Where the Hell is Matt? has apparently been making the rounds on the internets for a while now. It’s a guy traveling around the world and dancing like an idiot. And it’s surprisingly cool.

The rest of this post is a spoiler for the season 2 premier of The Venture Brothers:
Read the rest of this entry »

My birthday was today, and I got exactly what I asked for two weeks ago: a birthday card from and signed by my daddy. He wrote my name on the front and my age and year on the inside. And it looks like his normal handwriting (which, he’d have to admit, was kind of scratchy to begin with).

He didn’t put any money in it, though, the cheapskate.

Somehow I’ve pissed off the travel gods. Today they decided to delay my connecting flight back to Atlanta for two hours before cancelling it. So I’m stranded in Dulles, Virginia.

I could put a bit in here about how Dulles airport is the most hateful place on the planet Earth, and how the mouthbreathing pederasts who work for United at the airport are a scourge that must be stricken from the world, but it’s already very late and I want to go to bed.

It should suffice to say that I landed around 3:30pm, and it’s 2am now and I just got to the hotel. (Which, it’s worth pointing out, I have to pay for. Thanks, United!) I thought for a while about how I could get manage to get some work done around airport times and hotel check-out times and such, and then I thought, “screw it.” If I’m stuck here anyway I might as well make the best of it. I’m going to make an attempt to travel to DC and see the Mall and memorials and George’s house. It’s been 15 years since I’ve been to DC, and seeing as how I’m never ever going to travel to Dulles again, this may be my last chance.

Of course, the weather that supposedly cancelled my flight will probably ruin any attempts at sightseeing. And according to the internets I’m at least an hour away, so it may be completely impractical. And my camera is in my checked luggage, which is currently at some unspecified location in the southeast, so I’d be getting nothing but memories. Still, reading Sarah Vowell and a biography of Robert E. Lee got me hankering to see the capitol again, so I figure it’s worth a shot.

(Of course I wouldn’t even be considering it if my daddy’s condition weren’t relatively stable. But since I’m going to be stuck here anyway, it’ll be better than sitting here in a hotel room feeling depressed and worthless for not being down there already).

Update: What gets me is that no matter how pessimistic I think I’m being, it’s not pessimistic enough. Getting from the airport to anything sightseeing-worthy in DC would take a couple hours on a good day, and this weather has apparently paralyzed the entire Washington area. I didn’t feel like risking an attempt out there, so I just get to wait at the airport again for five hours (at least; this flight is going to be delayed as well, I’ll bet a million bucks). What’s really a drag is that this would’ve been a perfect opportunity to see my friend Alfredo for the first time in I don’t know how many years, but no dice. Maybe when I make my big tour of the eastern seaboard again, hitting Boston, New York, DC, and everywhere except #@$%&! Dulles, VA.

One of the advantages to spending so much time in waiting rooms and on planes (all right, the only advantage) is that it gives me a chance to get caught up on my readin’ and watchin’. And now, bloggin’.

Nacho Libre
I’m baffled as to why this one is getting walloped in the reviews. It’s not a great movie by any stretch, but it does deliver exactly what it advertises: Jack Black doing his usual schtick, with a cheesy Mexican accent in a movie about luchadores by the guy who made Napoleon Dynamite. I thought the movie was fine — not brilliant, but pretty funny throughout — and I don’t even like Jack Black. It’s got his prancing around, and his poop jokes (but the fart jokes, I like), and it’s got Jared Hess’ poor-man’s-Wes-Anderson thing going on, but as far as lightweight forgettable comedies go, I don’t see what’s not to like about it.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
I’ve had this one for a year but was scared to read it what with its being so long and all. I ended up flying right through it; it’s a great book. I’ve seen reviews that describe it as “Harry Potter for adults,” but I suspect that insults both the authors as well as their audiences. They’re only comparable in that they’re British and they’re about magicians.

Jonathan Strange perfectly conveys the feel of a novel written in England at the beginning of the 1800s, without resorting to too many obvious cliches like mimicking Charles Dickens’ or Jane Austen’s style, or an overabundance of “M_____” names. All the characters are believable (if somewhat anachronistic), and even the villains are sympathetic. And as one of the back-cover reviews says, it really does leave you convinced that there’s a real history of magic in England that none of us knew about.

Even when I wasn’t reading the book, I was eager to get back to it and frequently dreamt about the characters. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how to adapt it into a screenplay. So it was definitely compelling. The book does peter out a little bit towards the end, but it is a satisfying ending even if it’s more anti-climactic than I would’ve liked.

Hogfather
I started reading this book and then stopped and then picked it up again and I finished it. I suspect I’m getting burnt out on Discworld, because this one didn’t do a whole lot for me. I didn’t dislike it, but it was kind of the paperback fantasy book equivalent of celery. I feel completely unchanged as a person after having read it.

A Short History of Nearly Everything
This one is frustrating. It’s very well written — the language is clear throughout, it flows naturally from one topic to the next, and you’re never feeling left behind. But it always stops frustratingly short of what you really want to know. In the introduction to the book, Bryson explains that he wrote the book because of two major failings of science textbooks: they’re cold, dry, and impersonal; and they never explain how scientists arrived at the discoveries they made. Bryson nails the first part; he goes into the scientists’ personal histories and puts a human face on every discovery. But he fails completely at the second; I still have no better idea how these ideas and principles work than I did when I started reading.

For example, he describes how Ernest Rutherford used the half-life of radioactive materials to calculate the age of a sample and from that, estimate the age of the earth: “By calculating backwards from how much radiation a material had now and how swiftly it was decaying, you could work out its age. He tested a piece of pitchblende and found it to be 700 million years old — very much older than the age most people were prepared to grant the Earth.” Okay, Bill, but how? How did he know the size of the original sample? I can’t shake the feeling that there’s some obvious insight I’m missing, which is definitely not how the reader should be left feeling from a lightweight, accessible overview-of-science book.

And he keeps doing that. We hear about Max Planck’s career and how he developed quantum mechanics, but we never learn what quantum mechanics is. We hear about Albert Einstein and get a little bit of an explanation of the theory of relativity (space is like a rubber mattress with balls on it) but then we’re told that nobody really understands it, so we’re left to assume there’s no point in trying to explain it.

Plus, I’m only just over 100 pages into the book, and he’s already described about a dozen people as the greatest genius who ever lived. I’m starting to get the impression that Bryson doesn’t understand the stuff himself, and he’s trying to cover everything up. It’s possible that I’m just not the target audience for the book, and it’s meant for more general audiences who just want an overview instead of a more detailed summation. But it just leaves me with the same feelings of frustration that Bryson describes in his introduction. I really wanted somebody to explain quantum mechanics and relativity and carbon dating and how they know the age of the earth to me so I could understand it, for once.

The Odyssey
I admit I just started to read this one because of the references in “Lost.” I’m starting to remember that we had to read it in high school, and I couldn’t follow it then, either.

“The Venture Brothers” is definitely the best show on [adult swim], and if it weren’t for “Lost,” it’d be the best show on TV right now. I got the Season One DVDs when I was down in Georgia, and I’ve finally gotten around to watching the extra features.

The extra features aren’t enough to buy the DVD on their own, but it’s a great touch they went out of their way to include them. (Besides, the episodes are so good I’d've bought the set without any extras). There are interviews with the cast of the “live action movie,” and a special making-of segment. I haven’t listened to the commentary tracks yet. The best special feature is the totally bad-ass slipcase art by Bill Sienkiewicz.

The new season starts Sunday, June 25th, and adultswim.com has been running teasers for a sneak preview available online tomorrow (Friday). If you want to get as excited as I am, you can check out Jackson Publick’s blog and this fansite for the show.

It was from one of those blogs I heard about J.G. Thirlwell, who does the music for the show and records under the name “Foetus.” His album Ectopia (recorded as “Steroid Maximus”) is pretty damn cool. A few years ago I got Music for Imaginary Films by Arling & Cameron, and while I liked the concept, the music itself was predictable and dull. Ectopia delivers on the concept and is better in every conceivable way.

BBC News: Superman ‘not gay’ says director

Defamer.com’s painful beating-the-joke-into-the-ground

10. Wears blue tights, red cape, boots, and codpiece.

9. Flies around Earth at super-speed, turns back time long enough to deliver snappier comeback to Lex Luthor than earlier “Oh no you didn’t, bitch!”

8. Starts a weblog.

7. Outfits Fortress of Solitude with hot tub, private gym, and ironic 50s and 60s ephemera.

6. Dresses dog in matching costume.

5. Giggles uncontrollably at sexual innuendo.

4. Won’t stop quoting Bring it On.

3. Clark Kent requests transfer from news desk to gossip column.

2. Admits true weakness is not Kryptonite, but the Bravo channel.

1. Reveals that time away from Earth was spent writing a poignant, wry, and bittersweet memoir of his experiences coming to terms with a world that doesn’t understand him.

Thanks to everybody who sent e-mails with sympathy and offers to help; it was appreciated. My daddy’s condition is improving very slowly, but he and the rest of the family are going to be pretty miserable until he gets out of the hospital.

As for me, I’m 3000 miles away, unable to do anything except sit here and worry about it. I’ve got one week back here in San Francisco to get everything in order best as I can. Then it’s back down to Georgia for at least two months, maybe longer. I’d been stressing out enough at the prospect of spending an entire month down in Florida for work, and that was on the assumption I’d be home right up until the last minute to get everything done. Now, my living-out-of-a-suitcase time has been doubled, and I’m convinced that I’m going to forget something.

On the bright side, though: well, I’m sure there’s a bright side in there somewhere.

Update: It’s not fun to think about, I realize, but everyone should take a minute to get familiar with the ASA’s signs to recognize a stroke. They’re not that many to memorize. And it can make a huge difference in the event somebody you love starts showing the signs and you’re wondering whether to call 911 or not.