just to completely push the comic nerd factor to the limits, here's some capsule reviews/post-reading thoughts of the stuff i bought today:

batman #614
awesome issue. jim lee just keeps on amazing me. his joker rocketed right up there with bolland's, in my eyes. nice that loeb gave him a little bit of the classic characterization, as well. a "batboob" every now and then never hurt anyone. glad to see gordon show up. and i was pretty convinced that the mystery villain was going to be exactly who they lead you to believe at the end. loeb has a hard-on for him, anyway. if i were a comic book character, i'd totally be hot for jim lee's catwoman.

superman: red son #1
fan-fuckin'-tastic. i think the end result is totally going to justify the wait we've endured on this one. right up there with gotham by gaslight and holy terror as one of my favorite elseworlds. i really am counting the days until #2…

ultimate x-men #32
if this is what they call a "penultimate" chapter…i dunno. i like the set up, and then i realized that's all it is. set-up for issue #33, millar's last issue. i hope the story pays off and mark goes out in style. kubert's art continues to look sketchy in spots. i still blame miki.

i didn't pick up the new catwoman, i guess i'll just do that on friday. if you live in new york city, make sure to pick up the post on wednesday or thursday. x2 comes out on friday and you can pick up a free copy of ultimate x-men #1 (as well as other cool books) at just about any local comic shop.

now i'm gonna go get some q'doba.

woohoo! i finally found a plugin for WinAmp3 that will let me update the MP3 of the moment thing. (look at the bottom of the most recent post, and/or my webcam "portable"). i had switched to exclusively using WinAmp3 for a while, then i decided i wanted to do the MP3otM thing, realized there weren't any decent plugins to do that with WinAmp3, so i had to switch back to WinAmp 2.x. (which has just been updated to 2.91, for those of you still using the 2.x version). anyway, i finally found What's Playing today, and did some quick hacking to get it working with the existing javascript code. When i get a chance later, i'll probably move it totally over to PHP scripts, but it's working right now. yaay!

tomorrow (today, technically–the 26th) is the day when Sara finally runs the last leg of the Louisville Triple Crown–the miniMarathon. i know she's excited (mainly that it'll all be over soon and she can quit putting herself through hell) to finally finish. i just hope she doesn't hurt her knee any worse than she's already apparently hurt it. in any event, i'm sure she's going to do well.

and, (strange, this was supposed to be a quick update) my sister got in town on Wednesday night and has been staying at the house. it's been pretty wild to see my sister pregnant and to be talking with her about all this stuff, watching her, basically fawning over her to make sure she's got everything she needs. it's pretty cool.

later today, after the race and breakfast, we'll all (my sister, my girlfriend, myself) be driving down to my parent's. this'll be the first time Sara's met my parents, and though she's nervous, i know my parents are going to love her. plus, with my sis being in from France, and pregnant, i think they'll have bigger things to worry about than giving my girlfriend a hard time. i guess we'll find out though, eh?

o.j. simpson gets a reality show…think they'll show him "looking for the killers" out on the golf course? wow…i hope so.

easter went well. i hung out with the girlfriend's uncle (who certainly doesn't look 64…) and talked about tattoos and being young, drunk, and in the navy. always a good time. i did, however, come to the conclusion that i don't like lamb. i try not to eat any meat except birds (long story…if i can't kick it's ass with my bare hands, i don't want to eat it), but i made an exception for the sake of the girl and her family. appear gracious and all that jazz. the rest of the dinner was great, but i think i'll steer away from lamb from now on.

another saturday, another full day spent at work. it's okay, though, because i have my new addiction to help get me through it: bookworm at popcap.com. damn straight. try it and you'll never be able to quit.

i picked up the wilco dvd yesterday. it's pretty damn cool. lots of extra footage, commentary, great music. i highly recommend it.

when i showed up to work today, there was a ton of people all massed around the entrance. i seriously thought there was some sort of protest going on, like they had turned off the cable to an entire apartment complex or something. come to find out, it's just the yearly company easter egg hunt. tons of kids running around with baskets and eggs. a recipe for disaster if i've ever seen one.

speaking of easter, it looks like i've opted to spend it with the girlfriend's family. i've been doing a lot of family things with her, as of late, and it's kinda nice. i have to make sure to call my grandmother today and let her know i won't be making it to my family's own shindig. i have to leave for work right after diner, anyway, so neither family is gaining or losing anything fancy. eat, wave, zoom to work. sounds like a blast.

i just stumbled across the Wikipedia while looking up Glockenspiel for a minor update to the Lucifigous Prick about page. Wikipedia looks to be an awesome thing–an open source encyclopedia, built and maintained by a broad internet community. It's an encyclopedia that, should you find an article you disagree with, you can change (or recommend changes) to better fit the facts as you know or understand them. I think i may have to add some functionality to my bookmarklet to add an option for searching the Wikipedia.

In other fun news, our show on the 11th went alright, except that the people (there was another show scheduled earlier in the evening) who were on stage before us didn't get off-stage until 15 minutes before we were supposed to start playing. Seeing as it takes us most of an hour to get all our equipment set up, it was 10:45pm before we even started playing. So there were several people who kept asking us when we were going to be ready, and that we needed to start "soon." Needless to say, we were all a bit frustrated before we even played the first note, and the first half of the set pretty much reflected that–we were a little tight and held-back. Really, we didn't play badly at all… we were just "in a mood." I think most of the crowd was enjoying what we were doing, but i was a bit too frustrated to pay attention at the time.

Ah well, this sort of stuff is to be expected every once in a while, i'd say.

i'd like to take time on this saturday to point out that hellboy is one of the greatest comics ever. want proof? here you go.

today is thunder over louisville and where am i? at work, reading hellboy comics on the internet. i guess there are worse things i could be doing with my day.

like chinese water torture.

or listening to celine dion.

(A.K.A. mish-mash)

so, i haven't updated in a week or so–as usual, unfortunately–but i'm still around.

sara ran the 10 Miler and finished in 1hour 40minutes, which is better than she had expected (running an average of almost precisely 10 minute miles, which is her normal pace). she did great.

this past weekend it seems like i was just busy busy busy… a party friday night after spending most of the evening with Sara. then on Saturday there was a big shindig at our friend neil's new apartment (neil of Old Man fame), which was quite fun. then on sunday was dinner with sara's family (for her grandfather's birthday) and then the usual sunday night band-practice (with the twist of it being our next-to-last pre-show practice). all in all, it was a fun weekend, but i'm feeling a bit drained today.

protest-records continues to release additional volumes of material, and the Mudhoney track released there is quite good and taps into that almost tongue-in-cheek flair they get when they're writing political/or social-commentary songs. Mark Arm!

i keep finding things that i think i should post about, then forgetting what they were before i make it back to a computer or out from under my workload long enough to type something up. but this little tidbit i *just* found, and am surprised that i hadn't heard of it's existing before now. it's the annual human-rights report compiled by the U.S. State Department which lists all known human-rights violations perpetrated by all countries in the last year. If you're a human rights activist and *aren't* aware of this (and have several hours to spare, reading) you should get your ass on over to the 2002 Human Rights Report to see which nations you should be pissed at, and which nations you might want to reconsider taking your vacation in.

and later this week: lucifigous prick rocks the Rud. Apr. 11th (that's this coming Friday, for you slow people), 10:00PM, $4.00 cover. it's gonna be a great set, and we're opening up (which means get your crazy little asses there before 10:00PM) for a couple great bands: blue goat war and front porch campaign. come with your rockin shoes on.

my weekend in rock (an essay by j. brian hall)

saturday saw me jump in the car with my cousin chris to head up to bloomington to see spoon and crooked fingers. we got up there pretty early, so we ended up sitting in an irish pub for a while, drinking a couple of beers and watching basketball. we got the show before anyone started, shot a few games of pool, then found a couch to plop our asses on while the first couple of bands played. the first band sucked. they'd obviously seen the make-up a time or two and thought "that should be easy…let's try it ourselves!" well…it's obviously not easy to be the make-up. the second band was pretty good. i'd read that the singer/guitarist guy had worked with john strohm, so i was interested in hearing it. not bad at all.

then the crooked fingers. a strange cross between neil diamond and nick cave. i still can't figure out if i like it or not.

spoon was awesome. they brought the rock and were having a blast the whole time. they kept saying "indiana is cool!" and "why haven't we been here before?" if by "cool" they meant "visor wearing, hippie dancing, drunken college idiots," they were dead on. amazing judges of character.

got back from bloomington at about 4am. went to bed. had to get some sleep before the long drive to chicago…

for rocket from the crypt.

the girl and i got there right as the second band was finishing. just in time for sahara hotnights. damn them swedes can rock. after that, rocket hit the stage. they proceeded to rip out some serious shit, as only they can really do. no circa now! material, but i guess i'll live. "bucket of piss" and "bring us bullets" take on a whole new life live. speedo mentioned they were backing up a friend of his across town at the beat kitchen, so we decided to head over there and check it out. the "friend" was none other than sonny vincent…punk rock legend and complete unknown to me. they kicked out the jams in what could only be described as a "punk rock barnburner." full on conflagration, more like.

after sonny's set, we turned around, got in the car, and drove back home to louisville. we got home around 7am, picked up breakfast, and went the fuck to bed.

i'm still tired.

the end.

or something.