A Legend Covered in Jello

1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die (follow up)

2012-01-31T18:38:00.000-08:00

Turns out there is no reason to buy this book. All the comics are listed here: http://www.paulgravett.com/index.php/1001_comics/1001_atoz/P0/

My Gaming Collection Vol 2

2012-01-21T13:22:00.000-08:00

My Two Dads... er I mean PSPs

It was merely luck that gave me two of these awesome game systems. I got one a while back and I really liked it. I wasn't fond of the UMD system because it was rather loud and cumbersome but once I hacked the PSP is was smooth sailing. I could rip my UMDs to a memory stick and not have to worry about lugging around all those little discs.

About two years ago a friend asked me if I knew how to unbrick PSPs. Seems his friend royally screwed up his PSP trying to hack it and managed to kill it. Since I still had my hacking tools I unbricked it and returned it to factory defaults. Since no one really wanted it back (it didn't have a battery, charger, or even a battery door) I was told to just keep it. So now I have one PSP for playing backups, and another for playing games I buy on PSN, like the Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 9 and Gran Turismo PSP.

My Pet Monster Jam

2012-01-17T08:10:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday our family went to Monster Jam. I was expecting fireworks and excitement and car crushing but really it was just boring and loud.

This picture sums up the whole event. Most of the time was spent watching the trucks try to get into position followed by about 5 seconds of action. There was a lot of filler as well. At one point the schoolbus shaped monster truck broke down, to fill the time they gave away a T-shirt, not T-shirts, one T-shirt. The fellow with the T-shirt cannon walked the arena looking for the loudest section, for about 8 minutes.

To sum up, my kids wanted to go home before we even got to intermission. We forced them to stay and it did get slightly better with the freestyle competition but even with that my youngest started crying to go home, so we left before it was over.

Next year I think we'll go the extra distance and check out the monster jam in Toronto, which takes place in the Rogers Centre, where the trucks have more room to play.

I'm a terrible father

2012-01-08T07:41:00.001-08:00

My kids love batman and I've read them numerous batman brave and bold comics, and let them watch many iterations of batman cartoons. Recently I wanted to let them watch a live action batman movie so I looked at my options.

Newer batman movies - too violent
Batman- too dark
Batman 2 - way too dark
Batman 3 - Val Kilmer
Batman 4 - no real questionable content... so that's we let them watch, arguably the worst batman movie ever made. They of course loved it but I couldn't help but feel awful for making that their first batman movie.

My Gaming Collection Vol 1

2012-01-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

I own a lot of gaming crap. I've decided to start showing off that stuff on here because it probably won't ever see the light of day again until my kids are older and start rooting through my boxes in the basement.

On with Vol. 1 - My First DS

The story of this DS is interesting. I got it shortly after launch and quickly tired of it. It was fun but still being so new there weren't any games for it. Since my wife's aunt was big into Nintendo I gave it to her (and I'm pretty sure this DS has flown all over the world with her). Soon after I gave it to her I regretted my decision and finally got a DS lite some time later. When she was done with this DS she gave it back to me and since I had the DS lite I gave this DS away again to my Sister-in-law's kids. This past Christmas she bought her kids a 3DS and guess what came back home again? It still works and now I actually find it more comfortable to use because of its size.

I need to see this

2012-01-06T05:55:00.000-08:00

My life will not be complete until ...

1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die

2012-01-02T17:27:00.000-08:00

While at the library I saw this large gem waiting for me to peruse its pages. It's a decent book to flip though and it has helped me see outside of my superhero bubble. I'm looking forward to tracking down some of the titles in here for future reads. But, this isn't the type of book I'd want to own, actually, I'd just be happy to the have a spreadsheet of the titles.

1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die

Mister Mxyzptlk

2012-01-02T06:53:00.000-08:00

I've been mispronouncing his name wrong all along. I'm not sure why I thought it was "mix-ll-plix". Thanks to the internet I now know it's pronounced "/mɪksˈjɛzpɪtlɪk/ US dict: mĭks·yĕz′·pĭt·lĭk or /mɪksˈjɛzpɪtəlɪk/ US dict: mĭks·yĕz′·pĭt·l·ĭk)"

Thank God that's cleared up for me, now I can move on with my life.

Comic Questions

2011-12-28T04:45:00.000-08:00

I have been reading a lot of comics lately and as a result I have some questions that as a young person never occurred to me.

1) Does Batman ever sleep or eat? I know a thing or two about staying alive because I've done it for 36 years now and for all of those years I have slept everyday and eaten everyday. If I go to long without either my body goes nuts, I get eye pains and headaches and I get lightheaded and I can't think straight. I am not Batman but I am human, so what is Batman's secret? How is he Bruce Wayne during the day and Batman at night? I can't even work my job, take care of two kids and have time to play some video games let alone spend night after night fighting crime. On a related note how does Batman have time to go out on patrol by himself, then once in a while with Robin, and work with the JLI and still manage to, well, do anything else, ever? There aren't enough hours in the day for all the stuff he does.

2) Gotham is a dump in every version of it I have ever seen. Shouldn't someone perhaps have a sit down with Batman to see if his methods really are effective? If Batman is doing his job, along with the cops, shouldn't Gotham be a pretty nice place by now? I mean, Batman has been at this for quite a while, are his efforts all in vain?

3) Does earth need anything more than Superman? Superman seems to be the most awesome superhero ever. He can't be killed, he's super fast and super strong and yet there seems to be all sorts of super heroes all over the place, why? Like, couldn't superman just fly into Gotham and catch any one of Batman's enemies in an hour or two?

4) Who pays for and rebuild after a super hero brawl? I have seen parts of Metropolis, New York and various other cities, both fictional and real getting destroyed over and over again yet when we return there are no signs of destruction anywhere. Who does this work? Maybe the heroes own shares in construction companies and are destroying the city under the guise of saving the world only so they can get the contracts to rebuild it again. Why bother rebuilding the city anyway? It's just going to get destroyed again? Who the hell would live in these cities anyway, I mean earthquakes are one thing but living in the fear that a super hero brawl could kill you would be more than enough for me to move away. By now you'd figure the heroes could just follow suit with Dragon Ball Z and head out the desert for a brawl so no one gets hurt.

That's it for now. I've been loving the comics I'm reading (except for that Legion of Superheroes) and these are some of the thoughts that pop into my head over and over again. I realize there are no answers, and that they are just comics but maybe someone should at least make a comic following the crews that rebuild the city. Of have a comic of 23 pages of Bruce Wayne sleeping, eating a nice dinner with Damian, and recovering from his injuries.

Transformers

2011-12-14T06:23:00.000-08:00

This morning while I was walking into work I saw Bumblebee drive by. Sorry, what I meant was I saw a yellow Chevy Camaro drive by and this got me thinking. When I was a kid the Transformers was created as a marketing tool to sell toys. Hell, all cartoons back then existed to sell toys, and it worked. I owned tons of Transformers and I played with them while I watched the show. Then Gi Joe came on and I pulled out those toys, following that He-Man, etc. Here we are 27 years later and my generation is still buying toys because of the Transformers. It went from being a half hour toy commercial to becoming a 2 hour long car commercial. Now I'm buying Transformers for my kids and I bet 20 years from now they will be buying Transformers for their kids reminiscing about and their youth.

What's really amazing to me is that all this stems from a silly little cartoon about robots that turn into cars. I bet no one in 1984 would have ever been able to foresee the marketing genius behind what they were creating.

... and this is why I came back to Blogger.

2011-12-08T11:47:00.001-08:00

While Tumblr is very nice, looks good, and has nice features... it doesn't have David, Kid Dork, or Crazylegs, all of which are an essential part of any blogger's diet.

What the hell is going on in Legion of Superheroes

2011-12-07T11:36:00.001-08:00

I've read three issues of this comic so far but I honestly have no idea what's going on. The story feels disjointed and confusing. Why are there so many damn characters? When each character has a box next to them to indicate who they are, THERE ARE TOO MANY CHARACTERS! Like I'm supposed to remember all these people?

Anyway, I'm going to re-read the three issues that have been released and if it doesn't make sense after that I'll add it to the discard pile along with Hawk and Dove and Static Shock.

My wife won’t let me touch her Playbook

2011-12-03T06:37:00.001-08:00

I had intentions to write a nice blog post about our new Playbook. Turns out it isn’t our Playbook, it’s her Playbook. This morning I turned it on over breakfast, went to app world and browsed. She walked in, asked what I was doing and snatched it away from me. I am not allowed to install apps for her unless she asks me based on her need. I install apps just to see what they do, she doesn’t even look for apps unless she needs something... weird right. Anyway, there won’t be a Playbook review here unless I can get my wife to write one.

Got My Playbook (yay!)

2011-12-01T09:10:00.001-08:00

Despite having a rain check for a Blackberry Playbook from Best Buy I was getting nervous we weren't going to get one. Today I called and after letting the phone ring for 3.5 minutes I was told that all rain checks were cancelled... but that they did just receive a small shipment of Playbooks, first come first serve. So I asked my boss for an early lunch (10:30am) ran the 1km to my car and drove to Best Buy. I am happy to report that I did indeed get one of them (still at the $199 sale price) and all is well in the universe.

I'll write some more about this thing once I do the grand unboxing and initial start up.