just enthused to see it on the screen, but not expecting it to even remotely scratch the surface of the book. What I am interested in is why hasn’t there been any stories yet on Moore’s opinion of the movie? He’s apparently read the script.  I guess that’ll have to wait until we get closer to when the movie comes out, as there isn’t even a cut of the full film yet.

Best picture of the week? The Last Supper type ad for the final season of the best show on television (barring Friday Night Lights) Battlestar Galactica:

Cannot wait for the last season.

My friend Jessie just wrote me on Facebook saying, “nothing like a prostitute to make your Monday a little better if you ask me.”

As part of the investigation, a federal wire-tap on a Washington hotel last month had recorded Mr Spitzer allegedly arranging to meet a prostitute, the newspaper added.

Awesome.  I am so glad I voted for this guy. Looks like he’s resigning, and the Lieutenant Governor, David Patterson, is legally blind. Fucking awesome.