Le Grill? What The Hell Is THAT?

Lately I’ve found myself adding movies to my Netflix queue that, upon their arrival, make me say, “Why the hell did I pick this piece of crap?”The latest example, which I watched on Friday night, was Good Luck Chuck.
Of course, I do know why I picked that piece of crap:

1. Jessica Alba is hot.
2. The central premise was built around the concept of someone having a “super power” that is very similar to one I possess.
3. Jessica Alba is hot.

I’ll get into point 2 in just a bit, but before that I’ll say that the movie was absolute formulaic dreck that ticked off all the boxes on the “Zany Romantic Comedy Checklist.”
Fat, sassy black lady? Check.
Fat, obnoxious, crude, sex-obsessed best friend? Check.
Amazingly hot female love interest who is almost inhumanly kind, sweet, and nurturing, and who has some kind of endearing quirkiness? Check.
Romantic misunderstanding in which the male lead does exactly the opposite of what he should do, thereby driving the female love interest away? Check.
Big dramatic last-ditch effort to win female love interest back, preferably at an airport? Check.
And of course, somewhere in there the male lead learns some valuable lesson about himself, life, and love, and the fat-ass “comically” douchebaggy best friend manages to find true love of his own.
So yeah, it was crap.
Anyway, the central premise of the movie, for those who don’t know, is that the lead, Charlie/Chuck, was hexed in his youth by a spurned goth girl, making it impossible to find love himself, even as love “falls like rain” all around him.
More specifically, if he sleeps with a woman, she will then almost immediately meet someone else who turns out to be the love of her life. Thus women line up to have their turn with him and then head off to buy a wedding dress in anticipation of meeting their darling dearests.
Years before the movie came out, I wrote a Threshold entry in which I explained that I have a similar ability, though in my case, naturally, it doesn’t require that I actually sleep with a woman in order for her to reap the benefits.
All I have to do is simply become romantically interested, even in the slightest degree, in a woman, and within a year she’ll at the very least be engaged, or, as has happened more often, be married and have a baby.
In every case in which I’m privy to the details of what happened in the lives of the women in whom I’ve been interested, this has proven to be the way things turn out.
(In one instance, the power of my interest was sufficient to get someone who had steadfastly maintained for most of her life that she would never get married to change her thinking on the subject.)
Anyway, the fact that there was a movie built around someone who has a better version of my power (i.e. his power allows him to get laid), was sufficient, when coupled with Alba’s hotness, to make me want to check it out, and it’s not like I didn’t know it was going to be awful going into it.
On Friday Scott came over, by my invitation, so that I could make use of his van to go out and buy some things that wouldn’t fit in my car.
Namely a gas grill and a lawnmower.
Once he arrived we headed off to Home Depot, where I found the aforementioned items, in addition to a weed whacker and a hedge trimmer, and the two of us headed to a register where I prepared to drop a substantial chunk of change.
Before I could do so, however, the cashier asked if I had a Home Depot card. I confessed that I didn’t, and she asked, “Do you want one?”
She then proceeded to talk about the advantages of having one, most notably the fact that I would have no interest and no payments for a year on the day’s purchase if I were to sign up for a card.
So I did.
From there, we went to a grocery store to pick up some brats to cook on the grill after putting it together, and then to Super Target, where I picked up season 3 of Battlestar Galactica for us to watch after the day’s work was done.
Of course, by the time we got the grill assembled and the food cooked, we only had time to watch two episodes before he had to leave.
In any case, I greatly appreciate all of Scott’s help, as even if I’d been able to get the grill home by myself, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to put it together alone. If I had attempted to do so, there’s no doubt it would have turned out almost exactly like Homer’s attempt at putting together a grill on The Simpsons.
(Which provides the title of this entry; after dropping all of the parts in wet cement, Homer grabs the instructions and finds that the English side is unreadable and attempts to follow the French instructions.)
And of course the plan for today was to put my newly-acquired lawn equipment to use, but naturally it’s raining today and is supposed to continue to do so through Wednesday.
After Scott left, I continued watching BSG, and was about to go to bed at around 1 AM after watching one last episode, but at the end of the episode it said, “To be Continued,” which led me to say, as they do on BSG, “Frack!” as it meant staying up for yet another episode.
Today I went out to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things, came home, had lunch, watched an episode of BSG, then decided to try to take a nap, changed my mind, and sat down to write this.
Sometime last week I developed a cold.
It’s always irritating to be sick, but there are a couple of things that serve to enhance my misery. For one thing, the fact that I’ve managed to catch a cold – and a pretty nasty one at that – means that my immune system is no longer as seemingly bulletproof as it’s been for the past 8 years or so. For another, it means I can’t wear my gentle molding lenses, so my vision has been fading more and more each day.
In any case, we’re now up to date, so I think I’m going to go sit on the couch and watch some more BSG and feel miserable. It’s a perfect day for it.
(Pictures of the grill and etc. will be posted someday when it’s a little less gloomy out.)

Whither The Warlord?

It seems to be a week for total 180s; yesterday was gorgeous, whereas today? Not so much.
Given that Stacy picked up all of season 2 and season 2.5 of Battlestar Galactica on Friday and that there wasn’t nearly time enough for us to watch them all, it was suggested that I take the DVDs home with me to watch.
That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing all day today.
As per a conversation Scott and I had Friday night, I’ve been meaning to blog on a topic of extreme importance for some time, but haven’t managed to find the time, what with my busy schedule.
Okay, the more accurate assessment is that I’ve been too bloody lazy and the topic is one that maybe .01% of the population would care about.
But I’m going to write about it now anyway.
With all of the comic book properties that have already been developed into movies or are currently in the process of being developed, there’s a question that’s been plaguing me: why hasn’t anyone adapted The Warlord?
I mean, seriously, a Warlord movie would be freakin’ awesome.
(It could also be really cheesy, but for the purposes of this entry I’m choosing to be uncharacteristically optimistic.)
What is The Warlord, you ask?
It’s a comic about a Vietnam-era USAF pilot flying a reconnaissance mission over the Arctic Circle who gets shot down by a Soviet MIG and plunges through the Earth’s crust into a world inside the world; a place of eternal sunlight and unimaginable savagery. A barbaric world filled with ancient science, magic, dinosaurs, cannibals, and danger around every corner.
It was in this world that Lt. Colonel Travis Morgan, the titular Warlord, attempted to subdue and civilize with the help of his sword and his .44 AutoMag.
Of course, despite his efforts to build a civilized world, it was clear that the savage world spoke more fully to Morgan’s true nature than the world he had left behind.
Besides all of that, The Warlord has more than its share of ass-kicking hot barbarian chicks in skimpy outfits. What’s not to like?
So, Hollywood, I know that for you “baseline normal” is to totally suck balls, but every once in a while you do something right. How about making this one of those times?
On a more personal note, one of the things that I always liked about The Warlord as a kid was the two-page splash that opened every issue, most notably, back when Grell was still on the title, the credits on the splash that said “Written, Illustrated, and Created by Mike Grell.” The first time I saw that, it became my goal to have a book that would bear those same credits, only with my name.
Yeah, goals…I vaguely recall having those.

Early Release

So far I have to say that I’m liking the new boss.
Not that there was anything wrong with my old boss, but he didn’t do things like come around and say, “I’m going to be out this afternoon, so if you want to leave early, go ahead.”
And I wanted to, so I did.
Only two more days of work before I’m off for a week (and then I only have to put in three days before the weekend arrives when I go back).
Tonight I’m heading down to Manassas to watch some episodes of season two of Battlestar Galactica. The original idea was to watch the premiere of the new season, but as I’ve only just finished watching season one, I’d be pretty lost, thus the alternative idea of renting season two was presented.
My digital TV tuner was supposed to ship today, but I got an e-mail from Dell telling me that it won’t ship until next Friday.
Not really a big deal, except that I was hoping to get it before my vacation so that I could schedule a time for Verizon to come out with a CableCARD while I was on vacation.
Oh well.
In any case, not much else is going on, so I guess that’ll be it for now.

The Reason HD Was Invented (Plus: Learn At The Feet Of The Bra Size Masters!)

Some time ago when the movie Species aired (unedited) on one of the HD channels I get, I learned that seeing Natasha Henstridge nude in High Definition qualifies as A Very Good Thing. This wasn’t a surprising discovery, certainly, but it was something that I kept in mind when I saw that Species II was airing on Universal HD last night.
So, even though it’s not a good movie, I opted to sit down and watch it, though I forgot that I’d have to sit through almost the entire movie before seeing the reason HD was invented (at least as it relates to Natasha Henstridge).
In that pivotal scene, we see Natasha Henstridge’s alien-human hybrid character slowly walking across a room to approach her male counterpart. For these hybrids, the imperative to mate is even stronger than it is for humans who don’t have alien DNA, and conception and birth occur almost instantly, which is, of course, bad news for the plain vanilla humans, who would soon be driven to extinction by the rapidly-reproducing and aggressive aliens with their accelerated rate of maturation.
As they slowly walked towards each other, I found myself singing, “We don’t have to take our clothes off to have a good time, oh no!”
But of course, they did take their clothes off, which was actually fine by me, as it was the primary reason I was watching the crappy move in the first place, and soon they were bumping uglies. And I mean they were bumping really uglies, as they had morphed into their H.R. Giger-designed alien forms.
(For anime/hentai/manga fans there was even some tentacle rape [NSFW] involved.)
Anyway, after the movie was over I decided to stick around on the couch, as, starting last night, Universal HD is airing Battlestar Galactica (the 21st Century version) from the beginning. Despite hearing from many sources how great the show is, I never got into it, but now that I can see it in HD, I figure I might as well give it a shot. Even from watching just the first episode I can see that it’s a step up from the mini-series that launched it, which I watched but was largely unimpressed by.
They’re also airing Threshold, but I didn’t watch that, despite the shared name, and the presence of the lovely and talented Carla Gugino, as I had watched the show back during its brief original run on CBS.
Today has been largely uneventful, with a failed attempt at taking a nap being the only thing of note that’s really happened.

Build Your Bra Size Intelligence Department:
Speaking of the lovely and talented Carla Gugino, there have, of late, been even more than the usual number of seekers of her cup size visiting this blog (and promptly leaving in frustration). As has always been, and will likely always be the case, I can’t give you what you seek, but I do have something that I would like to pass along to all seekers of celebrity bra size wisdom.
While flipping through the channels the other day I stumbled upon a special entitled Man Made: The Secret History of the Bra on the National Geographic Channel.
From what little of it that I saw, it seemed to me that this show could provide a wealth of information for inquiring minds. Perhaps using the information provided, bra size seekers could learn how to determine sizes for themselves simply through eyeballing in much the way that the employees of an upscale lingerie shop in New York featured on the show do.
At the very least you would learn that any information you do find about celebrity bra sizes should be taken with a grain of salt, given the statement made by the shop’s proprietor that “8 out of 10 women wear the wrong sized bra.” And this guy knows from bras; he’s like the bra size equivalent of the enlightened master sitting on a mountain top to whom all seekers of wisdom will ascend.
If he is correct, even if the celebrities whose cup sizes you so desperately need to know in order to proceed with your bra-related intellectual pursuits were to reveal them to you, there’s an 80% chance they would be mistaken.
One customer at the shop was laboring under the mistaken belief that she was a 34 D. One of the women working there took one look at her and assured her that she is, in fact, a 32 F.
There’s so much about bras that these wizened masters could teach you, young Grasshopper. When you can unclasp a bra with one hand, you will be ready.