Well, The Upside Is That I Haven't Gone Blind...

...so far.

My beverage for the evening is Macallan Cask Strength Single Malt Whiskey. It's youngish and 58.2% alcohol by volume.

It's a challenging drink. Mostly because there's a lot of burn if you don't treat the scotch right. This is one of the few scotches that actually holds up pretty well to ice cubes. The water from the melting helps to balance the aromatics and the flavors without watering down the taste - which is generally my quibble with putting ice in the scotches I usually drink. Hence, I tend to take my whiskey neat or with the barest splash of water. You can't really do that with this one. Well, you can but you won't really enjoy it because your eyes will water everytime you bring it to your face.


Mr. Scoop has decided that, out of all the scotch that I've brought home, he does not like this one. He usually finds something to like about my scotches, despite being a Jack Daniels man by nature.

It's in his best interest as he never knows when he'll need to MacGuyver up a buzz on the fly.

He was offput by the alcohol in the nose and the overall sweet character of the flavor. It is very honeyed and there is a trace of sherry leftover from the time in the cask. I liked it. He didn't.

Well, we can't like all.. the same things. That'd be creepy.

My exit plan, should odd hallucinations or general whiskey related belligerence start, is to switch to cider. I've got 2 litres of Strongbow on standby. It was always there for me in (a bunch of) college. Cider won't fuck me over like that bitch, Southern Comfort. To this day, I'm surprised I can sit down to pee.

Technorati Tags: Scotch Whiskey , Jack Daniels , Strongbow Cider , Southern Comfort , Drinking , Humor

And You Know How I'm Loathe To Meme

Is "meme" even useable as a verb?

Per Fight Guy: The UK's Sunday Mail has posted 50 Movies To See Before You Die.

Bold up the ones you've seen. Then decide if you give a shit what a British news rag thinks.

1 Apocalypse Now
2 The Apartment
3 City of God
4 Chinatown
5 Sexy Beast
6 2001: A Space Odyssey
7 North by Northwest
8 A Bout de Souffle
9 Donnie Darko
10 Manhattan
11 Alien
12 Lost in Translation
13 The Shawshank Redemption
14 Lagaan: Once Upon A Time in India
15 Pulp Fiction
16 Touch of Evil
17 Walkabout
18 Black Narcissus
19 Boyz 'n the Hood
20 The Player
21 Come and See
22 Heavenly Creatures
23 A Night at the Opera
24 Erin Brockovich
25 Trainspotting
26 The Breakfast Club
27 Hero
28 Fanny and Alexander
29 Pink Flamingos
30 All About Eve
31 Scarface
32 Terminator 2
33 Three Colours: Blue
34 The Royal Tenenbaums
35 The Ladykillers
36 Fight Club
37 The Searchers
38 Mulholland Drive
39 The Ipcress File
40 The King of Comedy
41 Manhunter
42 Dawn of the Dead
43 Princess Mononoke
44 Raising Arizona
45 Cabaret
46 This Sporting Life
47 Brazil
48 Aguirre: The Wrath of God
49 Secrets and Lies
50 Badlands

I was actually surprised at the number I ended up having actually seen. I do keep meaning to actually see "Chinatown" and "Apocalypse Now"...and does it count if we sang songs from "Cabaret" in high school "show chorus"?

I didn't think so.

Technorati Tags: Movies , Meme , Humor

In Which It Is Discovered That The Dark Lord Of The Sith Might Be The Troll In My Uterus...

Today a six-year old pointed at my stomach, looked up at me and said, "Darth Vader lives in there."

He actually was referring to my shirt, which has a lovely arrangment of regular TIE Fighters and Vader's own TIE Advanced x1 Starfighter.

And then his summer reading tutor came in and admonished him for being out of his seat when he was supposed to be working on "Thomas the Tank Engine" or whatever it is that six-year olds are supposed to read when they are left to their own devices.

I felt guilty and fessed up that it'd been my shirt that distracted him.





I mean, you can try to sit there and read "Thomas" quietly, but how do you not end up losing focus and staring at the large print of theDeath Star on the back of my shirt? It's fucking massive.






And, yes, I owned this shirt well before I ever went to Nerd Prom.

I didn't decide to fuck off to the West Coast to look at freaks in a vacuum, people.

Oh, and I came back with this shirt:




If you haven't seen Clerks 2, you really should. One of the best, damn sequels ever. I almost forgive Kevin Smith for not showing up for his 1 PM Saturday forum at the Comic-Con. Almost.

Tomorrow, I will tell you more about the things I saw in San Diego. If I have the energy. There's a solid chunk of my brain that is still convinced that it is still on California time and thought it was 2 AM when I got up this morning. That only mostly sucked.

Technorati Tags: Star Wars , Nerd Prom , San Diego , Kevin Smith , Clerks 2 , Humor

More Photos from "Nerd Prom"

This is some excellent, original art by Matt Wagner that Mr. Scoop was lucky enough to receive with a personalized signature by Mr. Wagner!











This guy ruled. He was the only guy I saw at the Con dressed as The Question! Kudos, guy.












These guys know that if someone asks you if you're a god you say, "Yes!" Mostly because they've watched the movie more than me. Which is a hard feat to have accomplished.










I'd sign up, but this way lies madness and unemployment. Then I can't afford to go to the Con next year.











Elektra cuts up ugly with Star Wars people.

Which leads to an interesting question: Who'd win in a fight - Elektra or Boba Fett?










Folks dressed up in assorted costumes.













Mr. Freeze loves the camera. But not as much as his dead wife.












Lord Vader was nice enough to pose for a photo. But first I had to give myself over to the Dark Side. It really wasn't as big a deal as you'd think.











This photo isn't particularly geeky, but I really liked the statue.














This is the photo that started it all. I sent it to Mr. Warren Ellis last Thursday and he was nice enough to post it on his site.
















Technorati Tags: San Diego , Comic Con , Geek , Nerd Prom , Star Wars , Comic Books , Photos , Humor

Lego Batman!

Lego Batman!

Where The Wild Things Will Be...

Mmmmmmmmmm! Red wine!

This is one of those weird evenings. I've been drinking far too much Grenache, far too late. Win Amp is assaulting me with "shit I've forgotten that I've downloaded", so I'm getting clips of Anthony Stewart Head's cover of "Behind Blue Eyes" from the Where The Wild Things Are eppy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and clips from Eddie Izzard and Richard Pryor. Intellectually, I recognize that I should go to bed. I've got to be up at 5 AM and I'm at the bottle and a half mark. Tomorrow is going to be a hard dollar. I have small children to attend to in the morning. I keep this up and they're going to wonder why I smell like Daddy...or their weird Aunt Wanda. The one who doesn't usually get up until sometime around 3 in the afternoon and generally avoids solid food.

And, tomorrow, I go to Nerd Prom. I'll be in San Diego, kiddies. I'll be the one staggering about with the "kill me" expression on my face. Not because I don't want to be there. It'll be the colossal hangover I'm anticipating. Frankly, you'd be better off avoiding Mr. Scoop than me. He's bought a case of nicotine gum for the occasion. Mostly for the plane ride, but also so's to not stab people who ask dumb questions when we're 2 hours into a Q and A with Seth Green, Bruce Campbell or Kevin Smith. He likes to believe that they'll appreciate it. I personally take the position that if it's a really dumb question, then a stabbing is a public service. But, what do I know?

Oh, and did I mention Mr. Scoop has purchased a flask in order to smuggle whiskey into events? I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing. However, the idea of an inebriated Mr. Scoop leaping onto a display table shrieking "Suck my justice, Trekkie!" is appealing to me on a lot of levels.

We'll try to blog you from lock-up, I guess.



Technorati Tags: Comic-Con , San Diego , Nerd Prom , Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Humor

Dr. Tran

From Lone Sausage Productions:



Oh. God.

So. Funny.

Can't...breathe...

I really wish I wrote this. Damn.

Technorati Tags: Dr. Tran , Lone Sausage , Animation , Humor

Mass Media and My Own Damn Bad Habits

I woke up this morning. Screaming.

I don't think I can blame anyone.

Much like I don't think I can blame anyone but me for the fact that right now the background to my evening is PBS Soundstage: Garbage.

You see last night, I decided to indulge in several shots of a single malt whiskey, Laphroaig, followed by beer chasers. I went to bed around 2:30. When Mr. Scoop poked me awake at 11 AM, I was having a dream and the extraneous stimulation turned the dream from something innocuous involving FDR and some unknown quantity named "Stella" to something involving Cujo going for my face.

So I woke up screaming.

Mr. Scoop was so upset at the trauma that he had caused me that he volunteered to go get breakfast at McDonald's. Unfortunately, McDonald's stops serving breakfast at 11 AM. He got there at 11:15. My, entirely well meaning, breakfast was a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a medium fries. And a Diet Coke. My brain reacted to the grease and starch breakfast like it was entitled to it. Like Lindsay Lohan. On a day. Before she makes herself throw up. My stomach and intestines, still wondering why it had been made to filter so much hard liquor, reacted somewhat more violently.

Let me just say that it bothers me to have this much clearer understanding of Lindsay Lohan at this point.

I may need to drink more to wipe it away - but then I'll probably just find myself facing the "Tara Reid Conundrum". If I come away from it without plastic surgery scars, I'll probably be okay.

_________________________________________________________________

Normally, my weekend would have consisted of wine and beer. But TiVo decided I needed to see a program on Fine Living about Scotch whiskey on The Genuine Article. They spent most of the episode on the island of Islay - where most of my favorite whiskey is made. And then they told me that I could buy my own cask of whiskey as a retirement present to myself. Mr. Scoop worked it out. It'd actually be economical and I would be able to drink whiskey - based on the amount - everyday until I died.

Every day.

I had to go out and buy some Scotch to contemplate this.

I woke up with visions of Cujo.

Probably not auspicious.

_________________________________________________________________


Today, Mr. Scoop and I caught an interesting television program called Intervention. The premise is that well meaning family members shanghai an addiction addled sibling or daughter/son/whatever and get them into rehab. It is shot "documentary style". You can see folks say "fuck" over the audio bleeps. A lot of "this is why my life sucks" footage is shot preceeding the "you have to go into rehab or I get a restraining order" scenes. It's a compelling watch.

So compelling that Mr. Scoop and I have devised a drinking game:

"The 'Intervention Drinking Game'"

While watching the program, every time you have an internal moment of "Thank God I don't have a substance abuse problem" - drink.

__________________________________________________________________

Technorati Tags: TV , Scotch Whiskey , humor