Alexander

I would imagine that a House Inferno would be worse than a Disco Inferno...

No, it's not the best Morgan date by a long shot, but the title track has good hook and (wait for it) you can dance to it. Henderson is in great form on that album. I've long been of the opnion that the title track is actually the weakest number on the album and that it gets much better after that...

I'm planning on getting this as soon as I have sufficient funds. I loved the first volume and am very much looking forward to the second. I'm on board for the discount as well! I'll PM when I have the money in my Paypal account...

I love Hill's work, and have a couple of solo albums by him, so I'm looking forward to this!

Congrats, Paul! My wife and I have been together for 18 years and have been married for 12. And we still like each other! We still talk! Kinda amazing...

Cool! Can't wait! I might even have a JOB by the time these come out!

Oy!

A good friend of mine, a woman I went to high school with, was in a serious motorcycle accident about six years ago. She was wearing a helmet (albiet a helment without any padding or lining) but she sustained a serious head trauma anyway. She was in a coma for several days after the accident, and when she came out of it, she wasn't the same person. Her personality has changed completely. Sure she was a little flakey before her accident, but she was a very cool individual. Great sense of humor, very bright...she just made some bad choices. Now she's mean, selfish, reckless (moreso than before) and...well...a nymphomanaic (every time we talk to her she's boasting about her latest sexual conquest...usually another brain-injured patient). If she isn't a nymphomanaic, she's a pathological liar, but it's really six of one/half a dozen of the other. The point is she's not well and her behavior reflects that. We, all of her old friends, tried to stand by her after the accident, but she's really driven everyone away with her behavior. It's tragic. Her life was ruined because of one bad day (the bike, incidentally, had both transmission and braking trouble and she should not have been riding it at all, much less on the LA Freeway). Another friend of mine has a wife who just became a doctor. We were disscussing this very issue and she told me that in the ER they had a joke that the only difference between a helmet and no helmet in a motorcycle accident is an open casket or closed casket funeral...

So far today we've had brunch, went miniature golfing, and hit the amusement park! Right now we're chilling out in air-conditioned comfort (nearly 90 degrees outside today) before we grill up some steaks for dinner. Wife and child are watching TV in the living room while I listen to music (the one day a year I don't get hassled for doing this!)... Fun day! Wish it came more than once a year!

Great! Of course, in order to carry around as much music as on my iPod, I'd have to carry around around 3146 cylinders, not to mention the device on which to play them... Far better than an iPod, I'm sure!

BTW, speaking of Cthulhu, here's a great song parody I found on-line. It's sung to the tune of "Hakkuna Matata" from "The Lion King"... (The singers are Dagon and Abhoth) Cthulhu Fthagn -- What a wonderful phrase! Cthulhu Fthagn -- Say it and you're crazed! It means "Cthulhu, Rising out of the haze!" It's a prophecy, We'll all soon see Cthulhu Fthagn. Ahhh, yes! Cthulhu Fthagn. It's our motto, our slogan, our credo! Oh, I hate that! What? Han Solo clearly shot first! Not "Greedo", "credo"! When he was a Outer God -- When I was a Outer God! Easy on the reverb, sport. He found that his form lacked a certain appeal, All his glistening pseudopods made blood congeal. I'm a sensitive soul! At the end of the day, It hurt that my friends' flesh all melted away. Oh the shame! The terrible shame! What a disgrace! Falling from grace! Till I decided to blame Whose fault is it? The whole human race! Yeah! What the heck where they doing hanging around with an acidic mass of flesh-devouring polyps, anyway? Hey! Can I help it if I'm an "ick" magnet? Cthulhu Fthagn! Now we're in for strange days! It screws up your noggin -- Turns planets into buffets! And Great Cthulhu Spares whoever obeys! So get off of me, You monstrosity! Cthulhu Fthagn! Cthulhu Fthagn! Cthulhu Fthagn! Cthulhu Fthagn! -- if we keep doing this, he's gonna show up. ... Kewl! It means "Cthulhu, Rising out of the haze!" It's insanity, For humanity -- Cthulhu Fthagn! I say Cthulhu! And I say Fthagn! If I said Ithaqua, We'd need a toboggan! Cthulhu Fthagn!

Blasphemer! Everyone knows that it is Cthulhu who will harvest the souls of the living! Now THAT'S a God we can all get behind! (Dammit! Now I'm in the mood for sushi...)

I looked into the link gdogus posted and I read it with interest. However, if we look to Luke for evidence of the "it was really Mary who was descended from David" explanation, what are we to make of this? Luke.2 [1] And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. [2] (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) [3] And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. [4] And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) [5] To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. So Luke states with great confidence that it was Joseph who was related to David, not Mary. Moreover, at least in the KJV, Luke's geneology is also clearly patrilineal: [23] And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, [24] Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph, [25] Which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Amos, which was the son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was the son of Nagge, [26] Which was the son of Maath, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Juda, [27] Which was the son of Joanna, which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel, which was the son of Salathiel, which was the son of Neri, [28] Which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the son of Cosam, which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er, [29] Which was the son of Jose, which was the son of Eliezer, which was the son of Jorim, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, [30] Which was the son of Simeon, which was the son of Juda, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Jonan, which was the son of Eliakim, [31] Which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David, [32] Which was the son of Jesse, which was the son of Obed, which was the son of Booz, which was the son of Salmon, which was the son of Naasson, [33] Which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Juda, [34] Which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham, which was the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor, [35] Which was the son of Saruch, which was the son of Ragau, which was the son of Phalec, which was the son of Heber, which was the son of Sala, [36] Which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of Sem, which was the son of Noe, which was the son of Lamech, [37] Which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan, [38] Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God. I don't see any Mary in there, do you? Then, of course, the "mother" explanation is designed to explain the fact that Luke's geneology bears virtually no resemblance to Matthew's. But both lines seem to trace Jesus's bloodline through the father, not the mother (also, all of the names here are male). As to the "Mosaic Law" explanation...I don't know. You might have a point there. The OT prophesies only say that the Messiah will be from the "House of David." Doesn't say how the Messiah gets into that house, does it? So you could get around it that way, I suppose. As to the question of who "claims" what, it is true that Jesus doesn't go around saying that he's the Messiah because he's related to David. But since the authors of the Gospels were clearly TRYING to fob Jesus off as the Jewish Messiah, it was obviously very important to THEM that Jesus fit the profile exactly. I guess it seems to me that "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy," as the author of the Downing Street memo might put it.

But read the "begats" above! The line described is definitely paternal. If Matthew is to be believed, it is through Joseph, not Mary, that Jesus claims descent from David.

This is a question I may have asked before, but I can't recall if I got an answer or not. Mind you, this is really not intended as a smartass "gotcha" question, but one I'd like a serious answer to if at all possible. For our Christian posters: How do the various branches of Christianity solve the following conundrum... I know that according to the NT, Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. He's the Messiah of the Jews (even though the Jews themselves do not recognize Him as such) because He fulfilled the prophesies of the OT, one of which was that the Messiah would be of the House of David. As evidence of this, most of the Gospels have a geniology that links Jesus to David through a series of "begats." This one comes from Matthew, KJV: [1] The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. [2] Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; [3] And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; [4] And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon; [5] And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; [6] And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias; [7] And Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa; [8] And Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias; [9] And Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias; [10] And Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias; [11] And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon: [12] And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zorobabel; [13] And Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor; [14] And Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud; [15] And Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob; [16] And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Please take note of line 16. This is the conundrum. According to Matthew, Jesus is related to David through Joseph. Which is fine. Except that according to standard belief Joseph is not Jesus's father. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but Joseph is not supposed to be a blood relative, right? Jesus was sired by God Himself who visited Mary in the form of the Holy Spirit and impregnated her while she was still a virgin. If that is indeed the case, then Joseph is Jesus's "step-father," so to speak. And Jesus is not descended from the House of David. Which means He can't be the Messiah as predicted in the OT, since the Messiah has to be of the House of David. Or.... Jesus IS the son of Joseph, which makes Him the Messiah but also makes Him completely human. So...Jesus is the Messiah as predicted in the OT and is NOT the Son of God, or He IS the Son of God and is not the Messiah. Can't be both. Hence, my question: How do YOU (or your church) explain this? Okay, maybe it is a "gotcha" question... But I'd still like an answer...

I sort my records by the type of tree the sleeve was made out of...

I was thinking more along the lines of these kids...

Ducks have been dealing with aliens for years...

Warning...Spoilers ahead... As it happened, I didn't have a subbing gig today, so I went to see the new version of "The Omen" (just had to see it on 6/6/06). Having seen the original in bits and pieces over the years on countless late shows, I was already very familiar with the story when I finally saw the original on the big screen several years back when I was living in Rochester. The point being that even though it's been five or six years since I last saw it, the original is pretty fresh in my mind, and I was able to draw comparisons between the two films. I would like to start off by noting that I'm not a purist or a devotee of the 1976 film, and was probably a bit more receptive to the idea of a remake than many critics. That said, I liked the remake quite a bit. I thought the cast (with the possible exception of Julia Stiles, whose chubby face always makes me want to pinch her) was of extremely high quality. Liev Schriber is much younger than Gregory Peck and doesn't have half of Peck's charisma, but he certainly plays the role of an American Ambassador with the kind of easy charm one comes to expect from career politicians. The British actors (including Pete Postlewaite and Michael Gambon (doing one hell of a Leo McKern impression)) are all extremely good and chew the scenery as only highly talented Brits slumming in American films can (ask Ian McKellen, who seems to have cornered the market on such roles), adding a good deal of class to the proceedings. Stealing the show, however, is Mia Farrow in the role originated by the great Billie Whitlaw. Nowadays evil nannies are a dime-a-dozen, and the only way to set THIS evil nanny apart from her post-"Hand That Rocks the Cradle" sisters is to cast none other than Rosemary herself in the role (I was suprised at how little reaction her appearence on the screen generated in the theater. I suspect that I was the only person in that showing who had seen "Rosemary's Baby"). She oozes menace, especially when she talks about how much she loves children. What really sets this "Omen" apart from the 1976 film is improved special effects. In the original film, when David Warner's head is lopped off, it takes a lot of willing suspension of disbelief to forget that what's rolling accross the floor is clearly the head of a mannequin. Here, all of the nasty demises take place on screen and look disturbingly real. Whether this is an improvement over the original is a matter of personal taste, of course. I know I enjoyed seeing decapitiations that LOOKED like decapitiations, but everyone may not agree. Finally, there is the boy. I thought he put in a good performance, but I have to wonder why ALL evil children in movies have bowl-cuts? The thing I missed most from the original was the score. The 1976 film has great music, almost all of which is performed by a choir in Latin (but with approprately evil lyrics). It really adds to the twisted liturgical ambiance of the film. This film has fairly anonymous music, which hardly detracts from the film, but it doesn't add to it either. Some critics, too, have lambasted the film's Czech locations (substituting for London and Rome), but I honestly didn't notice. (I also had no problem with Prague "playing" Vienna in "Amadeus," so why should I complain here?) In short, I thought the film succeeds. Indeed, any film that succeeds in killing off Julia Stiles is OK in my book. Recommeded for those who like this sort of thing.

Never fails...

I have that parody in a hardcover anthology of comics from the 30s to the 50s. There's also a wonderful parody of Howdy Doody called "Howdy Doodit." In the opening scene, the kids attack Buffalo Bob. We see blood splattering the screen while a hand-written card is held up announcing "technical difficulties." During the story, the Howdy Doodit puppet only appears to pitch various products such as "Skwushy Bread" and "Bupgoo," a syrup that makes milk look like beer. "You see, Bupgoo works on the principle that children want what they cannot have..." The story ends with a little boy declaring that he wants to grow up to be a money-grubbing hustler just like Howdy Doodit, to which Buffalo Bob declares: "No, child. Howdy Doodit is but a simple puppet. He is no money-grubbing hustler. I, Buffalo Bob, am the money-grubbing hustler!" While I did read Mad in the 70s, it was never as brilliant as it was during the Kurtzman age. I should note, however, that I did buy a recent issue because my friend Jason has a strip in it. It's still not very funny, but there was a delightful story drawn by Drew Friedman that depicted a "day in the life" of Dick Cheney (which is punctuated by frequent heart-attacks and trips to the hospital).

The biggest problem with the site is the fact that these people can't spell...

I saw it last night (and stayed past the credits to see the "X-tra Scene"). Here are my thoughts: SPOILER WARNING!!!!! I have issues with the way the story was structured and, yes, I am a fan from waaaaaay back and I actually used to OWN the "Death of Phoenix" issue, so I also have some problems with the way the film deviates from the source material. I'm not freaking out over the fact that Jean was considerably less cosmic and god-like than she was in the comic. Nor am I freaking out over the fact that the final conflict wasn't held in the Blue Area of the Moon in the presence of the Watcher. No, I certainly understand that comics are comics and movies are movies, and changes have to be made. That said: I strongly disagree with killing off Cyclops during the first fifteen minutes of the film. The Professor X thing was different (for one thing, he's not really dead). For me, who grew up reading my dad's old comics (I'm talking about the stuff from the 60s), Cyclops IS the X-Men. He's certainly the guy with the coolest power (I mean, come on...Claws are great, but we're talking about OPTIC BLASTS here). He's also the only original X-Man to make the transition from the old Lee/Kirby team to the "new" team introduced in Giant Sized X-Men #1 (I know that the other members of the "old" team - the Beast, the Angel, Iceman, and Marvel Girl/Phoenix - were part of the "new" X-Men from time to time, but only Scott was there consistantly). I had felt that Cyclops was marginalized in the first two X-Men films, but killing him off (by Jean no less) is just...wrong. I know why they did it. And it works, for dramatic purposes. It says that none of the characters are safe (well, except for Wolverine. He has to survive to spin off into his own series of films). It certainly shocked the hell out of me and kept me on the edge of my seat. But Scott and Jean were THE big couple at Marvel Comics (sort of like Lois and Clark over at DC). When Jean died (sacrificing herself to save the universe) it was made all the more poignant because it happened while Scott was fighting to save her life. Jean's death in the film was somewhat hollow without Scott there. Wolvie may have loved her, but Scott LOVED her. In the comic, when it comes time to take Jean down, Wolverine can't bring himself to hurt her because of his love for her. In the film, Wolverine kills Jean...why? Well, she's become dangerous as hell, of course. But why was it HIS hand that had to pull the trigger, so to speak? Why not Storm? Or even Magneto? Also, Scott's death meant that he wasn't on hand for the first "reunion" of the original team in the films (this was the first film to have all five of the original X-Men, or rather it would have if Scott had been alive when the Angel and the Beast turned up). That aside, I was entertained. I liked Kelsey Grammar's performance as the Bounding Beast (always one of my favorite characters). It was a truly inspired bit of casting. I wish they had retained the plot point that the Juggernaut is Professor X's half-brother (there's a reason that his name is "Cain Marko"), but I enjoyed his part in the film. I should point out, however, that in the comic book the Juggernaut is NOT a mutant. He got his power from some sort of mystic ruby. So he shouldn't have been effected by Leech's power. I also wish they'd found more to do for the Multiple Man (I know it's goofy, but I always liked him in the comics). I was also saddened that Alan Cummings did not reprise his role as Nightcrawler from X2. Seeing the blue, furry Beast fighting side-by-side with the blue, fuzzy Nightcrawler would have been a hoot. I thought that McKellen was, ahem, magnetic (couldn't resist). I liked the opening scene in which he and Professor X visit the young Jean. The digital make-over (much ballyhooed in the press) was well done. Although I recognized quite a few names from the ending credits, I thought that the younger X-Men and most of the evil mutants were too anonymous (I had the feeling that many of the "punks" that Magneto hooked up with were supposed to be the sewer dwelling Morlocks, but it wasn't clear). I also liked (in his small role) Michael Murphy as Warren Worthington II (father of the high-flying Angel). I also appreciated the cameo made by the mutant-hunting Sentinels during the danger-room simulation (I was upset the Cyke wasn't included in that scene either). Seeing Kitty Pryde (who had appeared in the first two films as an anonymous student) in action was great, and I loved that she took out the Juggernaut. But on the whole it wasn't as good as the previous two films. Was it too many mutants, as many have claimed? Perhaps, but I think the biggest problem was that too much attention was paid to the spectical in the end and not enough to the simple human moments that always defined the comic.

Passengers Bravely Take Down Plane Showing Big Momma's House 2 Crews search the crash site, just hours after Flight 43 went down WASHINGTON, DC—The Federal Aviation Administration announced today that United Airlines Flight 43, which crashed outside Parkersburg, WV last Thursday, was in fact brought down by passengers who voluntarily sacrificed their lives in order to prevent the screening of the in-flight movie selection, Big Momma's House 2. All 105 people onboard died in the crash. "As we examine the passengers' cell-phone calls and flight recordings, we get a sense of the incredible courage displayed by these ordinary men and women," said FAA Administrator Marion Blakey at a press conference Monday, during which excerpts from the recordings were played. "They acted in the only way they could to stop this unspeakable horror starring Martin Lawrence as an FBI agent who goes undercover as a nanny for a sexy murder suspect." "These people are true American heroes," Blakey added. Flight 43 left New York's LaGuardia Airport on schedule last Thursday at 10:17 a.m. en route to Los Angeles with no indication of any suspiciously bad entertainment activity aboard. Black-box evidence indicates that, 40 minutes after takeoff, the crew walked through the cabin and asked passengers to close their window screens. The audio recording goes eerily quiet after a flight attendant can be heard announcing that Big Momma's House 2 would be shown. "It will be days, months perhaps, before we have a complete picture of exactly what happened," said FAA crash investigator Matthew Roberts, whose team was given the unpleasant job of analyzing Flight 43's last moments. "But we know that the passengers somehow assembled toward the rear of the cabin without attracting attention to themselves—which couldn't have been easy, considering the tense silence that typically accompanies a Big Momma's House film—and decided that they would rather die than let anyone do this to them." Around 11:00, business-class passenger Charles Rice left an emotional message on the cell-phone voicemail of his fiancée, Kathi Kearney. "Honey, it's me," Rice said in one of the excerpts. "I… God. Listen, they've darkened the cabin, and they've started showing Big Momma's House 2. The second one, I mean, and it… it's pretty bad. This might not go well, honey. A bunch of us are going to try to stop them. I have to go, we're going to go now. God, I am so sorry. You know I love you." Although Roberts said they may never determine who acted first or how the passengers organized their resistance to the brutally awful comedy, it is believed that all onboard were united in their need to stop the movie from being shown. In an amazing coincidence, at least one other person aboard Flight 43 had actually survived a screening of the original Big Momma's House on an international flight in 2001, which may have given them impetus to act. "It seems clear that, from the opening moments of the film, they knew exactly how it had to end—either 99 minutes later as Martin Lawrence's excruciating mugging brought it all to a heinous conclusion, or with the deaths of everyone aboard," Roberts said. "We can only hope that we would act with the same bravery and conscientiousness if presented with the same situation." Cabin recordings seem to indicate that a refreshment cart was used to charge the attendant station at the front of the aircraft at a decisive moment in the film in which a sexy potential villain asks Lawrence's character for help removing her bra. Much of the recording is incoherent, but Blakey played a 15-second segment in which some of the flight attendants can be heard exhorting passengers to remain seated while others seemed to be voicing second thoughts. "Clearly, the passengers were facing well-trained hard-liners intent on doing as much damage as they could," said Blakey, gesturing to the charred, partially melted Big Momma's House 2 DVD case found in the wreckage as evidence. "When they found the hospitality station locked down and secured as per airline policy, the only choice they had left was to infiltrate the cockpit." One last garbled transmission was made from Flight 43 just before it disappeared from air-traffic control's monitors. Though the FAA has not released it publicly, Blakey confirmed that the passengers can be clearly heard reciting the Lord's Prayer over the scream of the engines and the high falsetto shriek of a female-impersonating Martin Lawrence. Plans are already underway to honor the victims by presenting them with the Presidential Medal Of Freedom, a $4 million memorial in the West Virginia field where Flight 43 crashed, and a proposed Spring 2007 release of Flight 43, a big-budget action comedy-drama starring Chris Tucker as Martin Lawrence.

The hell with Taylor and Kat! John Daker should be the next American Idol! Listen to him swing "That's Amore"!