Ok, so I didn’t exactly achieve the birthday goal that I had laid out for myself a little over a month ago. In fact, I actually went up just a bit. Not much – maybe 4 or 5 pounds, so definitely recoverable if I get my head back in the game, but as they say, for that to happen I need to actually get my head back in the game…
From a food perspective, I’ve done a fair amount of binging over the last couple of weeks, however I think with just a little self discipline I can get that back under control. I think I’ve seen a pretty clear sign of this the last two nights or so, as odd as it sounds, because I’ve been getting up to snack again in the middle of the night. I really only do that when I’m hungry, so that kind of tells me that I’m not doing horrible at managing my calories during the day … now I just need learn to hold back at nighttime so that the reductions will actually take effect!
From an exercise perspective, I haven’t really been walking Cleo quite as much as I’d like, made clear last night when although we still managed to complete our big, 3.5-mile loop, I was certainly panting up a storm by the end of it! That said, it proves to me that I can still handle it and not have to ramp up again, even if it’s a bit of a push, so hopefully that will be a little more motivation to manage my time better so that I can set aside an hour and a half each evening several times a week to get out there, especially now that the weather is cooling down a little and sometimes there’s even a breeze to be enjoyed while I’m sweating my mind out!
I don’t really have a new goal yet, other than I’d love to see another big stride in time to be able to brag about it when we go home for Christmas, but for now I just want to focus on getting back on track and go from there.
This is just about my fill of politics that I need for the entire week:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-08-31/news/9-11-the-winners-profiting-from-september-eleventh/
Basically, this whopping 7-page Village Voice column is a ginormous laundry list of all sorts of non-profits and merchandising monsters who are making huge bank off of one of the worst tragedies the country has ever seen. Countless “charity” managers and directors making over $100,000/year each, sometimes barely paying out any funds at all to the actual survivors who their supposedly supporting, gift shops churning out t-shirts and coffee mugs and pretty much anything you can imagine that is fit to slap a flag or an NYPD/FDNY logo on, and don’t even get me started on the actual 9/11 memorial itself…
(this just kills me)
Cost of 9/11 Memorial – anywhere between $610 million and possibly $1 billion (translation: nobody really knows…)
Cost of WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C. (2004) – $175 million
Cost of Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial in OKC (2000) – $29 million
Cost of Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. (1982) – $7 million
I remember very briefly visiting the site of Ground Zero during my first trip to New York City back in 2006 and it was little more than a hole in the ground. That was five years after the attacks and the place didn’t even look like they had started building this so-called “memorial” that everyone gushed over. It seemed kind of sad at the time that progress was taking so long, especially in the city that never sleeps and with regards to the most talked about project in Lower Manhattan. I guess apparently they’ve finally got their acts together and plan on having something ready by the 10th anniversary of 9/11 this weekend … even though this something isn’t rumored to actually offer bathrooms at this point…
But now that things are coming around again, especially with the big anniversary, it’s just a shame that the capitalistic greed is so blatant and unapologetic, as if so many of these people who are skimming 95% of the funds from their charities are still convinced that the remaining 5% is going to do a lot of good for whatever causes they share those leftover crumbs with. I mean, it’s always been obvious that there was a ton of money to be made even immediately after the attacks – places that sold t-shirts and baseball caps with those same NYPD and FDNY logos couldn’t print the things fast enough.
Disappointing to me the most is what I’ve heard of the memorial, whose biggest draw appears to be their gift shop and makes itself out to be more of a tourist destination than a solemn place of remembrance. Anyone who’s been in the tiny gift shops along the National Mall (either at the Lincoln Memorial or in the center there) can vouch that those shops are educational centers at best – mostly packed full of books and postcards that explain the historical significance of the surroundings and their honorees, without a single t-shirt or commemorative bumper sticker in sight.
Does that say something about modern culture when people would rather buy a t-shirt with a flag on it than a book that tells a few inspirational tales of heroism?
Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure you’ll be able to buy both items at the new site, but it’s hard to overlook the overwhelming dollars and cents that will be swirling both inside and out on a day that should be about anything but money. Sure, some are modest and genuine with their intentions, but others are no doubt just in line to cash in on an easy money grab, and sadly, being the cynic that I am, the latter all but block my view of those who actually deserve our attention as we attempt to memorialize tragedy. Modesty is lost in the face of capitalism, and I think that we can do a lot better.
In other 9/11 news, The Onion had a nice, little parody of the media blitz that we can look forward to surrounding the 10th anniversary as well:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/responsible-cable-news-outlets-to-devote-sensible,21284/
I haven’t been very good about keeping my writing deadlines this summer.
Which admittedly is a little weird because although I technically only have about two of them right now, but the end of the year my goal is to have about 8-10 regularly scheduled writing gigs on my plate at a given time. It’ll be a mix of mostly monthly, but also a couple of weekly and even one daily project (this blog, in fact), but the point is, if I can’t even keep up to date on two assignments, how in the world am I going to not just absolutely drown once I bump things up five-fold in 2012?!
I kind of made a sad, but obvious observation last night when I was finally catching up a couple of embarrassingly oldhumor columns that I had neglected to finish from back in July. Basically, I need to be more diligent about just sitting down and working and not letting 1,000,001 distractions pull me away from actually being productive. Because the funny thing was, when I spent a good portion of yesterday morning stuck in a waiting room while my wife was at the doctor’s, I actually got a lot of stuff done! I’ve noticed the same thing when I fly on airplanes – as much as I absolutely hate the whole flying experience in general, I’m actually really productive on airplanes where I have limited internet access and other distractions, and it’s not uncommon for me to have half a dozen notebook pages filled with stories and notes to show for it when we land at our destination.
So I guess the trick is figuring out how to employ that same work ethic when I’m not stuck in a waiting room or flying 30,000 feet up in the air to allow myself to get back to actually posting my humor columns as scheduled on Fridays, as well as daily blog posts here and even more fun stuff to follow. I want to start small – namely with just my humor column, and then eventually work up to writing the shorter random blog posts that appear here every day as well (secret: sometimes I actually write a week’s worth of posts and backdate ‘em when I feel bad for not posting for a while…).
My column is usually actually the worst anyways because a lot more goes into the writing than just throwing stuff down like I tend to blog, but in general, I have a feeling if I can just dedicate single night each week to making that column happen (Mondays?), not only will that open up the rest of the week as far as editing and punch-ups to add some polish, but it should also make things a lot less stressful because I can certainly vouch that 9 times out of 10 my work isn’t nearly as funny when I’m pressed doing it at the last minute.
So hold me to it, Internet! Starting with this week, new humor columns at comedic-genius.com each and every Friday, on time and ready for your engaged laughter. And while my Monday goal isn’t going to happen this particular week, I do think that I’ve got a fantastic topic that’s going to make it a little easier to put together than most … and for what it’s worth, I’m really looking forward to writing it, too!
2012 will be the year that this writer finally learns to conquer his deadlines, and we’re starting a few months early just to be sure…
I spent a good portion of this morning in a waiting room, and as expected, during this time I had to endure an inordinate amount of morning news (our local FOX affiliate, to be specific).
To clarify, I really hate morning news, mostly because it’s 150% hype that’s more designed to stir up viewers and ratings than actually disseminate information like the news was originally intended to do. In between stories featuring the dog with the biggest ears in the world and something or other about supermoms, one particular farce that rubbed me the wrong way was their “coverage” of the issues that the US Postal Service is currently facing.
The Facts:
A lot less people use the post office these days, mostly due to the Internet.
They need to make some serious changes if they want to remain afloat.
Dropping Saturday service is one option, along with allowing them the ability to renegotiate contracts that they’re currently locked into.
The Morning News Spin:
“OMG!!! THE POSTAL SERVICE MIGHT BE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS – WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU DIDN’T HAVE THE POST OFFICE ANYMORE?!?!?!”
I mean, any reasonable person would take a look at our modern society and realize that things aren’t the way they used to be in when the post office first opened back in 1775. Sure, not everybody has computers and uses the Internet, but an ever-increasing majority of people do and thus you can’t honestly expect them to be able to continue operating in a manner that’s neither efficient nor financially possible. They’re not exactly held steadfast to that whole “through rain and snow and dark of night…” mantra these days, either!
It would be one thing if everybody looked through these things like I do, plucking the few random facts and leaving the hype to the side for what it is, but a lot of people hear this kind of crap and actually buy into it as an accurate assessment of the situation, and then they go out and spread that misinformation to other people, and use it when they vote, and so forth. All because a TV editor thought that it made for an intriguing 90-second clip to cite that “above all else, we used to be able to rely on the mail getting through, but that may be changing…”
Gourmet S’Mores?
We ended up grilling out hotdogs and hamburgers for dinner, and so at that point it was pretty much obligatory that we do s’mores for dessert … or at least that I have a s’more for dessert, anyways! Somewhat amused at all of the different flavors of marshmallows when we were at the store, I thought I’d try my hand at changing things up a bit and exploring new s’mores flavor options. Who knows – maybe I might come up with the next amazing recipe, right?!
Well, not this time, anyways. I opted for these new cinnamon bun marshmallows, along with a combination of classic chocolate and cookies ‘n cream white chocolate Hershey’s bars, and the result was edible, but not spectacular. In retrospect, I should’ve put a little more thought into the flavor combination instead of just thinking that each individually sounded intriguing, but rest assured, this experiment will continue until I find the perfect s’more recipe…
Lego Minifigs – Series 5!
Even though both Target and Walmart have been consistently failing me with having these things around lately, I still have to stop by the toy section just in case they happen to have a few laying around somewhere, and this time they did! Who knows how long they’ll actually keep them in stock – these seem like such an obvious seller to me, but stores can be kind of stupid sometimes in determining what they sell – but in the meantime, I’m happy to be able to pick up a few at a time as long as they’ve got them around…
Plus, I got the Godzilla guy, who was probably my most coveted fig out of the whole series!
P.S. Here’s a cool online catalog that I just discovered that not only lists every figure from this series, but also from the other four runs that they’ve already done. It looks like I’ve got some serious catching up to do…
Mailbox Repair for Dummies
And lastly, I have no idea what actually happened, but this weekend I had to spend some time fixing our mailbox. I don’t know if our mailman just has a temper or something, but I came home one day to find that it was no longer attached to the post … it was still technically there, but the screws holding the board down to the post I guess broke or something so basically it was possible to pick the actual mailbox up simply by opening the door.
It ended up being a simple fix, although admittedly I did have to go buy screws to reattach it because I didn’t have any long enough around the house. Not really sure why I’m even bringing this up now, except maybe because it’s not really something that happens every day – especially to me, and besides, these good, old summary posts always look better when there are at least three topics anyways and for this particular labor day, these are all that I’ve got!
Today we took Cleo down to a little dog park that we like near downtown Tampa. It’s actually a combination of a park and a beach, which is cool because it’s given us a chance to get Cleo acclimated to actually swimming, whereas she still hasn’t dared to set foot in our own pool just yet. Plus, this place has a great location in a neighborhood that I’m very quickly falling in love with and would love to eventually buy a house if we can somehow sort out the ridiculous purchase prices … but this particular post is about assholes at the dog park, not how you should buy my books so I can afford to buy my dream house…
😉
So anyways, aside from the couple of dogs that she had doggie class with and the one time that her brother came over to visit, this and one other dog park has pretty much been her only exposure to being around other dogs. She prefers playing with dogs that are her own size, although she can handle the occasional bigger dog when they’re just one-on-one, but she started having problems today when she’d start playing with just one other dog and end up getting chased by a pack of four or five of them.
Also, one dog in particular was hell-bent on humping her.
Now both incidents made me mad to varying degrees because in either scenario, only one owner out of the entire pack of four or five was ever nearby to even keep an eye on what their dogs were doing. I noticed that it’s somewhat commonplace at this park for people to let their dogs off the leash, then just go sit on a bench and chat while the dogs do their thing. Which I suppose is fine to some extent, but when your dog starts humping my dog and she has to come hide behind me because he won’t lay off, at that point the eventual giggled, “Sorry!” is too little, too late.
Seriously, where were you ten minutes ago when your dog first started violating mine from behind?!
Also frustrating when other people don’t watch their dogs is because when I was trying to play fetch with Cleo, four other dogs would go dashing towards the ball and she’d take off in terror upon seeing the huge mass of dog leaping at her! I mean, it’s not really the dogs’ fault – they just want somebody to play with them … but I don’t want to play with somebody else’s dog, I want to play with my dog!
Also also, I shouldn’t even have to mention this, but I did find one particular length of grass that was exceedingly covered in dog shit. Needless to say, it would’ve been wonderful had the original owners picked up said dog shit instead of me doing so by means of stepping in it when we were getting ready to leave.
Come on, fellow dog owners – we’re all in this four-legged frenzy together!
What’s even more incredible is to flip through the gallery of work in progress photos to see what exactly went into this model because not only is it kind of tough to gauge from the photo above that LEGO Voltron is actually three feet tall, but it even fully disassembles into the five individual lions as well! Thesephotos in particular give a really cool view of the framework underneath the structures – clearly a lot of thought went into creating this thing, and in “only” 71 hours of actual building time!
I also get a kick out of these pics, styled kind of like the characters each used to appear with their lions during the credits at the end of the show:
I don’t DM a lot of LFR games – yesterday was maybe my third or fourth that I’ve ever done total, and I really only started this year, but I have spent some time trying to come up with ways of making the games that I run unique and more enjoyable for everyone involved. I’ve toyed with the idea of incorporating LEGOs, but there are a bunch of logistical issues relating to relative sizes of minis, what to use for maps, and of course, actually coming up with what to use because you’d pretty much be limited to a couple of trolls, horses, maybe a dragon, and people, and honestly, the regular D&D minis just offer a lot more range than that.
All of those other elements aside, however, I was shown a tool yesterday that’s kind of neat for making maps that I think could have a lot of potential if I’m willing to invest some time in it. It’s called BattleMAP’R and it’s basically a tile-based web-app that allows you to construct a relatively large tiled map (8×10 squares, 3×3 pages – or 24×30 / 9 pages total) that you can then save or print via PDFs. It’s very easy to use – I literally created and printed off maps for the entire mod that I was running in about 20 minutes … an hour before leaving to go run the mod!
And although the initial tile set that is available is somewhat limited, the real potential here is in the ability to create and upload your own tiles because at that point you could use it to map out just about anything, given you’re able to craft simple 300x300px tiles … which wouldn’t be that hard to create with an afternoon and some basic guidelines in Photoshop. I was kind of disappointed to see that somebody else hadn’t already done this – you have the ability to share out your custom tiles with other users, but there are only a handful available. Still, could be very cool, and if in the long run it makes creating maps for the games that I do volunteer to run that much easier, then it’s probably time well spent!
So true to my word, I did end up downloading a full copy of the new album from The Muppets, or at least a bunch of random people covering The Muppets, and although I’m sad to admit it, my predictions were actually spot-on for what I ended up thinking of the full album. 3, maybe 4 tracks tops, out of 12, is what I will actually probably listen to again in the future, so I guess let’s just start going track-by-track to see what exactly went horribly wrong with this album in my book…
Muppet Show Theme (OK Go)
I guess you could call it the premiere track on the album, which was actually simultaneously released as a music video as well … but frankly, this one was just way too weird for me. I don’t really get into their kind of music anyways, so it was a bit too funky for me. And also, a small discrepancy that another reviewer pointed out – it did seem a little odd that they just sang the Statler and Waldorf lines along with everything else, so it seemed odd that they were boasting about the show one minute and then complaining about it the next instead of putting those words into the hecklers’ mouths.
Anyways, the spirit is there and they clearly had fun with it, but it was just too weird … even for The Muppets.
Rainbow Connection (Weezer, featuring Hayley Williams)
On the other hand, I really liked this one – nice and clean and simple … like several others on this album, this is just such a great classic that bringing too much to the table would’ve been overpowering, but this great duet really did the nostalgia justice!
Mahna Mahna (The Fray)
Honestly, this sounded almost exactly like I remember the original skit.
Movin’ Right Along (Alkaline Trio)
Probably the “most different” song that I actually enjoyed, I think this sort of hard rock/punk remix worked rather well, primarily because it puts its own spin while still maintaining the original fun spirit of the song.
Our World (My Morning Jacket)
I didn’t even recognize this song as the one that Ma sings in Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas until I looked it up on YouTube, so I guess I’m not really sure why they even included it on the album. I mean, the cover is fine, but it’s certainly not a song that comes to mind when I think Muppets. Odd because there are plenty of other songs that would’ve fit better…
Halfway Down the Stairs (Amy Lee)
Frankly, this and Rachael Yamagata are tied for worst songs on the album, in my opinion. I think what ruins this particular one is the eerie, gothic-tekno background music because otherwise she does have a really strong and pretty voice. And I do get that goth is kind of her thing, but this song was originally sung by the Muppet-equivalent of a little kid, so I think it was just a bad direction.
Mr. Bassman (Sondre Lerche)
For the most part I like this song except for one tiny, but significant-in-my-mind detail – the bass rhythms don’t actually match from the original!!! Seriously, I thought I was just making it up in my head at first, but then I pulled up the old duet with Scooter and Floyd and listened to them side-by-side and it just confirmed my nitpicking craziness. So close, too, but that tiny detail almost makes this one painful to listen to…
Wishing Song (The Airborne Toxic Event)
This was another one that was basically forgettable for me – the song never really did anything for me, and neither does this cover of it.
Night Life (Brandon Saller)
This is kind of a weird one to review because I actually never really liked this song even by Electric Mayhem … and yet, the cover in sort of a hair-band-style I think really works. I still don’t like the song, but it works!
Bein’ Green (Andrew Bird)
Hands down the best song on the album because just like with Rainbow Connection, this is a nice and simple rendition of an old favorite. And I know that a lot of people say that a “cover” should put a new spin on an old song, but if we’ve learned anything from American Idol, sometimes it can be better just to sing a nice version of an old favorite than to absolutely butcher it “making it your own.”
I Hope That Something Better Comes Along (Matt Nathanson)
Meh.
I’m Going to Go Back There Someday (Rachael Yamagata)
So slow and so boring – a real disappointment because I really, really love this song. It’s probably in my top 3 favorite Muppet songs ever (along with Rainbow Connection and Just One Person), so I was kind of bummed to hear the album end on such a low note. Frankly, it was almost depressing to listen to because whereas when Gonzo sings it with an upbeat at the end of each verse, this chick just sings it so monotonous that I’m not really sure if she actually wants to go back there someday or not…
I guess one interesting thought to wrap this up on is that while yes, this album is most definitely a very different take on The Muppets than I’m really used to, at the same time The Muppets themselves are evolving as well. Looking through the cast list for the upcoming movie this fall, the list of original Muppet performers still in active duty is getting pretty slim – really only Dave Goelz (Gonzo, Bunsen, Waldorf) and Steve Whitmire (took over Kermit and most of Jim Henson’s characters when Jim died), so while listening to this album also admittedly makes me a little worried of what to expect with the new movie, maybe it’s time to come to terms with the idea that The Muppets in general are kind of changing, too.
Of course, I’d love to later find that this album is an isolated incident and that Jason Segel has completely knocked it out of the park with this one, making it the comeback that we’ve been waiting for since Muppets From Space, but we’ll see!
In the meantime, if you want to make your own comparison between the old and the new, here’s a great “interactive video” from YouTube that shares sample clips from the original versions of every song on the new album:
(samples of the new tracks can be found on both Amazon and iTunes)
So true to my word, I did end up downloading a full copy of the new album from The Muppets, or at least a bunch of random people covering The Muppets, and although I’m sad to admit it,