Spidey

As you can tell from my profile pic, I'm a big Spidey fan. He is basically my childhood Superhero (does anyone else remember the cheesy 60's 70's cartoon?) The picture is of the third installment in the movie series and OMG is it going to be awesome!!! We have Venom, Sandman (the effects look great) and as was revealed in the end of the last movie...the new Green Goblin. Apparently they are changing the way the "Black Suit" is handled. For those Comic Geeks out there, Spidey was whisked away to a far far planet by someone named the Beyonder....as well as a lot of Marvel Heroes and Villans. His suit got ripped up in a battle, and he was given a new suit from this alien machine. It was black, and could mimic any set of clothes he wanted.....it was also an Alien lifeform that was bonding itself with him. It was removed, but found a new host....a man named Eddie Brock who hated Spidey as much as the suit did. They merged and became Venom. That's how it came to be a long time ago....Marvel, recently, has been doing something called the "Ultimates" series. Re-mixing their old Heroes origins to make them a bit fresher and more palatable for today's readers. So apparently the "black suit" was a result of science gone bad. Peter Parker's Dad and Eddie Brock were working on a cure for cancer or something and the black suit was the result. Doesn't matter to me...the movie is going to be awesome, and May 4, 2007 can't come soon enough for me.

My Wife

This one is going to be sappy, so piss off if you don't like it! This is not a rant, but tribute to my wonderful Wife, Cathy. Now as many of you know, Cathy is my second wife, but you know what they say: "There's always a rough draft before the final product". I will mention the "rough draft" briefly. We refer to her as PITA or Hellspawn and she was/is a stupid, immature, selfish human being....at least I think she is human. Enough said about that. I met Cathy online at a Yahoo Divorced support group. We started off as chat friends; speaking on occassion. The occassional chat became almost every night, and at that point it became very flirty too. Hey I'm not complaining. We then moved to phone conversations which was about the same time the group had planned to meet in a somewhat central location for a get together in real time. Cathy arranged for us to meet in Nashville; I went to visit her for the first time the week before. We hit it off right away. My first thoughts were "damn she's sexy..."! I still think this to this day. We were married two years ago and have finally lived in the same place for almost a year now. I forsee us growing very old together. I love you Sweetheart, very much.

BBQ Update

It was a success. All of my guests had a great time. My co-worker Tammye brought her little Shih Tzu and he was having a good time. Olivia kept the adults entertained by pulling out her Dance Dance Revolution game and dance mats to go with it. While I was outside manning the grill and talking with my co-worker Sarah's boyfriend Mark and Cathy, Sarah, Olivia, Tammye and her daughter Ashley were dancing around. Too funny. It's odd, Olivia was supposed to be with the Sperm Donor until yesterday, but she wanted to come home on Friday, which changed to wanting to come home on Thursday. And apparently SD didn't care. Of course not. He's happy to be rid of her. Such a schmuck. What is the old saying "There are people who are alive simply because it's illegal to kill them...".

Colma: The Musical????

Believe it or not it's true. Apparently these two buddies from the CSM Film School decided to get together after hearing a joke "soundtrack" from a friend of theirs about the City of Colma. Now for those that don't know, Colma is close to San Francisco, and has a below ground population that is higher than the above ground one. Yes, they have lot's of cemetaries.....lots!! Pretty much with the exception of the Golden Gate National Cemetary in San Bruno, no other Peninsula Cities have cemetaries. Okay, Redwood City has a couple, but not many. No, most of the deceased in the Peninsula are buried in Colma. I'd love to see this film as there are many a local reference that will make us Bay Area locals laugh. Just the idea of the opening scene of the movie taking place on Interstate 280 right before the Serramonte Blvd exit is absoultely funny. Then there is a scene of the inevitable Bay Area Fog......priceless......

My Rock Star Neighbor

Click on the Blog title to check out the music. Good stuff. This is a pic of my Rock Star neighbor, Amy. We discovered that her and her Husband Paul are musicians when my daughter Olivia, who loves to go visit them and play with their dogs, brought home a CD. There was my neighbor's face, and name on a CD. It's apparently her second. They are really great people, and Amy's music is very uplifiting.

Damn we're getting Old!

Cool pic huh? That's my constant companion now; Father Time. To quote Pink Floyd:

"So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, Shorter of breath and one day closer to death. "

Just looking over the past half decade and realizing alot has happened. My friend Brian is still married, happily I might add, to the same woman he courted for several years before they got married on July 31, 1993. He and his Wife, Chrissy, found out about 3 years ago that they would have issues trying to conceive a child. Several heartaches later, they decided to adopt, and have a wonderful little Daughter name Kailyn (she's two now). They live in Hawaii but have decided to move back to San Jose because it's just not working out. I keep trying to get them to move to Tennessee...figured they'd like it more. I got divorced in 1999, after a two year essentially mistake I made. Married someone that I didn't really know all that well. Met a wonderful woman on the internet (I know I'm a walking cliche) and we've been married now for the past two years. Going on three....... She has three great kids, and I love them like they are my own. About 2000 I ended up getting in touch again with an old friend from my Fencing class back in the mid 90's, Rodger. He came up to visit at Ren Faire, and liked it so much he wanted to work it. So he joined our group and he and I hung out and carpooled, and got to be good friends again. He in turn introduced me to a large group of really cool people. 6 years later, I am still in touch with them and look forward to seeing them some day real soon. One of them, Dan, is in a situation much like my own. He married a woman with two children and loves them like they are his own. I'm writing this because his son Dillon is graduating High School. Holy Crap!! The same kid who made the "it smells like clams" comment at the second or third gaming convention I went to, is now 18 and graduating High School!?!?! My friend Mike is married now, finally, and he and his Wife Anne are expecting their first child real soon. My sweet, little kiddo, Olivia, is going to be 12 soon and growing like a weed!!! Slowly becoming a young lady, but still refusing to be a girly girl...also there are signs of that Teenager attitude. God help me!!! Wow!!! the 21rst Century sure has been a busy one so far. I like it though. Wouldn't change a thing....well okay, one thing, I wouldn't have married the first wife......but other than that....not a thing.

Yeah I know...it's been awhile

I've been busy. Actually nothing really to rant about, except a follow up to the last rant. So apparently the guy in Jordan, his parents were looking forward to their son's new 16 year old "bride" showing up. The mother of the guy was at the airport waiting to pick her up. She is hoping that the couple still ends up getting together. Ummmmmm not happening Dumbass. Anyway, all is well with myself and the Family. Having my co-workers over for a BBQ Saturday....yeah that's right it's a BBQ.....everyone here in the South calls it a "cookout" or "Grilling out". Yeah whatever. I'm from California where we call the process of cooking food on a BBQ Grill BBQing. Whether or not BBQ sauce is involved in the process.

How Stupid can a parent be....

So did you hear the one about the 16 year old girl in Michigan? She is a Myspace member and met a 25 year old Jordanian man and "convinced" her Mother (apparently the Father and Mother are divorced and lives in another part of Michigan) to get her a Passport because she was going to Canada "with some friends". As she got to Jordan....long freaking way from Canada....she was convinced by US officials and Jordanian officials to go home...before she got to the West Bank. Okay, let's examine this. She's 16 and wants a Passport to go to Canada. You don't need one. You need a Birth Certificate to prove you are a US Citizen and that's it. Canada may be another Country, but it's on the same freaking continent and we have agreements with them concerning travel, and they with us. But that aside.....this Mother doesn't question her daughter the "straight A student who never gave us any trouble" about with whom, and where in Canada are you going, and when are you going. The Father is quoted as saying something to the effect of "How does a 16 year old girl end up travelling to Jordan to meet a 25 year old man". Okay Dumbass.....how does this happen???? Because you are both screwed in the head!!!! WTF??? If my Stepdaughter was to come to me and say "I need a passport because I'm travelling to Canada with some friends", there would be some questions asked. Of course she's only 11 at the moment, but even if she was 16 or 18 I'd still be asking questions. I have 3 Step kids of varying ages, and I know that you ask what, when, who, why. Whether they like it or not. Do these people not watch the news???? Myspace and Blogger and the others are good sites which try real hard to catch the pervs, etc. It's hard though. 76 million members of Myspace alone, that's a lot of manpower to find who's a freakazoid and who's not. People, know what the Hell your kids are doing!!!! Why does Ms. Straight A student who is a good kid all of a sudden have an urge to travel to Canada with "some friends". Kids say crap like that when they it is a lie to cover up something. Most kids would say "I'm going to the mall with Mary and Jenny, etc"....not "I'm going to the Mall with some friends". That's kid code for we are going to the mall to hook up with some boys/girls.........is what that is. Do we forget the crap we pulled on our folks when we were teens???? Wake up people. Get a clue before it's too late.

Forget the AntiChrist

Remember what today really is. The start of the destruction of a Human AntiChrist named Hitler years ago. This is from the History Channel.

June 6
1944 General Dwight D. Eisenhower launches Operation Overlord
On this day in 1944, now known as D-Day, future President Dwight D. Eisenhower, then supreme commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces in World War II gives the go-ahead for a massive invasion of Europe called Operation Overlord. Back in America, President Franklin Roosevelt waited for word of the invasion’s success.
By the first week of June 1944, Nazi Germany controlled most of Western Europe. Allied forces, numbering 156,000, were poised to travel by ship or plane over the English Channel to attack the German army dug in at Normandy, France, on June 5. Eisenhower had a window of only four days of decent weather in which an invasion would be possible. When bad weather hit the channel on June 4, Eisenhower wrestled with the idea of postponing Operation Overlord. Weather conditions were predicted to worsen over the next two weeks and he had thousands of personnel and thousands of tons of supplies that were in his words, “hanging on the end of a limb.” After a promising but cautious report from his meteorologist at 9:45 p.m. on June 5, Eisenhower told his staff “let’s go.”
That night, from Allied headquarters in England, “Ike,” as he was later affectionately called, composed a solemn and inspirational statement that was delivered the next day as a letter into the hands of every soldier, sailor and airman set to embark on Operation Overlord. In a radio delivery of the message, Eisenhower displayed the confidence and leadership skills that in 1952 would clinch his election to the presidency. Reminding the men that “the eyes of the world are upon you” and that their opponents would fight savagely, Ike exhorted them to be brave, show their devotion to duty and “accept nothing less than victory!” In closing, he wished his troops good luck and sought the “blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.” At the time, no one knew that, along with that statement, Eisenhower had also scribbled a note in which he accepted all blame in case the mission failed. The note remained crumpled up in his pocket.
Meanwhile, back at the White House on the afternoon of June 5, President Roosevelt waited for word of Operation Overlord’s commencement. According the Doris Kearns Goodwin in No Ordinary Time, Roosevelt had hoped to be in England with Churchill and Eisenhower for the monumental event, but his declining health made travel impossible. Instead, Roosevelt sat in his office tinkering with the speech he planned to deliver once the invasion began. At his daughter and son’s suggestion, Roosevelt turned the speech into a prayer entitled “Let Our Hearts be Stout.” First lady Eleanor tried to go about her daily business, but felt “suspended in space.” At 3 a.m. Eastern time on June 6, Roosevelt received the call that the invasion had commenced. He notified the nation by radio that night, saying “at this poignant hour I ask you to join with me in a prayer.”
On June 8, 1944, after years of planning, preparation and placating egos among his military peers, Eisenhower was able to report that the Allies had made a harrowing and deadly, but ultimately successful, landing on the beaches of Normandy.

Something a bit serious

Please click on my links section on the link that says "Dan's Blog". My friend Dan is a school administrator...he is currently the Co-Principal at the Middle School that I attended when I was in 6-8th grade. Back when I went it was a good school. The neighborhood was good, etc. Now it is a War Zone, with punk asses that ruin it for the good students. I won't mention the City because Dan keeps the site name and City anonymous on his Blog so out of respect to him it shall be that way here. Put it this way, if you know me, then you know what City I grew up in, and you know what has happened to that City. Enough said. Today Dan wrote about an incident at his school that was almost disatrous. Apparently two 13 year old students were planning a "Columbine-Style" assault on a handful of other Students who berate and abuse them constantly. At the root of the situation: differences of opinions about music. Music!!!!!! Jesus Christ!!! Is this what we are teaching kids??? If you don't like someone then pick on them and try and deny them their rights. After all was investigated, it was discovered that the planned assault was just a scare tactic to make the Bullies crap their pants. What is it going to take to make kids stop picking on each other???? Another group of "misfits" going on a shooting spree??? It seems to me that we are seriously destined to repeat history. Iraq has become another Vietnam, but we have at least learned that the soldiers aren't to blame for the mess but that the blame sits squarely on the shoulders of the Politicians that sent them there. As for these poor kids, they are getting psych help, but will probably be expelled. One is on suicide watch. My daughter Olivia goes through sometimes at school. She is learning to ignore it though. Thank God. So if you are reading this and are a parent; teach your children TOLERANCE. Please!!!!! If not, it may be your kids bodies they carry out of the next school massacre with a sheet draped over it.

Adult Swim

No it's not pool Porn you sick perverts....it's Adult oriented animation on Cartoon Network. If you haven't seen it, you are missing out. Some of the funniest Pop culture stuff is on here. You have your standard adult animation: Family Guy, Futurama, then there is the original bizarre stuff. First there is Aqua Teen Hunger Force. A floating box of Fries with a Goatee, a Walking Shake and a ball of uncooked hamburger named Meatwad who live in a rented house in New Jersey and solve crimes....although they really haven't solved alot of crimes but that's their cover. I know you are scratching your heads right now saying "Steve...WTF????" Watch it, and make you own judgement. Hey each episode is only like 12 minutes long. Then we have my favorite: Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. Birdman was a lame Hanna-Barbera cartoon that the geniuses at Adult Swim turned into a sitcom style cartoon. Birdman is now a Lawyer : He wears his mask, and a three piece suit. His enemies are the opposing council and the Judge, I believe, is one of his many enemies as well. Funny episodes have included: The Flintstones aka the Sopranos where Fred and Co have an office in a Bedrock stripclub called "The Dabba Do". Shaggy and Scooby busted for pot possession......like no one saw that coming......just some funny crap. They also play some pretty cool and some pretty strange Anime as well as some intersting pseudo animated stuff. There are also a couple of stop animation shows. Morel Orel: A claymation spoof of the Fundy Christian claymation show Davy and Goliath. Very funny and wrong in all sorts of ways....Then there's Robot Chicken. Think Action Figures gone bad. From the mind of Seth Green (Dr. Evil's son....) comes a series of shorts about Action Figures doing bizarre and funny things. Skeletor commiting suicide, Te-La being a "girls gone wild" druken slut......funny funny.......and there "bumps" in between shows are brillant as well. A bump is something that fills the space where there is no broadcast of a show or commerical basically. The guys that work and program there are all tuned into pop culture and the current vein of what's funny and what's not anymore. They often post up viewer emails then answer them in the bump.

Open Letter to Hollywood

Dear Hollywood,
You are cordially invited to please pull your collective heads out of your asses and to please kindly get a clue. Remakes of movies from the 70's are a waste of your money; and ours. In the past 5 years there have been numerous remakes of 70's and early 80's movies. Amityville Horror, When a Stranger Calls, Poseidon, The Hills have Eyes and finally on 6/6/06 The Omen. STOP it now!!!!!! Don't you people have any creativity left in you???? Having Peter Jackson remake King Kong was a good choice, but it was 3 freaking hours long and felt like it!!!!!! Unlike the Lord of the Rings Trilogy which were all long movies but were entertaining and engaging that you didn't notice, King Kong was drug out way to much. You should have spent the money on having him make The Hobbit. You'd be buying a new private plane by now. I am glad to see that you are tapping into a well deserved medium; Comics. Also glad to see that you are actually putting some money and thought into the movies you make of our beloved childhood Super Heroes. The earlier attempts on TV and some movies were so lame that we wanted to execute you. What happened to all the good Comedy's???? Now they are remakes of old ones and they often have sequels which are just as lame as the first attempts at the remakes. Oh yeah, stop with the movies with numbers after the title okay???? If you are going to make a Sequel, think of another name for the title other thant "Blah blah 2: The Quest for More Money". All James Bond movies are sequels essentially, but they all have different titles. Think about it. Stop trying to pass off Soft Core Porn as some "Well acted love story". You make a movie about Gay Cowboys in denial, who ruin other peoples lives because of a lie and you call it "A well acted, romantic love story". No. It's soft core gay porn. Simple as that. An action movie is an action movie. A horror movie is a horror movie. Paris Hilton kills movies. She sucks (literally and figuratively) and is a useless human being. The remake of House of Wax looked interesting until I saw that Paris Hilton was in it. Thusly the reason it bombed. J-Lo kills movies. The only reason I saw Jersey Girl was that she died in the first 5 minutes of it. J-Lo is a talentless hack. Owen Wilson kills movies. He plays a stoned, surfer dude in whatever movie he is in. Need to look at some more novels for ideas of movies. Read my blog entry about movies that shoul be made. Trust me, there will be an audience. A big one. Ben Affleck doesn't play Super Heroes well at all. He's an OK actor, his friend Matt Damon is much better. Oh, and when making Tom Clancy novels into movies, don't screw around with timelines and character ages. Chavez is a much cooler and deeper character than he was in Clear and Present Danger. Willem Dafoe as John Clark?????? Did you even read the book??? Clark is more like Bruce Wayne....built like a brick shithouse. Not Willem Dafoe. Sum of all Fears. Great book, the suckiest Clancy movie I've ever seen. Should have stuck to the book, it would have been an awesome movie. A comedy starring Johnny Knoxville; anything starring Johnny Knoxville for that matter: don't bother. Stupid and lame and frankly not funny. STOP remaking old 70's TV shows into movies. Starsky and Hutch....you made a cop show a comedy????? WTF???? Dumbasses. Dukes of Hazzard....why did you bother??? BTW, Jessica Simpson, not attractive at all and dumber than a bag of hammers. Also untalented to boot. Biggest waste of your money would be to put Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Johnny Knoxville, Owen Wilson and J-Lo in a movie. You could call it "It Came from Hollywood and it Sucked". You wonder why people don't go see movies that much anymore.....they SUCK!!!! Scary Movie 4, Another Date Movie.....STOP NOW!!!! Enough okay. Just make them straight to DVD. Save you some cash, trust me. That shit was funny for 5 minutes the first time. Talk about beating the lifeless, bloody corpse of the dead horse. Tell George Lucas and Spielberg that they don't know what they are doing any more. They were great at one time, but got so lazy that when they decided to make movies again...they all ended up sucking. I will not aknowledge that there were Star Wars Episodes 1, 2 & 3. Sorry, they didn't exist. Novel idea though, making an amusement park ride into a movie. Haunted Mansion sucked, but Pirates of the Carribbean was excellent. I think the sequel will be good too. Make more Pirate movies. They are always good. Don't make another Cutthroat Island or Pirates of Penzance. Real Pirate movies. The only good movies, consistently seem to come from a place called Pixar. Why? ORIGINAL IDEAS!!!!!! Aging SuperHeroes.....brillant!!!! We need more Good Morning Vietnams and Stripes and Ghost Busters. Didn't see RV, but I heard it was a good Comedy. For once. See you can do it. It seems to me that you are using the "put a thousand monkies in a room with typewriters and you will get shakespeare" mentality when it comes to green lighting scripts. Start hiring David Chase, or any of the folks that Write TV shows for CBS: Criminal Minds, Numbers, CSI (the original). If you don't know who David Chase is, he is the creator of The Sopranos. One of the best TV shows in decades. Honestly it is. Take the hint guys. Stop spewing out crap and start getting creative again. Lord of the Rings Trilogy in my opinion has been the closest thing to a Masterpiece to come out of Hollywood in a long time. Where are the Deer Hunters and Godfather's??????? So in closing I'd like to say this one thing: stop with crap and start cranking out quality again.
Sincerely,
A disgruntled Movie Buff.

PS: Keep your damn politics to yourself too. We don't care and it makes you all look like whiney assholes.

Provident Marketplace

This is the retail facility going in near my house. Kind of the reason we bought where we did. Bring on the sprawl I say. Makes it feel like home. It's nice to have all of this a 5 minute drive from the house, and not pay some huge price to live there. The house costs us 130,000 and probably has doubled in price because of this retail facility. Plus behind the retail are 7 new housing developments all with a central theme. 7 unique neighborhoods, each by a different builder ranging in price from 140,000 to if you need to ask you can't afford it. When it's all done it's going to bring so much tax revenue into this little town I live in it will feel like the Peninsula. Living in a State with no State income tax, towns need to rely on sales tax revenue. When your town has nothing but banks, mortgage brokers and real estate agents, you get very little sales tax revenue. There are two major restaurants and one hotel that used to help with that. A handful of fast food, a buffet and the nasty Waffle House. I remember hearing so many people complaining that all of this retail was coming in, but I could tell that the City Council has been needing cash for years because there are signs all over town that say "Buy Mt. Juliet First." The nearest mall is an Outlet mall 12 miles away (not a huge selection) and the Hickory Hollow Mall about a half hour away. For those that live in my old stomping grounds think Hillsdale with a criminal, thug element. Typical mall, tons of punk ass kids roaming around not buying anything but causing fights, car jacking people in the parking lot, etc. Happens to be in the town of Antioch which is considered East Nashville, kind of like Oakland Light....also where I work. Mt. Juliet's City Council finally got smart and courted this development. Since the opening of 5 of the many stores and restaurants that are coming in I bet the coffers are overflowing. I know I've spent my share of cash at Target, Petsmart and Best Buy. Hell I helped my neighbor carry a large HD flat screen TV into his house the other day. Cha ching I say. To the bitchers and whiners I say this: if you want to live in the sticks with nothing around you, then get the Hell out of the suburbs of Nashville. Hell there are plenty of places in this State that are BFE......I'm helping to make it more like San Carlos or San Mateo personally.........