I'm beginning to blog a lot like Christmas

Okay now that baseball season is over (go Yanks!) I can finally return to the blogosphere, and since I seem to be getting increasingly bored at work, expect more posts...hopefully.

But I'm not sure if you people have noticed but it's a week until Thanksgiving already and of course that means Christmas decorations were up a month and a half ago, but now it's okay to talk about it. And since it's the Christmas season, I've decided to do a brief little ditty on my three favorite Christmas movies of all time.

3.Jingle All the Way



-Ahnold Schwartzenegger's Christmas flick about the toy every kid wants is fabulous, I'm not going to say it's Oscar worthy material, but Arnold and Sinbad have an awesome chemistry in the flick, mix in a little bit of Phil Hartman, and top it off the The Big Show in the biggest damn Santa suit I've ever seen, you have an epic win.

2.The Grinch



-I am referring to Jim Carrey's version, although I do love the cartoon as well, I just thought Carrey brought such life to the Grinchy character and they expanded the story well enough without taking away from the central message of the story and kept it humorous enough. The supporting cast also has a lot of really good comedic talent behind it and they make Whoville a really vibrant place to live in.

1.Die Hard



-Seriously, the greatest Christmas movie of all time. Don't think this is a Christmas movie? Let's take a look at the facts, random Christmas party where people get drunk? Check. Naughty people getting punished by not getting what they want for Christmas? Check. Use of the word “Ho.” is a Santa-esque variety? Check. Check. Check. Movie beginning and ending with Christmas music? Check. Obligatory family hug in the snow? Check. Happy ending? Yipee ki yay mother checker! Oh yeah there's also a fat guy enjoying sugared treats, thank you Carl Winslow. So you say Die Hard isn't a Christmas movie, I say fie onto you and argue it is the greatest Christmas movie.

Worktime Blog Randomness!

The Return of the Random Blog From Work

Well here I am sitting at a desk again, and because this new job is still very new and training is not anywhere near completion yet, I thought I'd bring back an old concept but a fun one. I pick something random in pop culture and just start typing about it.

This weeks issue: Rogue's galleries, and no this does not mean pictures of Anna Paquin.

Myself and my buddies Danny and Steve got into a semi-heated debate about who has the best rogue's gallery in comic book history. Superman and Captain America were among the first discussed but then quickly dismissed when we quickly realized that after Lex Luthor and The Red Skull, there's not much depth there. I brought up the Teen Titans but then was shot down because it's a combined rogue's gallery, and that isn't really fair. Though for the record Slade Wilson is one of my favorite comic book villains of all time.

On and on the debate went until we finally narrowed it down to two heroes, both with impressive arrays of villains of varying complexity and danger. Those two heroes are Batman and Spider-man. And I will analyze both before giving my opinion, though I'm sure anyone who knows me knows who I'm gonna say.

We'll start with Batman and I'll give a Top 5 list of at least my favorite villains for the Caped Crusader.

1.The Joker – Easily Batman's chief rival, and really epitomizes what Batman goes up against. Joker is just insane but hilarious at the same time, and easily has had the best material. From Cesar Romero's makeup covered mustache to Nicholson “rubbing another man's rhubarb” to Mark Hamill being completely and fully awesome in the animated series and Batman Beyond (the movie Return of the Joker is a must watch) all the way to Heath Ledger's amazing portrayal of the Crown Prince of Crime.
2.The Riddler – Okay I'm going to get flak for putting Riddler this high on my list, but these are all my opinion because this is how I grew up with the Bat. The Riddler was always such a fun villain for me because he didn't need to resort to physicality, and it was more of a reason why Batman is a great detective, not just a strong semi-ninja badass.
3.Ra's Al Guhl – Now I know he's higher on most other people's list, and truth be told, I'm not that high on him. I mean I do respect that he is reallt the guy who can get to Bruce Wayne and not necessarily Batman and that's always the mark of a good villain. They know the secret identity and explot it, but don't expose it.
4.Two Face – Oh man do I loves me some Harvey Dent. It's great to see Batman always show a bit of remorse when he is up against Two Face because he knows that he is partially responsible for turning public servant Harvey Dent into a coin flipping murdering madman.
5.Poison Ivy – Female villains are tough to come by, especially really credible ones. But when you give someone an outlook on life that is good and then take it up to insane proportions, then give her control over all the world's fauna, that's a force of nature. Plus Ivy plays off her looks and uses it to capitalize and gain the upper hand on the bat and bird. Plus deep down she's a chemistry nerd, and who doesn't love a good chemistry nerd?

Is this list complete? Of course not. Will you agree with all of my choices? I sure hope not, but these are Batman's Top 5 Villains in my humble opinion. All due respect to Misters Cobblepot and Freis.

Now moving on to everyone's favorite webslinger, Spider-man. Here's a brief rundown of my Top 5 favorite Spidey villains.

1.Norman Osborne – Oh man where do I start with the awesomeness of Normie? He's got the political stroke of Lex Luthor and the criminal genius of The Joker. And his glider's got jets. But serious Norman was a huge threat to Spidey even BEFORE he knew who was under the webbed mask, but once Norman found out Peter's little secret, he made the young Parker's life a living hell. That and he likes to throw blonde women off of bridges.
2.Venom – Eddie Brock regardless of what backstory you follow has always been a huge threat to Spidey for the simple reason that Venom has all the same powers as Petey does, and doesn't register as a threat to the ever present spider-sense of the wall crawler. But also the fact that the alien symbiode bonded to Brock's skin only has very few weaknesses and is powered by the overwhelming hatred Eddie has for Parker and Spider-man.
3.J. Jonah Jameson – Peter's boss being on this list probably surprises some people but it really shouldn't. Beyond being able to torture Parker at work, he also is a huge detractor of Spider-man. Jonah was the one responsible for spider slayers to try and taken down the webbed wonder, and the creation of Scorpion. And recently in the Brand New Day in the comics, the dynamic between Jonah and Peter has gotten so much better as Jonah is now the step brother to Peter Parker, but Mayor of New York City with a whole team dedicated to take down the anti-registration criminal known as Spider-man.
4.Doctor Octopus – Otto Octavius has spent a lifetime trying to make things difficult for Spider-man. He is truly a geek gone bad as the mechanical limbs bonded to his spine has basically driven him to the point of madness. He even tried to marry Peter's Aunt May once. And the writer's of spider-man look highly enough on Doc Ock to feature him in ASM 600, where Otto hacks into the city grid and actually has the whole of New York City attack Spider-man. He is probably the biggest threat while being the physically weakest because of his mental acumen.
5.Burglar – Honestly I had a hard time coming up with the fifth because I was running through a whole list of guys like Lizard, Kraven, Chameleon, Kingpin, etc. But there is one guy who, with one simple act, has haunted Peter for years, decades even, and this guy was never even given a name. It really illustrates why Spider-man works as a hero. This random guy, the one guy Spidey really just let slide, ends up being the person who has impacted and shaped his life more than Norman Osbourne would even hope to take credit for. The murder of Uncle Ben, made Spider-man who he is today, and is the prime motivation for Pete to continue leading this dual life because with great power there must also come great responsibility (had to fit that line in somewhere).

Now you may be wondering why there was no mention of Catwoman in Batman's list, and honestly it's because Spider-man has Black Cat who is essentially the same character, only done better. And yes I think Spidey has better villains just because they seem more well rounded than Batman's villains, and also they don't have to rot in an Asylum and then break out every time they want to do something criminal.

Well hope you enjoyed this rant...if anyone even reads this anymore.

My Little One Year Vacation...of sorts

What a strange and wacky year its been.

A year and a little under two weeks ago, I got fired from my job at Wyeth, and to say I wasn't handling it well would be an understatement.

Though I figured it was a good thing at the time. A little time off from everything, a brain break if you will. I figured with my academic credentials and job experience, I'd be able to land a job by my birthday, and all would be right with the world.

Then month by month slowly went by. Slowly. Exceedingly slow. And the months just seemed to drag on and one, and the economy seemed to be getting worse are worse and the job market shrinking faster than a tiny dick in the Arctic Ocean. (How's that imagery for ya?)

And as time went on, I got more and more frustrated and despondent, as this blog can pretty much attest to. And it seems like as soon as something started to look like it was going my way, it was dashed away thus dragging me lower into my rut.

But it looks like there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Right when my unemployment ran out, I got a new job at IBM up in Fishkill.

Slight problems with it though.

It's not in my field.
It's a lot less money, nothing to sneeze at, but a lot less.
I basically have to live with my folks for the whole week away from all my friends.
And I'm not really that enthused about it.

....but it's a job, and it's a start.

And for right now, I guess that's good enough.

I don't understand sports movies sometimes Pt. 1

I call this part one because I'm sure not how many parts I'm going to do of this...but it is something I'm probably going to end up doing more than once. But I watch a lot of sports movies, currently The Waterboy is ending right now, case in point. And I'd like to think of myself as a pretty decent sports fan, not an aficionado of any kind, but I'm relatively active in the pro sporting world...and yet some things sports movies just plain baffle me. This series of blogs will be exploring the minutia of pop culture stuff I love to pick apart.

1) Luis Mendoza is a horrible hockey player, and a horrible human being.



Now granted, I'm new to the sport of hockey just recently watching it now (Go Pens) but I'm an expert at the Might Ducks movies. Now the first Mighty Ducks movies, the kids were not expected to be talented, and most of them weren't as evidenced by the fact that they axed a lot of kids without any explanation (i.e. Jesse's brother and Little Pete). But the second movie was when the Ducks were given an influx of so-called "ringers." Now I have no issues with the smoking hot Julie "The Cat", the enforcer Portman, the puck-wrangler Dwayne, or even Mr. spinny-flippy Ken Wu...but Luis Mendoza, he's an issue.

The man could not stop in a fast break on skates. Now the very few times I've been ice skating in my life, I have realized that stopping is a very important aspect of the sport, especially in hockey. There is no way that he should be considered a "ringer" if the man can't stop. And despite his shortcomings the one time he does stop, he sprays so much ice in the face of the goalie that it could be counted as interference. Mighty Ducks 3 only explains the horribleness of Mendoza further, as he has apparently not only forgotten how to stop (way to go Coach Orion) but scams on a varsity player's girlfriend and just shrugs it off with "Our little secret". If the boyfriend had done something openly horrible to his girl I can accept that, because that's the movies...but no, Mendoza probably just said he was in Menudo and broke up what appeared to be a perfectly happy relationship. So, in short, fuck you Luis Mendoza.

2) The Rick Vaughn situation

Pitcher characters in sports movies have always been somewhat of a mystery to me. It seems like every time a pitcher takes the mound in a sports movie, he always pitches complete games and there is literally no bullpen. However, Rick appeared in both of his movies as a starter and as a reliever. I'm not sure if this is a Joba Chamberlain-like scenario, but it can be very confusing for baseball fans who actually watch these movies...or for that matter just take it way too seriously.

Okay well that's all for now, or at least all I can think of right now without getting too wordy.

High School Hearthrobs...

Okay, this is going to be yet another random over assessing pop culture blog posts...so strap in, make sure your tray tables are in their upright and locked position, and the captain has turned on the "being awesome" sign.

I'm sitting here watching the last episode of Saved by the Bell, the Malibu Sands summer, and as the classic early 90s love music kicks in as Zach says goodbye to Stacy and Slater walks off with a young, hot Denise Richards, I'm left to wonder...did either Zach or Slater ever get laid? For that matter did any TV high school hearthrob get laid?

I'm talking Fonzie, Zach Morris, Shawn Hunter, Will Smith, Eddie Winslow and a whole slew of others...we were led to believe that they were the macks of their respective schools and had the girls falling all over them. But it doesn't seem like they ever got more action beyond the no tongue closed mouth kisses we saw on screen.

It's a very odd concept that the illusion these shows tried to create, because in actuality if these guys existed in real high schools, they would probably be crawling with so many diseases it would make Courtney Love blush. Yet it didn't matter how many girls these guys hit on, kissed, asked out, dated, or what have you they were back a week later with a new one.

High school TV sure tried to teach us some weird values.

Anyway for those still playing the little game I mentioned last week, here's another one to crash your internal hard drive. Imagine the country's first black president Mays Gilliam, the evil alien from Men in Black 2, Severus Snape, Frida Calo, independent pornography star Lester The Molester Cocknshtuff, and the Warlock trying to track down Daredevil and Will Hunting all while being thwarted by Earl, his brother Randy, and Rufus, and thus you have a really interesting re imagining of Dogma.

Certainly has been a while...

Okay it's been a while for me since I did this, and to be honest I'm not really sure why. Many blog worthy things have come and gone...I mean hell my last blog was in November. I didn't blog about Christmas, my favorite holiday of the year. I didn't give a recap of 2008. Nothing about the start of the baseball season, or about my awesome last trip to the Burgh. Hell I went to Japan for my 26th birthday and still nothing posted on this site. And yet I'm not sure why I never got around to writing about it.

Actually...I probably do know why, call it writer's block, call it lack of focus, call it pessimism, but honestly...I'm in a rut.

A rut creatively, emotionally, psychologically, financially, pretty much any way I can be in a rut...I am in a rut.

So why the blog post now, you ask? I don't know...I'm sitting here on a Friday night bored as hell watching NCIS, and I need to do something. So here I sit, here I type. Apologies if this isn't exactly the most well thought out or thought provoking blog you've ever read. I'm just I guess trying to get back to doing this because I loved doing it for a while.

You know my folks keep telling me that I need to establish some sort of routine for myself, because they know I'm in a rut too. And to that I say, it's really hard to develop a routine when it's hard enough just to get the motivation to get out of bed and do something every day, especially when you have nothing you have to do.

But I'm trying...I guess. I'm starting out slow if you can call it that, I'm establishing a new workout routine for myself at a new gym. And I have a few people in my life trying to keep my spirits up, but it's really difficult. I mean until I can someone set a balance to my life to where I have some sort of job that I can get a hold of, the overwhelming stench of failure still kinda radiates from me. And I know I'm not the only one with this problem, especially in these times. But is it wrong for me to feel kinda worse when I see friends of mine lose their jobs just like I did, then spring right back to their feet a few weeks later? I mean I wish the very best for all of my friends, but I wish I just had someone, anyone in my life that could relate to me right now. And I don't. As much as everyone is trying to cheer me up, it's usually only temporary because I don't have anyone who really knows how much of a failure I feel like.

It's just hard because there's nothing I can actively do to change my situation. Sure I can send out all the applications in the world, and I can follow up with phone calls, and I can look outside my profession, outside my state, outside any other cities I'd be willing to live in...but ultimately, I don't make the decision. It's all in someone else's hands, and the very few interviews that I have gotten, thought went well and then nothing are like knives all over me. What did I do wrong? Did I not smile enough? Should I have done better in Statics? Did I spit when I talked? Were they looking for someone with a vagina? Someone with darker skin to fill a quota? Is there anything I could have actively changed about myself that would have gotten me a job? I mean is there someone out there who can somehow give me gratification that the past 8 years of my life trying to get my Master's degree wasn't a huge fucking waste of my time?

Ugh. Okay...this is a long post so far, but I'm going to try and cheer myself up by doing what I love to do most...analyzing pop culture WAAAAAY too much.

I was out with a few friends last week and someone made a statement that really got me thinking. Golden Girls is really just an extension of Sex and the City. I mean it makes a lot of sense when you look at it, take Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte give them about 20 years and kill all their husbands, then relocate them to Del Boca Vista and it's basically the same show. Samantha would be Blanche, the sex-crazed one. Charlotte would be Rose, the sweet but scatterbrained one. Carrie would be Sophia and Miranda would be Dorothy. Watch an episode of golden Girls and put the Sex and the City actresses in the roles and it becomes a much weirder show, but still very similar.

Okay one more thing before I start to get into brain mush, I've recently created a new game for myself to make movies I've seen a million times over seem more interesting. Basically I imagine what a film would be like if you took the leads and then replaced them with a role they played in another movie. Okay that even looks confusing reading it, so I'll explain it with an example.

The movie One Fine Day with George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer where they are both single parents trying to get through a crazy day in New York City with their kids and end up falling for each other, you all know it and love it. Now let's examine both those actors film histories. Take Clooney who played Batman in the infamous "nipples and codpiece" Batman movie, and take Michelle who played Catwoman in the "hey Christopher Walken's in this one" Batman movie, and now picture "One Fine Day" where the two protagonists are Batman and Catwoman trying to take care of their kids in full costumes in NYC. To me, that makes a much more awesome movie.

Try it yourself and feel free to let me know what kind of crazy shit you come up with. I personally think seeing Tyler Durden, Batman, Ross and Monica's dad, Jason Bourne, and Shawn "Sugar Daddy" Donkey trying to steal money from Terry Benedict far more interesting than Danny Ocean and his crew. Also here's a teriffic visual to leave you on, Heath Ledger's Joker in 10 Things I Hate About You.

I rest my case.

Keep on, keeping on people.