Ba dump dump ching!

Sorry.

Anyways, welcome from the house that plague built.  This week has been a wee bit hectic as we opted to celebrate Mother’s Day with Pink eye and Strep throat in the house, so we’ve been boiling and wiping and bleaching everything in order to keep the disease from spreading.  We have met with… some success.

Special Kudos, to Bearman Cartoons for continuing his annual charity drive.  I thought I was being all clever by coming up with the Bearman Bar and Grille when I went back and re-read his post and realized that a bar name was actually one of his suggestions…

We’re never as clever as we think we are…

Huh, huh… see what I did there?!?

So, I’ll try not to be to spoilery here, but I’m going to discuss Iron Man 3, so spoilers there be…

In 3…

2…

1…

While reaction to this movie has been mixed, I must say that I really enjoyed it.  For background, I have a very large stack of Iron Man books in my collection.  I loved Iron Man and thought Iron Man 2 was a desecration and generally refuse to acknowledge its poorly implemented existence.  So there’s that.  The fact that IM3 focuses on characters rather than action I take as a plus.  Of course, the movie is by no means perfect, so let’s cover what I didn’t like:

1. Shortround – Really?  Did this movie need a Shortround character?… and if it did, could we at lease have made better use of said character?
2. Iron Patriot War Machine – Great actor, great character, itty bitty part… would have liked to see more than taxi cab service… but that’s me.
3. Snap-Fit Models – I know the guy is sleep-deprived and stressed, but are we really to believe that Mr. Stark can’t remember how to build an Iron Man suit that can handle… I don’t know, having a tin can tossed at it without falling apart?!?  Surely one of the suits would be semi-durable.
4. Guy Pearce – No reason… just don’t care for his smarmy arse…

So that’s what I didn’t like.  What did I like?  The childish interplay between Stark and… well, just about anyone… I’m sure in the real world he would go around with a continuous black eye, but it’s amusing.  The story was a bit shallow, but it was interesting from comic book history vs movie character history sort of way.  I don’t want to go as far as to claim that I saw actual character development on screen (I didn’t), but I did get to see more than the costumed character which is much closer to the comic book experience than your usual movie.  What action was there was fun… which is basically my thoughts on the entire movie… it was fun.  Pointless, enjoyable fun.  What were your thoughts?

So Brittany’s home!!!  Huzzah!

I’m pretty sure it’s still snowing in Marquette, though…

Cripes!

We’d been enjoying nice warm weather here in A2 before heading out, but we knew it would be chilly up there, so we refrained from putting away the cold weather gear until after the trip.  Yessiree Bob, I had one my jeans and a long-sleeve waffle henley… very nice…

…of course, being a dillweed, I forgot my coat!

Let’s just say it was a bit… chilly in the morning…

And what the heck is it with college students?!?  I swear to you here stuff expands along an exponential curve!  I know everything fit in the Escape when we dropped her off, but if we hadn’t been able to store some of her things with a friend, there is no way it would have made it back!

Actually, maybe she’s just getting worse at packing?  I don’t know… but she’s home for the summer, so huzzah!

‘Nuff said…

So let me make this clear from the start, I have never read The Davinci Code or anything else by Mr. Brown… I’ve seen the movies on cable, but we’ve discussed those before…

As per The Hunger Games, it’s one of the books you can borrow from Amazon, so I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about… but very slowly… you can only borrow one book a month, so I read THG last month, borrowed CF April 1, and just started reading it this morning.  They’re short books, though, so I’m sure I’ll be returning it and snagging the last one tomorrow… it will be useful as I have a trip to Marquette this month…

Anyway, so the books aren’t nearly as bad as I’d imagined.  If you remember that these are meant for the young adult market, and any semblance of character development takes a backseat to action and emo-esque drama, they are actually kind of fun… I’m sure I’ll have more to say about them later, but for now, it’s a relaxing read.

So, I hate drawing badly (on purpose)… and it’s not that the Red Bull commercials are drawn badly… they are a lovely example of squigglevision, and do a very nice job, but try as I might, I couldn’t make the transition from squigglevision to still images, so I opted for intentionally rough… in hindsight, I bet pencil sketch lines would have looked better and been a bit more satisfying.  Oh well, next time…

I’m with Jane on this one.  The best writing occurs hours before the deadline.  If you finish too early, it will spoil, right?!?

This game is, of course, an oldie, but a very, very goodie.  I find that at least once a year, I will load it up, roll a new character and play it all the way through.  It is nearly perfect, and a whole lot of fun.

When I actually have time to play, of course…

I am blessed with vision.

So this is a fairly accurate representation of my world without glasses… well… not accurate…. it’s too sharp, actually, but I couldn’t get blur to give me quite the right effect, and you get the idea.  Regardless, as bad as my vision is, it’s fully correctable, and that is a beautiful thing.

So, I wanted to squeeze in a run the other day, but I only had about an hour and a half before my next conference call for work.  I do NOT run in my glasses as it becomes an exercise in trying to keep them from falling off and wiping off sweat while trying to run.  I DO wear contacts, though.  They work very well.  However, the contacts I got as my new prescription this year are… difficult.  They trap air beneath them unlike any contact I have ever worn in my life, and trapped air simply means “I’m gonna pop out the first time you blink.”  So, putting these things in can take 30 seconds, or it can take 30 minutes.

I didn’t have the time.

I do, however, know my running path quite well, and am adept at picking out moving colors (there is one major street crossing), so I opted to just pluck off the glasses and run.

And it was nice.  There may have been the usual crowd of people staring at the fat guy trotting by, but who could tell?!?  Certainly not me.

It was kind of surreal, though… running through a sea of colors… but kind of relaxing too… at least until I brought the pavement directly into focus my coming right up to it!  Turns out there are lots of opportunities to stumble in that miasmic sea of colors.  Oddly, I didn’t fall until I was back on my on patio.  You’d think I’d have had that patch memorized.  Guess not.

So, next time… I’ll take the time to put in the contacts.

Good run though…

It’s that time of year again when we at Slightly Off-Topic pause to remember the great disaster.

No Memorial Poster… I might post it later, but I like to keep the annual Titanic remembrance light… and the poster…wasn’t… keyhole figures seemed to be a better choice.  I may go ahead and throw up the poster later, if I can work up the stomach to finish it, but I’ve been following @TitanicRealTime as I finish this, and it leaves one feeling… sad.  I mean we are all intimately aware of the story, but seeing it play out is a bit disheartening…  the twitter feed seems more real than that movie…

Rather than our usual focus on the ‘berg or Bruce, I thought we’d look at the accomplice… sitting just ten miles away and unable to understand what was happening before their eyes.  A shame really, but it’s easy to judge in hindsight.

So, as the band plays on, let’s take a moment to remember those who fell on the unsinkable Titanic.

So yeah… these sort of things always seem to come in pairs, don’t they?  But that’s it for now… at least until I get to the LvsC parody, but that’s a ways off yet.  The Flash strip just came about because I was wondering what it would take to make the Flash utterly useless… broken leg seemed the natural answer.  The Green Lantern strip, however, is more an expression of exasperation regarding the ever-changing yellow vulnerability.

I mean I get it.  You can’t have a truly invulnerable character and remain interesting in the long run.  Superman has to have his kryptonite.  The Green Lantern has to have his… yellow…  I’m good with that.  I just wish DC would pick one reason why the Corps might be vulnerable to yellow and stick with it.  Is it an intentional battery impurity to keep folks humble?  A side-effect of having Parallax bound in the battery?  Or is it the latest and greatest a friggin’ test to see if you can overcome your fear?!?

Whatever… It’s all shite since Marvel dropped Richard Ryder, anyway…

Ah well, enough… we’ll be back Sunday with the annual tribute (probably in poster style), and then on Tuesday… I think we’ll check in with Jane… or maybe Elric… hard to say…