All right. My superiors at work have asked me to attend a mandatory meeting on Friday at 6:00 am. Normally I'd be excused from this sort of thing, since I don't even report to work until 12:30 pm (I'm fast asleep by 6), but for whatever reason, this is an exception, so I have to deal with it as best as I can. That includes getting as much sleep as possible, which leaves me no time to get a comic done on time. So I'm going to blog out some thoughts that have been circulating in my brain for a little while, in a lame attempt to have some kind of update for Saturday. At some point I'm going to have consistent 3-update weeks, dammit :P

First off, as is my tendency to talk about things much later than I should, a quick congratulations to the World Series Champion Chicago White Sox. It a little disappointing that they went through the Red Sox to get there, but at least another garment-themed team won. Also, more importantly, the Spankees failed to win again.

It's also nice to see another team finally end decades of frustration. I know most Chicago people are Cubs fans, which makes me feel that - for just this time, at least - everybody in Chicago should enjoy this. Simply BECAUSE the Cubs are now the losingest baseball team ever, Chicago should celebrate now...who knows when (or even if) they'll see another championship baseball team again?

Speaking of near-century-old phenomena, what a wacky hurricane season, huh? I don't mean to be callous by saying that. I just seems like we had more and more powerful hurricanes than we've ever had...or at least since either we've been watching them, or since we've been naming them. And that seems true for almost any natural weather thing to happen. It seems a lot of coldest-day-on-record, hottest-day, most-rainfall, most-snow, etc. kinds of records all are either almost 100 years old, or have been recently broken. If things like this go in a cycle, then I guess I've got some pleasantly mild weather to look forward to in 50 years or so. :)

A couple of smaller, random thoughts...

There's a new radio station around here (or at least, relatively new, as far as I can tell) - 93.7, Mike FM. Their slogan? "We play everything." Well, not EVERYTHING, I've noticed...no country or classical or Indian sitar music or anything, but that's not the point. In their self-promotional bumpers, they'll occasionally weave in current events. In one I heard recently while flipping through the stations, I think it was referring to the whole Harriet Miers debacle. Talking about themselves, they said, "We're a good judge of music."
And I thought, "You play everything. You say as much no less that 500 times a day. If you play everything, then you're not judging any of the music that goes through...it could be crap music, but you have to play it, because you play EVERYTHING!"

Also saw an ad for the new movie Zathura on TV. In the critic blurbs they flash across the screen, someone described it as "one of the most original movies in years". Or at least "original", I remember that much, at least. Why? Because the movies isn't original in any way whatsoever. It's "Jumanji in space"! They even tell you "from the people who brought you Jumanji" in the same damn ad!

Speaking of movies, I was also thinking about Walk the Line, and being surprised finding out that it was Joaquin Pheonix playing Johnny Cash. Well, more accurately, just how much he sounds like him. And that he doesn't seem to have his trademark creepy-darkened-eyes thing happening...which is a good thing. I had similar epiphanies before...like "Holy crap, that's Will Smith?!" (in Ali) and "Holy crap, that's Jamie Foxx?!" (in Ray).

I also wanted to complain a little bit about Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it as much as the next person. But they've become far too popular for their own good. They've seemed to have developed this sense of entitlement. In one of their bumpers a couple weeks ago, they were going over their ratings. The line was, "What, no millionaire love this week?" Like they expected to get at least a million viewers....it's such an arrogant line. And then they show the numbers for the top three shows of the week. Two of them were Family Guy reruns. And they wonder why they aren't pulling in the numbers they used to? Adult Swim got popular by broadcasting reruns of Futurama and Family Guy. Then they got lucky with ATHF and Harvey Birdman (and probably a couple others). But now they're wondering where their precious 18-34 male viewers have gone when they're offering up such gems as Tom Goes to the Mayor and 12 oz. Mouse. God, I hate 12 oz. Mouse. That steaming pile barely qualifies as an animated cartoon...the voice "acting" just sounds like a couple of guys who get completely baked sitting in a room with a microphone recording every grunt, sigh and inane conversation. I was literally falling asleep in my brave attempt at watching the show. And I'm horrified to see that they have an "alternate version" showing after the new episode this week.

I will admit that that I'm giving Squidbillies the benefit of the doubt. From what I've seen so far, it hasn't been completely not horrible. Although you'd think will all the time it's spent in development, it might at least look better. And, of course, I haven't seen The Boondocks yet. That I'm still reserving judgement on. On the plus side, the animation looks good. Even if it seems to be heavily influenced by anime. However, I don't read the comic strip (as my local paper doesn't carry it), but even if it did, I wouldn't read it anyway, because I don't really go for that kind of political or racially-focused content.

As I'm typing this, I'm at work on Thursday evening (but don't tell anyone). I'm wearing a gift that my sister gave to me a couple years ago for my birthday: a blue Simpsons T-shirt with "Mr. Sparkle" on it. I know I've worn this shirt to work before (though I usually try not to if I can help it...or at least not while we have important visitors), but today, for whatever reason, I've had people comment about it for the first time. Once someone identified it as Mr. Sparkle, and twice I've had to explain who/what Mr. Sparkle is, or what the writing means (which I can't say, really, because it's in that faux-kanji). I just think it's weird that today happens to be the first time I've gotten comments about it. The same thing happened when I wore my Green Lantern shirt too. I wonder if I should try wearing my Corn Boy shirt to work and see what kind of reaction I'd get? hee hee
posted by Tim at 1:25 AM