Happy Birthday to The Godfather of Soul

Happy Birthday, Mr. James Brown.



You would have been 80 years old today.

Iron Man 3 is coming, too

jeez, this poster is rad

I'm pretty jazzed for Iron Man 3, but won't see it until next weekend.  Y'all try not to spoil it for me.

Looks like Rhodey and Pepper are getting a lot more screen time.

I heart Pepper.

We Salute Mythbusters as they enter their 10th Season

I often forget to mention that I watch Mythbusters nigh religiously.

Yes, they blow things up real good in most episodes.  Yes, I am curious about what happens when you throw a car in a swimming pool, or jump at the last second in a falling elevator, or try to maximize gas mileage or park a car behind the exhaust of a 747, drop a car from a helicopter or blow up a cement truck, just 'cause...  The show raises questions I didn't know I had, then answers them pretty thoroughly.  Even if, in an early episode, they got that whole thing about sodas exploding in one's car wrong.*

Adam has aged, but Jamie is eternal

No doubt the mix of personalities keeps the show working, and the dichotomy of Jamie and Adam's approaches always an object lesson in how even two people who know each other well can have completely different ways of solving a problem.  And, of course, we all love the build team and you should really follow them on Twitter.  They're pretty amusing.

It may not be perfect science, but the progam aims to demystify science and engineering, and therefore, perhaps, demystifies the world through some of the steps of the experimentation (and less often, the scientific) method.  Evidence is reviewed.  Hypotheses and ideas are considered and explained (including why some options are cast aside), and small scale testing of components is shown.  As the full experiment is built to, math is shown, explanations of physics are all brought down to a consumer level.  And if the myth doesn't go off as planned, in recent years, Mythbusters has gone on to find what they think would be required to replicate the scenario described in the myth.

Willie Nelson's 80th

Monday was the 80th birthday of Texas music legend, Willie Nelson.



I am aware that some people lump all country into one huge pile and say they do not care for the genre.  And, growing up as a suburban kid on the edge of shit-kicker Texas, I can understand the urge to want to put on the blinders when it comes to pop country.  I have been exposed to it since 1979.  Much of it it is not to my taste.

But I am not speaking of Country Music Awards winning, flavor of the year, country guy.  I'm is Willie Nelson.

And I will punch you in the jaw if you say anything bad about the man.

Some toys from the movie "Man of Steel"

Well, today I found what I guess are the three "Movie Masters" action figures from the film Man of Steel.

Walmart has on this promotion where they released some items early.  They were supposed to arrive on Sunday at Walmarts all across the land, but I visited three Walmarts in my area (all within a short distance of each other, and, I am fairly convinced, connected by a series of subterranean tubes that keep their management from ever having to deal with the surface dwellers) and did not find the displays at any of the three stores.  

I even asked at the Walmart closest to my house and got a pretty snippy response to my query about the toys from the manager, and an eye roll from her pal who informed her - as if I wasn't there - that "that movie isn't even coming out til June, so don't even bother".  I considered letting them know that many popular Superman fan sites had re-published the Walmart press release announcing the promotion, and that I had, indeed, seen photos on facebook of the items at other Walmarts on the extremely well run Man of Steel facebook page.  But then I briefly examined my life and what choices I was making and I left.

Well, I chose to give up.  My OCD did not.

Forbidden Planet - May 25th at Noon at The Ritz

It's no lie that I love the 1956 film Forbidden Planet.

Incredible FX, a weirdo story based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, a killer soundtrack and Robbie the Robot?  That's not even mentioning Leslie Nielsen in a straight role as a proto-Captain Kirk.

If you're in Austin, I'm going to try to be down at the Ritz at 12:00 noon to catch this thing.  A great, otherworldy sci-fi classic!

Here for details

And, btw, this poster hangs in my stairwell, so I look at this image each and every time I come down the stairs.

Supermarathon: Superman - The Animated Series! ("Last Son of Krypton" and "Blasts from the Past")

I started developing an interest for Superman in high school, and just after I'd picked up a couple of issues, DC launched the whole "Death of Superman" business, which I knew was a gimmick, of course, and so I didn't bother with it.   And this sounds perhaps a bit trite, but when Superman "returned" with a mullet and entered into what I consider to be one of the weakest eras of Superman writing and development, there wasn't much to grasp onto.*

In 1996, Warner Bros. responded to Fox Kids Network's complaints that Batman was too "dark" by trying their hand at a Superman series.  Superman was a lot spunkier, in theory.  Of course, it's a story that depends on killing an entire planet of people just to get started, but let's not split hairs.

I think Google has more or less broken my blog

I tried to be a good Google citizen and update my blog to use the new features integrated with Google+.

It's not working out.

I am not sure you guys can see my comments right now, and I'm pretty sure only people with Google accounts can comment - if you can jump through the hoops to make it happen.  Only after "checking out" the new Google Comments did I realize Blogger (a Google product) will not let me back out of their awesome new commenting system.

Sigh.

I use Blogger because, for ten years, it's been really simple, really easy and for the past 5-6 years, its been rock solid.  I use Google stuff all the time, and never have a problem.

Until today.

I'll keep working on the problem, but this is where I'm at.

Comments are borked until further notice.

Basically, it looks like Google is trying to find a use for Google+ and Blogger in this age where, in theory, nobody blogs anymore.  So they found a way to make them work together, except that it doesn't work.  It also generates so many cookies that it took me, literally, ten tries to figure out if I'd "allowed" all the right cookies.

In short - this is why there's a guy all developers make fun of that can "talk to people", but he's the person who looks at stuff like this and says "guys, this is totally not working.  We need to make this make some sort of sense to actual human beings before we roll this out".  That did not happen here.  This is what I call "success by the developer's standard".

Supermarathon! Pilot: Lois & Clark

I wasn't watching much TV when Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman debuted.  I was a freshman at UT and the only TV I really watched was:

• Animaniacs
• Batman
• 90210 (it's a long story)
• Melrose Place (an addendum to the long story)
• X-Files
• Brisco County Jr.

Of course, the only channels we had good reception for in the dorm were Fox and PBS.

As I recall, the show aired on Sundays, which was homework night.

the show more or less promised Lois and Clark would eventually "do it" from the first promo pic

I did watch the pilot with some buddies, no doubt our iffy reception riddled with static.  And it aired at the same time as the pilot of SeaQuest DSV, and we couldn't figure out which to watch.  In the end we decided to try to pass our courses (barely) and didn't watch either on an ongoing basis, really.

Stars Dean Cain (Superman/ Clark) and Teri Hatcher (Lois Lane) became household names immediately.  A nation embraced the phrase "Great Shades of Elvis!" from our erstwhile Perry White.

Supermarathon: The Serials!

In 1948 Columbia rolled out a weekly Superman serial.  10 years after the Man of Steel had first appeared on a comic book cover, America knew Superman from comics, radio, the Fleischer cartoons, the newspaper strip and games and toys.

Special effects weren't exactly rudimentary in 1948, if you had a budget, but as the serials rolled out as part of kid-friendly Saturday afternoon matinee fodder, this was not a $200 million set-up.  The serials are probably best remembered for the use of animation to show Superman flying (which becomes rarer and rarer as the series progresses).   Basically, our live-action Superman poses, and then is switched to cartoon form for the flying scenes (and that's not to mention the death of Krypton, that seems inspired by your typical Betty Boop cartoon explosion).

Kirk Alyn is our pre-George Reeves Superman, and he actually looks not unlike the Superman of the comics of the time.  Alyn's a lot more "gee-whiz" than the "Yup, I'm three steps ahead and I got this situation handled" aspect of Reeves' Superman.  Lois is played by Noel Neill, who would return to the role in the TV series, The Adventures of Superman in seasons 2-6.    She's extremely young and perky here, but not the sloe-eyed adventuress of the Fleischer cartoons.  Jimmy is played by Tommy Bond in full huckster, vaudevillian mode in a goofy hat and making faces.