Comic book murder

I heard that the former organizer of the Pittsburgh Comicon was recently convicted for the murder of his wife 20 years ago.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24546594

Not that I ever knew the guy, but he always struck me as a profiteer with no interest in comics other than what money he could make from them. The MSNBC article says that comics were his passion, so I guess I'm wrong. I guess I'm still bitter over watching the comic book industry get ruined by the sleazy profit-mongers and I automatically lump any white guy over 45 wearing a suit in with them. Anyway, the Pittsburgh Comicon hit its high point in 1995 (the year before I moved here, of course) when they had Stan Lee as a guest. It's been on a slow decline ever since and I haven't even gone to it the last couple of years. Aside from a rare high point of having Clare Kramer (Glory from Buffy) and Mark Lutz (Groosalugg from Angel) as guests it's been pretty bad the last few years. I did get to talk to Ernie Hudson from one of my all time favorite movies (The Crow) though. What a nice guy.

Anyway, I remember the Con organizer guy at the auction on the last day back probably in 1999 or 2000. The item for auction was an autographed picture of the band Nirvana and he held it up for everyone to see. Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl had signed but "the guy in the middle didn't sign it," according to the organizer.

Um, yeah. That'd be Kurt Cobain, and he didn't sign it because he's dead.

Dumbass.

Poker

I was going to write some crap about online poker and gambling but bored myself halfway through. So I erased the whole thing and will just say that I played for 3years and will be stopping after September. It's been fun but it's time to move on to better things. I was spending too much time playing that stupid game for too little money. The reason I don't just stop now is that the site I play at has a loyalty program through which I can get an Ipod Touch if I earn enough points. After playing 20 more days I'll have enough points for that, and that'll be my final reward for playing this silly game all this time.

So what's next? I hope I'll spend that 2 hours a day writing instead of playing poker. Heck, whacking myself in a frying pan for 2 hours a day is marginally more productive than playing poker.

Comic book geekery

It's been a long time since I've bought a comic book. I've continued to read them and still enjoy them, but having them laying around is more trouble than they're worth. So I content myself with reading them in Borders over an orange-mango Cremekula or downloading them.

Not to mention, I think the medium is dying.

It's sad to think that this hobby that I enjoyed so much for a large part of my formative years will likely not exist in another 10 years. There are just too many distractions and comic books can't compete. There are too many video games to play, movies and tv shows to watch, gambling games to try to maximize expected value, porn sites to browse-- these are all hobbies that rely on introverted, near-auticstically intelligent, obsessive teenagers for their lifeblood and comics have to take a back seat to these more immediately gratifying hobbies.

The comic book industry only has iteself to blame. When speculators struck on comic books as a possible investment vehicle, the publishers were only too happy to milk them for all they were worth with multiple covers, special editions, and relaunches of titles starting the numbering at #1 again hoping speculators would buy and hoard boxes of them. For example, Marvel renumbered Iron Man at #1 for "volume 2" sometime in about 2000-- then inexplicably started at #1 again 13 months later for "volume 3". After the novelty of a new numbering system wore off, they wanted to reconnect to the original numbering of the Iron Man series so the comics would sport TWO issue numbers-- so the same issue would be Iron Man #80 (for volume 3) and #498 (for volume 1). Confused yet? I was long gone from being a regular comic book buyer by then. It didn't help that the collectors made the publishers shift comics from an intentionally cheap form of entertainment printed on newsprint to more expensive 'books' printed on longer-lasting paper stock. Comics were $0.65 each when I started buying them in the mid-80's and they're $3.99 now.

Not to mention that there hasn't been a good run of a monthly title in a while. All of the really good comic moments either happened in the silver age from 1960-1988 or in one-shot/miniseries. Too many of the new comics today are re-interpretations of these events, remapped to today's world. Not that these new interpretations aren't entertaining but orignality is severly lacking. The novelty of seeing modern Gwen Stacy in Ultimate Spider-Man's 21st century life versus the hip 60's chick wears off quickly.

I wonder if Marvel and DC will continue to be comic book publishers. Marvel has already made strides into producing their own movies instead of licensing their characters to others to make movies. The huge success of Iron Man shows that that may be a viable alternative to comics for them. They already redid The Hulk and a new Punisher movie is coming. Publishing comics may be a loss-leading strategy just to keep their characters in the public eye until they make their next movie.

The Fisher King

I had the day off today. I have to work on Saturday and having today off was the usual day off to make up for working tomorrow. Then I'm off Sunday and Labor day. You can't beat that.

I, uh, FOUND a way to watch The Fisher King before the library got it so thankfully when they're talking about it in class on Tuesday I'll be able to follow what they're saying.

The first thing I thought was that it takes place in NYC and was released in 1991, which prompted me to think "10 years after this film was released the world changed dramatically". I don't mean to be a downer about 9/11 but when I think about the world pre- and post-9/11 I get nostalgic. Before the tragedy, I wasn't even 30, my time in the informatics program just ended and I didn't know where my life was headed. I remember waking up 9/11/2001 listening to a TV news story on the Krispy Kreme that opened up in Cranberry that day (I used to fall asleep with the TV on and sometimes it'd be on all night). I only wish that was the biggest news story that day.

Wow, this entry sure took an unexpected turn! So, The Fisher King--

I enjoyed it. I'm not too familiar with the classic story of the Fisher King so I think a lot of the little touches were lost on me. But it's a story of redemption, and that's something universal. Jeff Bridges plays Jack Lucas, a highly successful, self-absorbed NYC radio shock jock who makes an off the cuff comment about how the patrons at a certain upscale NY bar/restaurant 'aren't human, only mate with their own kind and need to be stopped' to a deeply disturbed caller who had designs on asking out a woman that he had seen there. The caller later goes on a shooting rampage at the restaurant killing 7 people before turning the gun on himself. Lucas blames himself and goes into a deep depression. The film picks up 3 years later where Lucas spends his days drunk and ineffectually working at the video store of a woman he has been cohabitating with. One night he nearly tries to kill himself but encounters Parry (Robin Williams), a homeless man that Lucas learns was once a college professor who was with his wife at the restaurant the night of the shootings. Parry's wife was one of the 7 victims and witnessing her murder sent Parry on a downward spiral into mental institutions and homelessness.

In terms of screenwriting, there's definitely a lot to learn from how Lucas' character was set up. In only 8 mintues, we have a crystal-clear picture of who Jack Lucas is. That's impressive economy (on more than one occasion I've heard that poets and poetry students do very well writing screenplays). I'm sure we'll deconstruct it in class next week.

Dirty Dancing is next!

I forgot to mention...

Have I mentioned how good I am at jinxing myself? The room that I thought was going to be big enough for the screenwriting class actually wasn't the one I had pictured. It was much smaller and there aren't enough chairs even for the registered students. I, along with 2-3 other students, was sitting on the floor against the wall for class. I didn't mind and will continue to do it if that's the only option for me, but there really ought to be enough chairs for the paying customers at least.

I'm just saying.

Maybe the instructor will ask for a room change, but I'm not counting on it. Doesn't matter, though-- what is art without suffering?

First Class

The first screenwriting class was awesome. The 'book list' for the class is actually a DVD list: Dirty Dancing, The Fisher King, and Lars and the Real Girl. He made sure to point out that these movies were all made from 'spec scripts'-- that is, scripts that were written by the writer first (with no promise of getting paid or the script being made into a movie), then shopped around looking for someone who would want to make it into a movie. This is in contrast to a writing assignment where the studio knows that they want to make a movie about something (a book adaptation or an established character) and then they hire a writer for a treatment. The writer gets paid for his treatment but the studio can then decide they don't like it and throw out his/her script and hire someone else to write another one. The first writer still gets paid for his treatment even though the script was canned. The assignments of course go to the top A-list writers, folks who have proven reliable in meeting deadlines for writing and oh yeah-- have written a successful movie or two. Spider-Man was a writing assignment, as was Superman Returns, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone... you get the idea. I can tell that the prof loves movies and a good story. You can't fake enthusiasm like that and it really carries over into the class (I'm sure we've all had classes where nobody wanted to be there, especially the instructor). Lots of energy here. This is going to be good.

First assignment is to write one scene and include a specific sentence that he gave us in the scene. And it has to make sense in the context of the scene (i.e., you can't just have a character say this sentence because he's reading out loud from a book). Since I'm there just to listen and learn I won't be handing in the assignments, but I'll probably do them for the practice anyway. The purpose of the assignment is probably to get us writing in the proper format with some semblance of a goal (we have to work that sentence in somehow). I never hurts to go back to basics, so the undergrad class is exactly what I need right now.

Dirty Dancing is on Comcast On-Demand, I have Lars somewhere though I haven't watched it yet, and I reserved The Fisher King at the library. I should be all set to go.

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

How about $50,000? Would you make an ass of yourself on national TV by jumping onto giant red balls and falling facefirst into a mud pit?



I'm talking about the ABC show Wipeout. It may sound like I'm slamming the show but I'm not-- I actually find it pretty damn funny. People tune in (me included) to laugh at other people's misfortune. That sounds pretty terrible but nobody is forcing any of these folks to run this obstacle course which is so obviously built to make them look as stupid as possible. And I didn't even mention the contestants that apply to get on. Good grief, what are some of these people thinking? The athletes going on this show fine, I get it-- you're agile and strong and this represents a challenge to you. But the couch potatoes and average joes? Come ON! Why in the world would you go on this show? Have you exercised at all lately? No? Then what makes you think that you'll be able to complete the obstacle course faster than the 20 year-old, 6'0", 175lb personal trainer from Van Nuys? Because you're going to have to beat him in three different courses to win the money.

That's right-- only one person out of 24 wins $50,000. It'd be one thing to get paid $50,000 for making an ass of yourself on TV. But to make an ass of yourself, not make it past the first round and not get paid? No thanks.

But I enjoy watching it. I'm a bad person.

First class tonight-- and I can't wait!

The first screenwriting class of the semester meets tonight from 6-9:50pm. And it's a GOOD thing. It's so refreshing to be a student by choice instead of necessity; to learn something out of interest instead of a need for credits toward a degree. I think I have enough letters after my name and post-bac class time for 2-3 people. Since I don't want credits, I don't see a reason to have to pay for attending class. I got permission from the instructor (the screenwriter of Snakes on a Plane!) to sit in on it as long as there are enough chairs in the room. I'm so glad I work for the university so a request like this isn't much of a stretch to grant. I'm not so sure I'd be as welcomed if I were a random person asking to sit in (thus depriving the university of some tuition money). I've done this before with other classes and I know this room is pretty big, so there shouldn't be a problem. This is an undergrad class, whereas the last two screenwriting classes I've sat in on were graduate level. The grad level classes were great, thanks in large part to the very experienced and down-to-earth instructor (a writer from Saved By the Bell who is a 'burgh native). I've sat in on nearly all of his classes, screenwriting or not, just to scrounge for some nuggets of wisdom and for the funny anecdotes and I'll be doing it again in the spring when he teaches screenwriting again (he's let me sit in on so many of his classes it might be weird for him if I'm NOT there ha ha). But I'm looking forward to seeing how a different instructor approaches teaching screenwriting. [I'm so glad nobody reads this blog. Otherwise some university administrative bigwig might put the kibosh on my classroom freeloading]

I feel good about digging in and finally focusing on writing instead of spending all my free time on something stupid like online poker (I'll leave my not-so-favorable perspective on having been a semi-pro online poker player for another time). As a bonus, it looks like enough people from the screenwriting class from last spring are interested in finishing the screenplays they started so we should be meeting monthly. Sept 4th looks like our first non-class related screenwriting workship. If this blog becomes a 'screenplay progress report' I would be so happy. That would mean I'm making progress on my own screenplay.

I have a good feeling about this year. Not that I've had bad feelings at the start of previous years-- they've been more indifferent feelings before. That's got to mean something, right?

Kevin Smith Hosting Dinner for Five

Geez, how did I not know that Kevin Smith hosted a DF5 episode with freakin' Stan Lee, JJ Abrams, Mark Hammil, and Jason Lee before now?

Monday Monday...

In my first blog post I mentioned that I can now record all of the shows on network TV in HD but that I'd use the ReplayTV's and the remaining Tivo to record as backup. The reason for that is the last 3 of 4 episodes of Supernatural that were shown on the WPCW HD station on Comcast had a weird audio problem where the dialogue track was muted while the background music and sound effects tracks could still be heard. I know that it's not my Motorola box as I recorded the episode on the Vista machine also with the same problem. And during commercial breaks the audio was just fine; this only happened during the show. Quite annoying. I got around the problem by hooking the ReplayTV (on which I had also recorded the episode) up to my speaker system. So I could watch the HD picture with the audio from the SD recorded broadcast. The only difficult part of this hack was synching up the audio with the video. Luckily the TV has a Picture-in-Picture feature, so that made it easier to play back the show on both recording devices so they'd be in synch. I emailed Rob Owen (the TV writer for the Post-Gazette) and I also emailed the WPCW station website about the problem. I wonder if either one will respond. I just hope they fix this soon and that we don't have to wait til 2/09 for the digital OTA switch for the problem to go away.

I'll see if I still have use for my remaining Tivo in a couple of months or if I'll be happy enough with the ReplayTV's carrying the load for recording the standard def broadcast stuff. If I could DEFINITELY get $210 for it I'd sell. But if I'll only get something like $170 (a very real possibility), then I'd just as soon keep it until I have no use for it anymore or it breaks. It never hurts to have another 157 hours of potential recording time at your disposal. And Tivo just plain does a better job of keeping track of season passes and when shows change time slots. I trust that it'll grab Robot Chicken when the new season starts. Not so much with ReplayTV. I'll set up Vista Media Center to record Robot Chicken and see how it fares. I should add Mad Money and Chelsea Lately to the Replays and see how it works out. If I find I never use the Tivo, I might was well get some cash for it.

Otherwise, it's the first day of classes for the kiddies here. I can't believe how young they look. It's been a good day so far-- we haven't been overrun yet. Hopefully we won't be all year and we can keep up.

A moment of silence please

I sold my Soloflex home gym today. I got it a few months after I moved to Pittsburgh waaaaaay back in 1996 off a classified ad in the newspaper (before Craigslist. Geez, was Amazon even in business then? Ebay?). In retrospect, it's kind of surprising that I was able to get one in the first palce just because of how big and heavy they are (I think all told we're talking about 120lbs of metal and the longest piece of the thing is about 6 feet) and the only model car I've ever owned is the Honda Accord. Yeah, the Japanese engineers didn't really have hauling huge hunks of metal around in mind when they designed it. Luckily the dude I bought it from had a truck and for $20 delivered it to me. It's a nice piece of machinery. I wish I had the room to keep it. Not that I'm any kind of athletic specimen, but it did serve as a daily reminder to do some sort of exercise. It probably kept me in decent shape during the first 2-3 years I was in Pittsburgh when I'd be too mentally tired to trek over to Trees Hall to exercise after work. Sort of luckily the apartment building I was in built an exercise room in the first floor my second year of living there. That was the beginning of the end of the utility of the Soloflex machine but I'd still do some dips or pull ups on it every so often. Then the Bellefield Hall exercise room was built, which was a lot closer and easier to get to than Trees, knocking the Soloflex down another notch or two.

It wasn't too out of place in my last apartment as my bedroom was huge, but the bedroom in my condo is quite a bit smaller. I had to put it between my bed and the window as there was no other place for it. It made for an adventure to open/close the window in the middle of the night-- it was hard enough to get around it to the window when I was fully awake, let alone half asleep. Last week, I finally got to the point of wanting the space more than the Soloflex. I hadn't used it in the last 2 years other than to hang my clothes on it to dry (that seems to be the fate of most home exercise equipment. The clothes hanging phase is the menopause/middle-age equivalent stage for exercise equipment, I have concluded) so I thought with the new year coming up and the other changes I'm making in my life I'd also finally get rid of the Soloflex.

So I posted a Craigslist ad. I paid $320 for it back then (when a new machine was $2000). Not bad. CL had a few other Soloflexes listed in the $120-200 range. Since I was more interested in getting a little something for it than as much as possible and the buyer had to haul it away, I listed it at $75. That probably opened me up to getting a lower offer when it came down to selling (you can expect that on CL whenever you sell something anyway), but I was ok with that so long as the buyer would come to haul it away. I eventually got $65 for it which was just fine with me, especially since the guy brought a friend to help him load it onto his truck. My bedroom looks more like an actual bedroom now, instead of a storage locker.

I'm still a little sad. I've had that thing for all but 3 months of my time in Pittsburgh and as stupid as it sounds, it was like having a good friend move away. I'll miss it. I'll still be able to exercise with Bellefield Hall being so close and in all truthfullness I hadn't used the Soloflex at all in 2 years. Still, the Soloflex came into my life during a more innocent and optimistic time. Not having it around anymore just makes the difference between myself then and now all the more striking.

But at least I found a good home for it.

Hot dogs

So I was in the Aldi on McKnight road this morning. I'm not entirely sure how MUCH cheaper it is buying stuff there versus Giant Eagle. Things are always cheaper but given that you can't use a credit card to pay in addition to the limited (actually there aren't any) brand choices, is it worth it? At least at Target you get the name brand choices in addition to the Dharma Initiative/Market Pantry branded stuff. I went to Target after Aldi to get some vanilla extract. One ounce of McCormick's was $2.79. A two ounce bottle of Market Pantry vanilla extract was $2.99. No brainer on that one.

The Aldi branded hot dogs caught my attention. It was something like $0.59 for a pack of 8. Hmm, pretty cheap. Then I looked at the nutrition information label. 110 calories, 90 calories from fat. I know that's not really a surprise for hot dogs-- I don't blame Aldi for making a standard issue hot dog. But 90/110 calories from fat?? So there's only 20 calories per hot dog coming from carbs and protein? Think about it.

So anyway, shopping at Aldi... Bananas were $0.45 per lb; Giant Eagle-- $0.49 per lb. That's about a 9% savings, so on that basis that's pretty good. The way food prices have skyrocketed in the wake of increased transportation costs due to $4/gallon gasoline, I'll take any savings I can get.

Better late than never (I hope)

I'm too old for this (blogging, that is).

Or so I thought. It occurs to me that if I really want to be a writer, I'm going to have to start writing something creative on a regular basis. And since screenplays and fiction are giving me trouble-- why not something like a blog? I can do it at home, over lunch at work, maybe even once I get an Ipod Touch I'll do it on the run in airports or the library. At the least it'll let me find my voice. Besides, other people's blogs (down with OPB, yeah you know me) have been a real help to me in the past. For example, I just got a HDHomeRun QAM tuner for my Vista Media Center computer that I use as a DVR (I'm getting ready to record all of the good fall network TV shows so I can timeshift and watch them in HD at my leisure). I was having trouble getting it to work until I came across a blog where the blogger put some really easy to follow steps in place (much clearer than the manufacturer directions) and bingo-- I was up and running. This blog probably won't be as helpful to others as that, but you never know.

So anyway, I'll be rambling about whatever I feel like at the time. This definitely won't be a big personal "what did I do today?" thing. My life is not nearly interesting enough to support that and I wouldn't want to write anything that'll get people mad at me or fired from work. It'll more likely be a place to vent my spleen and sort through some thoughts. I imagine that poker, the Penguins, Steelers, comic books, movies, game theory, tv shows, and books will be the main subjects. We'll just have to see how it goes.

So as I was saying, once I got Vista Media Center working with the HDHR recording HD content on the QAM signal, I had less use for one of my Tivo Series 2 units (I have two of them) that don't record in HD. At one point I had two Series 2 Tivos, two ReplayTV showstoppers, the Comcast Motorola HD DVR (dual tuners!), and the Vista MC/HDHR machine that can record 2 HD shows at once plus a standard NTSC tuner. So if there were 9 television shows that I want to watch and they are all at the same time, I can record and watch all of them at a later time. Well, that doesn't happen and HD is soooooo much better than standard def that I find that I don't find myself using the Tivos or ReplayTV's much. I can now record 4 HD shows at once thanks to the Comcast box and the HDHR. Plus with the coming digital change-over, analog tuners (such as the tuner built in to the Tivo Series 2) won't be of any use much longer. Yes, cable companies will still transmit some analog channels to homes after the 2/09 switch date but that may not last long. I read somewhere that they're mandated to do so for three years. After that they could go all digital and once they do, Tivo Series 2 boxes will be almost useless. I might as well get something for it while I can. I'll recount my ebay story later. I just wonder if I should sell the other Tivo. I still have the two ReplayTV's to record stuff as a backup (more on THIS later) and the chances of selling them for anything worthwhile are slim (ReplayTV just never got popular with Tivo taking most marketshare and word of mouth. Nobody cares to buy old ReplayTV's even though they work just fine). But for now I can relax safe in the knowledge that on Mondays this fall I'll be able to record Chuck, Terminator: TSC, and How I Met Your Mother/The Big Bang Theory at 8-9pm all in glorious HD to watch later. And that's all that matters.