ANARCHY!

Picking up Season 2 DVD's today so I can get all caught up (I lost track after they went to jail last year and never saw the end) but I'm glad this show is back.

IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN

College football starts this week. As a University of Utah student (sort of) I'll be rooting for them just like always. Aside from that, I don't have a college team that I root for. I enjoy watching some of the games, but  a lot of them I just don't care for. More than half the players at the college level just aren't very good and it can be bring to watch. Most of these people will never make the NFL, so most of the time I feel like I'm watching a lot of future personal trainers, bank tellers, high school coaches and those hoping for the revival of the XFL living a dying dream in front of tens of thousands of people.

That said, I will be paying close attention to the standings and the win/loss column for the next four months. But only because I'm more of a sports hater at heart. Here are the things I'll be "rooting" for over the course of the college football season.

- For Boise State to lose as many games as possible. Their blue turf and gimmicky plays bug the shit out of me. Mostly the blue turf, though. It brings a smile to my face every time I think of how they ditched the WAC for the Mountain West WAC.

- For Notre Dame to also lose as many as possible. Much like the Raiders and Bulls of the 90s, I hated any team it was cool to like, and Notre Dame fell right into that category. That's the only reason. That, and my friend Tom likes them. I root against the Bears and Liverpool for that reason, also.

- USC. I like Southern California and USC was kind of my team when I was younger. But this year I'll be rooting against them for one reason—Lane Kiffin. Never met the guy, but everything I've read/heard about him makes me hate him. He's the epitome of a guy that was born on third base but acted like he hit a triple.

I'm sure there are more, so I'll be sure to update this list throughout the season.

P.S. - I'm a Yankees fan, so I know all about the stones, glass house, etc. Doesn't change anything, though.

OH, SCIENCE

Damn you, Spielberg!

First the Brontosaurus and now the Triceratops? You guys are killing me.

Gizmodo -- Scientists are saying that the Triceratops dinosaur—you know, the three horned one—was actually a juvenile form of a Torosaurus, the three horned dinosaur you don't know. Apparently, dinosaurs' skulls can shape-shift.

The scientists, John Scannella and Jack Horner, believe that the Torosaurus and Triceratops are actually of the same species. According to the them, as a Triceratops aged, its horns and frill became more similar to that of a Torosaurus. Short becomes long, saw-edged becomes smoothed and so on. Having them be the same species would explain why there were never any young Torosaurus fossils discovered.

The duo say there is a clear transition from triceratops into torosaurus as the animals grow older. For example, the oldest specimens of triceratops show a marked thinning of the bone where torosaurus has holes, suggesting they are in the process of becoming fenestrated.

Scientists sure enjoy crushing my childhood memory of The Land Before Time (they nixed Brontosaurus a while back). Hopefully they won't delete Triceratops too.

I guess it doesn't matter though, because we all know that dinosaurs weren't real anyway. God only planted their bones to test our faith, right? Right.

But just for fun, here are "5 Reasons the Triceratops Definitely Existed".

LEADERS AND INNOVATORS

"Changes in the industry have forced some newspapers to fade or even close," said Clark Gilbert, Deseret News CEO and president. "At the Deseret News, we choose to lead and innovate."


I guess leading and innovating means firing nearly 50% of the staff. I hope all newspapers don't take the Deseret News route into the next generation.

Such a bummer, even if I didn't care much for the D-News anyway. I know a lot of people from my time at the Chrony went on to work there, and the movie critic, Jeff Vice, has always been a solid guy and a great supporter of things in this community, like local comics and the Salt Lake City Film Festival. Sad to see some of them are getting the axe and I wish them all the best.

Deseret News -- SALT LAKE CITY — The Deseret News announced today work force reductions and unveiled a plan to refocus the quality and reach of its product.

"Changes in the industry have forced some newspapers to fade or even close," said Clark Gilbert, Deseret News CEO and president. "At the Deseret News, we choose to lead and innovate."

Part of that leadership, he added, is the willingness to make hard choices.

"Today we have announced the reduction in our print work force by 57 full-time and 28 part-time employees, which reflects just over 43 percent of our work force," Gilbert said.

Gilbert called the decision to reduce staff "enormously difficult."

"We honor all the outstanding contributions that have added to the great heritage of the Deseret News," he said. "This makes these decisions even more difficult."

Full Story

WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY

Here's a little known fact about me: I really, really wish I could draw because I've always secretly wanted to be an animator.

Bad news for me is that I couldn't draw a straight line if I had a ruler. The sketch book I bought when I was 19 sat empty for six years (save for one drawing that I threw away immediately after "finishing") before I started using it to write down the movies I saw in theaters. I spent hours as a kid trying to get better—asking for art supplies and drawing books to practice with. I'd sit around and try to emulate my favorite cartoon characters, and every once in a while I'd resort to tracing something and convince myself (and my parents, among others) that I drew it freehand. Eventually I just gave up and realized I was way better writing words than drawing pictures. Still doesn't change the fact that I wish I could draw.

I went to see Waking Sleeping Beauty last night because of my love of all things Disney and the fact that it was a story about the re-birth of the Disney animation department after it was nearly shut down back in the mid-80s.  It was mostly home video footage shot by various employees (most of which came from Pixar founder John Lassater) with audio interviews from past/present employees of the company in the background.

I really liked it and it just re-enforced my belief that making cartoons for a living would be the best job ever.

I want that job. Someone get it for me. I can draw one hell of a stick figure.

DEAD WALK

Finished the 48-issue Walking Dead Compendium a couple of nights ago. Much, much better than I originally gave it credit for. Still a little soap opera-y at times, but it had a lot of great moments.

Still, it should probably be subtitled "The Increasingly Bad (and somewhat irritating) Decisions of Rick Grimes."

But the show starts in October and looks like it could be really, really good. Hopefully they pull it off.

WASTELAND

Some friends of mine have a pretty great band called Reviver. They just had a video made for one of their new songs. Check it out below.

You can also keep up with them via their blog. There's a streaming version of their new EP, Potential Wasteland, lyrics and general ramblings. It's good stuff. Bookmark it.

http://reviverhc.blogspot.com/


Reviver - Wasteland from NoCuff Kid Productions on Vimeo.

EVEREST

PROOF

Remember when I started posting stories about when I went to Peru like 4 months ago? Yeah, well I finally put a set of pictures up on Flickr.

Check it out.

THE NEW DEAL

This is the first thing I see when I walk through my front door.

IN YOUR HEAD

I don't much care for statues or action figures. I don't run around Comic Con trying to snag the exclusives that are incredibly overpriced and take up way too much room on the drive home, but there is one statue I've always wanted. I ordered it when it was available, but never got it. Still a little bitter about it.

But tell me you wouldn't want this thing?

COMIC BYTES

City Weekly -- I love comics. I love the way that a good writer can take his time crafting a long-form story combining subtext, bold ideas and Batman fighting the Joker. I love the habit of going to the comic shop every Wednesday, and I love reading stories written by someone who loves comics as much as I do.

It’s not a perfect relationship, though. There is one giant aspect that I don’t love, and it may be sacrilegious as a fan to say it, but: I hate collecting comics. I have nearly 30 boxes that need to come with me every time I move—which means nearly 4,000 comics sitting in my house taking up space. Some of them, I’ll pull out and read again someday; many more, I won’t. That’s the part I hate.

It’s the conundrum that most comic fans find themselves in when it comes to talking about the rise of digital comics and the potential downfall of the old collector paradigm. With the release of the iPad earlier this year, comic-book publishers took a big step toward the future of their industry. All the major companies have now developed the beloved “app” for their comics, and slowly started releasing parts of their back-issue catalog. The majority of what’s available are older books, chosen to give newcomers the chance to play catch-up for a cheaper price and get them into shops to buy the print version of new issues.

All of the books in the DC App’s “new” category are at least two years old, as are the majority of Marvel titles. Having worked with retailers and distribution companies for the better part of their existence, the Big Two are showing loyalty to the old guard and don’t want to offend them by helping to establish new competition. The memory of what happened to mom-and-pop music stores when digital music and file-sharing exploded before anyone knew what hit them is still fresh in everyone’s mind. No one wants to see the same thing happen to this industry, because the vast majority of comic shops across the country are locally owned.

That means that adapting to the changing technology is going to be a slow process. You’ll still be able to find torrents of downloads of new issues online, but usually those are just copies that someone scanned and made into a PDF. With the books downloaded from the official company app, however, the quality is much better—on the iPad especially. Readers can zoom in on individual panels, and everything has been adjusted to remain as clear as possible. Plus, compensation for the creators is usually there, too. You’re getting a better-quality product, and no one suffers financially.

Marvel and smaller distributor IDW have been taking steps to ensure they are at the forefront of digital comics by adding recently released books to their App store. IDW announced that each title it publishes will be available digitally for only one month after the initial print date. Marvel has offered up a few books simultaneously with the printed shipping date, but as was the case with the Iron Man Annual, it was split into three separate chapters that cost $1.99 each; the print version was available all at once for $4.99. Rather than dive in head first, everyone seems to be testing the water a little bit at a time.

As with most new things, there are downsides to digital comics. You can’t really share your comics without giving someone your entire iPad (or similar device in the near future), which no one wants to do; there’s also the inevitable rise of quality comics being illegally shared, hurting the entire industry. And there are still going to be those who say you’re not a real comics fan without a basement full of longboxes. But those vanishing comics just leave more room for a growing collection of action figures, statues and convention exclusives.

BACK ON THE MAP

I repost a lot of stuff I find on other people's blogs and don't ever give them credit. I think a lot of people do  this though, so I don't care.

This picture is no exception. It is awesome, however.

THE INTERNET AT COFFEE GARDEN SUCKS

With everything that's been going on in the past couple of weeks, my blog updates have taken a serious nosedive. I didn't think it really mattered because no one read it anyway, but I've had a few really good compliments on it while I was away (thanks for those, by the way).

Now, onto some of the stuff I missed—and Christ there's been a lot of it! Tonight is the first time I've heard the Bed Intruder Song which I enjoyed to no end, I haven't had ESPN so I have no idea who Skip Bayless is mad at this week (which to be honest, kind of irritates me that I miss it), I had to do a Google search to find Dan Fletcher's Blog because he changed the URL again, and I've been overloaded by so many new bands/albums/songs coming out that I don't even know where to start.

My internet and cable get set up tomorrow, so hopefully that means I'll be back up on the horse in no time, but we'll see. I'm not getting my hopes up until I can post comfortably from my couch.

But also, now that it's late August that means that every TV show I didn't watch last year will be out on DVD soon so I may be getting even less done.

Who knows. Stay tuned.

EASY MONEY

Holy Shit. I love this already.

TRANSITIONS

No internet this week, so none of my inane ramblings for you to read. Comcast comes next Wednesday (I hope) and after that I'll be playing a little bit of catch-up and all will be back to normal.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

WEEKEND

This has been my life all week. Check out the films www.slcff.com

SIX CANS. ONE SHOT.

In a ten minute window. And people wonder why he gets crazy sometimes.

THE MOTHERLOAD

Um, these have been going up in value all these years, right?

THE BUCKET OF DEATH... THE RETURN

CITY TO CITY

A couple of years back, my friends band was recording and I decided to tag along with the video camera. This is the 'teaser' for the in-studio documentary. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS

Holy Christ it took them a long time to get to that dinner. It had its moments, Paul Rudd is always a good straight man and Steve Carrell is great, but... they just played it too safe. No one wanted (or dared, maybe) to just go for it. I can't really explain it (which is why I don't review movies anymore) but it just felt like they could have gone all out and made a hilariously edgy movie, but they opted to keep it square in the middle instead.

What else do you expect from the Meet The Parents guy, though? Right?

THE WALKING DEAD

Back in 2004, when I first started writing for City Weekly, The Walking Dead was the first comic I ever reviewed (apparently the CW archives only go back to 2007, which is kind of a bummer). I didn't like it. I thought it was too soap opera-y and just wasn't into it.

Now it's six years later and about to become a live action TV show on AMC (home of the excellent Mad Men and the even better Breaking Bad) Executive Produced by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption). I decided that I'd better give it another shot, so I went online and found The Walking Dead Compendium One. It's got the first 50 issues of the series in one giant trade paperback. I'm actually really excited to start reading it.

You'll probably get an update here in a few weeks. Or days—I've been told that I'll burn through the entire thing quicker than anticipated. We'll see. Stay glued to the edge of your seat for my thoughts.

THE COOL KIDS

No one can say what this world is coming to, but for a big part of the population, it probably can't be good with these discoveries. Look, this is old news but I never posted anything about it so I'm doing it now.

VEGAN

Yep. Mike Tyson went vegan and lost 130 pounds to get back into fighting shape. of course, he's probably not going to be fighting anyone because he's washed up and batshit crazy. But still, him being vegan is pretty awesome.

STRAIGHT EDGE

Metallica hasn't put out a good record since The Black Album (even as much as I love Garage Days, I know that isn't really a Metallica album) and the whole band has been a shell of their former selves since somewhere around the turn of the century. Sure, Hetfield was battling addiction, but when the band started squabbling in front of a family therapist for the sake of a documentary, there's just no coming back from that.

But now, Hetfield is "reborn Straight Edge." And any way you look at it, this is kind of cool. Mainly because it pisses off metal fans everywhere. As someone on another blog said, it's not like the guy was a few beers away from Master Of Puppets II, anyway.

This interview was in the Metallica Fan Club zine, So What?

SO WHAT: (Caught by a tattoo)… that's a new one, right? Sorry-

James: Straight edge? Yeah.

SO WHAT: You're not getting away with the last comment, incidentally. We'll have to go back to that. But anyways, the straight edge X.

James: Right. Well, straight edge, this was certainly a design of my own. You know, the old straight edge tattoo, it's just like a big X on your hand. No drinking, and I don't drink. It's like when you go into the clubs, they put and X on your hand…

SO WHAT: Right. It's because you haven't shown your ID.

James: And I don't need drink or drugs. That's straight edge life. Obviously I'm not straight edge – a true, hardcore straight edge has never had any of it in her or her whole life. But I'm a reborn straight edge.

SO WHAT: I always associated Minor Threat and Ian MacKaye and those guys with straight edge punk. That's what they were all about.

James: Absolutely. There's some hardcore people that are straight edge from birth. So this was my take on the straight edge X, you know? Straight razors. A straight edge, is what that was all about.

------

I don't care what anyone else says. Both of these are awesome.

SHARKTOPUS!

This is amazing.

TRUTH

Thanks Dan.

CYRUS

I've been a fan of John C. Reilly for a long time. He's been spending the past few years getting into more and more comedy, which I think suits him far better than the dramatic stuff he was doing. He was great in all those roles, don't get me wrong, but he's great at the funny stuff.

Cyrus had its moments, but wasn't as funny as I'd hoped. Reilly, Jonah Hill and Marissa Tomei are all great together and it had some really hilarious parts, but just couldn't take it that one extra step further. It was directed by the Duplass Brothers who made a short for Sundance a few years back called This Is John. After the shorts program they did a Q&A, and while I can't remember a lot about what they said, I remember it being really fun. Glad to see they're getting to work with some bigger names now.

And check out This Is John if you've never seen it. It's pretty great.

Psycho Chicks & Total Dicks
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