"I will take you outside and fuck you in the street!!" - Ed Begley Jr.

"That is spicy. I don't think that's for cats." - Adam

I love that photo a lot.

Sarafina and myself went to the Pineapple Express movie last night, and ate fish burritos, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. I would say there are at least six things in that film that are outstanding, four things that are just really pretty, and the rest is overall very well done. Additionally, I read the second neo-Fray arc issue in Buffy, and was so goddamned thrilled that I almost didn't know what to do with myself. Actually, I probably embarrassed myself in public spaces with my near-constant glee. The densely-woven futurespeak is new (I suppose we can presume that in the previous self-contained storyline, we were seeing "translated" futurespeak, as we would see translated Chinese in an issue of Iron Fist) but very well done. And as for the spoiler... well yeah. I fell for the Dru fake-out rather nicely and was aptly rewarded at the end, but the bones of the thing now are just gorgeous to look at. Something happened in this issue that never happened before - the modern-day Buffyline just gained a fuck of a lot of context, a place in the world. It's not limited to Sunnydale any more, it's not even limited to the naughties any more; with the past and present accounted for and the future now added in, the Buffyverse feels dense. I like.

This crazy son'bitch built the Batman Beginsmobile. There was a phantom DeLorean that lived somewhere between my ex-girlfriend's house and my parents' place, back in the day... you'd be driving along at night and it would just appear behind you, and you (meaning I) would freak right out. Imagine how you (meaning I) would feel if the motherfucking Batmobile started tailing you instead. Holy cow.

Finally, for everyone who (like me) is still having trouble sliding the oily oyster that is "Quantum of Solace" down their gullet, there's a Joe Cornish fake theme song floating around YouTube that's quite enjoyable. They had me at "great big man-tits."

Posted by tederick at 3:48 PM in batman! & comix & joss & movies & youtubery
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I don't want to rain on the Whedonites' weekend, because lord knows those poor miserable people have been through enough. (They cancelled Firefly! In 2002!!) But I'm just not on board with Dr. Horrible. Did no one else find it... kinda humdrum? There's a self-congratulatory air about the proceedings with this one, which I hope does not extend to Dollhouse, but probably could. Yes, the whole project is sorta adorable and there are songs and Doogie Howser has a death ray. But if this were made by a college kid - aside from the fact that we'd all be gawping at the fact that he somehow found fifty billion dollars for his budget - would we really be calling it all the great things it's been called this week? The story is flat, the genre innovations are a no-show, and the technical craft is bottom-drawer. There isn't a single note here that wasn't done better in any of the other superhero inversions of the past five years, and there's no ending. Honestly, I've come to expect more. Captain Napalm: strike!

Anyhoo. Rough weekend. I ate several grilled cheese sandwiches. Well, to be fair, one cannot really call what I grew up with as "grilled cheese" truly "grilled cheese," as there is no grilling involved whatsoever. It's more like "broiled cheese sandwiches." To whit:

1. Toast two pieces of white bread
2. Butter one side of each piece with the yellowest margarine you can find
3. Pre-heat oven on broil
4. Place both pieces of toast on a baking sheet, one with butttered side up, one with buttered side down. On the one with buttered side down, place two pieces of thin Kraft cheese singles, the ones that are not made out of actual cheese.
5. Put in the oven and heat until cheese is gooey and other piece of toast is notably browning
6. Take out of oven, put un-cheesed toast on the cheesed toast, flip the whole sandiwch, and re-broil until other side is as brown as the first side was
7. Serve and enjoy.

Comfort food is lovely, but I may panic soon and need to watch the entirety of The Lord of the Rings. It's a scale of escalation.

So, I am likely not going to be living in my dream home at College and Yonge come September first. This means I am shortly to join Toronto's homeless population. As predicted on this blog 18 months ago, my homeless personality shall be Captain Jack Sparrow - me and that Jedi guy outside the Scotiamount are gonna have a fight. Look for me - my hair is nearly long enough for dreadlocks already. Shiesh! How do people stand having hair in the summer?

Happy Potteaster! On this day in 2007, Harry Potter died for our sins and was reborn a complete franchise. Praise Potteresus.

Posted by tederick at 9:40 AM in foodin' & h-pot & joss
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Oh, I'm gonna be mighty pissed at myself if it was that obvious the whole time.

Posted by tederick at 2:16 PM in comix & joss
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Astonishing X-Men by Ellis and Bianchi - sucked! oh god, did it suck. Human words cannot describe the ugliness of Simone Bianchi's art, nor the degree to which Ellis apparently never read a single issue of the comic he's taking over. When did Hisako become a cross between Molly Hayes and a pissed-off gym instructor? Never. Fuck you.

Angel: After the Fall, now with a revolving clusterfuck of increasingly incompetent artists teasing out the dregs of Brian Lynch's evidently uber-thin original concept - the worst comic I am currently reading! I cannot believe the phenomenal fucking nosedive in quality this thing took around about the middle of issue 4, nor the fact that 6 fully awful issues later (including the unforgivable "First Night" mini-arc), I am still here. Spike: After the Fall? No thank you.

Batman: RIP by Grant Morrison - incomprehensible! Utterly, structurally, conceptually, executionally the worst-written anything written I've read since The Writer's Journey! Morrison has had it! The hack is off the job! Four more issues of this just to find out what the Big Change is? Not worth it.

Buffy vs. Fray - so fucking good.

Posted by tederick at 2:21 PM in batman! & comix & joss
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Me, to D-Coc, re Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: I think we just got pantsed.

D-Coc, reply to me, re same: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS
HOW HARD AND FAST AND VIGOROUS CAN THEY EAT MY ASS

Posted by tederick at 12:32 PM in joss & tederick films
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Genuinely I can say that this issue of BTVS was the first time I felt legitimately like I was watching an episode of the show. Which is nuts, because it was entirely based around content that could not possibly have been featured on the television program - Giant Dawn robot fight in the streets of Tokyo, etc.

What it felt like, though, was the stakes of the show - where characters enter and exit, succeed and fail, rally around each other in unexpected ways, and come away changed by the events therein. That's what's basically been lacking from arcs 1 and 2 of this comic - no real growth. WatG, however, really felt like a grand finale of something, setting up and paying off relationship after relationship while still fitting into the overall scheme. And not a hint of Floating Boots to be found. Sublime.

(I've figured out who Floating Boots is, by the way. It's Captain... Malcolm... Reynolds!! Sweet.)

Posted by tederick at 10:39 AM in comix & joss
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A big fire swept through the backlot at Universal Studios last night, and among the casualties was my actual favourite part of the lot: the Hill Valley town square from Back to the Future. (The clock tower evidently survives, but was damaged; no word on who or what traveled where or to which time period.) If all this is making you nostalgic, I might point out that they have the goddamned Flux Capacitor at the Silver Snail now. It certainly prompted two or three minutes' of unabashed staring from me.

I Rode for the Heart this morning; a big thanks to Erin Booth, Helen, e-Becca, my aunt Beth, Jocelyn, Matthew Fabb, Demetre, Jeff, Chris, Meredith, my parents, Steeeeve!, Christys, and Sarafina for sponsoring me. Hey, here's an idea: next time I want to do a 75K on this thing, someone remind me to actually train beforehand, yeah? And by "beforehand," I mean for several goddamned months like a real grown-up would do, not a few weeks of half-assed riding. I did the whole thing in about four and a half hours this morning and it damn near wasted me. I was not prepared.

Let's post-script two things:

Lost! While on the whole I'd say that Season Four has been fairly kickass, I gotta call the finale weak. Not as bad as that disastrous tail-ender to the first season, but still not nearly as absorbing as last year's "we're in the future now!" slam-o-rama (though to be fair, what could be?) nor even as action-adveturey-science-fiction-terrifico as the Season Two closer with Desmond. So instead of debating the fiddle-faddle of who was in the box or who got blowed up on what freighter, I'll just give two bits of human interest on the whole thing and then call it a year: 1) they pointlessly brought Harold Perinneau back just to get rid of him again, because he did indeed go "boom" with the boat; and 2) here are some hilarious alternate versions of the final shot, featuring other non-Bens in the coffin from Season Three. Anyways, I'm sort of glad the year's done, as my interest in the show was sort of lessened by the strike gap. I'm sure I'll be back on board for Season 5.

X-Men! In like kind, I'm glad Astonishing X-Men is done. Joss' lack of commitment to the publishing schedule made the final arc really difficult to enjoy, and the final one-shot was a solid B minus at best; the high-mark work in the arc took place earlier with Scott, not in the bullet with Kitty. It was at some point this week that I realized that I've been regularly reading three X-titles and pretty much don't care about any of them any more, so I think it's time for an X-break. At least until Ellis takes over AXM.

Posted by tederick at 4:40 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & comix & jedi antics & joss & movies
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Maybe I'm missing a big part of the concept or something, but Dollhouse ain't exactly blowing my doors off yet. It even looks for shit - the worst parts of the Angel season 5 production design and lighting style, taken to a new level of bland.

13 episodes have been ordered... anybody wanna lay bets on what order Fox will air 'em in? I'm going 6-5-3-13-11-1-cancelled.

Posted by tederick at 5:39 PM in joss
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Round trip to Brantford last night for my lady, home late and up later, woke up this morning not entirely sure who I am, until I remembered: "Oh yeah, I'm the guy who did that." It's nice when the strings connect.

It took me a few go-throughs but I am enjoying the new R.E.M. album. Better than Around the Sun anyway, but I really didn't get much out of that one. Still, I'm aware that nothing's really shaking my shit loose like it did back in the day. But then, one should not expect a band to be able to do anything like they did "back in the day." "The day" is where bands live, and every day since "the day" is a Sick Boy rant I can recite from memory which comes from a movie that is, in its own way, indicative of the exact phenomena it so effectively critiqued.

Apparently someone can actually sculpt Harrison Ford's face. Worth tossing the 12" to move up to Premium Format? Nah, probably not. It would be better if these things weren't shipping so late in the year, anyway. By third quarter I'm gonna want none of this; if they'd streeted in the second week of May, it'd be nothing but Indiana Jones all over my damn self. As it is, I guess I'll buy this measly Oldiana Jones figure. It amuses me. And the like-scaled Slave Leia can worship hiim as a god-thing.

I gobbled up the first issue of Millar's run on Fantastic Four last night, because everyone said it was so darn good... and it is so darn good. Plus, Serenity: Better Days #2 was actually the first time in five Serenity comics that I actually got that "new story smell," i.e. feeling like I was actually watching an episode of the TV show I never saw before. It was a bit vague, but I liked it. Why does the art have to suck so much?

Thank Christ, they finally found my Raiders jacket at Wested in the UK, new lining not yet installed, and mistaken for a "pre-distressed" jacket on order because it's just so spectacularly Jonesy in its beaten-up-ness. Now it might actually get back just in time for it to be too hot for me to wear it!

Posted by tederick at 9:39 AM in comix & dr. jones & jedi antics & joss & toys!
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IT IS IT IS IT REALLY IS

Other flicks they really oughta get off their asses and release in BD PDQ (I'm all about the block caps today, both acronymical and N.O.T.):

• There Will Be Blood (c'mon!!! I'll be your friend...)
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (why? will this in any way impact my viewing of the film? Zuh? I dunno. Wantee.)
• Kill Bills, the vol. 1, and the vol. 2
• Fight motherfuckin' Club
• The Lord of the Rings (obviously)
• The Matrix (the first one only. Wouldn't that be a hoot?)

This concludes a list that got progressively obviouser with each subsequent bullet.

Posted by tederick at 6:52 PM in joss & shinybludisks
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