ComicCon or Bust

It took me 3 days of trying, but tonight I finally scored a Thursday pass to ComicCon San Diego. I'll be in Sonoma the week before, so I'll drive down on the 21st or 22nd and look forward to shaking pablowapsi's hand, as well as - hopefully - being able to say hello to Brooke McEldowney again. As well as just experiencing the con. NYC seemed big to me, I'm told this is much bigger. And from my experience in New York, I should be able to see all that I want to see in one day, and then head home.

Give that organist a raise

Over at the Cross-time Cafe forum at TAC, sleepyjohn00 posted a link to this incredible video, which I felt moved to share.

The YouTube comments, as usual, drew the widest range of responses from "How blasphemous!" to "Totally awesome, dude!" I fall into the latter camp.

Michael Jackson led a tortured life, as many historical geniuses did. Their personal peccadilloes very rarely persist in historical memory, while their contributions and creations almost always do. This was, to my way of thinking, a well-deserved and extremely creative tribute.

It reminded me of this audio recording of Still Alive on the Storke carillon tower...

Robots in disguise

The whole time I sat watching Transformers II, one thought kept running through my head: "This is an amazing amount of money to spend on such a stupid premise." I mean, I thought the little toys were cool back in the early 80's when I was buying them for my kids - vehicles that transformed into robots and back again. But a planet full of sentient robots that turn into cars and trucks? Um...

OK, well, now that I got past that little rant - and many other folks seem to have their own set of gripes about the film - I can move on to say that I thought this was a whale of an entertaining movie. pablowapsi took the film to task for its lack of consistency and a host of other sins, and yeah - he's right about most of them. I mean, the film could just as well have been titled "Megan Fox's Lips" for all the glistening closeups they tried to provide. Still, some of the scenes were absolutely heart-stopping in their intensity, and I give gold stars and props to the CG guys and gals who did the work on the film.

There were characters I liked, characters I loved to hate, some slapstick, some nobility, some humor, big guns and many, many crashes and explosions - archetypical guy stuff. John Turturro was a crackup.

So certainly not a lot of substance, but a better ride than many roller coasters I've been on. And I got to see the previews for 2012, which took my breath away. I don't feel like I wasted my time or my money.

What will poor Pussy do now, poor thing?

She'll have to find someone else to stroke her...

Mollie Sugden, one of the stars of Are You Being Served, was transferred to the store upstairs at the age of 86. Mogg's teeth, that was a funny show, and Mrs. Slocombe was given some of the best lines. I never liked Grace and Favour as well, but some of the performances were still good.

She will be missed.

480-223-0973

Four calls from this number in the last 2 days. Never anyone on the other end. I know it's an autodialer, but I keep answering because I want to find out who the hqiz is on the other end, and be able to report them somewhere.

Hell is full of such scumbags. It amazes me that legislation to outlaw caller ID spoofing has been floating around in congress since 2007 and never gets anywhere. This seems like such a no-brainer. Not that it would really stop people who don't care about breaking the law, but it would be a step i' the right direction.



[EDIT: The drones finally answered the phone. A transcript of the call is here. This is an outfit called "LifeSecureUSA", and they're running one of those "barely-legal" scams. If you get a call from this number, or this company, hang up!]