The Holtonian

New Batman in the works

So apparently the new batman series plans to parade the pretty boys... Dark Knight will feature the Joker as mentioned at the end of Batman Begins played by everyone's favorite gay cowboy Heath Ledger. In my mind there will always be only two jokers,

Cesar Romero, the one on the right.

and my old pal Jack.

Also Ryan Phillipe is making a hard push to play Harvey Dent aka Two Face... what is this cute actor's studio or something? I mean can't he just be happy being Legally Blond's arm candy? I always thought Alec Baldwin would make a good Harvey Dent, he's tall, got the right hair, kind of crazy, and he's a baldwin so he's gotta have at least 2 personalities in there.

Also Philip Seymour Hoffman as penquin I'm not crazy about, though I can see the similarities... though he's really too tall. Lets face it Danny Devito was another guy, like Jack, who was born to play that role. Though I must admit I wasn't a fan of the 2nd batman. I like hating my bad guys and in Batman 2 the bad guy is really the evil corporation and Christopher Walken... and Penquin and Catwoman are just pawns, so you kind of feel sorry for them.

Mellow Mushroom's one redeeming quality, and other events of a saturday

We had a pretty uneventful day here on the ranch. I didn't go for my bike ride, mostly because of the rain, and I kind of felt like running more. We sort of just hung out, I watched the Braves get dominated again by the Mets, and read a book. Played with AK a lot as well, got some nice vomit on me, she's good at that.

We went out to run a few errands and catch a pizza. The chicken salad we had planned didn't seem to be in the cards, or really what we were in the mood for so we hit up Mellow Mushroom downtown. No generally I'm a pretty anti-Mellow guy because its a chain, everyone there is a stoner for the most part, and the pizza, though good, is just not better than Lupis. But the problem I have with Lupis is its small, smokey, and loud. I love the Hixson one which we went to a week ago, but living on the Mtn its too far to go out there for pizza.

So I gave mellow a try 3rd time I've been there I think. Everytime its taken forever to get our food and our check, tonight was no exception. The cheese bread came out quickly but in the end it was a hoagie roll with garlic butter and cheese, not too impressive, it tasted good but lacked the flair and awesomeness of a Lupis Bruchetta (aka cheese bread). The pizza was good, they have a few more toppings that Lupis doesn't, but they charge you an arm and a leg for them. Like Portabellas, lupis doesn't have those, but they charge you for two toppings at Mellow if you get them and they usually don't put enough on there anyway. Our waters were good, hard to mess that up.

But what I've decided that sets apart Mellow from Lupis is the out door seating. We ate outside and thankfully no one smoked near us. Side note: I'm allergic to cigarettes (throat tightens and gets scratchy also my eyes water and get scratchy to wear I'm generally pretty miserable), the wife's pretty allergic as well, and we have a 2 month old so I'm pretty anti-smoking. Plus I think it totally is rude to smoke while people around are trying to eat, people want to taste food not ash and smoke. So thats my rant on smoking. So we're out side enjoying the nice cooler weather thanks to the rain earlier today. And man we saw some great freaks. I mean the people watching was awesome. We saw some amazing mullets, some fat people in too tight clothes, a pregnant woman drinking a beer, entire families including kids walking down the street smoking, a person park in half of a spot, it was great and made the mellow all worth while. Though Lupis has better food and Pisa has better atmosphere and 1 PBRs. Hixson Lupis has cheap guiness 3.50 but as mentioned before too far.

We then went up to the Hixson Target.... yeah i guess we could've hit the luips up there come to think of it. But we went up there to return some stuff and get some stuff. I hit up the new Bestbuy up there and was astounded to see a best buy that was about a 1/3 the size of a normal best buy, it was tiny. Everything was pretty well organized and compact to save space, they didn't have tons of merchandise though. They'd have 3 of one kind of cd/dvd and that was about it. Not too many games, hardly any appliances. I had read an article about how Best Buy was going to start making their stores custom built to where they were being placed in order to better combat walmart. Basically if in a techy area they'd have more ipods and computers, come to think of it this one didn't have any computers besides some laptops. Home Depot has done the same having some stores be more garden centers and others be more contracting type stores. Its interesting and the smaller best buy was fine by me. I didn't buy anything though. I've found that online is the best place to buy cds and video games. Dvds i try to stick to mckays.

And then we headed home, pretty laid back, just the way we like it.

Carlos Lee Ejects and Landis is being taken behind the shed for being too manly

A quick baseball note then down to business: the Carlos Lee deal makes no sense to me from a Rangers perspective. Now Rangers and sense have never really been two things uttered in the same sentence... ala Arod billions of dollars. I heard tonight while watching the braves their offer for Arod (back when he signed with Texas) was apparently the next best offer but about half of what texas threw at him. I think the deal was great for the Brewers as they got stuff they can use and Carlos in my mind is a little over rated and frankly if a dude turns down your 4 year 48 million dollar offer and doesn't counter, that's a guy you don't want. I think Lee will also suffer going back to the AL, i think his average will dip a bit and his value will shrink in the talent filled AL. Granted it makes Texas better, but not that better. I'd find it hard to be Texas and think they have a championship team, they got a few good pieces but they need more. Granted I heard a rumor they're making a push for Tejada, now that might make them the team to beat in the west, but I think its just an empty rumor.

On to cycling: this whole Landis thing has got me mad and frusterated. I think its part Europeans trying to get americans out of their sport... that we dominate in. I think its also over policing. I mean his epistrome was too low in relation to his testorone, that's why he failed... does anyone know what epistrome is or does? Maybe he's naturally manly. I think in sports right now we have varying degrees of steroid policing. You have the cycling world which is a witch hunt and throwing every person to the curb that has given that sport some spectators. You have baseball which polices but its all closed doors and you don't hear about it till 2 months later. Plus you have a union trying to fight policing and the union has probably more power than it should. Then there's football which lets face has no real steroid police.

I talked to scott about all this today and frankly I think football needs steroids and human growth hormones. 300 pound men playing football week after week can't do it without a little help from the pharmacy. We like the big hits, amazing plays, and down right humogous beasts going up against each other. The old timey football wasn't anything to its modern counterpart. I'm not saying "kids take steroids if you wanna play football." but i think if they were to take a lot of the drugs out of football we'd be left with a lot of injured people and a lot of little players. Which in the end maybe then we'd have the CFL. Which lets face it isn't the CFL a better game anyway... i mean only 3 downs!!! I'm obviously kidding the CFL is lame.

Sporting Equipment

Well it was wednesday thus it was soccer nite. I must say the atheletic people seem to be multiplying as it went from a few out of shapers and a few in shapers too pretty much me and a bunch of in shape, good soccer players. Its hard getting older too, because my cankle hurts and I'm not sure why. Granted I did kick the ground one time on accident... I was aiming for the ball... and the ball was still at the time... yeah it was great. Though I think I kicked it with my right foot and my left cankle hurts... maybe my left cankle is having sympathy pains.

My shins have taken a good beating the past three weeks of playing so I took some shin guards I had from high school with me... though after about 2 seconds I realized I looked like a tool and took them off. They were kind of uncomfortable and way too big for me anyway.

Being the youngest of three and having a lot of cousins most of my sports equipment came via siblings' and cousins' hand me downs. I think I owned a pair of soccer cleats at one time that were mine, bought specifically for me. But I think I out grew them or lost them. Luckily I never wore a jock strap or a cup, I figured I'd make do without rather than take a hand me down. Though I should be fair I'm sure my parents would have sprung for one, I just never liked either, give me a good old pair of tighty whities! I even played catcher for a while in baseball... I figured it made me a better catcher... i had vested interest in making sure I caught the pitch.

In little league, my baseball cleats were usually my soccer cleats or tennis shoes. In highschool my soccer shoes were tennis shoes as I just gave in and theorized, "I'd rather my feet be comfortable and slip all over the field than wear uncomfortable cleats and have traction." Then in highschool my baseball cleats were Concerned's old highschool football cleats that were a size too big.

Baseball gloves were also usually bought specifically for me, though I do recall using the free one from Busch Stadium glove day for a few seasons... it was made I think of nylon plastic instead of leather. I remember catching a fly ball one time and the thing broke into a million pieces. I should rephrase that, I tried to catch a fly ball one time... Then the one that I got to replace it was good but very small and I used it a little too long. It looked like I was an old timey baseball player with one of those tiny gloves. I'm not even sure if the baseball technically fit in the glove.

I have a really nice glove now, though I'm not sure where it came from and I'm not sure if I've ever used it. I think Concerned might have bought it for me after he borrowed mine and broke it... not sure

My dad did buy me some golf clubs though I feel bad because I was pretty young and buying your under 16 year old a set of clubs is kind of a waste of money, because in a year or two he'll be too tall for them. Sorry Dad...

The golf clubs I have now are hand me downs from a cousin and are the best clubs I've ever used. They're a bit short for me but I make do. I figure when I'm shooting a good Par everytime I can make the jump to some custom made clubs or something. Mom did get me a sweet new bag too for christmas last year though I have yet to employ its many neat ameneties like a kick stand and double strap. The child sort of eats into that whole golf budget... not that I ever had a golf budget... but if I did she would have eaten into it long ago.

My dad also bought me a bow and arrow one time, a compound one, it was nice. I had just seen I think Rambo 3, the one where he takes down the Russian Hind with a bow and arrow, it was classic. Anyway with that and Robin Hood fresh in my mind I figured I should work on my archery incase I either need to invade Afganistan to aid the muslim rebels against the Soviet aggressors or if I ever am in Nottingham and need to rob the rich and give to the poor. It turned out to be harder than Robin Hood and Rambo made it seem and that hobby lasted maybe a month. Sorry again Dad...

My frisbee golf frisbee was stolen from concerned... I broke it by the way... sorry bro.

My parents always gave me nice mountain bikes. Not sure why, as a bratty child I certainly didn't deserve a nice bike. But my first one was a Giant, pretty good, except for it was called, "Awesome" which made it instantly lame. I may have scratched that logo off. But it was a good bike and when I out grew it my parents got me a Diamondback mtn bike and it was really good too. I used to ride it back and forth to work at Panera. Then two birthdays ago they got me the Janus i have now and its a great bike. I haven't used it in about two weeks, though Scott keeps trying to convince me to start commuting to work via bike. And who knows, if my car quits I just might. The problem is getting up the Mountain... I'd have to take the trails up ruby falls and what not which would take longer, but be safer and more gradual for a fatty like me. Plus a mtn bike just sort of handles better on the gravel. I might do a ride this saturday and see how long it takes me to go down and up on the trails. Though that would require a pass from the wife as it would take a long time.

Random Baseball thoughts

So apparently my brother Concerned doesn't appreciate me posting videos on the blog, he says its lazy. So SORRY CONCERNED FOR TRYING TO BROADEN YOUR HORIZONS AND CULTURE YOU WITH STUPID HUMOR....

Geez, can't please everyone I guess.

Anyway random baseball thoughts time:

Harold Reynolds was fired from Espn... sad, I really liked him. No reason yet why he was fired.

Odalis Perez traded to the Royals from the Dodgers... nice knowing you welcome to the pasture... that you've been put out to

Cardinals seem to own the dodgers this year... unfortunately we can't play them in the World Series or the NL series or any other series.

Braves finally have a closer thats not Smoltz and not awful... Wickman is a good grab for my second favorite team. I'm happy to see they got someone that's good as well as fat.

The white sox i think have the best to offer the nationals for soriano. I think they're also the only team that has stuff to lose and still be OK, that and the angels.

The angels are like that guy you don't like inviting to play poker because he never bets more than the ante. They're a bunch of misers and won't stinkin do anything with their prospects and have stars like Vlad and company going to waste. Their prospects will come up, do mediocre then be traded away for less than they're worth probably now. A potential good player is better than a proven mediocre player.

Granted the cards seem happy with mediocre ala weaver.

I think if the Mets lose a starter to injury the Braves have that division. But the Mets have to lose Pedro or Glavine for an extended period. Even without a starter though, the Mets still have enough power to get to the playoffs and probably still win their division. I'm just saying the only way I see the braves taking it one more year is with an injury.

I'm starting to finally think the tigers are for real... I probably won't be fully convinced until they win the WS. I reserve the right to be pesimistic... after all its the tigers.

Birthday Ideas for myself...

So My birthday is less than a month away and I've given the wife plenty of good ideas in the form of bookmarks on our computer. Such as a pair of these
These are 19bucks and would be great for wet weather, or camping. Birkenstocks are my only pair of sandals now and though they're the best when it rains its bad to wear them in the rain b/c the leather stretches out. Plus it would be great to have something to have when I go camping that aren't so dang expensive like chocos and don't have the social soccer mom ramifications that is associated with crocs.

Also for camping...

Its a polycarbonate (aka plastic/indestructible--think nalgene) french press. Baldwin had one when we went camping and, man, coffee french press style around the campfire is awesome. Plus I don't own a french press and it could also be used at home.

Then of course a video game, though likelyhood of getting this are slim to none and slim just left town.

But this caught my last night, man I could really use one of these for picking up rocks, twigs, pine cones, small branches, bigger branches... did I mention pine cones...

Video of the Day: R Kelly's Urban Rock Opera

Here's the old clip of the day, I love this, mad tv man they're genius!

Also so I maybe the only person, but I am so excited for this movie...

I mean not super excited, but I'm hoping it will recapture the joy and utter coolness of the first four rockies. I loved the first four, thought they were so good, then 5 game along and ruined me on Sly. So here's to Sly seeking to fullfill his midlife crisis.

Video of the Day and Jimmy Fallon's one funny moment in history

Here's my video of the day

I love John Madden. I really think Mad Tv is over looked in the humor department. I think they put more thought into their sketches than SNL does. SNL just got culturally retarded and not funny in any sort of way. Will Ferrell was the last guy with a sense of humor to be on that show. I'm kind of really glad Jimmy Fallon's career post SNL has sucked because frankly I always found him lame except for this

I could go for a swansons dinner...

Anyway, not much else going on. Just chillin. Played some vicious soccer tonight. Some real all stars showed up... i.e. guys who can kick and aren't out of shape. Nevertheless it was fun.

My sister in law is coming up this weekend which is pretty fantabulous. Obscene Gene though is flying those crazy planes again so he might not make it. Somebody has to teach the future Geeses and Mavericks of the world.

Video o da day, Summer TV, and its bloody hot

Another mad tv sketch that i find hilarious

Its really funny if you've been to a wedding where you conga and you're like, "Why am I doing this???"

In other news I beat Tennis on gameboy at the highest level, so you might want to start calling me Pete Sampras.

In other other news the Cardinals are playing some amazing baseball. They seem to do awesome against the dodgers then come in and get crushed night after night with the braves. I'm catching a lot of crap at work for this too as the braves are well pretty bad this year. Granted I've said all year the braves are just in a slump and knew their offense was capable of what its doing right now. The cards on the other hand who knows.

In other other other news during the summer of re-runs I start watching shows that I normally wouldn't be caught dead watching. Like Rock Star Super Nova. Its basically the second season of rockstar last year they were trying to find a new lead singer for INXS, this year they're getting a lead singer for Tommy Lee and two other guys. The people they have on their aren't awful, well some of them are, most of the women are just on there because the band guys just wanting to score with them. Then on ABC there's this lame american idol rip off that makes it 'realer' by showing you the lives of these lame=o's while they go through the contest. Sad thing is they all suck. I mean with the rock star people they're ok, i mean they're just all a bunch of tools and stooges anyway, but the rock star people are at least sticking with a MO of hard rock and the band obviously has in mind what kind of band they want to be. The other show its just, lets throw a bunch of musicians and at the end we'll pick one we like.

Hell's Kitchen is another show i'd normally wouldn't watch but everything else is a repeat. It was on last night and it appeals to my sense of eating, desire to be chef, and desire to be on a reality show to get yelled at by some british guy with an attitude. Whats the deal with every reality show having a cranky british guy who yells at the contestants and tells them they're awful? I mean I realize the brits think little of us colonies but do they have to be so vocal about it? I mean come on we gave them canada.

The heat wave is awful especially for a guy with a black car and no AC. My car's AC is spotty and works when its cool outside for some reason. When I'm sweating it doesn't work. I walk 4 blocks to my car because of my company and we'll just leave it at that so i don't lose my job, but anyway i walk 4 blocks, get in a black car that's been sitting in a parking lot under the sun all day, crank it up and get some nice hot air in my face. I get home and I smell like I ran a marathon, not that I know what the smell smells like but I'm sure its close to death and that's what I smell like when I get home.

weekend

So this weekend the last of the my wife's room-mates from college got married. Blair got married to Ethan a guy she met via Megan. If you don't know any of them that is meaningless. IT was a cute wedding, a cute rehersal, and they make a cute couple.
Here's the 4 roomies

I was pretty much on baby patrol since wife was in the wedding. Also Liana's husband (she's the fourth roommate) well he backed out and used some sort of jedi mind trick to get out of coming to the wedding so I had to watch their baby as well. Luckily Megan's mom helped when she started crying during the wedding. So it was Chris, and two babies for a lot of the weekend... and basically I got a taste of twins and it was sour and not to my liking.

I snuck away right before the wedding and saw Nacho Libre and frankly I don't know what everyone was upset about over it. I thought it was cuter than Napoleon, the story was just kind of funny and sweet. Jack Black has a few parts where you can see the director just said, "OK Jack be yourself for the next 5 minutes." The song Nacho makes for his love interest is hilarious. I mean it wasn't as unique and great as Napoleon but it was funny. Josiah's big thing is he feels Napoleon is too depricating to the characters and the movie makes us laugh too much in a condescending way at the characters. There's some truth i think in Josiah's opinion but Nacho I felt didn't got that route at all. I found myself laughing at Jack Black because he's jack black mostly. Plus the lines he says are hysterical. Basically its true what everyone says, If you like Napoleon and you like Jack Black you'll like Nacho.

Also I find this video hysterical as well. I'm just being honest

And here are two cute pics of the baby

One good Sci-Flick deserves a bad one

So wife out tonight, I rented two movies that were on my rent while wife is away list: Serenity and Ultra Violet. Ultra Violet was actually the movie I had planned to rent, actually I planned to rent a horror flick but chickened out. And let me tell you Ultra Violet is just about as bad as everyone has made it out to be.

You know usually I can find something fun and entertaining in the dumbest of action flicks, but this one was bad except for two fight scenes that were matrix esque except they lacked logic. Well clarification: in the Matrix its not reality thus reality can be bent/broken... that makes sense to me. Ultra Violet is a vampire who dodges bullets like neo in a normal future based reality... that doesn't make sense to me.

It was very comic booky in its portrayal, the dialogue was comic booky, aka pretty weak and dumb. Mila Jockovich's lines were down right awful and poorly delivered. Makes you long for the days of Katinka in Zoolander. Also they seemed to fade to black all the time... well that's scenes over fade to black, cue up next scene.... no transitions or anything. The plot was Aeon Fluxish (the movie version) with an oppresive regime doing its darndest to keep the little man down. Whats funny was this movie made no attempt to sort of base itself in the surrounding world. Its like the main characters were in their own universe that was self contained. So it was big old piece of crap for lack of a better explanation.

Serenity on the other hand was one of the best sci-fi flicks I've seen in a long time. I'd say its better than any of the new star wars and its characters, though space cowboyish and reminscent of Hans Solo, were all pretty cool. The two main good guys in the movie kind of play two different versions of Hans Solo.

But the story was good, the effects were pretty amazing, good action, funny dialogue (Leia: 'I love you' Hans: 'I know' type funny). Definately worth the price of a rental, and maybe even a good 10 dollar or less buy. I might watch it with the wife when she comes back if she's up for it.

Sports Inspiration

Its amazing what watching real athletes will make people do. I remember when Lance was going for his 6th tour I got a bike, granted a mtn bike but still a bike. I can remember when I was younger in St. Louey when wimbledon and the french open would hit in the summer my brother and I (Concerned) would go hit the tennis court. And pretty much all summer I have the desire to go throw a baseball around, granted no one around to throw one too, AK's tries to catch it but she's a little weak on the throwing arm.

Well tonight capitalizing on some of the soccer fame of the old World Cup I teamed up with some of the Catacombs/Coptix folks. It was a lot of fun but man I'm A. out of shape B. out of soccer shape C. very fat D. Right handed E. short F. was a history major. G. I'm just making up random excuses at this point...

Luckily I wasn't the only one, but nevertheless its kind of funny (some would find it depressing but I tend to laugh at myself) to see how much my body doesn't do what it used to. My mind thinks it can run fast, kick ball, score goal, stop ball; but my body says pass the doritos, sit down on the couch, and watch the Italians do it. Nevertheless since the field is across the street from the old homestead I hope to make it a regular thing.

I was just sort of reminising last week with the wife how it was fun at covenant when blackwatch and jungle... and her (she was on gallery), would go down to the ashe gym to play indoor soccer. I mean we played almost every other night. We had to stop for some reason, i think the basketball team wanted to start practicing more, even though we informed them it wouldn't do them any good. We tried playing in the new gym for a while, but it was bigger and used more for basketball thus playing the length of the gym was impossible with pick up basketball always going on. That and a former soccer coach who will remain nameless though I hear he cross many men yelled at us a few times for kicking the ball above the cinderblocks. I remember him yelling at me one time and I yelled back, "Do you think I'm doing it on purpose? I'm aiming for the goal, but I'm not that good." He couldn't argue with that.

Yeah its kind of neat how real sports folks inspire us to get off our duffs and do something. I remember the time when the Torino Olympics were on, man I loved that Biatholon. So i got some fence pickets and tied them to my shoes, went in the back yard took my shot gun out and started shooting. Luckily I only grazed my neighbor... a few times and the cops let me off with time served.

Gunther's Cousin?

So Josiah told me to look up this Gunther fellow that is all the rage now. ANd I'll admit Mr. Gunter has a nice 'stache' but this guy, is possibly the greatest African German I've ever seen. Makes you want to be German...

Cutest Baby Update

I think I blogged a bit ago about our trip to Macon two weekends ago. Here's a great pic of Great Grandpa Papa holding AK.

Here's a few of the proud pops.

All in all things are going well. She's got herself in a good schedule 99% thanks in part to mom sticking to the baby wise. I might give myself a .5% of credit and .5% credit goes to possibly dumb luck. But she's sleeping well, has good wake time after feeding, and has slept through the night a few times but we're still working on that. Granted she'll be 8 weeks this week so we're a bit head of schedule on the sleeping through the night.

She likes to smile a lot, a trait she inherited from me. She finds her father to be the funniest man alive, which can you blame her? And if she smiles or giggles at you, its mere coincidence and usually its a sign that she is thinking of something funny I did or said.

This weekend we got a wedding to go to which should really test the schedule as its in central time zone and during the wedding wifey will be a bit busy (she's in the wedding) and so dad will be on high alert full patrol. My hope is she sleeps the whole time during the wedding, granted if she cries then I get an excuse to leave the wedding, which isn't all bad.

Superman Returns: Give me Richard Pryor anyday

So I made it out to go see Superman and I can honestly say it wasn't that good.

I grew up in the 80s and some of my favorite movies were Superman 1 through 4. And i can honestly say this one was one of my least favorite. Give me Richard Pryor and those jive talking robots anyday.

I'll try not to give any of the movie away but still give a critique, so here goes.

Singer seems to struggle with how much back story to put into the movie. He seemed to just put enough in for a refresher but with little dialogue you're just sort of watching almost a silent home movie. Some people have complained that he shouldn't have put any of it in if it were to be at true sequal of the originals, but I understand the need to connect with the past, though I think the way he did it was campy and too flashbacky.

My least favorite scene had to be when Superman takes Lois for a flight in the clouds, this is pretty much a rehash of the original movie, minus Margot Kidder's annoying monologue, "Can you read my mind..."

Brandon Routh was a fine superman when he was superman he was great, though his clark kent felt like a channelled version of Christopher Reeves. Though I fault Singer for that not Routh because I think it was Singer's design was to connect to the originals as much as possible. Hence the Marlon Brando...

Lois Lane was awful. Kate Bosworth is blond... no matter how much hair dye you use she's still a blond under all that. Plus her frame, her dialogue, her acting its all off and in no way conveys the proud confident Lois Lane. She comes off as more an annoying little girl. Instead of a pesky hot shot reporter we get a pesky teenager struggling through puberty. She didn't seem to command the respect that Lois Lane does. People fear lois because she's so strong, thus it takes superman to tame her in a sense...

Lex Luthor was ok. Kevin Spacey is a good replacement of Gene Hackman though Gene Hackman is probably better in the end, "MISS TESCHMACHER!!!"

Parts of the story are ok, but then parts really are kind of lame. And without getting too much into detail it just didn't have the umph that it needed.

Visually it was great, someone said it was the original with better graphics and I could agree with that somewhat. I just felt that Lex's plan really wasn't well thought out and was similar to his plan in Superman 1... its like dude get a new idea he beat you on that one already.

My big problem with superman is he never has a true knock down drag out action scene. He has no equal so he never really has to use his power mono y mono on a guy. He saves the day but he never has to take out the trash if you hear me. Spidey vs Green goblin, Doc Oct or coming in the next few years Spidey vs Venom. Or Batman vs the Ninja dude, i mean those are great fights. Superman fought those krypton guys but frankly they looked like rejects from a german disco not truly cool badguys.

Now I was a big fan of superman when i was younger. I have probably around a 100 comic books of varing kinds of the old superman. But as I grew older I realized that superman as a comic book character is flawed. A truly great comic book character has to have several weaknesses, which he has two a rock from his home world... which lets face it how many people have access to that. And the struggle that every super hero has his loved ones. And in almost every super hero movie you have the loved ones on one side and greater good on the other and how oh how will he save both???? I mean that has been done to death. And to knock the original superman he chooses the greater good by stopping the nuclear bomb and loses lois so he spins the world back a few times to cause time to go backwards??? I've always had a problem with that even as a kid. I can remember thinking as a kid, "That would cause everyone in the earth to fly into the atmosphere and die. Plus the way the world spins has nothing to do with time..."

Another thing is Superman has no equal here on earth so you're either going to have lex's global destruction thing going on, which gets old after a while (and why does someone want to destroy most of the world? Talk about not getting held enough as a child). OR you have some alien being sent to earth to destroy Superman. Face it superman doesn't have the villians that spidey or batman have. He doesn't have the human element that makes a super hero truly interesting.

As I've gotten older I've found that spiderman and batman really have much more to offer because in a lot of ways they just feel more believable. I mean who can't relate to Peter Parker's struggle with being a dork in school? Or his best friends always turning into bad guys. I mean if some how Jimmy Olsen or Lois lane turned into Superman's arch rivals then that might get me interested. I mean spidey can't catch a break, he's a dork in school, his friends are all trying to kill him because they're either Venom, Doc Oc, or the Green Goblin, is too busy to spend time with the girl, and he's poor. The guy just can't win.

Superman has a good job, gets the girl, saves the day always, can't really be hurt in any sort of way, and has a prime piece of property in the North Pole. Plus all the people around him are so dumb that he doesn't even need to wear a decent disguise. Nope glasses, his hair combed the other way, and a goofy smile.

So I've sort of gone sour on superman. And the movie was just ok.

here's some thoughts i wrote, they're kind of random and not that great...

I've said it for the past 10 years: the only superman movie I think I'd find interesting would be the death of superman. It was one of my favorite points in the comic book because superman finally met his match. You have doomsday a genetic creation pretty much created to destroy life and all the superheros in DC comics go up against him and get pulverised. One guy loses his power completely because Doomsday destroys his super suit (which was the sorce of his powers). So Superman steps up and battles to the standstill where they each throw the last punch and both doomsday and superman fall down dead infront of the daily planet. Then four supermen arise to take his place: One a krypton type being who is tired of mercy and goes around burning criminals and bad guys alive. The other a half cyborg half man superman who claims to be superman recreated---he actually turns out to be the bad guy and the other three superman have to fight him. Superboy who is a clone of superman though they couldnt' clone his super powers they could only close his physical features so they some how infuse him with telekenesis. Then the fourth is Steel which I think Shaq made a movie of already. He's a former arms designer who sees the weapons he created being used by street gangs so he makes a suit of steel and goes around fighting gangs.

Now that movie would be interesting, because you'd have the battle with doomsday and all these cameos of other superheros. You'd have superman's death and subsequent resurrection. And then taking down the cyborg evil superman. Good stuff. Granted there were tons of holes in the plot even in the comic book that would have to be fixed. And frankly they're probably too big to fix so why bother. Like: Where'd the krypton guy come from? Same question applies to superman 2 the movie, where'd those lameos come from? How do you clone superman if he's impervious to needles and such? How do you infuse someone with telekensis and can i sign up for that? Then the fact that superman comes back to life only as a human not a superhero and has to fight the bad guys as a regular joe... yeah that was pretty lame as well.

Another great pbs documentary

So caught another great PBS documentary tonight, the Bob Dylan one. I had already seen it but much like Dylan's music it takes a second viewing/listening to fully understand his mumblings. Don't get me wrong I think Dylan's a genius... though I just think he can't sing for crap.

But his lyrics are something that just can't be matched in any form of american music in my opinion.

I wish Scorcese would stick to documentaries instead of long drawn out movies that have little point. He's a good documentarian I must admit.

Japanese Samuarai Baseball

So I watched this documentary on PBS tonight about Japanese High School baseball. And being a baseball geek it was really interesting. The Japanese passion for baseball makes americans' pasion about college football appear to be a passing crush. I mean these kids were just so intense, as well as the parents, and school teachers.

And the exercises these high school kids were doing for baseball, wind sprints, sit ups, things high school baseball players here never do. I hate to tell them that a lot of the exercises they were doing really had no baring on their baseball physique, some of them I had never seen before. Granted I know I don't exercise, but still some of them were weird calastetics or pilates or something.

Those japanese, always taking it to the next level.

But come to think of it when aren't the Japanese intense and dedicated... I mean look at Pearl Harbor, Akira, Lost in Translation, Sushi, the Ninja Turtles, Morris, Mr. Baseball starring Tom Selleck, Street Fighter 2, Furbie, Nintendo, and most of all Soduko. I think I've made my point.

Searching for Asian Cusine: A response to Comments on Sweet Basil

Bill's impression of me being a chain ganger, aka a chili's junkie is all wrong. I hate chilis, applebees, and all the like, i like the local flair. However I could in no way see why people think sweet basil is so amazing. It just tasted like every other asian cusine place i've ever eaten at.

There are only two asian restaurants where I've been impressed with the foods uniqueness. Pho Grand which is in st. louis which is like Sweet Basil in its quality only a few notches better but has great atmosphere as well. The food is vietnamese so its slightly different but in the end the same ingrediants for the most part. Its one of the few asian restaurants where you leave and don't feel like you gorged on a fat and grease, its a pretty healthy look at asian food.

The other restaurant would be PF Changs which though a chain is a pretty good attempt at fancy chinese food. Though with PF i still feel like i'm paying twice as much as the moon at noon and getting the same food. Its the same food only fancier.

My wife and I put it this way. You can go to Armandos and get a 3 dollar grease burger thats awesome. Or you can go to Canyon Grill and drop 23 bucks on a ground Filet Mignon burger. They're both good, one is better quality, but in a lot of ways they're both awesomely tasty in their own right. Now which would you rather have? I'd rather have the Armandos because I'll feel good about not dropping over 20 bucks on a burger. I feel chinese/asian is the same way. Its all the same you're really just moving up the quality scale. So I'm a moon at noon guy and an armandos guy, both serve tater tots and french fries I believe, just like old momma Chen does in downtown Hong Kong.

So why do people think Sweet Basil is amazing??

So the wife and I went out for some grocery shoppin today as we had no food in the house due to a trip to macon this past weekend to see the in laws. So we stopped at Sweet Basil a restaurant so many of our friends seem to be gaga over.

Frankly, don't see what the big deal is...

It actually just tasted like chinese food. I got something spicey with chicken and rice and basil and wifey got something with chicken and pineapple and both were alright but not worth 10 bucks a plate. I mean the quality was there but it wasn't anything better than china moon as far as taste goes.

I will concede that the spring roll thingy's were pretty dang good but everything else was just mediocre. Good atmosphere though.

It was also my first foray into Tai food and frankly I can't tell much difference. ANd what's with everything having curry in it? I thought that was like an Indian thing?? Wife and I are not big fans of the Curry, its generally over used in Indian cookin in my opinion. A little curry goes a long way, granted some might say the same with our cooking and garlic. We tend to douse anything and everything in garlic.

So in the end I just didn't see what the big deal was.