kapgar

Why dance around to the same damn song...

I told you I'd post it today, and I posted it today. Whether my RSS feed updates is outside my control. So for that I'm sorry.

But I welcome you to the 2009 Primetime TV Kappy Awards!

A few notes... these awards relate to shows as they aired in the 2009 calendar year (with one exception detailed below), not the traditional network television season, not the non-traditional cable television season, not nothing like that. Just what's going on. Coolness? 

First, the list of shows we've watched over the last year from which these awards are derived:

Mad Men The Big Bang Theory How I Met Your Mother Castle Life Life on Mars The Closer The Cleaner The Office Criminal Minds Burn Notice Psych The Good Wife NCIS: Los Angeles 24 True Blood

Flashpoint Chuck My Boys Royal Pains Grey's Anatomy NUMB3RS Private Practice White Collar Men of a Certain Age 30 Rock Cougar Town Modern Family Gary Unmarried Dexter Damages The Amazing Race (Fall 2009)

I think that's about it. God, I hope that's about it.

Let's proceed...

Acting Awards:

• Best Dramatic Acting - Jon Hamm, "Don Draper," Mad Men
• Best Comedic Acting - Jim Parsons, "Sheldon Cooper," The Big Bang Theory
• Best Dramatic 1-2 Punch - Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic, "Richard Castle and Kate Beckett," Castle - sure, this is borderline between drama and comedy, but you'll just have to accept that I'm using it as drama
  
• Best Comedic 1-2 Punch - James Roday and Dule Hill, "Shawn Spencer and Burton 'Gus' Guster," Psych (at right) - this one is more comedy than drama despite being a cop show like Castle
  
• Best Dramatic Ensemble - Burn Notice - and, if you're smart, you're tuned in to the Burn Notice marathon on USA as I type this
  
• Best Comedic Ensemble - The Big Bang Theory
• Best Male Comeback - (tie) Nathan Fillion, "Richard Castle," Castle and Ed O'Neill, "Jay Pritchett," Modern Family
• Best Female Comeback - Courtney Cox, "Jules Cobb," Cougar Town
• Best One-Off Guest Role - Wil Wheaton, "Wil Wheaton," The Big Bang Theory
• Dark Alley Award - Jimmy Smits, "Miguel Prado," Dexter - yeah, his run on the show aired in late 2008, but not being a Showtime subscriber, I didn't have it available to me until 2009; and he was just too bad ass to not have earned this designation

Show Awards:

• Best Drama - Castle
• Best Comedy - The Big Bang Theory
• Canceled Too Soon - (tie) Life on Mars and Life
• Most Overstayed Welcome - The Cleaner - it was amazing how quickly this show went from really exciting and a great vehicle for Benjamin Bratt to a lot of the same old, same old... and then cancellation 
• Lost in Left Field - Grey's Anatomy - this show needs to find its way and we keep hoping it will but it just adds too many new characters all the damn time in a pathetic attempt at self resuscitation and it consequently loses us
• Where the Hell'd You Go - Flashpoint - this is simply because we love this show and we want it back
• Most Surprising Show (in a Good Way) - Cougar Town - we started watching this not expecting much at all and darn if it doesn't make us laugh harder than many shows
• Second Chancer - Modern Family - we watched the first two episodes and didn't really care too much for it; then, due to prompting from one of Katie's students, we started again about a month or so later and now we love it

Network Awards:

• Best Network - USA - c'mon! It has Burn Notice, Psych, Royal Pains and White Collar!
• Worst Network - NBC - according to Katie, we have one night of television (Thursday) that we watch and they killed an entire primetime hour every night of the week for a Jay Leno variety show that couldn't possibly be any worse than it is, or could it?

Would you counternominate any actors or shows in these categories? Please share!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I always intend to do one of those year-end wrap-ups that so many other bloggers do so well, but I get so locked up in these awards I do that I forget.

How about we talk about the actual day instead? So how'd you spend it?

Katie and I did the same thing we like to do each year... wine, Chinese food, pajamas, and movies!

Can it be any better?

Checking it off my list, unable to rewrite...

Yes, I do still have two Top lists to post and, including today, only two days before the New Year to post them. However, I really wanted to do another Snippet Wednesday. Plus, Katie and I are talking about seeing a movie (or two) on New Year's Eve and I'd like to give those movies a fair shake on the Top Films list. So that one will be on New Year's Day while the Top Shows will be tomorrow. Promise.

Banking
This bugs me. We are receiving bills for an urgent care visit for Katie from February and March of 2008. They’re claiming we never paid. Never mind the fact that it took them nearly two years to discover this supposed discrepancy, we did pay it. They say they’ll waive it if I can provide them with copies of the canceled checks. Due to that stupid federal law that passed some odd years ago, banks no longer have to send back canceled checks to us. So I checked our online account to find the digital images of the checks. I can only access back through August 2008. So I call my bank branch and they tell me they can look for it but it will take “research” as the information is “archived” and they may have to charge me for the research time. Isn’t that supposed to be the great thing about online banking is that your history is entirely digital and should be available at your fingertips 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Why would you archive digital information and make in inaccessible to the user? This makes no sense. Stupid banks.

Bear
I was reading Marty’s top albums of 2009 list and I really like this one thing he did which I might try next year… he included lists of albums that he considered a letdown or that he just didn’t get. It’s a pretty cool concept considering how much hype some albums receive. And I completely agree with him on his assessment of Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest in this regard. I’ve listened to that album a ton of times and I just don’t get it. Why is it so highly regarded? What makes it so great? Why was it one of the top selling independent albums of the year? And the real kicker for me is that usually when I see a band live, I wind up gaining an appreciation of the album by hearing the songs up close and in person. I saw Grizzly Bear at Pitchfork and the live experience helped not at all.

Bears
Can someone tell me where the hell the Jay Cutler that we saw on Monday night against the Vikings has been all season long? Damn. Even though the Bears defense really started to stink things up a bit in the fourth quarter giving up 17 unanswered points and letting the Vikes tie it up, it was a very exciting game! This is something we haven’t really seen all season… save for the stinking things up bit. That was pretty much par for the course for the Bears this year.

Book
I cannot, for the life of me, find my Moleskin notebook. I’m pretty sure I’ve exhausted the places where it could possibly be located. Dammitalltohell. Why is it that when you don't need something, it's always there, but when you do need it, it's nowhere to be found? I wanted to do some writing and, of course, it’s nowhere to be seen. 

Books
The reason I’d like to find my Moleskin is because I have an idea for a book I’d like to write and I want it along for the ride. Maybe I should just buy a new one that would be dedicated to this endeavor. Actually, that probably would be a better idea since I have some ideas for illustrations that would accompany the text and an oversize Moleskin would be better for this project. Yes, it’s a children’s book. Anyone have contacts in the children’s book publishing industry?

Bark
Dog collar beer bottle opener? Greatest. Invention. Ever. Me wanty. Hey, do you guys need a blog reviewer? Drop me a line. E-mail addy's in the top menu bar.

Time to head to work. Adios, peeps.

Everybody's singin', all the bells are ringing out...

Hey all, Merry Christmas!

Yes, I said it. I opted for political incorrectness and y'all are just gonna have to deal with it. Heh.

I just wanted to quickly share one gift that we exchanged. This was with some of the cousins on Katie's mom's side of the family. In lieu of regular, paid-for, what-retailers-are-begging-for gifts, we decided to make mix CDs of music we enjoy for everybody else. No, we're not making mix discs of music the recipient would like. These are of music we like in order to potentially introduce the recipient to new stuff.

Sounds like it should be pretty cool. Especially being the music fiend I am, right?

Not so. I hate making mix albums. I was dreading this. I remember the John Cusack character (Rob Gordon) in High Fidelity describing all the work he puts into the creation of a mix tape and similar information is shared by Rob Sheffield in his book Love is a Mix Tape. And, based solely on this input, I've been scared off of ever making mixes. Stuff like the delicate mix between soft and fast music, the blending of the end of one track into the beginning of the next, etc. I'm a perfectionist and, if I can't do something right, I don't want to do it at all. That's just how I am. 

However, after making the actual exchange yesterday, I feel much better about it. Everyone was really excited checking out the mixes that we all put together. Then, with those couple of people that forgot to include a tracklist, we threw the discs in a stereo and played "Name that Song." It was really fun despite my earlier dread. And Katie and I are kinda hoping we do it again next year. Heck, she's already planning out what she wants to do for hers.

But here are the albums we put together. Let me know what you think.

First, the covers. The covers are basically a photo of us die cut on top of a wallpaper of the album art for the songs contained on the disc. Disc one on the left is the disc in Katie's name and disc two is the one from me.

And now for the music...

Disc 1 (Katie's mix):

• The Smiths - "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"
• Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson - "Relator"
• Rascal Flatts - "Life is a Highway" - she was worried about this fitting in, but it actually sounds decent, I think
• She & Him - "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?"
• Dave Matthews Band - "Why I Am"
• Weezer - "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To"
• Scissor Sisters - "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'"
• Katy Perry - "Hot n Cold"
• Doves - "There Goes the Fear"
• Norah Jones - "Chasing Pirates"
• Imani Coppola - "Legend of a Cowgirl"
• Lady Gaga - "The Fame"
• Phoenix - "Rome"
• I Fight Dragons - "Heads Up, Hearts Down"
• The All-American Rejects - "Gives You Hell"
• 30 Seconds to Mars - "This is War"
• Paramore - "Ignorance"
• Pearl Jam - "Just Breathe"

Disc 2 (my mix):

• The Flaming Lips - "Race for the Prize"
• Matt & Kim - "Lessons Learned"
• Pomplamoose - "Beat the Horse"
• The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - "The Tenure Itch"
• The Republic Tigers - "Buildings & Mountains"
• Blitzen Trapper - "Gold for Bread"
• Stardeath and White Dwarfs - "New Heat"
• The Mooney Suzuki - "Alive & Amplified"
• Tokyo Police Club - "Tesselate"
• Razorlight - "America"
• Phoenix - "Lasso"
• Silverchair - "Straight Lines"
• Wolfmother - "New Moon Rising"
• Damone - "Out Here All Night"
• Foo Fighters - "Wheels"
• Bear in Heaven - "You Do You"
• Modest Mouse - "Guilty Cocker Spaniel"
• Dungen - "Du ar for Fin for Mig"

I was expecting most people to not know a majority of the stuff on my disc. I relish the thought of it being a musical expedition of sorts.

Alice at Beyond Alice and Through the Looking Glass has bequeathed unto me the Lemonade Award, or at least that's what I think it's called. Might have something to do with being able to turn lemons into lemonade via your blog posting or maybe it has more to do with having posts that grate on your nerves like a sour lemon. Meh, I'll take it either way. Thanks Alice!

And now for the rules...

• Put the Lemonade logo on your blog or within your post.
• Nominate at least 10 blogs with great attitude or gratitude.
• Link the nominees within your post.
• Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
• Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

Well, let's see what I can cobble together here. Mind you, these are just 10 of the many blogs I read and love every day. So, if you're not included, it's not from a lack of love. Trust me on that one.

Oh, and as for the fourth bullet, I may or may not get around to that right away. We all know my piss-poor commenting of late.

• Marie's Blog Cafe
• Kev's Useless Bollocks
• Renagerie
• Sybil Law
• Charm School Reject
• Katie Schwartz
• So a Blonde Walks Into a Blog
• Banal Leakage
• ilaxSTUDIO
• Life is Not a Movie

Merry Christmas to all my lemonheads out there!

Well, I'm outta here. Talk atcha soon.

Could you go and run into me...

I don't know why this year was such a tough one from which to cull a top-ten album list.

Oh wait, yes, I do know. It's the fault of that damn Amazon MP3 store and all the discounts and freebies they offer. I've discovered that about 2/3 of the music in my iTunes player actually was purchased or ripped this calendar year and a disproportionate amount of it came from Amazon... I bless and curse you!

Anyway.

I pared my list down from about 2,100 songs released this year to just 10 albums, and it was a bitch to say the least. So without further ado, I present you with the Kapgar Top 10 Albums of 2009 starting from the bottom of the list and moving to the top. So, um, that means the bottom of the list will show up at the top and the top of the list shows up at the bottom and, well, screw it. If you don't get it...

Oh, and "Track It" is just my cutesy way of recommending a single track on the album. Just click one of the album links at the top of the listing and you can go to either Amazon or iTunes to listen to the "Track It" single.

10. Flo Rida - R.O.O.T.S. (Route Of Overcoming The Struggle) - Amazon | iTunes
It took about three months before I finally discovered that first album of 2009 that moved me and that album was R.O.O.T.S. This marked my first time listening to Flo Rida even though I'd heard of him long before this album was released. I do believe I made the jump due to some deal on Amazon that was just too good to pass up. I'm glad I jumped.
Track It - "Be On You" featuring Ne-Yo

9. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic - Amazon | iTunes
For a second there, I was almost afraid that my favorite live act of the year wasn't going to make the top album list. I might have actually felt bad about it, but this is a strange album even by Lips standards. It's a very moody, binaural cacophony of experimental noise that really allows the musicianship of Michael Ivins, Steven Drozd, and Kliph Scurlock to shine.
Track It - "Silver Trembling Hands"

8. Pearl Jam - Backspacer - No longer available in Amazon's MP3 Store | iTunes
I remember reading another review of this album that said something along the lines of how Backspacer is the first album in years to come from Pearl Jam where they actually sound like they enjoy writing music again. I'd have to agree. This is one of the most upbeat works to come from PJ in years and my favorite since Vitalogy.
Track It - "Johnny Guitar"

7. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Amazon | iTunes
I have a lot of trouble describing this album to people or comparing it to anything else. It was recommended to me by the music editors at Amazon and I've loved it ever since. Simply put, you should just give a listen to this NYC outfit.
Track It - "The Tenure Itch"

6. Pomplamoose - Pomplamoose Videosongs - Amazon | iTunes
I do believe it was my buddy, Iron Fist, who guided this parched horse to the water that is Pomplamoose. They are an NYC duo, she the vocals and he the multi-instrumentalist. They've firmly lodged their foot in the YouTube door with interesting spins on Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies" and Michael Jackson's "Beat It," but this eight-track EP proves that they are not just cover wonders. How did an EP make a top album list? Well, when your eight tracks constitute a much more solid overall album than most others, why the heck not?
Track It - "Beat the Horse"

5. Stardeath and White Dwarfs - The Birth - Amazon | iTunes
In a case of the student besting the teacher, Stardeath and White Dwarfs, consisting of members of The Flaming Lips' road crew and Wayne Coyne's own nephew, have put together one of my favorite pieces of eclectica (not a word... yet) that I've heard in some time. It's a fun mix of sounds and vocals and I really hope to hear how they sound live. And, yes, I did spell it right. They call themselves "Dwarfs" not "Dwarves." Merriam and Webster are rolling in their graves.
Track It - "New Heat"

4. Matt & Kim - Grand - Amazon | iTunes
Special Note: this album is only $5 through the end of December 2009!
Punk is a misunderstood genre anymore. Many artists claim to be punk who clearly are not. Matt and Kim claim to be punk and, thankfully, are. They are a New York duo (geez, what the hell is it with NYC this year???) who were classmates in college and decided to start a band, learning their instruments on the fly. They learned quick and so are we as fans. In their few short years of existence, they've rocked the stages at Lollapalooza, Bumbershoot, and Pitchfork just to name a few. Sadly, I missed out on their Pitchfork performance. I didn't get tickets for that day. Dammitalltohell! I will not make that mistake again.
Track It - "Lessons Learned"

3. Jay-Z - The Blueprint 3 - Amazon | iTunes
If my recollection is correct, I listened to this album straight through something like three times consecutively. I'm sorry, but Jay-Z knows how to write a damn fine album and bring into the studio a laundry list of artists to perform with him including Pharrell, Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Rihanna, Kid Cudi and many more.
Track It - "Empire State of Mind" with Alicia Keys

2. Modest Mouse - No One's First and You're Next - Amazon | iTunes
This EP was only meant to be a way to placate fans until their next full-length album due out in 2010 (I hope) and it has become, in my opinion, one of their better collections of works. The buzz kicked in with "The Whale Song," the video for which was conceived by the late actor and video director Heath Ledger. It continued with the band actually bringing his vision to life with the help of Monty Pythoner Terry Gilliam. It's a fantastic video and an even better album.
Track It - "Guilty Cocker Spaniel"

1. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - Amazon | iTunes
For the longest time, this album was one that I kept returning to, listening over and over again. Then the songs started showing up in multiple TV shows and on commercials and, I think, even on Muzak. Usually, this equates to musical death for me. Somehow, though, that didn't happen here. Sure, my listening slowed down a bit, but it picked right back up after introducing my wife to them and discovering that they were one of the acts performing at XRT's Big Holiday Concert (even though it turned out to only be a five-song set due to a family emergency with their drummer back home in France). And I'm still listening and turning more and more people on to them. I love it. The album is just damn good electronic-rock and picking out a single song to recommend is not easy, but here goes...
Track It - "Lasso"

Well, that's all she wrote. Sure, there are a bunch of albums I never had the chance to listen to this year. It's tough on a limited budget, but I try.

The gift you gave is gonna last forever...

I know that there are some of you who actually look forward to Snippet Wednesday. And I've kinda left you hangin' the last coupla weeks. Last week it was an unfinished Snippet Wednesday due to Katie's crash. Yesterday, I just plain ran out of time.

So I'm gonna make it up to you with a special edition Snippet Thursday: The Reckoning!

Still love me?

Katie
Tomorrow marks Katie's official final day of student teaching. However, she got her grade for student teaching as well as her portfolio yesterday. As on both! That means she is graduating with a 4.0! I'm ridiculously proud of her! Mah baybee gotz intelluhjints!

Taste
My IT Director at work was in my office for a meeting yesterday when he looked on my cubicle cabinet and saw a promo card for the release of The Flaming Lips new album. This led to a discussion about music. Turns out:

• My IT Director loves The Flaming Lips.
• My IT Director loves Pete Yorn.
• My IT Director loves Bob Mould and Hüsker Dü.
• My IT Director loves The Replacements.
• My IT Director loves Tom Petty.

Clearly, my IT Director rawks.

Digital
I went to Best Buy yesterday to look into how much copies of The Hangover and Inglourious Basterds were on DVD. I also was curious if they came with digital copies. Both do. But, thanks to Ren's recent warning, I began to read the small print. Expirys were not a concern, thankfully. But compatibility was. Basterds is fine, but Hangover is neither Macintosh nor iPod/iTunes/iPhone compatible. Why in the name of Christ would a distribution company not want their product to work on the top-selling digital player of all time? Sure, I can probably rip and convert it without a problem (I do have Handbrake and iSquint and all those other cool little apps), but just loading the digital copy is so much easier. 

Inglourious Basterds digital copy? WIN!

The Hangover digital copy? EPIC FAIL!

Oh, and I alerted some customers and employees to this fact as well. They were dumbfounded by the stupidity of it all.

Blu-Ray
I actually have a Blu-Ray disc. My very first Blu-Ray disc. I don't own a Blu-Ray player, but I have a disc for when that day does come. I don't know how many of you subscribe to e-newsletters from restaurants and whatnot. Well, I do. And I get all kinds of free birthday shit as a result. Usually they amount to free desserts or, if I'm lucky, free entrees.

I got über lucky this year thanks to Disney who offered me a free Blu-Ray disc for my birthday. Say whaaaa? Of course I could only choose from a list of five movies. But it's free. So who cares? I chose Enchanted. Hey, Katie and I enjoyed that movie. And it's got Amy Adams. Can't go wrong with Amy Adams. Both my wife and Sizzle know of my obsession with her very well.

Gift
I think I've finally figured out what I'm going to get for Katie for Christmas. I usually have her gift done by now. This, I believe, is the latest I've waited to buy something. I just want to do a little research first before I actually buy it. There's no way in the name of all that's holy that she'll be expecting this. Not one iota of a chance.

Fox
I had a plan last week to write up a big glowing review of a movie Katie and I went to see, Fantastic Mr. Fox. I had it all pre-written in my head and was sitting down to type when I decided, instead, to read through my subscriptions in Google Reader. This was when I noticed Avitable had done the same thing and pretty much had the exact same opinion of the movie as Katie and I. So, if you'd like to read about a fantastic film, sure to be one of my tops of the year, head over to Av's digs and read up. 

Medley
This is simply too cool.

Well, adios for now.

Tell everybody, waitin' for Superman...

...that his name is Lin Brehmer and he's the morning host on WXRT 93.1 FM Chicago.

Actually, he was Thor, if the puffy muscle shirt he wore as one of the emcees of last night's XRT Big Holiday Concert was any indication.

Yes, last night was my third concert of the year and my second one involving The Flaming Lips. Two shows and absolutely no letdown whatsoever from one to the next.

I got to the show a little early and was able to snag a spot on the floor not too far at all from the stage right in the midst of the pit and surrounded by a bunch of kids. I still don't know if it made me feel younger by association or old and creepy. The jury's out.

Anyway, the show opened with some local band called, I think, the Nicholas Tremulis Orchestra. Not bad.

Pete Yorn was next and he just rocked out. I've been a Pete Yorn fan since the release of his first album back in 2000, I believe. But this was my first time seeing him live. He performed a variety of songs over the course of about 45 minutes or so and even included solo versions of two of what I consider his best songs from Break Up ("Blackie's Dead" and "Relater"), his duets album with Scarlett Johannson (the video is at this link). He also did a pretty cool medley of Bruce Springsteen's "Hungry Heart" and his own "Don't Wanna Cry" from Back & Fourth.

Before Phoenix took the stage, we were informed that their drummer had a family emergency and, instead of canceling their portion of the show, they would do a stripped-down, four-man acoustic set. The set was only five songs long, but I enjoyed it. And I do not agree with the article making it sound like everyone was booing. Sure there was a little, but I think people for the most part, got behind the idea that they were about to see something that few others would ever see. At least they got "Lisztomania" and "1901" in there. 

Then it was time for The Lips. God I love Wayne Coyne and the band. Much like their performance at Pitchfork 2009, they had the domed light background that served as a video screen showing accompanying images for the songs. And, at the beginning, it was again used to great effect for the band's vaginal emergence sequence.

I think what I love most about The Flaming Lips live show is that Wayne Coyne seems to truly appreciate his fans. He strikes me as genuinely humbled knowing that all these people are there watching him and his band play. The Lips are not one of the most well-known bands in the world. In fact, many of the people to whom I told I was going to this show just gave me a funny look like "who?" But this place was packed last night and everyone was completely into it. I don't know how you can't be. The music, the energy, the pageantry of it all. It's almost as though Wayne needs our shared energy to maintain his lifeforce. So he gives us the show we want in exchange for the fuel he needs to keep going. That's the best way I can think to describe it. And it affects you deeply. One of my Tweeps, @CityGirl912, was there as a result of winning a free ticket. She'd never been before and had no idea what to expect. 

 

Hmmm. Think she liked it?

I guess you could argue The Lips following is almost cult-like. If that's the case, gimme the damn Kool-Aid. I'll drink it. Hell, one of my photos from the show is even my new blog banner... my green alien buddy.

I did manage to sneak in a camera to take some photos (only a handful of which turned out decently). But I also used it to capture some video of Pete Yorn's "Hungry Heart" / "Don't Wanna Cry" medley, Phoenix's acoustic "1901," and The Lips' vaginal emergence and Wayne's gerbil ball. I'm hoping to take a little time to edit it all together nicely if y'all don't mind a little wait.

In the meantime, I've got a photo gallery and The Lips' setlist below (as of right now, no one had submitted the setlists for Phoenix or Pete Yorn, bummer).

[Facebook-ites, click through to be able to see the photos]

The Flaming Lips setlist

Edit this setlist | More The Flaming Lips setlists

Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak...

...somewhere in this town. Tonight there's gonna be trouble, so don't you be around.

And that trouble is Snippet Wednesday!

Dodging
Tonight is the playoffs for this season of dodgeball and I think, afterwards, I'm officially quitting the sport. It's just not as much fun as it once was and the novelty certainly wore off quickly. Plus, having a bunch of adults slinging barbs and calling each other a bunch of effin' liars in a league that runs on the honor system just sucks. I'm done. God I hope my buddy starts a sand volleyball league again this summer. Been too long.

Funkalicious
Katie got me an early birthday present this year and I'm just as happy as can be about it. The funny thing is it's only a sweatshirt. But it's singularly the coolest sweatshirt in the known universe. It's called Funkalicious from Threadless. I saw this design for the first time at the Threadless booth at Pitchfork and fell in love. I was planning to go back later and get it but I got so stuck in the masses of people awaiting the Lips show that, if I left, I never would've gotten my place back. And Threadless only recently started reprinting this design on hoodies (I didn't want it on a t-shirt). But now my boom-boxin' astronaut is rockin' it on my chest!

Stats
For some reason, this morning I decided to look at my all-time stats just to see how things have changed. Right now, I'm lucky to break 100 hits a day. But there was actually a time when I had 943 views in a single day. So I drilled down to find the date... June 4, 2007... yeah, the day when Dave guest posted for me while I was in Las Vegas. And, in the comments is Kim stating how this is probably going to be my best statistical post ever. How right she was. I find stuff like that funny. But it was a brilliant post by Dave. No question. Slappin' the salami!

Flair
Remember the 80s when we owned jean jackets with buttons and patches all over them? Do you still do that at all? Decorate something with flair, that is? I think my camera bag is slowly becoming that flair canvas for me. I've got a few buttons and pins and a Rwandan beehive keychain (craft thing I got from Starbucks) and I want to sew on some patches that I dug up at home from a friend who was in the military (Airborne patch and unit insignia). It's not ridiculous looking and I'm sure I'll stop before it gets bad. But it's kinda fun. Takes me back. But in a controlled manner.

Mars
I've been watching the BBC version of Life on Mars, season 1, since they finally made it available and, like many of you told me, it is good. In some aspects better than the U.S. version I so dearly love. But, in other aspects, not as good. I'm not sure if it's simply because it's a DVD version, but the BBC version is far more risque. The stories are really cool and they don't delve as far into Sam's "visions" as the U.S. version (no lunar rovers yet; but that little girl and her clown doll are weirding me out). While I still really like Jason O'Mara in the U.S. version, Jon Simm is starting to grow on me. I'm kinda torn between the U.S. and U.K. when it comes to Annie, Gene, and Chris, in all honesty. But, the biggest difference to me is the character of Ray carling. The BBC Ray is just lacking a lot of the gusto and bravado brought to the role in the U.S. by Michael Imperioli. I think Imperioli and his 'stache rock that role like no other. I'm also hoping the story with Sam's mom and his younger self builds up a lot more like it did in the U.S. version. There's still time. Any other opinions? Bear in mind, I'm only six episodes into season one. There are two eps left and then I've got season two to watch.

Any way the wind blows...

Happy Snippet Wednesday Before Turkey Thursday!

Bohemuppets
This video goes a long way to proving why I love the Muppets and how, despite being nearly 35 years old, I find them hilarious and oh-so brilliant.

Okay, it's not as new as it was this morning when I first began writing this up. Now it's everywhere. But I'm still posting it. I don't care.

Graduates
Yep, we graduated this past Sunday from the Citizen's Fire Academy. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself on Monday nights now. Anyway, here are photos from the final two days including auto extrication and the graduation itself. Enjoy! (Facebookers, click through)

Amazon
I'm thinking the greatest single thing to happen to my music loving has been the Amazon MP3 Store. Now they, like so many others, are getting in on the Black Friday specials. A little early, sure. But still. The sad thing is, I either already have much of what I want from this list of specials or it's been ordered by my local library by my request. I really have too much music. And too much influence over my library.

Moon
I know I've been having fun on Twitter at the expense of many New Moon and Twilight fans. I can't help myself. This is my revenge against all who heckled me when I got so geeked (and ultimately disappointed) about the release of the new Star Wars film back in 1999. Yes, Twilighters, I'm equating you to geeks. And you are. Admit it. But anyway, I do want to see the film New Moon despite this heckling. And I think Katie and I are going to see it pretty soon. We kinda have to. About half of Katie's class saw it opening night at midnight and they were in shock she hadn't seen it yet. Due to parent-teacher conferences this week, she's had a reprieve, but we need to see it before next Monday or she may pay with their scorn. Here's hoping tickets are available.

Eternal
I only wish I had video of the show that Katie and I gave the drivers next to us as we drove to the grocery store tonight. She was singing harmony as I took the role of Susanna Hoffs singing The Bangles' "Eternal Flame." I thought we sounded pretty damn good.

Danger on the tracks...

Happy Snippet Wednesday to you.
Happy Snippet Wednesday to you.
Happy Snippet Wednesday, dear reader.
Happy Snippet Wednesday to you.

How sad is it that when typing that, I accidentally keyed "dead reader" at first? That's truly not how I think of you all. Honestly!

Sales
Already I'm loving the holiday sales season even if I truly believe it's blasphemy to be thinking about the holiday season this early. I almost violated my own Christmas list by purchasing the complete series of Life on Mars (US) yesterday when I saw it for $17.49 at Best Buy. It's a $40 set. Same original price for season four of The Closer, which I actually did buy for Katie yesterday at Target for $12.99. How do you pass that shit up?

Santa
Speaking of holidays, I had flipped on some news broadcast last night and they were reporting that the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas is pushing that their employees be given higher priority on H1N1 vaccine shots. While I laughed at first, it does make perfect sense. They are exposed to a ridiculously high number of children on a daily basis, many of whom are probably sicker than dogs and still go to see Santa anyway because their parents won't deny them this childhood privilege even if they are hacking their lungs out all over the floor. And a lot of the guys playing Santa (the real-bearded ones, anyway) are older and some quite overweight. Yeah, give them the vaccine. Last thing we need is a class-action lawsuit against a Santa who infected a few hundred kids. But I do still laugh at the idea that Santas are unionized.

Trains
The reason I have no idea what channel this newscast was on is because it was whatever channel was left on the TV before switching over to my DVD player last night and watching one of the better thriller movies I've seen in a while, Transsiberian. In a nutshell, it's about a couple (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) who take a train trip across Siberia to Moscow after completing volunteer work in China. While on board, they meet up with another couple (Kate Mara and Eduardo Noriega) who may or may not be drug mules. Murder, intrigue, and police investigating ensue. It also stars Ben Kingsley as a Russian narcotics detective. Is there any nationality that dude doesn't play? Offhand, I've got German, Jewish, American, British, Indian, Russian... Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised considering its low-budget and low-distribution nature. Very enjoyable. Oh, and it was directed by Brad Anderson, the guy behind the disturbing The Machinist starring Christian Bale in what I consider one of his finest performances.

Mojo
Just when I think I can have all my snippets related, I throw in one that's not. Well, pretend it is. Let's just say I was reading this before watching Transsiberian, okay? I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Mojo magazine. It's basically another music mag with reviews and interviews and the like, much akin to Rolling Stone but without the political leanings. And, as a bonus, it comes packaged with a CD of music related to the theme of that month's issue. Sure this makes the mag cost $9.99 per issue, but I don't buy it often. This is actually the first issue in a few years and I had to do it because the CD is all electronic music including M83, LCD Soundsystem, Tangerine Dream, OMD, and an exclusive track from Kraftwerk, along with 10 more. Yes! I like electronic music, okay?

Ken
Must. Break. Addiction. To. KenKen. Puzzles. But. It's. Too. Much. Fun. Help.

We care a lot...

I need BlogFiber. Something that will make me more regular about posting here. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who would benefit from taking this.

There was a time when, for 14 consecutive months, I posted every single day. Not that I ever want to go back to that again. That was hell. Not that I didn't enjoy the writing or struggle for something to say. I had ideas coming out the proverbial yin-yang. I only wish I'd held onto a few of them for these dry spells.

Oh well. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

Now I'm lucky to post three or four times a week. For those of us who live and die by RSS feeds, that's not really all that big a deal. We simply wait until notification arrives in our aggregator letting us know that a new post is up.

But not everyone "gets" RSS. Sure it's free, but they don't understand how to use it or whatnot. And I can understand that. Not all of us are geeks and I'm not going to hold that against you. These people have blogs like mine bookmarked and just make return visits when they have time in hopes of finding something new to read. And here's little ol' me giving you jack shit for your loyalty.

So I'm going to try to be a little more fair to you and your faithfulness. To that end, I've implemented an e-mail notifier on this blog. Simply enter your e-mail address and you should receive an e-mail when I post something new. Bear in mind, I did try to implement one of these some time ago from a third-party source and it didn't work. Hence why I hadn't done it since. But Typepad's been rolling out a bunch of new features lately and they've all been pretty reliable in their functionality. With this one working in conjunction with FeedBurner, it should work quite nicely. Here's hoping!

All you need to do is visit that little box in the bottom of the right column and sign up. It looks like this...

[this is not the actual box;
you won't be able to type anything in it;
use the one over to the right --> ]

You may encounter a CAPTCHA verification and then a confirmation e-mail, but those are all pretty easy peasey.

See? I do care!

Lots of people have asked that age-old question "if you could meet any one person, alive or dead, who would it be?" on their blogs.

That question is boring. It always winds up being some great world leader or philosopher or thinker or the like. Plllbbbtttt! Yes, that's right, I just blew an e-raspberry at the great people of the world. BO-RING!

I want to ask something a bit different...

If you could sit in a bar and do shots with anybody, who would it be? And let's keep it to people who are alive, okay? And have some fun with it. None of the standard answers.

Me? I want to do shots with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips and Chad Ochocinco (nee Johnson) of the Cincinnati Bengals. 

 

Why? I'm really not entirely sure. I just get this feeling that it would be a blast, they'd both have great stories to tell, and there would be some fantastic drunken Tweets (Chad does have his own account, too) and videos to post on this blog afterwards.

Plus, you'd need one helluva twisted mind to come up with the stunts that Chad does as well as this video from the Lips.

Ummm, I'm gonna make you link over to the video as it's severely NSFW (as in Not Safe For Work). Don't say I didn't warn you.

Black cat, nine lives, short days, long nights...

Welcome to a vacation-borne Snippet Wednesday. Of course, it's only a vacation day for me, not Katie. How's that work? In Illinois, kids get freakin' Casimir Pulaski Day off, but not Veteran's Day? And I actually do get a real holiday like Veteran's Day off but not some weird, never-heard-of-outside-Illinois-borders holiday? WTF?

I guess I should just shut up and not complain, eh?

McAdams
Rumors are swirling that Rachel McAdams may be cast in the next Spider-Man film as Felicia Hardy/Black Cat. Rock on! This might actually help make up for that travesty of a third film that has officially ruined the series for me. But I think they'll have to recast Peter Parker/Spider-Man as well now. Rachel is too much woman for Tobey Maguire. Sorry, dude, but it's the truth.

CaptureMyChicago
Well, I finally got semi-firm (heh heh) word on when the CaptureMyChicago book will be out and winners announced... December 9! When I first placed the order for the book, it said it would likely ship in mid-November. Aye aye aye! I gotta wait another month? And they won't announce who is in the book until the launch party on the 9th. This is brutal! I wanna know! Stupid launch party.

Titans
Okay, sure the teaser trailer for Clash of the Titans looks a little overwrought with CG and more than just a bit fakey. But, damn I think this is gonna be one good ol', popcorn-munching fun fest of a film. BRING ON THE TITANS!!

Sorry it got recentered a little funny. I had to resize to fit the width of my central content column. Well, it was supposed to resize, instead it was cropped. Never had that happen before. If you wanna see it in all its glory, go check out either Geeks of Doom or Cinematical.

Veterans
On a more serious note, do take a moment to remember those who have served in the Armed Forces. A really great tribute came last year from my buddy LeSombre. Quite moving.

Never forget.

I'm gonna set you free...

Um, yeah, so it's Snippet Wednesday. Sorry, I got nothing more original. I need to make a couple lunches before I head out for work.

Fall
While I'm upset that we here in Chicago still never seem to have much of a fall in terms of nice autumn weather, we did get some beautiful leaves for the first time in about two or three years. Lately, the odd times during which we've had rain have made the leaves go from green to brown with no color variations in between. Something worked this year and we got some magnificent colors. Thank God.

I'll upload some more pictures soon.

Victims
Talk about death and decay, police in Cleveland have discovered the bodies of 10 victims in or near the house and yard of a suspected serial murderer. The kicker is that people have been complaining about strange odors emanating from his house for years. One person went so far as to describe it as the smell of a dead body. And it took Cleveland cops how long to investigate? There's something severely wrong with this story.

Superman
Funny thing about this particular Dilbert strip is that I could see this sort of thing as an outtake in the original Superman. How funny would that have been?

 

Swell
I was totally stoked the other day when I discovered that The Swell Season (featuring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of the movie Once) had a new album out. Cooler yet was that there was an iTunes code in it for an additional free song. But they had two codes, one for the US store and one for the Canadian store. So, if there are any Canadian fans of The Swell Season, drop me a note in the comments and the code for this song is yours. I'm not sure if it cancels out after I redeem the US code, but it's worth a shot. First come/first served.

Married?
Archie is marrying Veronica? Not Betty? Six-part comic arc? WTF? This is so not cool.

Time for lunch making. With a tear in my eye on Betty's behalf.

We don't need no water...

I love not-so-subtle wordplay... I enjoy coming up with creative ways to say things... twisting words to create meanings or thoughts contrary to what was intended...

For example, last night I posted the following message on both Facebook and Twitter...

 

Sounds pretty twisted, doesn't it? Kinda kinky and sexual, wouldn't you say?

The truth, however, is anything but. See the photo slideshow below to see what I mean (Facebookers, click through).

It was Fire Academy. We were using air tanks to crawl through a lit-up smokehouse crawling around on all fours and attempting to crane our necks upwards to see the fire while also looking down to follow the hose through the building.

I was discussing this at length tonight with a friend. She got a bit of a kick out of it, but wasn't convinced. So I threw this one at her based on our situation at the time I was talking to her.

"Right now, I'm half naked with a woman who is not my wife climbing all over me."

And this statement was 100% true. She died laughing. Mostly at how dirty it sounded. Partially at the fact that I managed to say that with a straight face and so off the cuff.

Turns out I'd managed to turn a simple chiropractic appointment into a tawdry sexual affair.

Oh God, how I love words. I seriously need to be a political spin doctor.

I'm watching V right now. The remake, relaunch, reboot. Whatever you want to call it.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of it all.

It's got promise, I suppose. Note, I use "promise" very loosely. But it was all so rushed. So much crammed into a single hour. Half of what they revealed in this episode could've waited another episode or two.

[episode 1 spoiler below]

And, for me, the most shocking thing was the idea that Morris Chestnut is, effectively, the modern version's embodiment of Robert Englund's Willie from the original series.

   

I'll keep watching for now. But I may have to go rent the originals just to remember how cool it was.

When you wish...

Taking a cue from Marie's post yesterday, I'm going to write up my own I Wish... list.

I wish...

...Katie would graduate sooner than December, maintain her 4.0, and wind up with many job offers from which to choose her ideal teaching position.

...someone would just donate us two new cars.

...all my friends in need of a job could find one.

...the idiots who skimmed my credit card number would be caught and violated in a very uncomfortable place while wasting away in a foreign prison.

...we would get an inordinately high number of trick or treaters this year.

...I could take Katie on a trip anywhere in the world she wants to go.

...all financial issues would resolve themselves.

...I could cook anything without worrying about how it's going to turn out and without relying on cookbooks or recipes; make me Kapgar Batali!

...our house would clean itself.

...we'd have a grounds crew in our townhouse association that actually made our monthly assessment a worthwhile investment.

...that people could accept each other for who they are and stop fighting, name calling, and judging without getting to know someone first.

...that two tickets to XRT's Big Holiday Concert 2009 featuring The Flaming Lips, Phoenix, and Pete Yorn would just magically find their way into my hands.

...I had an ice cream cone right now. Double scoop. Chocolate Peanut Butter. Waffle cone.

Yum.

C'mon. This is me. Did you really expect them all to be serious? Oh and I guess that might count as a meme to some degree, right?

Well, they didn't "magically find their way into my hands," but I did score tickets to the Big Holiday Concert!

Sadly, Katie can't go. Bad timing with work and whatnot. But she wanted me to go anyway, even without her. It's me, my Lips-man Eric, and his wife Michelle.

So, even though it's six days after my birthday, we'll just pretend that the following are in town to help celebrate with me...

Pete Yorn

Phoenix

The Flaming Lips

So, um, yeah, that's two Flaming Lips shows in one year.

You could argue I'm hooked.

I'd argue that you're right.

Just open up your mouth and feed it...

The last Snippet Wednesday of October 2009. Where the hell has this year gone?

Teeth
Okay, this has been driving me nuts and considering the current popularity of the genre, I feel we need a decision and that right now! Where should vampires fangs be? Some TV shows and movies have them on the back two incisors like The Lost Boys and True Blood. I find this goofy looking because they just clash with the already pointy incisors, but it's very efficient for grab-and-go dining.

 

Then there are those shows/movies that have them where I feel they look best, on the canine teeth. These teeth are already pointy and it looks natural when the canines just grow out a bit to become fangs. But it's gotta be a bitch to have to bite back that far on a person so the canines can make contact. Fast food would be an impossibility. Seriously, try it. Stick your forearm in your mouth and see how far you have to shove it in (that's what she said) before you can get a good grip with your canines. Some examples of this can be found in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bram Stoker's Dracula. 

 

Oh, and don't get me started on goofy little Nosferatu boy. I'm not even including his front incisor appearance as an option. Although he is certainly getting a handful in this shot, isn't he?

 

So what say you? Rear incisors or canine fangs?

Joy
The library got me Phish's new album, Joy! I'm not a huge Phish phan, but I've heard bits and pieces of this album and have liked what I've heard. Maybe I'll go back and pick up some older stuff later on.

BSG
I just finished watching Battlestar Galactica, season 2.5. Damn! Talk about a cliffhanger season ending! All I can say is that if I were watching this series live, I'd be pissed I'd have to wait however long to find out what happens in season three. Thank the Gods for DVD. And thank my library for having all these seasons available so I no longer have to wait for Netflix to do it for me. I had a friend offer to loan me the whole series, but I was afraid of how long it would take me to watch it. May not be a problem anymore.

Camera
Don't you hate how on the day you forget your camera, everything in the world happens for which you could possibly need it? On Monday, I was driving into work and saw a truck fire. Sure, I got a couple pictures, but not the quality I would have with my trusty Sony. These were Blackberry shots. And then, that night at Fire Academy, we were up in the bucket truck a good 85 feet above the city. You could see so damn far and the shots would've been spectacular. Oh well. Shit happens, eh?

Memes
Has anybody done any memes out there lately? I can't even remember the last time. Feels like years.

Oh well, time for work.

And if you can find them...

Consider me jazzed (Thanks Cinematical!)

This is the first official photo of the main four cast members from the upcoming The A-Team movie. 

 

[Click image for viagra-ized version]

From left: Bradley Cooper as Templeton "Faceman" Peck (originally played by Dirk Benedict), Quintin "Rampage" Jackson as B.A. Baracus (originally Mr. T), Sharlto Copley as "Howlin' Mad" Murdock (originally Dwight Schultz), and Liam Neeson as "Hannibal" Smith (originally the late, great George Peppard). 

Of course, any remake or "relaunch" of something from the past has cause for alarm. How badly will it deviate from the source material? How bad will the new cast be? There's just so much to worry about.

But I actually think, just based on this photo, that this movie could be fun in a purely popcorn-munching sort of way. No high expectations at all. Just walk into it expecting nothing but shit gettin' blow'd up. Hey, if Liam Neeson kicks even half as much ass as he did in Taken, it will all be worth it.

I do wonder if people will actually die in the movie unlike the TV show. Yeah, that's right, not a single person died in the show. That was one thing for which it was noted... no deaths. Lots of explosions and people flying haphazard like ragdolls through the air, but they all survived.

To be filed under "Things I Never Thought I'd Hear Katie Say."

This morning, she woke up and went into the bathroom to get ready for work. All of a sudden I hear, "OHMIGOD! The toilet seat is cold! If I had balls, they'd be shriveling." 

I love my wife more than she'll ever know.

It all started with a big bang...

This is Snippet Wednesday! This is Snippet Wednesday! Pumpkins scream in the dead of the night.

Smoked
I was warned about this when starting the Citizen's Fire Academy and clearly they were not full of it. We spent Monday night in the training tower watching how quickly a fire can fill the room with smoke and seeing how dark it gets and the stratification of heat... all that cool stuff. But they told us that one thing we'll notice is that our bodies will pick up on the scent of soot and smoke and that it will effectively ooze out of our pores for days afterward. Last night I came home and showered. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed trying to get the smell out of me and it wouldn't get out. Turns out it did, according to Katie. But my nose couldn't tell. I still smell the smoke. It's ingrained in my sinuses. Yummy.

Wil
Did you all happen to catch Wil Wheaton as, well, Wil Wheaton the other night on Big Bang Theory? I knew it was just a matter of time before he finally showed up there. Wil raves about the show to no end. And his turn as the target of Sheldon's ire was pitch perfect. And Wil had some cool stuff to say about the experience on his own blog. It's kinda fun reading Wil's blog when he talks about his work on different shows. His Criminal Minds diary last year was a lot of fun to read.

Boo
You know it's true love when your wife helps you celebrate your favorite season by going out and buying you a box of Boo Berry cereal as a surprise. I love you, hon!

Discworld
Are any of you fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books? I'm interested but a little timid. There's just so damn many of them. Is it an actual series that needs to be read in order or can you pick and choose individual novels as you go? What are your recommendations? I'm asking because I picked up a book some time ago called The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents and am now getting around to reading it. I had no idea when I bought it that it was technically part of the Discworld saga, but it does seem to stand alone pretty well so far. But I thought this might have more to do with the fact that it's classified a young adult book as opposed to the scifi/fantasy that the remainder of them are. So, being a YA book and not an adult novel, I thought maybe he wrote this one intentionally to stand alone and not tie in to the rest so much. So what say you?

Capture
The Capture My Chicago photography contest is over both in terms of submissions and voting and there is no word so far on what is going on. There wasn't even an official announcement about it closing. I would seriously like to know what's going on. C'mon CBS! Give us some idea here! This is killing me. Not that I actually think any of my photos were chosen, but I'd at least like a little clue into what's happening. Updates?

One day I say today we live as a lion...

Need a great gift for a loved one? Try a Snippet Wednesday! They are great for any occasion and are truly one size fits all.

Psych
I did have a few requests regarding where I found those variations of the theme song from Psych and I figured it might be easier to just post them here. Might even steal some traffic when people Google both those audio files, we shall see. But I'm posting them here in MP3 format. There are plenty of tips and tricks provided by myself and others as to how to convert them into ringtones in this post and its comments, so knock yourselves out. Let me know if you are able to make them work.

• Psych Theme Song (Hindi variation)
• Psych Theme Song (Boyz2Men variation)

Zombie
Must. Have. [Brains.] Now.

Zombie Mez-Itz???

God I love ThinkGeek.

Zoo
I'm going on yet another field trip with Katie's class. Today it's to Brookfield Zoo. I haven't been to the zoo in years and miss it immensely. Of course, my number one goal is to collect all the wax animals just like when I was a kid. 

Bonus points if they have a red wax lion.

More bonus points if it has a slightly smashed head.

Even more still if it talks and only I hear it.

"Find a penny..."

Speech
Katie saw this flyer posted at her school. We both found it quite hilarious.

Hair
Less than 12 hours and counting...

Yes, Katie will be there to chronicle (photograph) the shaving of my head and I'm sure to hold my hand as well.

A walk-on would be fine...

There is a fatal flaw in the logic of mousedom.

Sure, they're small. They can fit in places you wouldn't ever expect a mouse to be able to fit. They can take advantage of the tiniest of gaps. They're nocturnal and scamper about primarily at times when a majority of humanity is fast asleep. You rarely ever see them until it's too late. 

The flaw is that they shit more than a newborn double dosing Super Colon Blow (tm). They're compact little crap factories. If Hansel and Gretel wanted to find their way home, they should've brought mice along to leave a poop path as opposed to leaving breadcrumbs in their wake.

My mouse has been located due to his (or her) inability to control their rectal output. Yes, I found it behind my fridge through the hole in the wall where the waterline for the icemaker is located. There was a pile of shit on the floor under the hole, a trail leading from there to the side of our countertop, and another pile at the floor where they were scaling the counter. Yes, they were pooping the entire way up. If there was a second mouse in this hunter-gatherer pair, I'd sure hate to be him. "Dude! Will you quit shitting in my face!?!?"

The gaps are now stuffed with steel wool, the plate has been replaced and screwed into the wall, and caulk has been applied to the area between the plate and the recessed valve box.

I win this battle you little shit mongers!

Here's some multimedia for you to enjoy. (Yes, Facebookers, now is the time to click through.)

First, a video. And I have to thank Sizzle for guiding me to this absolutely fantastic visual gem by The Antlers called "Two." It blew my mind. Now I want both this album and a bubble-blowing guitar! How cool would that be?

Second, a series of photos I took while on a hike with my mom through the Springbrook Prairie Preserve in Naperville. Good times, good photo ops, and good exercise.

Whichever way the wind blows...

For this Snippet Wednesday I shall regale you all with snippets about what I've been doing with my week off work. No, I swear I'm not trying to rub in the fact that I'm off and you're not. Really.

Reading
Sadly, it hasn't been the reading of books, thus far. I think I'm going to try some more of that later on today. I did, however, finish the book I was "halfway through" last week. But I have been catching up on a huge backlog of magazines that have been piling up around here. I had four Sports Illustrateds and three Rolling Stones that I had either not started or only gotten partially through. Right now I have two SIs and one RS left! Yay me! And, thankfully, I no longer have to look at that freakish picture of Megan Fox on RS from a couple weeks back. That picture disturbs me. And, sorry if it makes me less of a man, but she does nothing for me. Not anymore anyway.

Cleaning
I've been cleaning our bathrooms and doing some straightening, dusting, and vacuuming (hey, I spelt that rite on my fürst tri!). Exotic, eh?

Moulding
As much as I wish I could say this referred to me listening obsessively to the music of Bob Mould or Sugar or Hüsker Dü, I can't. I'm talking about getting the crown moulding installed above the cabinet in our master bathroom. It's been partially installed for a couple years now and desperately needed to be finished or I think Katie might do something to me that I'd rather not think about while I sleep. It's now installed and the filler is drying so I can get around to painting it.

Containerizing
We discovered this morning, via an abundance of little black turds on the counter top, that we have another mouse. He must be new as of last night or early this morning because that was the only place I could find his crap, literally. So I cleaned and containerized all our food. The little bastard did manage to eat through the bag that contained a brand new batch of naan bread that I bought at Trader Joe's only yesterday. I never even got to enjoy any of it. Yes, traps are set to kill. (In deference to Marie) Eff you, you effin' effer!

Watching
I will admit to watching an exorbitant amount of TV on DVD. I finished season three (and, thus, the entire run) of Deadwood. I finished the first disc of Battlestar Galactica season 2.5 and disc two should be here from Netflix tomorrow. I rewatched disc two of Firefly (I love "Our Mrs. Reynolds," great episode). 

 

I also wiped our TiVo clean of Mad Men and The Amazing Race. Okay, not every hour can be productive.

Exercising
I did go jogging on Monday, but I skipped yesterday due to some crappy weather. It rained most of the day and then we had a pretty nasty wind storm into the evening despite the clouds completely clearing up. Strange, strange weather yesterday. Today, though, I am going in for yoga. I know that means driving in to where I work, but my yoga instructor has been out of town for the last couple weeks and my body can feel it. So I decided not to miss this week even if it means wasting some gas. But I have to be there for dodgeball tonight anyway, so why not? And I might try to work out between the two. Not sure what yet, but something.

Tweeting and Booking
I've also been doing my fair share of Tweeting and Facebooking. Not really a whole helluva lot, but enough to keep relatively up to date.

And how has your week been so far?

Mother, tell your children not to walk my way...

I knew I wanted to use that lyric for this post but I wanted to get it right so I Googled it. I was so damn convinced it was The Cult. But it's Danzig. How the hell did I mix that one up? Oh well, on with Snippet Wednesday, anywho.

Foo
Ack! New Foo Fighters!! NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!! NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!!!

(iTunes | Amazon)

Did I get the idea across that I'm excited? Really? You didn't feel it? Lemme try again...

NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!!

No, I won't go so far as blinking text. Not even for the Foo Fighters. Sorry.

Malfunkshun
The other day, while shopping for decade-related costumes for Katie to wear to school in their weeklong celebration of the school's 50th anniversary, we came across a Mother Love Bone T-shirt. Of course we bought it and she wore it on Monday. But it got me a bit wistful for the band and I've subsequently been going a bit nuts listening to their music as well as reading about them and their late lead singer, Andrew Wood. I discovered that there was a documentary made about his life called Malfunkshun, after the name of the band he fronted prior to MLB, and I tried to find it on Netflix. They clearly didn't have it as this mixed bag of search results would indicate.

But seriously, a cult horror film followed by an NC17-rated steamy, dark, cerebral romance about a kid's forbidden desire for his mom, and then... Mulan? A Disney flick. Family animation. I can just see some kid putting Ma Mere in their queue as a mother's day tribute.

Music
I'm sure all of you already think I'm a music addict ("whore" might be more appropriate). But just to confirm the theory, my iTunes account is now showing that I have...

Yes, 10,794 songs that clock in at 29 days, 12 hours, 51 minutes, and 13 seconds (including the copy of Danzig's "Mother" that I just picked up because I felt so guilty). I can listen for nearly a month without hearing the same song twice (unless you're talking February; I so rock that month, even on leap years). Yeah, my name is kapgar and I'm a music junkie.

60
Katie and I are actually going to try watching The Amazing Race again after giving it up for about two or three years. We kinda miss it. But the problem is that CBS, the network that airs TAR, always seems to have something programmed during the day on Sundays that bumps the start time of everything else after it, including TAR. So I get severely annoyed having to open my TiVo viewing of something we want to watch by seeing snippets of crap we don't want to watch in the form of 60 Minutes, a show that I feel has absolutely no newsworthiness or cultural significance at all. Why is that show still on the air? Somebody please pull the plug already.

Rogue
Why is part of me morbidly fascinated about the pending release of Sarah Palin's memoirs, Going Rogue: An American Life? Am I doomed to damnation if I read it? Could my damnation be any worse than it already is having forced myself to read an Ann Coulter book as I did a few years back?

Funny thing... I couldn't remember Coulter's name for whatever reason. So I Googled "conservative freakshow blonde pundit" and, lo and behold, a link to a CBS news page about her shows up first in the results. 

I'm off too work. Enjoy!

So give me coffee and TV...

Robin, Dave, and Adam (and perhaps others that I've forgotten to list) have done it, so why not? Here is our list of Big-5 network TV shows we're watching this fall broken down into several categories. 

For the record, "our" and "we're" refers to "Katie and me," not some split-personalitied version of myself.

Returning Shows We'll Keep Watching

• How I Met Your Mother - SUIT UP!
• Big Bang Theory - You have no idea how much we love this show.
• The Office - This one, too.
• 30 Rock - We were late starters with this show, but it's a lot of fun.
• Gary Unmarried - We were both surprised by how much we enjoyed this show. 
• Criminal Minds - One of the few crime dramas we actually like.
• Castle - Crap! I can't believe I forgot to list this the first time through. Thanks Odie! You just can't go wrong with Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic is a great foil to his behavior.
• Brothers & Sisters - This one is actually a Katie show only. She loves it.
• Dexter - This is my show and I will find a way to watch it. Even without premium cable.
• Private Practice - Katie's more into this than I am and considering how much I like a lot of the cast members otherwise (Kate Walsh, Tim Daly, Taye Diggs), that's really surprising. But we'll keep going.

Returning Shows That Are On the Fence

• Grey's Anatomy - We were going to quit this show, but I was pretty impressed with the finale from last season and want to see how things wrap up. It may not last, though.
• NUMB3RS - It's just getting a little uneventful and we don't care much for the newer cast members added over the last couple seasons.
• Parks and Recreation - We didn't like the first season, but, it could prove to be a slow starter like The Office and it's from the same creators.
• New Adventures of Old Christine - This show is painful because Julia Louis-Dreyfus is annoying as hell, but the supporting cast is a lot of fun.

New Shows We'll Give a Shot
I did mention at one point about how there wasn't much Katie and I were looking forward to in the new season, but we've decided to give a shot to a few shows anyway. Let's see how it goes.

• Community - So far it's not boding too well. The first ep was almost painful.
• Vampire Diaries - It's not that good so it may not last, but it's got Ian Somerhalder playing a rather cool and self-assured vampire and, as Katie says, it's better than Twilight (the movie; she loves the books).
• Modern Family - We've watched the first episode. We're giving it one or two more episodes, tops. 
• Cougar Town - These expectations are so rock bottom that I'm not even sure why we're bothering.
• NCIS: Los Angeles - We like LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell, plus we watched some of the original series in syndication recently, so we'll give it a chance.
• V - This one will likely be all me as well. And I'm very tentative about it. May not last long.

Big Ol' Hell Nos

• 90210/Melrose Place - Not a chance in hell.
• Fringe - I gave it a chance last season and got bored. C'est la vie.
• Eastwick - A series based on The Witches of Eastwick? Yeah... no.
• The Mentalist - While I'm over the fact that the concept was stolen from Psych (yeah yeah argue all you want about how much different it may be, whatever), I just can't get over my dislike of Simon Baker. The dude just oozes smarm and I get bad vibes from him. To the degree where I just don't like seeing him.
• Trauma - Yawn.
• Mercy - Yawn.
• Three Rivers - Yawn. So burned on medical dramas.
• Ugly Betty - So done with this show. The character of Betty has become everything she once battled against. And it used to be so good.
• And there are so many more, but I just don't want to get into them all.

Bear in mind, this list does not include any midseason starters like 24, Chuck, and Flashpoint. Nor does it include non-standard-season cable shows like Psych, Mad Men, Burn Notice, My Boys, and Royal Pains, among others.

The Kapgar Reading Initiative seems to be working. Slowly, but it's working. 

I have two new books that I'm really looking forward to reading:

 

And I'm currently almost halfway through this book:

And I need to write a review of this book that I finished over the weekend:

Added together with the other three books I've read and reviewed in the last couple months and I'd say that's pretty good, right? Well, better than the nil reading I was doing before that anyway.

We hear he is a wonderful wiz...

Hollow it out, pack it in tight, light 'em up, and take a long drag on Snippet Wednesday.

iDependence
I was reading a post on Kevin Spencer's blog about his iPod crapping out and how he suddenly became very aware of how dependent he is on his iPod on a daily basis. I completely agree with him except I never needed my iPod crapping out to tell me that. I'm fully aware of my overdependence on this little electronic gem. I listen to it on my commute to work and nearly all day during work. I use it when I work out and anywhere else I drive and sometimes just when I have a free moment and need a music fix. I would be so lost without my iPod. Is that sad?

Jam
I wasn't going to talk about the new Pearl Jam album, Backspacer, and how much I'm enjoying it so far (probably my favorite album of theirs since Vitalogy), but then I read this review on Chicagoist and realized how nicely it summed up my feelings and decided to share it with you. So here you go.

NCIS
After all that to-do yesterday with regard to NCIS: Los Angeles, what do I do? I forget to set the TiVo for last night's premiere episode. Oh well. Guess we'll be starting with episode two as I see no replay of the first episode in the immediate future. Stupid me.

Lips
I totally want to preorder the new Flaming Lips album, Embryonic, from their Web site. Not that I actually expect to get either the autographed litho or win the tickets for the New Year's Eve show (although either would be damn cool), I'm in it for the dead Muppet CD case! Tell me that's not cool. Okay, there are a lot of reasons I really want this set, like the DVD/CD and the litho, but that is some damn unique packaging. Oh and if one of you, as a result of seeing this snippet, orders the set and wins something, I'd better get a cut of it. If it's the litho, be creative. 

Wizard
Tonight, Katie and I are off to see the wizard. Yep, the wonderful Wizard of Oz. It turns out that a local theater is showing it and hopefully there are still tickets left. With my luck, there won't be. But we shall see. That would be a cool flick to see on the big screen.

Yep, it's all sold out. Go fig.

Heart cooks brain...

I have become "The Ambassador of Din Din." More specifically, Katie's din din. Oh, and "din din" would be "dinner," not "loud, raucous noise" although I'm sure I could be quite capable of the latter given a chance.

I'm not very self-assured when it comes to cooking. I try it, but I always fear it sucks. And it has a lot to do with the fact that I have very little ability to combine flavors. I know what smells good (although I cannot identify it for the life of me) but I'm not sure if this good smell works with that good smell. 

I guess you have to think of it in terms of clothing. I can buy an individual article of clothing that looks pretty good. I have relatively decent taste in that regard. But ask me to make an outfit out of that piece of clothing with everything else that a guy needs to wear to keep from being arrested for indecent exposure and, well, that's where I need help.

Apply this principle to cooking. I feel I'm okay at making individual dishes. I help Katie pretty well on a course-by-course basis at Thanksgiving. But I need to rely on her for the overall planning. What food goes well with what food, that sort of thing. If left to my own devices, I might have hot dogs with lime-and-cilantro orzo, tater tots, and a side of fruit cup. Ick, right? Individually, nothing really wrong with any of them. Together, they're a gastrointestinal disaster in the making.

Somehow, though, I pulled it together last night. Not sure how, but I made it work. Katie had one of her infamous long days of work and I took it upon myself to cook as I've done a lot lately (good practice). So, intertwined with doing laundry, ironing shirts, and watching Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday, I threw together a meal of roasted pork tenderloin with an Italian glaze (thank you, Betty Crocker), green beans, and a long grain wild rice blend. Oh yeah, and throw some Vidal Blanc in the mix as well. It was really the rice I was worried about most, but Katie said it worked. She went back for seconds. That's good, right?

Did I mention that Katie made dessert? She poured a couple glasses of milk and grabbed a pair of Little Debbie football-shaped brownies. She actually hiked one to me like a professional center might. She bent over and pretended to give a snap count and, just as I was thinking there's no way she would actually do this, she fired it at me and nailed me in the thigh. So much for cat-like quarterback reflexes, eh? I was a lineman in high school. What do I care?

As I laughed at her "ball" hiking skills, she asked me, "you're blogging this, aren't you?"

Damn right.

If a reviewer were to compare a new show that you're looking forward to watching (in this case, NCIS: Los Angeles) to "little more than an updated version of 'The A-Team'," would you worry or take that as a compliment?

As a child of the 80s who loved The A-Team, I could see that as a good thing. But, then again, I've watched a few episodes of The A-Team in recent years and they don't really hold up so well anymore.

I'm torn.

The birds will still be singing...

I have a confession to make, after a few months trying to transform into a runner, I crashed. I crashed hard. No, not a literal accident. Just the figurative "wall" that runners tend to hit. But it still hurt bad.

There was a while there that I was doing pretty good. Constantly attempting to increase the distance that I was running. At one point, I actually hit five miles. For the first time since the summer after my freshman year of college, I ran five miles straight.

Since that day, I have not run more than a mile and a half again.

Physically, I'm not entirely sure why it happened, but it did. Any time I attempted to run, I got winded way too quickly or my body just couldn't move. That so-called "groove" I had during the monster run just would not come back. 

Mentally, I saw myself getting worse. I watched (or read) as people I knew were running longer and longer distances at shorter and shorter times. I kept thinking "Why not me? Seriously, why the fuck not me?"

As a result, I got frustrated and I ran less and less. I think I got stuck in the whole "you lost the race" mindset and gave up. I still worked out, but not nearly as much and running was a once or, maybe, twice-a-week thing I would do that did nothing more than bum me out even more.

Yesterday, though, my brain had a breakthrough. After giving away an hour and a half of my life to Guitar Hero III (yes, I still enjoy playing that one solely because of the mix of songs on it), I decided I just needed to go out and run. 

Screw how long I go. 

Screw how far I go. 

I just needed to go.

And I did.

I'm not sure how long. I'm not sure how far. I don't know how it compares to those of you who are runners... and I don't care. I just know that it was more than I've run in months. And it felt good. And I need to capitalize on this feeling. 

Screw medals.

Screw finish lines.

Screw mentally competing with all the people I know who are runners.

I need to do this for me.

I need to do this for my health.

I need to do this for Katie.

I need to do this for our future family (no, that's not a veiled announcement).

So, nothing personal against those of you who are competitively running. I'm happy for you and I wish you all the best. But I need to stop paying attention to what you say and write about. I need to stop gauging my success on how I compare to your efforts. That's the wrong way to live. 

I need to do this for me. My own rules. My own standards. 

And I need to just be happy that I'm doing something. Something that, hopefully, will result in a longer and happier and healthier life.

Life is just too damn short to worry about keeping up with everyone around me.

On a lighter note. I found this gem of a video via Google Reader. 

A musician named Jarbas Agnelli found a picture of birds perched on a series of five suspended cables as birds are wont to do. But instead of just disregarding the image, he and his musical mind decided to see if there was any compositional value to how the birds were sitting.

Check out what he discovered. It's pretty amazing, really.

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Originally posted at Superhero Journal. Well, that's where I found it, anyway. Via Google Reader.

I believe that we are gonna be friends...

Hey! I actually did it! I recorded another video podcast! It's been a year almost to the day, but The Damn Fool Network is alive! Alive, I tell you. Alive!

Actually, I made a commitment to myself to defeat this video editing roadblock that keeps holding me back. So, while the results of this little experiment in habañero pepper consumption may not be the most exciting, I was doing this more for the opportunity to play with recording, editing and use of titles and transitions. I want to do this more often as it should get easier with time. I hope so anyway.

Again, if I only had an iota of Marty's talent.

Be honest and let me know what you think about it...

The Damn Fool Network: Habanero Peppers from Kevin Apgar on Vimeo.

I received a note from the press people for the Chicago Public Library (CHIPUBLIB) asking if I'd be interested in helping them promote the CHIPUBLIB Sound Off competition.

It's a really cool music competition for participants 14 years of age and over to develop their own original piece of music about or inspired by the City of Chicago. The competition is being judged by local music critics Chris Force of Alarm Magazine, Jessica Hopper of The Girls' Guide to Rocking and Kanye West's collaborative songwriter Che Smith, more commonly known as Rhymefest. Submissions are being accepted until September 27, 2009, and the grand prize winner will headline the CHIPUBLIB Sound Off Concert in October and receive a package of recording studio time.

How cool is that? If music (making) were my forte, I'd be all over this.

So if any of my Chicago-area readers are interested, head on over to the CHIPUBLIB and get a bit more information or check out what else is there.

Walk away and taste the pain...

But don't come again some other day or you'll miss Snippet Wednesday!

Office
The big ol' honkin' special edition "Beet Box" set of season five of The Office came out yesterday at Best Buy and I gotta say there's one thing that pisses me off... the whole reason I got it was the T-shirt that was included that says Schrute Farms Beets. Great shirt but it only came in large. That's too big for Katie and too small for me. Why oh why didn't NBC Universal just include a certificate with the set so you could go online and order one in the size you want? That would make so much more sense. Sure you'd have to pay shipping (if they want to be dicks like that) but you get what you want. At least my beet-shaped stress ball is in the right size.

Quartet
Tomorrow I'm heading into the city with my brother and SiL (Katie can't make it due to work) to see Million Dollar Quartet again. It will be cool to see it and hopefully we'll have most of the same cast members as the last time. The reason why is because there is a Q&A afterward with the cast. I'm hoping this means we can get some signatures because I just bought my 25th anniversary remastered The Last Starfighter and I would really like it signed by Alex Rogan/Johnny Cash/Lance Guest. Cross your fingers for me.

Habañeros
If any of you have been following my Tweets then you know that I've been daring myself to eat several of the peppers I've been growing. Whole. Untainted by being mixed with anything else. And yesterday a coworker and I both ate habañeros and I video'd it. I'm still playing with the video trying to figure out edits and captions and transitions and the like but it will be posted soon. I will beat this bitch known as video editing and hopefully get back to making video posts on a semi-regular basis. They are fun when they don't piss me off.

Music
Yesterday I looked and saw that nearly 20% of the music in my iTunes was loaded on my computer this year. Holy crap! That's nearly 20 GB of music just this year and it isn't even over! Oh I knew this Time Capsule was going to be both a blessing and a curse. Mostly a blessing though!

TV
The fall TV season is upon us. Are there any new shows that have piqued your interest? Sadly there are very few for us. We're going to give Accidentally on Purpose a shot since we're both fans of Jenna Elfman from her Dharma & Greg days. But we're not holding out much hope for it. And then there's Community. Hard to go wrong with Joel McHale and Chevy Chase. Or I hope it's hard to go wrong anyway. Finally there's NCIS: Los Angeles. We've watched NCIS on occasion in reruns and like it but have never committed to it. Just too much to catch up on. Hopefully starting this from the beginning will make up for it somewhat.

Commas
I can't believe I went a whole post without typing any commas. Not that I didn't need them. I just opted not to. Meh. Screw commas. Overrated little pieces of punctuation. Maybe next time I'll shoot for no periods or paragraph breaks and just turn my whole blog into a James Frey novel.

Time for workity work workin' workers.

Here come the story of the hurricane...

I feel like the floor of a taxicab. Hmm, must be Snippet Wednesday!

Bose
I finaly got my new earbuds and I did wind up getting the Bose in-ear buds again. Turns out those of you, including Katie, who said to talk to Bose were absolutely right. They actually do have a replacement program. Turn in your old ones and get a new pair for half price. Sure, this half price is still more than I was looking to spend, but Katie even said I use them religiously and we know we like them, so I might as well. Can I tell you how nice it is to have bass again in my music?

Crowes
And what better to listen to with my new earbuds than the new double album, Before the Frost... Until the Freeze, by one of my longtime faves, The Black Crowes. Glad to see they came back from their hiatus. I only hope the Foo Fighters do the same.

Parents
Not only can I see parents doing this, it's really not a half-bad idea. Funny though it may be. And when The Onion, in an attempt at lampooning morning "news" shows, does a better job than the shows themselves, you know something is wrong. Or maybe it's right. Hmmm...

Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

Poll
The idea that somebody would pick Spider-Man 2 over Superman in a head-to-head superhero poll just floors me. Please avert this travesty of superheroic injustice by visiting Cinematical and changing things before it's too late! (I agree with all the other results so far, though).

Kevin
Yeah bitches! I'm a hurricane this year and I'm bearing down on Mexico! Rock on!

Check that. I've been downgraded to a tropical depression. I guess I pussed out. Talk about depression. I was so excited when I saw the name "Hurricane Kevin" on the Google Earth hurricane tracker. This blows, but apparently not enough.

Fetch
Somehow I don't see that a subject line of "Jerry plays fetch with himself" on a spam e-mail message is really going to make me want to open it. Just so many things about that I'm much better off not knowing.

And it's time to head on out into the void.

Is anyone going anywhere...

On my way to work the other morning, I looked ahead to approximately where I hit the on-ramp to the highway eastbound and saw two helicopters just floating there.

At that time of day, I couldn't imagine them being anything other than news or traffic choppers. This could not be a good sign, could it? Accident? Traffic jam? Prison break? Toppled beer delivery truck?

Despite my internal alarms ringing, I kept driving in that direction in hopes that I was wrong.

I was only partially wrong.

They were, in fact, news/traffic choppers and were likely reporting on some accident, but the scene was about a mile or so further west of my on ramp. Translation? There was no eastbound traffic coming to my merge. My commute in to work was free and clear, baby! Oh my God, the only other time I'd ever seen the highway this empty at rush hour is on those few days between Christmas and New Year's when nobody is working. It was a beautiful thing.

Now I must come up with ideas as to how I can create traffic jams at that same location daily so I can have this same easy commute every day! Any ideas?

This has to be one of the most amazing music videos I've ever seen. It's for "King Rat" by Modest Mouse. Director credit was given to Heath Ledger for conceptualizing it as a protest piece against whaling off the coast of Australia. I'm not sure if he actually did any work beyond the concept phase, but I do know he had directed a handful of music videos in his time.

Modest Mouse - King Rat (directed by Heath Ledger) from Johann S. on Vimeo.

I think one of the reasons I love it is the choppy pseudo animation that's employed (I have no idea what the actual animation style is called). It's very reminiscent of Monty Python segues. I do believe Terry Gilliam had something to do with this as well, which would explain the Monty Python parallels.

For the record, the video is incredibly brutal and raw and bloody, but oh so powerful and entrancing. I love it. Almost as much as A-ha's "Take On Me" (this particular copy complete with VH1 pop-up commentary), which is my favorite video of all time.

Seeing stuff like this and realizing just how much raw talent was lost makes me miss Heath Ledger even more.

Thanks to ChordStrike for cluing me in to this.

I got a devil's haircut in my mind...

Welcome to Snippet Wednesday, where we take three parts debonair, four parts sexy, five parts awesome, and... completely disregard it all in the name of blog tripe! Wooo hooo!!!

Fiber
If you read this on a product, would you ever eat it? "NEW USERS: Increase your fiber intake gradually. Gastrointestinal discomfort may occur until your body adjusts." This warning is on the wrapper of the new Kellogg's Fiber Plus bars. I'm thinking the original warning "You will have gas the likes of which have not been seen since Vesuvius" was nixed at the last second. C'mon, be honest with us here, okay? TRUTH IN ADVERTISING, DAMMIT!!

Porn!
If you're under 18 and having, er, urges, you might want to take a hop across the pond to get your fix...

Rampage
Fatal cow attacks in Britain? Well, duh, they obviously want their porn, too, before the three-week grace period is up!

Jet
Holy crap! I had no idea Jet was even still around and now they've got a new CD. I was way more addicted to Get Born than I should ever admit. But I will say it anyway. And their new album, Shaka Rock, is only $3.99 on Amazon for a limited time. Or pay full price on iTunes once the promo period runs out. Gotta say I'm loving the Amazon store more and more every day.

Faces
One of the things I always loved about Sports Illustrated was the "Faces in the Crowd" section where they give little sentence blurbs plus a photo highlight to regular people who have made some major athletic accomplishment. I always hoped I would see someone I knew in there. To the best of my knowledge, this has not yet happened. Have you ever known anyone in the "Faces in the Crowd"? Oh too funny, while searching for "Faces" on their Web site, I found that the swimsuit edition is on Twitter. I'm shocked there aren't more followers. 

Targettunes
I'm curious... for at least the last several years, Target has had an online affiliation with Amazon. Amazon is in direct competition with iTunes in digital music sales. So how come Target is now aligning itself with iTunes for exclusive online music sales starting with Pearl Jam's new album Backspacer? What am I missing? It's an online menage-a-trois of pain ("I hear you have to pay extra for that kind of action, Cotton"). Clearly I need to be hired as their proofreader, though. Found two errors in that tiny little paragraph below.

Time for work!

Too easy to make you mine...

This is driving me a little batty right now.

Katie is now into the all-important student teaching phase of her Master's degree program, which means she's working a weird schedule at her regular job. Some nights and even weekends; well, Saturday, anyway. And I have no idea what to do with myself. I'm bored actually. Sure, I'm doing stuff around the house, but it's still boring. I miss Katie.

I never denied being codependent. Neither did she. In this era in which the U.S. suffers a 51% divorce rate, I think codependency is a good thing, don't you? To me, it means you actually want to be with your significant other. How could that be bad?

Anyway, one thing I have done is to start watching True Blood, season 1, on DVD. I really like it so far. Bloody, sexy, wickedly violent... everything that watching HBO used to be but hasn't been in a long time.

But there has been an unexpected side effect of watching this series, I've begun having vampire nightmares. Last night's was vicious, to say the least. The violence and bloodshed in my dream far exceeds anything I've ever experienced on any vampire show or movie. Just when I think I've seen it all, my brain comes up with worse. Who'd'a thunk it?

I want to write about it, get it committed to a page; but I cannot even fathom putting words to what my brain created. No words exist for what I saw in my dream.

But it did give me an idea for a different type of story. Somewhat less gory, thankfully. I just have to actually write it down... like all those other ideas I keep swearing I'll write.

I think that roughly translates to "it'll never happen." Heh.

Now, however, in an attempt to cleanse my brain of all this vampire imagery, I'm going to go watch a TiVo'd copy of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead from the other night. I've never seen it, but how can you argue with a movie that stars Gary Oldman and Tim Roth?

Yesterday, I updated my Facebook status with a message about being busy downloading a bunch of free and legal music.

Based on the comments, it would seem several people couldn't grasp the concept of music actually being free and legal. Yes, it does happen once in a while. This time around, it was Amazon offering 27 free album's worth of world music. Yes, 27 albums worth. Believe it.

Of course, world music isn't for everyone. It can be quite the acquired taste to us insular U.S. natives. But I've developed a taste for it in recent years. Very small scale, so far, like Fela Kuti and Rodrigo y Gabriela (who have a new album coming out next month that I'm completely stoked about), but it's a start. And 246 free new songs can go far to developing that taste, don'cha think?

If you're interested in checking them out for yourself, visit Amazon.

Grab your mouse and stroke your keys...

(Sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques")

Where is Kapgar?
Where is Kapgar?
Here I am.
Here I am.
Where the hell you been?
Lazy S.O.B.
I took a week.
Just for me.

And it felt damn good. Okay, moving on.

Apparently, retail America would have you believe that we're closing in on the winter holiday season. This despite the fact that we have only just begun hurricane season and, hell, Chicago only recently started to actually have summer weather. Yeah, we're late bloomers around these parts.

But the idea of it being so close to holiday season had me thinking about gift giving. No, I'm not giving you anything. Well, not yet anyway. Maybe sometime down the line a bit. I was actually thinking about the process as a whole. Some people are easy to buy for, some people are a pain in the ass. Some gifts are fun to buy, some are not.

This is where you come in... I need the answers to two questions regarding gift giving.

First question... What would you consider the worst gift you had to buy for someone? I'm not talking about white elephant gifts or gag gifts. I mean what gift did you have to buy for someone that just made your skin crawl, activated your gag reflex, made the hairs on your neck stand on end? But you did it anyway because it was what this person wanted.

For me, it was the Bodyguard soundtrack CD that I bought for my brother one Christmas years ago. I know I don't always listen to the greatest music and that some might consider my tastes to be bad. But this? An album of nothing but Whitney Houston tripe? This was physically painful for me to have to purchase. Mainly because I could not fathom that living around me did not rub off on him more positively. The shame I felt.

Second question... what do you think others may have considered to be the worst gift you bought for them? This would be something that you bought that you just know this other person despised. It may have been purchased intentionally to drive them nuts or maybe they just didn't receive it the way you intended.

For Katie and me, it was a gift package of Chicago Bears bib, baby bowls, sippee cups, and plastic flatwear that we purchased as a baby shower gift for Katie's cousin and his wife. Why was it so horrible? Well, her cousin is a diehard Bears fan, so we're pretty sure he liked it. But he lives and works in Green Bay and is married to a woman who bleeds Packer green and gold. We knew this when we bought it. It was purchased wholly for him in his quest to keep his newborn daughter on the good side of fandom. And we're pretty sure it's either been disposed of by his wife or has at least been hidden far, far away.

I think I have discovered the definition of "geek porn." And it's a song.

The song is "(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar" by The Guild featuring Felicia Day (she being the object of many a geek fantasy herself after her starring role in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog).

It is a truly hilarious satire (at least I choose to look at it as satire) about people who take their online realities very seriously. Not to poke and prod them too much as they might rise up in revolt against me, but it is well done and funny. (For the record, there is a video embedded below that you may not be able to see if you're reading this from my Facebook wall. Wanna see it? Click through to this post on my blog.)

Also, this video is receiving huge traffic so you might want to click to start it and then pause it to wait for the entire video to preload before you play it straight through.

Check out the song on Amazon or on iTunes.

Alright, already, we'll all float on...

Need I say more? Didn't think so. Okay, I will anyway. Go check out my guest post at Secondhand Tryptophan.

Yesterday was Triple Feature Friday for the ol' kapgar. Something I'm pretty sure I've never done before in my life. Yes, three movies in one day. And I stayed awake for all three!

First, after Katie finished her student teaching meetings during the day, she and I went to see (500) Days of Summer. Absolutely brilliant movie. It was so well done and if this doesn't hammer home the name Joseph Gordon-Levitt as one of the better 20 to 30-something actors in Hollywood right now (I think he's 28), nothing will. And Zooey Deschanel? I don't think there's anything I can say that hasn't already been said. She's just fantastic.

After that was The Time Traveler's Wife. Admittedly, I have not read the book yet so I cannot compare from one medium to the other. But Katie just finished the book a couple weeks ago. As someone who has only seen the movie, I enjoyed it. I was never bored nor confused and I enjoyed the interplay between Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. Katie said that there were some key details left out and the ending was very different, but it didn't bother her too terribly. She still cried like a baby at the end and enjoyed it overall. She did tell me, however, that whereas the book's description of time travel kinda confused her, it all made sense when she saw it on screen. The woman sitting next to us completely agreed.

Then, later that night, my buddy Eric invited me to go see DIstrict 9 with him. I need to admit something about this movie... before last week, I'd never heard about it at all. No previews, no posters, no nothing. Then I saw a trailer tacked onto G.I. Joe and just thought it looked weird. But I went anyway after Eric gave me a primer on it. I FREAKIN' LOVED IT! Holy crap. I haven't had this much fun at an alien film in years. Probably not truly since Aliens in '86. The documentary style of shooting this film and splicing in the news and archival footage was brilliant. Plus, it was the most perfect integration of live acting and CGI I've ever seen. And the movie was a ton of fun, too. I don't want to say much about the plot of the movie whatsoever because I think my going into it with a complete sense of tabula rasa really helped the experience immensely. Just go see it.

'nuff said.

You were a vampire...

Today we will talk to a 12-year-old girl who was impregnated by her seven-year-old half cousin who summarily left her for his 52-year-old social studies teacher. Now she's working as a greeter at a local Wal-Mart while living in a mobile home that she shares with a family of dogs that sought refuge after escaping from Michael Vick's, er, kennel and traveled halfway across the country with a bunch of crack-addicted carnies. All this and more, today on Snippet Wednesday!

Talkies
Something like that might actually get me to tune into Maury or Tyra or Oprah or whomever. Alas...

Coraline
Instead, I watch movies like Coraline, which, in all honesty, completely underwhelmed me. And I was a fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas. A big fan. But Coraline? Meh. The animation was pretty cool, but the story just didn't flow well for me. It felt too forced and no fun.

True
The good thing is now that I'm sending back Coraline to Netflix, I will finally be starting up on HBO's True Blood, season one. My only complaint about this is that each disc of the set only has two or three episodes on it. I've become so accustomed to four or five episodes per disc (House does five per disc from season three on) that this is just not gonna be enough to whet my appetite. I know it's all about the timing. Network shows are shorter because of commercials. But HBO shows aren't that much longer. They still have commercials, just at the ends of the episodes. Most episodes of Deadwood still clocked in at only about 45 minutes each and that was HBO as well. Stinks of a plot to upcharge for the DVD set, if you ask me.

NFL10
It was time to renew my subscription to Sports Illustrated and I saw that they had a new offer... subscribe for a half year and get a free copy of EA Sports Madden NFL 10 on whatever gaming platform you want. So I checked, and they do have it for the Wii. I'm not a huge fan of the Madden games. They just get too damn complex for me. But on a Wii? This could be fun. And Katie wants to play it with me. We can be terrible together (I was going to say "we can suck together" but I know how you perverts think). 

Lebanon
Is it wrong that I saw the headline to this article -- "Arlen Specter Faces Angry Lebanon Crowd on Health Care" -- and all I could think was "what the hell is Marie doing now?" Of course this time, they actually are talking about Lebanon, Pennsylvania, not the country that Marie is currently visiting. My bad.

Lego
I'm a fan of nearly all things Lego (except maybe for Bionicle). I love these little bricks and have since I was about five years old. I still get excited when new sets get released and I love going in Lego stores. It's just too much fun. But this announcement of a combination live action/animation film featuring Legos? I dunno. I can't say I'm looking forward to it at all. Please, just nix it before it goes too far.

When you're gone...

I swear, when technology rains, it freakin' pours.

About a month ago, the left half of my Bose In-Ear Buds died brutally. I was at the gym running and *fzztt* they died. That left me with the gym-attendant-chosen radio station. Christ it's painful.

You might remember me inquiring on Facebook and Twitter about some SkullCandy Ink'd earbuds. While I haven't picked them up yet, I still may. I've been suffering through the humiliation that is the standard iPod earbuds in the meantime, though.

Katie is not happy about the death of the Bose since we spent $100 on them. To me, I got a relatively good value out of them since I used them nearly daily for a year and a half, but it does still kinda suck. And that amount of money is why I was asking about something much less expensive like the SkullCandys. I can't see myself spending as much as I did on the Bose again. Not now at least.

And this morning, while watching the final episode of season one of Battlestar Galactica, another pair is fuzzing out on one side. I was listening to the episode on my big ol' Pioneer SE4000s to keep from waking up Katie. I've loved these over-the-ear, noise-reducing 'phones for quite a while. They're huge, they're bulky, the plastic of the frame creaks when you move them around... but I didn't care. The sound was fantastic, the bass response was awesome, the big sponge and foam covers blocked out anything short of a nuclear blast, and they have about a seven- or eight-foot-long cord so I could still sit a comfortable distance from the TV or stereo and use them.

The best thing about them? They cost me $50 and lasted 16+ years. I was still in high school when I got them, that much I'm sure about, and I graduated high school in '93. Damn, they don't even show up in a quick Google search, that's how old they are.

Crap. Now I need to choose which to replace. I'm sure it will be my daily wear since I'd use them more often. I may be able to juice some more time out of my Pioneers since they aren't completely dead yet. If I move around the cable on the left side a little bit, the sound returns. Annoying, yes. But better than buying two new pairs of 'phones.

This blows.

I am very techno-bummed right now.

It really kills me sometimes when a song like The Who's "Who Are You," for example, comes up on shuffle on my iPod like it did this morning and all I can think of is the opening credit sequence from CSI.

It truly pains me that I can no longer enjoy the song just for the song but that it now has to be forever associated with that show in my head. It's not always such a bad thing like, say, when used in a Quentin Tarantino movie. But, otherwise, TV and product ad usage are really gonna be the death of my enjoyment of music.