Nerd dating: the seasonal nature of relationships
Odds are this would have helped you more a few months ago, but it didn’t occur to me until today that this might be useful.
As I have stated before, while I am decent at meeting and dating women, I have always been pretty mediocre when it comes to maintaining a relationship. A lot of this is on me, but a lot of it is on the women I date as well (it takes two to tango). Of course, since these issues seem to be endemic to the women I am attracted to, I guess it all really falls upon me due to the fact that my selection process pulls in flawed women.
Either that or there are no sane women out there, a premise I find both feasible and depressing.
Anyway, one thing I am an expert at is rejection and short to moderate length relationships. That being said, I have noticed patterns in the whole relationship cycle as it relates to the the seasons and more specifically the holidays. This info may help you on the front end, but if you figure out how to apply it to the back end for god’s sake share it with me.
Here’s how it works. Women hate going into the holidays single. Christmas (or your Winter holiday of choice) is the time when you get together with friends and family to compare lives and try to figure out who is the biggest loser of the year. Women are already struggling under a huge burden of self esteem issues, and not having a boyfriend or husband seriously compounds those issues. Every time they hear from their mother or sister “So when are you going to meet a nice man and marry him?” that is the female equivalent of someone asking a guy “So when is your other ball going to drop?” Nothing is worse for a woman than to go to the company holiday party and have to be the only single woman there.
That is the foundation of the cycle. Women start looking for a relationship in September and early October. The weather starts to suck, and people start to feel lonely. This way they can have the super fun Halloween party date (the onus to be in a relationship is less strong for Halloween, but costume parties are always more fun to go to as a couple when you can coordinate your costumes) and have the relationship be a couple months old when it comes time for Christmas. When the gift giving season comes around it is great to have someone new to buy gifts for (and to buy you gifts) so you can get something different from the same sweater your mom gets you every year. You can bring your new boyfriend to the holiday parties and have all the other women, still stuck with the same guy for 15 years, be totally jealous (new is always more interesting and exciting).
Then, there is the added benefit of having someone to kiss at midnight on New Years Eve while the crowd of single losers look on with palpable jealousy (if you look carefully into that photo you will probably see me). After that you get the post-holiday winter blues that are aggravating by being in the deep, dank, horribly depressing winter months when it’s really nice to have someone to cuddle up to.
Then we come to the one day a year when a boyfriend is more important than air: Valentines Day. If a girl doesn’t have flowers and gifts arriving for her on 
February 14th she will feel like a social pariah for the rest of the year. This is the girl equivalent of Green Lantern recharging his power ring, except that it lasts for exactly one year. Like Green Lantern if she doesn’t recharge she is a mere mortal once again. (Green Lantern logo image courtesy of the DC Comic t-shirts)
However, once you have served your V-Day function, things are likely to change. I’m not saying she will dump you soon, but everything you do that annoys here will no longer have the I’ve-got-to-have-a-man filter and will become glaringly obvious. Also, as the weather warms up she will be wearing less clothing and every other swinging Richard on the planet will be paying a lot more attention to her, assuaging her self esteem issues and stroking her ego. So with your flaws like a paper cut on her brain and a summer of dating and guys to look forward to, you can expect to get dumped sometime in April or May, which by no coincidence is almost always exactly six months.
Again, this is not the pattern 100% of the time, but I have seen it enough times, both personally and through friends, to approach April and May with dread. This info can help a lot when it comes time to determine when you want to focus your dating efforts (Sept-Oct) and also when you want to minimize your flaws (Feb 15th-the rest of your life). Also, women who make a New Years Resolution to loose weight and actually do it are eyeballing the bathing suit months so it might be the time to match her pound for pound.
Anyway, this post is less about actual, applicable dating advice and more about observation and ranting about how my dating life kind of blows. I’ll get back on track next post.
As for the Superman vs Prof. X question, it is my opinion that if Superman as originally written took the time to talk to the Professor he would be mind controlled and eating a Kryptonite sandwich in about three seconds. On the other hand, if he just charged in with super speed and launched Charles’s chair into orbit then Superman would win. Of course, in recent years they have said that Superman has heightened resistance to mind control (because he wasn’t powerful enough, I guess) so who knows.
Today’s question is another battle of the moronic comedy relief characters: Shaka from Land of the Lost versus racially insensitive carbuncle on the ass of the Star Wars universe Jar Jar Binks.
Movie review: Tron Legacy
So I have discovered I like doing these movie reviews, and this time instead of doing something that has been out for weeks I would do something that just opened up (I also figured out that if I review these movies on my blog I can call the movie ticket a business expense. Life is good).
I just saw Tron Legacy in 3d. Normally I avoid 3D as it gives me a headache and I don’t think adds a lot to the movie experience, but I felt that if there were one movie I need to see on as an elaborate screen as possible, it’s this one. Overall, not a bad movie going experience, but not the earth shattering tribute to the first amazing Tron was. I’ll total it up after going through the points, but let’s see. (Flynn’s Arcade image courtesy of the science fiction t shirts).
Incidentally, if you have not seen or are not a fan of the first Tron, I would say this movie will be entirely wasted on you. A lot of the issues I was able to forgive due to being a massive fan of the whole Tron thing. If you are not than you will spend a lot of time wondering what just happened and why.
I approach most Disney movies with the same caution and reservation I would use in approaching a plague-ridden bunny rabbit. It’s still pretty cute and can be fun to watch, but is also terribly sick and likely running with all kinds of vile pus, bile, and humours. Disney has a way to taking a great movie concept and forcing it into it’s cookie-cutter, kid friendly PG model (by they way, Disney, kid friendly translates into suck for most adults with a 12 year old or older mentality). However, since this movie was an original Disney movie I can’t hate on them too much, and while the violence was definitely sanitized for kids they didn’t abuse it too much.
I’ll recap the story briefly, without spoiling anything. Kevin Flynn has been missing for 21 years. His dropout, slacker (sort of) son is now the owner of Encom, a massive computer company based on a real life computer company that shall go nameless but rhymes remarkably with LicroToft. However, he doesn’t run the thing and the company is headed by an evil looking CEO and cocky software developer who show up as the early heavies and the proceed to disappear entirely for the rest of the movie (something tells me some kind of corporate power struggle ended up on the cutting room floor. These characters serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever). Sam Flynn, the son, is sucked into the Grid and has to run around, finding his father and saving the world from some ill defined nemesis.
Honestly, the story felt like it had been Skyped in over a dial up connection. It seems pretty apparent Disney was counting on amazing CGI and special effects to carry the movie which, for the most part, it does. However, given the fact that guys producing films in their garages have access to the same technology (for proof, check out Iron Sky, a movie I would like to see get finished) building a movie around special effects is not a way to create a movie legacy (haw! Me so clever).
First the stars. Jeff Bridges is in the movie. Two stars. The special effects are freaking amazing. Three stars. The two female characters are super hot and wear skin tight outfits. One star. Disney managed to avoid the trap Lucas fell into and not have EVERY REFERENCE FROM THE FIRST MOVIE SHOW UP IN THIS ONE. One star. There was an amazing light cycle battle that later showed up again with a really cool twist. Two stars. The costumes were super cool and perfectly in theme. One star. There were Recognizers. One star. The fight sequences were well choreographed and very cool. One star. None of the characters annoyed me. One star. Total: 13 stars.
Now the black holes. There were any number “What the hell just happened?” and “Why the hell did he do that?” moments. There was no apparent motivation for anyone to do anything. Two black holes. The story overall kind of blew. Two BHs. In spite of being called Tron, Tron himself has a bit role wherein you never see his face and says less than 10 words. Also, they were gearing up for a huge Tron related surprise that would have been really cool except they decided the audience was brain damaged and just gave it away for no reason. One BH. The pacing kind of sucked. There were more than a few scenes wherein I was seriously in danger of dozing off because absolutely nothing was happening. Two BHs. The whole movie seemed to be gearing up towards a huge, epic final battle that never surfaced. One BH. In spite of breaking several of the basic laws of thermodynamics there was no attempt to explain where the technology to enter the grid came from like in the first movie. In fact, they don’t even talk about how they did it or show the transformation process. I think they just assumed we would all remember it from the first movie. One BH. There was no Sark. One BH. Total: 10 black holes.
So that gives us a net result of three stars. Overall, not bad, but not amazing. However, if I weren’t a fan of Tron I might have been a little harsher and scored it lower. The fact that I saw the 7pm showing in the only 3D theater for about 15 miles and the place was maybe 20% full might give you an idea of how well it’s going to do at the theater. Once all the fan boys (like me) see it I don’t know if it really has the legs to pull in the big numbers. I would say your best bet is see it once, but don’t drag your girlfriend or non-Tron fan friends to see it or you will owe her a serious chick flick for this one.
As for yesterday’s question, it is my unfortunate opinion that Airwolf would beat Blue Thunder, in spite of the fact that Blue Thunder looked 100 times cooler. Airwolf had more in the way of missiles while Blue Thunder only had the minigun. Too bad.
Today’s question is might over brain: who would win, Superman verses Professor Charles Xavier?
Movie review: The Warrior’s Way
So last night was Tuesday night, which means $5 movies at the Regal Jack London Square cinema, and I decided to spend some of my hard earned scratch catching up on current pop culture. I refuse to see any of the Narnia movies, and most of the rest looked like Speed remakes, Harry Potter, or some other piece of dross designed to crowbar Angelina Jolie into the same movie as Johnny Depp. The only thing that looked like it would appeal to my inner nerd was the Warrior’s Way.
Before I get into the film, let me say the one bad thing about $5 movie tickets is it really drives home how much they are gouging you for candy when you pay $8.75 for a tiny bottle of water and a box of Junior Mints. I might have to adopt my mom’s childhood policy of sending us to the liquor store for cheap candy before walking in.
Anyway, the Warrior’s Way was not what I expected, which is normally good (see my review of Skyline). However, it is not really good if what you were expecting was something relatively decent. It is the creation of a first time writer and director from South Korea with the unlikely I’d-like-to-buy-a-vowel name of Sngmoo Lee. I don’t want this review to be a reflection of my attitude towards South Korean film, as they have a real growing film business and I have seen some really good stuff coming out of there (if you haven’t seen Save the Green Planet I highly recommend it).
Sngmoo apparently wanted to create a mashup of Western and Eastern culture in the form of Ninjas versus cowboys. This sounds great in concept, but honestly I think it could have been done a lot better. I will recap the story without spoilers; however, I don’t need to spoil anything as the story is so cliche and predictable it could have been a porn movie, only with slightly less good acting. The story is of Yang, the worlds greatest swordsman and the only character who is slightly appealing and believable in spite of the fact that he says about 15 words during the entire film, who opts out of a ninja clan war when he has to kill a baby girl. He flees to the American Old West and lands in a town who’s sole industries seem to be drinking, caving in to local bullies, and collecting sand. The set looks a lot like a more surreal version of the set they used in the Star Trek episode Specter of the Gun. In the town he meets a series of white-trash cliche’s, each less believable than the next, and a super hot red head with a predictably tragic past and an annoying personality. The rest of the town is half inbred losers and (for some unexplained reasons) an old carnival. The mayor of the town is also the ringmaster, a midget bald black guy with the kind of insulting name of 8-ball. There are clowns (in full makeup 24/7 in spite of being in a dustbowl), a bearded lady, a strong man, assorted other surreal freaks, and a town drunk who later turns out to be an amazing gunslinger. Each one is less believable and appealing than the last.
Anyway, you should be able to tell already that I was less than impressed, but let’s let my patented stars/black holes system speak for itself. Stars first, as always.
The movie has ninjas. Two stars. (ninja image courtesy of the martial arts movie t-shirts category) It also has cowboys. One star. The martial arts sequences have a kind of cool Matrix-like fast motion/slow motion film technique that I liked. One star. Kate Bosworth is hot. One star. The main character is kind of cool in a dead-inside ninja sort of way. One star. The ninja costumes are all pretty cool. One star. There is no shortage of killing. One star. The action went pretty much as one would expect (ninjas getting shot at range, cowboys getting Ginsu’d up close). One star. The photography is pretty good. One star. Net total: ten stars.
Now the black holes. The film has clowns. One creepy BH. The story is painfully predictable. Two BHs. All the characters except the main one suck. Two BHs. The main character spends most of the movie literally babysitting a baby (who, in spite of what looks like months of film time, never grows. Too cheap to hire more than one child actor, I guess). Two BHs. There is little to no motivation for anyone to do anything in the movie, especially for a couple hundred ninjas to travel across the world to kill one baby. One BH. Somehow the ninja and his master arrive in the dust hole of the American southwest speaking perfect English. One BH for continuity. The cowboy costumes looks like they all just climbed out of a steampunk sewer. One BH. The villains all look like low level faceless NPC’s from a video game. One BH. The final, epic battle scene between the worlds greatest swordsman and the master who trained him was over in about 30 seconds. One BH. There were flashback training scenes (normally very cool) crowbared into the LAST fifteen minutes in a pathetic attempt to add more character development to an already flat character. One BH for root-canal-like editing. The set looked like I made it out of balsa wood in a childs sandbox. The surrounding scenery was bland and boring. One BH. The ninjas had magic powers when it was needed to push the story along but never at any other time. One BH. Total: 15 black holes.
Subtracting one from the other leaves us with 5 black holes, a painfully bad score. Honestly this film looked more like a badly written first person shooter video game than a movie. That being said, there is a real possibility that this could, 5-10 years down the road, turn into one of those cult films everyone loves for being so bad. Don’t see it in the theater, but if you are looking for a brainless Tuesday night with beer and pizza stream it off NetFlix.
This is turning into a really long post for me, but I have to answer the who would win question from yesterday. In my opinion, Darth Vader would probably in the long run beat Godzilla, most likely by using his force powers, but ultimately the real loser would be the city of Tokyo.
Today’s question: who would win; Optimus Prime versus the Iron Giant?
Nerd Dating: Making “the Move” part 3: Kissing basics
I’m not going to dig in too deep on this. There are any number of sites with advice on how to kiss. Instead, I will highlight things to look for that can make the kiss work well or fail miserably (trust me, when it comes to mistakes you can make to crash and burn, I am an expert).
1. Clean breath. I have stated this before many times, but it is important enough to restate again. If you think you might make out, don’t order the onion-garlic special for dinner. In fact, operate under the assumption that you might be kissing on any given night and order accordingly. Get your stank breath dinner plate on the way home after she rejects you for other reasons. Also, brush, floss, and toss in a breath mint at some point.
2. Match her tongue technique. Kissing a girl can be like trying to pet a strange cat. The slightest bad move and she will skitter under the bed, never to be seen again. Some women like a lot of tongue. Some women think it’s gross as hell. She will show you what she likes with her tongue. Go as deep as she does and not one micro-millimeter further. The difference between her thinking you a nice guy or a sex driven pervert is literally one lick too many.
3. Hold her face. Most (not all) women kind of like it if you put one hand on the side of her face while kissing. DO NOT use both hands. Try it and see if she seems to respond positively. Also, if you have hands big enough to encompass her entire head (I generally do) just use the the finger tips.
4. Go gentle. Slow and easy. Remember that strange cat. (Actually, this advice can be applied to all your interactions).
5. Close your eyes, and keep them closed. Some women will, at some point during the long kiss, open her eyes to make sure you don’t have your eyes open. Somehow the romance is robbed if you open your eyes, but not if she does. It’s called a double standard because it is twice as true.
6. Do your best to control your autonomic responses. Nothing will kill the mood like you having to belch (or something even less savory) during the kiss, but that should be obvious. However, given the audience I am talking to I can’t assume anything, so don’t belch during the kiss. The important one to avoid, however, is showing your excitement in a physical sense if you know what I mean. For some girls this would not be a real problem, but like I have said most women are constantly looking for an excuse to dump you and pitching a tent 30 seconds into your first kiss can give her the rip cord she is looking to pull. Think about baseball or something.
That’s it for today. Next post I will start talking about when and how to initiate the kiss.
Last posts’ “who would win” question actually seems pretty obvious in retrospect. I think Gandalf would kick seven kinds of crap out of Harry Potter in about 30 seconds. Sorry to all the Harry Potter fans out there, but any man who can beat a Balrog one on one will not have a lot of trouble with a pimple faced teenager on a broom.
Today’s question is kind of a “stoppable force meets movable object” one. Who would win; a squad of Stormtroopers verses a squad of Red Shirts? (Stormtrooper image courtesy of the Star Wars t-shirt category).
Nerd Dating: Making “the Move” part 2: How to Kiss
OK, we are on final approach to Makeout International Airport, but we need to make sure you aren’t going to completely repulse your date with your heinous kissing technique. What you see in movies and TV is not really what you need to do. Like anything else, this requires some research and practice to be not bad.
This is a bit of a tender subject for me, as I didn’t kiss my first girl until a later age. I don’t want to get into the specifics, as they are terribly embarrassing, but let’s just say I was no longer a teenager (may my high school and everyone who ever attended it burn on the 7th level of Hell). It is also a little awkward as the first girl I ever kissed took that opportunity to check to see if my tonsils had been removed with her tongue, and I assumed for years that this was the technique to use on all women. Tragically, this was not the case.
I will get into specific instructions tomorrow, and will actually be referencing some sites to help me, as I don’t consider myself an expert on this at all. For homework I would recommend you all start by checking out a site like this one on how to kiss. Seems like good info, and if you all read that I can save time on specific stuff and stick to the funny. For today I will talk about signs the girl can give you that you have either mistimed your kiss, misjudged her interest in you, or just have some painfully bad breath (by the way, like we discussed months ago, make sure your breath smells good. Mints are not a bad way to go). I am doing this both because I think it relevant and because talking about it is hilarious.
1. She turns and gives you the cheek. This is pretty much the sign that she was planning on giving you the let’s-be-friends speech and was just waiting for the moment to cause you maximum pain. On the one hand, it sucks. On the other hand, you just saved yourself some pain sometime in the future.
2. She kisses you, but does everything possible to keep from 
touching any other part of your body. Girls can do this weird Twister-like maneuver that allows them to kiss you while somehow not in contact with any other part of your body. Maybe it’s all the yoga. If she looks like she is trying to stick her lips through a knot hole in a fence or maybe like poor Flick from this Christmas Story t-shirt than you should probably get the clue. Odds are she isn’t really sure about you but was leaning towards a no. Sorry.
3. She starts kissing you but then pushes away. This is a pretty good sign that your breath stinks (shouldn’t have ordered extra onions) or you have god-awful kissing technique. We will talk more about this but odds are you went too far too fast with her. Practice more.
4. She shoots mace or pepper spray into your eyes. Yeah. Are you sure this is the girl you had dinner with and not the coat check girl? If she is your date you should go home and review your thought process on the entire date. It would appear you seriously need to re-evaluate your ability to properly interpret statements like “I really don’t find you at all attractive and want to pay my half in order to not feel in any way obligated to you.” In fact, I would consider examining all your human interactions. Odds are you misinterpret things from people all the time. It might actually be better if you didn’t reproduce, so consider a career in lighthouse keeping.
That’s it for now. Yesterday’s vs question was Skynet vs JLA sans Superman. The consensus seems to be what without Superman the JLA should be riding the short bus and that Skynet would kick the crap out of them. Personally I like to think that Batman would do something, and Green Lantern is pretty cool, but I think Skynet would be a real issue for them. I would have to vote for Skynet.
Here is today’s question: Who would win, Harry Potter or Gandalf?
Nerd Dating: Spotting crazy girls early pt 6
I think I could write about this for the next six months, but I think I have given you some decent guidelines. Remember that this list is both not comprehensive and not absolute. Each girl is different, and finding just one of these items is usually not a complete red flag (the three or more cats rule is one of the few absolutes I can think of). However, one sign of crazy is usually the herald of an avalanche craziness, so it is rare that you will see one of these running solo. I’d say after you run into three it’s time to pull the rip cord.
Anyway, I think I will give this topic a rest after this post. If something comes up later on I might revisit, but I think the time is upon me to move on to the next dating subject.
19. Does she seem to pick fights with random people all the time? Does she seem to get into a dispute with the server at dinner, cab driver, 
valet, movie theater usher, or random homeless (fellow) crazy people on the way home? This is a real bad sign for the crazy meter. It’s also a bad sign if she seems to shift from “reasonable debate” to “full throttle screaming she-devil” with practiced ease in a shockingly short amount of time. Imagine Wolverine on the debate team. (image courtesy of the Wolverine t shirts)
Also, if a girl seems to have a lot of stories about actual violence she has been involved in, stay away. Sane girls do not get into fights with other girls in her gym locker room. This goes double if she carries a weapon or weapons other than the typical pepper spray. I spent some time with a girl who carried a push dagger in her purse. At first I thought she was cool, but then I realized she was nuts. Avoid at all costs.
20. She revels in telling you about the freaky sex acts she has been involved in. This is something that is fun to discuss after you have actually slept with her a couple times, but if she insists on telling you the gruesome details on the first date she is either completely nuts or is testing to see what kind of weird sex acts you are into. Either way, trouble. So if she likes to talk about her lesbian experiences, three-or-more-ways, her penchant for handcuffs, or other acts that would be found in one of the “specialty” sections at the adult book store, odds are you will be happier in the long run going some where else.
However, in the short run, this girl could be a lot of fun. Just walk carefully.
Incidentally, the whole multiple partner thing is a huge intimacy killer. If you are just going to have fun with her than go for it, but if you are trying to build a real relationship stay away from this subject.
21. Does she drink or do drugs to excess? Getting hammered on a date as a thin excuse for “losing” control is a vaunted American tradition. Getting hammered 4 or more nights a week is a bad sign. Furthermore, while most of the signs of crazy I have listed at least indicated that the girl can be fun and amusing (in the same way being attacked by several hundred Dachshunds can be fun to watch while they chew your nuts off), alcoholics tend to be nothing but depressing. Also, don’t get sucked into the idea that maybe you can save her and then have the perfect girl. You can’t, and even if you did she wouldn’t be the same person you met.
While there is nothing wrong in my mind with the occasional imbibing of pot (heck, I live a couple miles from Oaksterdam University) or trying coke once or twice, regular use of anything harder is not only going to make you miserable but could also get you killed. This goes for prescription meds too. There was a crazy girl I used to like a lot (before coming up with these guidelines) who was on Xanax the whole time I hung out with her. She also had a lot of these other issues too, and in the long run proved to be completely loony.
22. She seems to talk about marriage a lot early on. This may just be my personal Peter Pan “I don’t want to grow up” issues, but I find women who discuss marriage on the first or second date to be trouble. I don’t mean saying “I’d like to get married some day.” Rather I mean the one who has her whole wedding planned out and discusses the flowers, venue, and wedding cake with you on the first date. This is something I have had to increase my tolerance for as I get older and all women are subject to this to a certain extent, so don’t make this the stray that breaks your camel’s back.
I think I am going to wrap it up here. I could probably add another 20 or so, but honestly all women are subject to at least a few of the minor issues, so unless you plan to swear off women you should probably allow for a few of these in your life. I’d say pick which ones are really going to drive you nuts and avoid those. Good luck, my friends.
New dating topic next time I get into it. Leading up to something big!
Nerd Dating: Spotting crazy girls early pt 5
OK, I’ve reached the point in this series that it might have been easier to just list the ways you can spot non-crazy girls (I hesitate to use the word “sane” in this circumstances) but it seems you have a better chance of winning the lottery than finding that extremely rare creature. What this really is is how to spot girls crazy enough to severely complicate your life and/or cause you physical harm. The ones who will only cause you emotional pain I consider entirely datable. All things in life are relative. Here are a few more spotting tips.
16. Excessive tattoos and piercings. Personally I actually find it really these really attractive, but that is my own cross to bear. I also had a thing for my own piercings back in the day, but I think when I first started this whole dating advice blog I mentioned that I personally make a lousy boyfriend, so take that for what you will. Women (and men) who feel the need for multiple visible piercings and tattoos tend to have all kinds of “Pay attention to me” issues. I kind of see 
them as showing different symptoms of the same mental issues that strippers suffer from.
(Pinhead says “Pay attention to me as we tear your soul apart”. Image courtesy of the horror movie t shirt category)
17. Excessive cosmetic surgery, makeup, and elaborate hair styles. Another train wreck. Women who go for this sort of thing have massive self esteem issues. Again, you have to look for the excessive. A girl who has a mole removed or a bad scar worked on is not excessive. Nose, lips, and eyelids really is. A girl who gets a breast enhancement to make her body more proportional I don’t consider excessive. A girl who gets a breast enhancement so big that comparisons to sporting utensils bigger than a billiards ball become functional is excessive (think _____ball-sized). A perm is not excessive. A blowout that takes an hour or more every morning is. Also, watch out for women with excessively trimmed eyebrows. If it looks like her eyebrows were drawn on with a pencil stay away. This goes triple for girls who have their eyebrows plucked out and replaced by tattoos in their place.
18. Does she talk about her private grooming practices early on? Girls who feel the need to tell you exactly when and what kind of bikini wax she got are fishing around to see if they can get a reaction from you in order to better mess with your mind. There is also a very good chance she feels you aren’t paying enough attention to her, and there is an extremely good chance that you can never in your life pay enough attention to her.
I gotta run. Something just came up. More tomorrow.
Goodbye, Leslie Nielson and John Steakley
I need to break away from the dating stuff for today as two of my favorite guys in the world both died yesterday and I feel the need to comment on them.
The first is the great Leslie Nielson, who passed away yesterday from pneumonia (Naked Gun image courtesy of the movie t shirt category). I’m sure this isn’t news for any of you, but I want to mention how much he meant to me personally. The Naked Gun was so much fun. It came out in 1988. At the time I was probably at my lowest point in my life, having dropped out of college and gotten a horrible, horrible job working graveyard shift at a medical lab, doing dangerous, mind killing work for a company that did not give a damn about me. Ever wonder how long it takes a gallon bottle of frozen urine to thaw out? I can answer that for you.
I used to go to work at 10:30pm and do overtime until about 11am. I would stumble home and was supposed to sleep until 6 or 7. However, my best friend at the time, Eric, would come over usually about 2 or 3pm. My mom would never let him wake me up so he learned to sneak around the house and tap on my bedroom window to wake me up. He was a manager at a local Edwards movie theater and we would inevitably go see a movie for free before I went to work. We saw pretty much every movie out, and let’s just say with a few exceptions it was not a great period in cinema. We saw a lot of crap.
One day we went the theater and the only thing playing that we hadn’t seen was something called the Naked Gun. I had never seen Police Squad and had no idea what it was about. I watched the movie and laughed so hard my stomach hurt. I was totally jazzed that night at hell job, and I think I watched it three more times over the next few weeks. To this day, the scene with Leslie and Richardo Montalban in the office with the pen and the exotic fish makes me laugh my ass off.
Leslie Nielson had this amazing combination of looking serious while delivering the most off the wall, insanely funny comments. He didn’t need to make weird faces or even be in particularly weird situations to make the scene funny as hell. I have been an avid fan ever since the Naked Gun and seen all his films before and since. I will miss him a lot.
The other passing was less well known. John Steakley was an author who wrote all of two novels, Armor and Vampire$. Vampire$ was about a team of mercenaries who would go around being paid to kill vampires. Good book, and was made into a mediocre movie starring James Woods. When you consider the fact that it was made by John Carpenter it actually really sucks. It was number 55 on a list of the top 70 vampire movies. Personally I think they took too much license with the script rewrite and should have stuck closer to the story, but that’s what I say about almost all movies that are derived from literature.
The other book, Armor, is considered a classic of military science fiction and that is for good reason. I don’t remember when I first read it, but when my literature well runs low I just pull it out and reread it again. It details the life of a truly messed up guy in a truly messed up war against giant ants. He runs around in a suit of power armor that is extremely cool. The story is amazing, the writing clean and very cool, and the characters engaging and interesting.
I have probably read that book twenty times, and to say it had an influence on my life is like saying the sun has an influence on the ecology of our planet. If you have never read it I highly recommend it. My love of science fiction started with Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (another book ruined by a bad movie) and was firmly cemented into place with this book.
Also, it seems I have a thing for powered suits of armor. It bugs me that we have advanced so much in asinine stuff like better ways of delivering porn but don’t have a powered suit of armor that I can use with jump boots to leap over a building.
Anyway, two guys who I like to consider a part of my life are gone, and the world is a sadder place for it. I will miss them both.
Interview with Firefly veteran Danny Nero part 4
Continuing my interview with Danny Nero, stand in extraordinaire. The photo on the left is Danny in full demon attire with Angel star Andy Hallett (the Host) at a Angel charity posting board party. I’m sure you know Andy tragically passed away in 2009.
D: Most of the outdoor filming for Angel happened in downtown LA. I used to live near there, and it’s always fun to recognize a particular piece of wrecked transit building or warehouse on the show. They also filmed The Crow down there. However, I know from personal experience that the neighborhood is 
one step up from a demilitarized zone. One thing I admire about Joss is his dedication to his personal vision. I guess a few crack dealers and gang members will not stop him from filming late at night in a terrible neighborhood. Have you found that such concerns are truly not an impediment to his getting the shot he wants? What are some of the most bizarre, dangerous, or just out of the way locations he has dragged the whole crew to? (Crow image courtesy of the horror movie t shirt category)
Danny: If you are familiar with the series, Angel’s first season hang out was a rather cramped underground lair that proved to be a difficult set to shoot in so by the end of season 1, it was blown up with the best pyro demonstration I’d ever witnessed! The explosion on the exterior of the building took place at about 3am on the Brooklyn street at Paramount and although it didn’t make a lot of noise (that was all added in later) it did send some huge fireballs out in all directions. One unintended effect was the trigger of the fire sprinklers in the soundstage directly behind the facade which flooded one of “Roswell’s” sets. I’ll bet that was costly!
The whole crew wished we had a convenient all-purpose alley set on the back lot to use but no we had to make many trips to downtown L.A. for so many of those all-nighters. There were plenty of real live rats that didn’t enjoy us being there but they didn’t bother me. I did pause one time when a medium size rat was running toward me one night and then it vanished into a hole in front of me covered by some rags. The alleys were always disinfected by the locations guys but sometimes that wore off before the sun came up and we had to resort to Vick’s around the nostrils.
There were resident’s of lofts in some of those neighborhoods that weren’t happy to see us. We all did our best to stay quiet late at night but it’s tough when you have a small army working carrying equipment and shining bright lights and talking on walkies. Some locals painted large camera symbols with red circles and slashes through them on brick walls where we needed to shoot. One night, I was standing on DB’s mark for a lighting setup when I was drenched with water tossed from above. I really considered myself lucky that it was ONLY water! We had heard stories of other nasty things being tossed down on unsuspecting crews.
The actors were mortified that I was a target and all graciously offered their trailer shower’s for me if I wanted but I just found some dry clothes and was
good to go.
So as much as I loved the “Angel” cast & crew, when I got wind of “Firefly” in the works sometime during season 3 of “Angel”, I asked the powers-that-be to send me. We were working in the soon-to-be-razed Ambassador Hotel kitchen fighting off small creatures called “sluks” when I told DB that I was going into space with Joss and that set him off. I was one of several crew from both “Angel” and “Buffy” that were making the jump and he stopped everything for a moment to ask “And who ELSE is going over to Firefly?” God bless my dear friend Andy Hallett raised his green hand and jumped up and down which broke everyone up. I can’t tell you how much I miss Andy!
We really had become good friends and getting the call from his Dad early one morning last year was such a horrible blow. I flew back East to Boston with Dayne Johnson who did Andy’s make up and Mark Lutz who played the Grooselug and we drove down to the small Cape Cod village to be pall bearers for Andy. We who were lucky enough to know him will never forget him.
Movie Review: Megamind
Ok, I know I shouldn’t interrupt the interview series with Danny Nero, but I just saw this movie and want to do this while it is fresh and the movie is still relevant. Also I have nailed down the rating system and want the chance to present it.
Like many movie reviews, I am going to award movies stars. However, unlike other movie reviewers, I am going to tell you exactly what each star is for. Each positive thing I see in the movie will get a star or two. For example, I might say “Plot was decent. One star.” Then, because I am a nerd who loves outer space and knows what happens to stars when they go bad, I am going to award black holes for negative things I see in the movie. An example might be “After the movie I felt compelled to go upstairs and murder the projectionist in an attempt to keep other film patrons from suffering as I had just done. Four black holes.”
At that point I will add up all the stars and subtract all the black holes and hopefully come up with a number between 1 and 10 in either stars or black 
holes. So a movie like Blade Runner would have like 10 stars and one black hole (for coming out with 14 different versions and making the first release the weakest of them. See the final cut if you haven’t) for a net total of 9 stars, an extremely good score. A movie like Zardoz would have like 10 black holes (plot, acting, character development, costumes, chest hair, the list goes on) and two stars (for having Sean Connery in it and for the fact that pretty much every woman in the film has a nude scene at some point) for a net of 8 black holes, a terrible score. (Blade Runner image courtesy of the movie t-shirt category)
Let’s try it out, shall we? Megamind is an animated superhero movie that borrows so heavily from Superman comics that if it were a lung transplant there would be no chance of tissue rejection. It details the adventures of Megamind, a super intelligent alien sent to earth by his parents while their planet got blow up by a supernova-I mean sucked into a black hole, and his arch nemesis, Metroman, a completely different super powered alien sent to earth by his parents from a different planet that was being sucked into the same black hole. The twist here is that Megamind, the protagonist, is the villain rather than the hero. I enjoyed the movie too much to give any more spoilers that that.
Stars first. Excellent plot-one star. Animation was un-freaking-believable-one star. Main character was very cool-one star. Main character was voiced by Will Ferrell, whom I am a big fan-one star. Main character was a villain-one star. Comic relief characters were not completely worthless but were rather actually pretty bad ass in and of themselves-one star. Dialogue was fun and well written-one star. Female supporting character was drawn as a younger, hotter version of Tina Fey (whom I already think is pretty hot looking) and basically had her sarcastic, dry personality with short haired brunette elfin-like looks-one star. Tons of super villain devices, robots, explosives, and weapons-one star. Total: 10 stars.
Now the black holes. The movie had not just one, but two comic relief characters (in a comedy, no less)-two black holes (one each). Story was kind of predictable-one black hole. While the writers can claim it’s a tribute to comic books all they want, it’s basically a Superman story with a twist-one black hole. Also, they couldn’t decide if they were writing the Incredibles or not-one black hole. Total, 5 black holes.
If you have a 1st grade eduction you can probably subtract the 5 black holes from the 10 stars and get this movies final score in my opinion: 5 stars. However, remember that there is a range of stars (positive) and black holes (negative) so really, it’s like a 15 out of 20. And that’s the last time I will explain that. Essentially a 5 is very good, as even a one star movie is still in the positive.
Also, note that there is no upper limit to either stars or black holes (just like in space). As an example, I give the Star Wars Holiday Special one star for each of the main movie stars that made the horrible mistake of showing up in it and another star for the cartoon first appearance of Boba Fett. Then I give it one black hole for every second of it’s existance-7200 black holes. Plus a black hole each for the appearances of Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur, and Jefferson Starship, with 10 bonus black holes for the wookie porn scene and 83 black holes for Bea Arthur singing. Net result: 7289 black holes.
(Please note-that is not my clever way of saying you should see the Star Wars Holiday Special for some kind of nerd cred. There is nothing good about that flick. Trust me. It would be better if you watched the Phantom Menace in slow motion every day for a month than watch that. If you ignore my advice on this you will have a cherished childhood memory sexually abused, murdered, and then have the corpse desecrated. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)
But I digress. Megamind gets a 5 from me, which means it’s totally fun. You can bring your kids to it. You can bring a date to it. Heck, I think I’d even bring my mom to it. Well worth seeing, even though I had to watch it in 3d, which gives me a headache.
By they way, as far as that rating system goes, Copyright 2010 Dave Inman
