Something fun

The last couple of posts have been downers. Need something lighthearted cause my life really is not so doom and gloom right now. So thank Todd for tipping me to this one.

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Drama Nerd You sure do love the spotlight and probably have a very out-going and loud personality. Or not. That's just a stereotype, of course. Participation in the theatre is something to be very proud of. Whether you have a great voice for musicals, or astounding skills for dramas/comedies; keep up the good work. We need more entertainment these days that isn't television and video games (not that these things are bad, necessarily.)
Social Nerd
Literature Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Musician
Anime Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Artistic Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

Yeah, like any of that is a surprise.

House Hunt

Trish and I have been looking to purchase a home over the past couple of weeks. And the process has taught me one very important lesson: house hunting stinks. We have one more night looking at places scheduled for tomorrow, then it is time to make a decision. Thank God.

Corruption and new math

Slate has an interesting chart of scandals at the Bush administration. Unfortunately, to get their premise of Alberto Gonzales is at the center of each major scandal, they had to exclude a whole bunch of scandals like Valerie Plame, Jack Abramoff, Pat Tillman, FEMA, fixing intelligence to go to war, "4th Branch" Cheney, Blackwater, the EPA, the destruction of habeas corpus, Guantanamo Bay, Don Siegleman.... God that is depressing. The good news comes when you look at the current electoral college map and realize we just might be near the end of this mess.

Happy Birthday, Chris Wrenn

July is the month for birthdays... at least for the cool kids. Up today is best friend Chris Wrenn. Chris and I have been so close for so long that before he married Lisa there was rampant speculation that he and I were a couple, including friends who knew us well. (Thanks, Lisa!)

Chris and I met our first year of high school. He was the guy who was so quiet you started to wonder if he took a vow of silence but when he finally spoke you fell over laughing at the sharp observations and Sahara dry wit. (Then of course you would try to tell someone else of the hysterical thing Wrenn said and it would never come off nearly as well.)

Since that freshman year of high school there has been years of adventures involving cops, angry girlfriends, would be girlfriends, drunks on planes, petulant Swiss boyfriends, The Simpsons, secret service impersonations, roommates fornicating in shared spaces, over indulging, The Lord of All, road trips, "Mister Rogers has been arrested", not getting bumped into first class, prostitutes, gambling, Risk/Illuminati arguments, guacamole, "please listen", golfing in heat waves, stealing communion wine, fending off rumors of "the gay", breakdowns, failing at a much higher level, marriage, children, and far, far too many bad vaults. (No, I am not explaining any of that; see above about trying to repeat Chris stuff.)

Cannot think of a better man to have gone through all of that and more with. Happy Birthday, Chris.

Happy Birthday, Jim

Happy Birthday, Jim Catechi. Jim is a friend from the theater years; we met while doing late night shorts for the old AHA! Theatre group. We got off to a rocky start as he made a move on a girl in whom I had one of my patented One-Sided-Love-Affairs-From-Afar, so I was not willing to give him the time of day until I heard it never went anywhere (yeah, well I was young).

Glad it didn't because he has been a good friend for many years. A talented designer, photographer (photographed my wedding in fact) and cook, we have spent many an hour eating good food, drinking good beer, playing mediocre poker and watching baseball that varied between dreadful and inspired. (Jim is the only man I know who had tickets to the two baseball games ever called because of an earthquake - the 1989 World Series and the old Kingdome quake in the 90's when we were sitting in the owner's suite.) We were also known for our joint birthday casino night parties (he is 5 years older than me to the day).

And I wish our history was just that cool, but in full disclosure I have to admit we also spent many, many hours playing Magic: The Gathering as well. To the point where we brought our cards along when we spent a week in Acapulco. Yeah, yeah, yeah. (Hey, now that I am 40 do I get to rewrite history to fit my personal narrative or do I have to wait until I am past 70, like McCain.)

Happy Birthday, James.

Tension

Over the course of the next few months a lot of my life could change. Trish and I are looking to buy our first home; the pitch for Duo is out searching for funding; and of course, we continue to try and conceive a child. It is quite possible that all of those hit within weeks of each other. It makes for a very exciting time.

But the problem with exciting is that it creates tension. I am not talking about stress, but about the tension of possibilities. I feel like we are balancing on the edge of something and I just want it to tip over all ready, damnit. I want something to change, to feel like we are moving forward instead of this seemingly endless place we have been in for the past two years of getting the timing just right to conceive or talking about great ideas for movies yet unable to finance them or whatever. There was even a job possibility that appeared and disappeared within 24 hours, so that is still the same.

It is not that I am unhappy it is just that the waiting is starting to get to me.

Tyranny

I have no idea how to write this without sounding histrionic, but a U.S. Appeals court has just ruled that the President has the power to detain legal residents and U.S. citizens indefinitely, without being charged and without access to the courts. The fact that the Bush administration has "only" imprisoned three men this way is not a mitigation. This is fundamentally un-American - and horrifying.

Happy Birthday, "Buddy"

Steven "Buddy" Liu turns 26 today. We met in acting school when he was a wee lad of 20. Talented, smart, a killer with the ladies.... well, talented and smart. Buddy was the guy that everyone picked on because he was so earnest and young and he took it with amazing grace. Top notch actor who is always willing to let himself be vulnerable. Check out the second half of his demo reel to see what I mean. I suppose one of these days, I will have to forgive him for moving to LA. But not just yet.

This day is also 5 years to the day that I kissed Trish for the first time. How do I remember the exact date? Because it was after getting hammered at Buddy's 21st birthday party that I finally did it. That the kiss came in front of the apartment Trish shared with her boyfriend at the time might help explain why I got hammered before working up the nerve to kiss her. (And I kicked myself all the way home for ruining a perfectly good friendship, too. Little did I know.)

Buddy likes to take credit for the relationship because of that. And I think once a year, we can let him take it. Thanks, Buddy, and Happy Birthday. (And move back to Seattle, damnit!)

Nephew

Just a quick post to remind you that my nephew is ridiculously cute even when things are not going his way. That is all.

UPDATE: Photos by brother-in-law Jim. More photos his Flickr site here.

Fan Boy II

So the DVD was a little disappointing. The animation was great; the stories were fun; but the shorts were a little too short; and instead of an extra disc of special features, I got a CD with a Batman comic on it that I already own as a comic. Hrmm. Still worth watching if you are a fan of either Batman or anime. And if you want a real taste of the upcoming film, Rotten Tomatoes has a whole mess of clips online. I'm avoiding that personally, but other geeks might want to jump right in.

On a completely different but possibly even more geeky fan boy note, Joss Whedon's internet mini-serial Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog goes up with its first episode on July 15th. If you have no idea what I am talking about, because you have a life, there is an explanation here. Whedon has created some top notch tv shows, so this should be fun. And it will only be online through July 20th, so get your fill.

Fan Boy

I have to warn you, with each day that we move closer to the new Batman movie, I am moving more and more into a total fan boy state. So I am probably going to purchase this animated DVD and geek out over the extras just as much as the shorts. In the meantime though, this is hi-larious.

Convergence

Have you ever had a stretch of time where multiple, disparate threads in the universe converge into what seems to be a clear message from God to follow a particular path? That's happening to us right now. Cannot get into details - again - because everything is so tentative right now, but the next six months could bring very interesting changes in home and career. (And no, I am not trying to hint at Trish being pregnant.) In between bouts of giddiness, were clear eyed moments when we realized much of it is out of our hands and that is ok. So we do what we can and trust for the rest.

Audience udate

The Audience Strikes Back will be released on DVD July 29th and can be added to your Netflix queue now. Pat Beacham, the writer/director, also has created a new MySpace page for the film which has a bunch of content, including some nifty behind the scenes photos I hadn't seen before (which I unfortunately cannot copy from the site so I cannot share them here with you, but go check them out). Rent it, then buy it, then tell me you loved it!

Duo Hopes

So there is some positive movement on funding Duo: A Geek Tragedy. And I think that is all I can really say about that at the moment. It's not that it is particularly secret, but it is uncertain. Given the uncertainty I think the fewer details discussed the better. So send some positive energy this way and I will let you know if the movement becomes something solid.