About to drink second cup of tea without Marmalade this morning. Also, I just won the Newbury Medal for THE GRAVEYARD BOOK....

Newbery, not Newbury. Also FUCK!!!! I won the FUCKING NEWBERY THIS IS SO FUCKING AWESOME. I thank you.

• Rick Moody's Garden State (not the basis for the movie)
• Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson
• Opening Skinner's Box by Lauren Slater
• Play Poker Like the Pros by Hellmuth
• James McManus's Positively Fifth Street
• James Howard Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere
• Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
• Comic Wars: Marvel's Battle for Survival by Dan Raviv
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• Bragging Rights: A Season Inside the SEC by Richard Ernsberger, Jr.
• The Automatic Millionaire and The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner by David Bach
• Oliver Sacks's A Leg To Stand On
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip-Mining of American Culture
• The scripts to When Harry Met Sally and Good Will Hunting

1. Going to El Caminito del Rey
2. Getting a cat (yes, I'm still allergic to them)
3. Shaving my head
4. Getting a tattoo (although not of the cover of the Tao of Pooh)
5. Buying an HDTV and a PS3 or Xbox360
6. Taking three weeks off to walk around Europe/Australia/Asia/Alaska
7. Summiting Everest
8. Growing my hair out

• For Iron Giant fans and for non-colorblind Iron Giant fans.
• For voracious readers of daily-delivered, chronological, bite-sized book excerpts.
• For Eddie Izzard/Star Wars/LEGO fans.
• For Harry Potter fans.

• Watch this week's Lost.
• Read The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John C. Bogle.
• Read The Little Book That Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt.
• Watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force Vol. 1: Disc 2.
• Watch Negima: Magic 601
• Watch An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder Disc 2.
• Watch Touching the Void.
• Finish Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.

batnandu: btw, for the record, any story--movie, book, tv show, song--that's 100% historically accurate isn't a story, it's history
batnandu: which is why i like batman

sgnewswire

Occasionally, there are literary events that transcend any rock concert. On August 1st and 2nd, Radio City Music Hall will host readings from three authors: John Irving, Stephen King, and J.K. Rowling.

Stephen King writes:

I am excited to announce that on the evenings of August 1st and 2nd, I will be reading with the creators of Potter and Garp at Radio City Music Hall. This came about because two good people agreed with me that it might be possible to do one gigantic reading to benefit two charities.

One is Doctors Without Borders, an international independent medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural or man-made disasters, or exclusion from health care in more than 70 countries, and the other is The Haven Foundation, a charity that supports writers and artists who can no longer support themselves because of accidents or illness.

First, if you live in or near New York: Fuck you.

1. Shaving my head.
2. Getting a tattoo of the cover of The Tao of Pooh where the kite is on my right shoulder and Pooh is on my shoulder blade.
3. Growing my hair out.
4. Going on a road trip to Graceland.
5. Buying a bicycle to ride to work from Juniper St. to North Ave. during what appears to be a slightly hectic rush hour.
6. Going on a road trip to Louisiana.

Stealing, of course, is a crime and a very impolite thing to do, but like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable, if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there.

But if you were very, very hungry and you had no way of obtaining money, it might be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.
--Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if that thing is cats.

Daniel Handler evidently is adamantly opposed to censorship. Read the letter he wrote to this blogger.

• "Well, you should understand. It's in your native language."
  regarding the Aramaic The Passion of the Christ to someone from Italy.
  
• "It must suck to lose to an in-state rival."
  to a Virginia Tech-alum regarding Virginia Tech's loss to West Virginia a couple of years ago.

Link It
Edit: Since LJ apparently doesn't let you embed javascript code in a link anchor, the link goes to a page I have on my own site with the bookmarklet.

That which I should not have picked up at Target for seventeen dollars:

Soul Calibur II for the Playstation2, which I played in Weapon Master mode until 12:30 AM last night, despite my intentions to go to the Independent and be social.

They who should suffer grievous bodily harm:

The people who stole Rob's chained-up 2001 Kawasaki Ninja ZX 9R at some point last night. They should have the skin flayed from their faces. Glow-stick sodomy is too good for them.

He who should have massive amounts of funding:

Rob del Bueno, bassist for Man or Astro-man?, who's trying to push biodiesel use in the Atlanta area and the Southeast through his site, Vegenergy.

He who must not be named:

Voldemort

She who should probably write something a little more substantial than "testing. testing..." since she went ahead and registered for an LJ:

genny0926

That which does not work:

Motorola's Mobile Power Tools, which have given me the capability to hook my new phone up to my computer and synchronize calendar and contacts, but which, for some inexplicable reason, will not upload my self-created MIDI file as a polyphonic ringtone. Damn you.

• Coupling Series 3 (with a $5 off Best Buy coupon)
• Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
  Koshun Takami's Battle Royale Vol 7
  Ken Akamatsu's A.I. Love You Vol 3
  Clamp's Cardcaptor Sakura Boxed Set (Vols 4, 5, and 6)
  Make It In Minutes (all under a "Buy 4 books get the 5th free" sale and another $5 Waldenbooks coupon)
• Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (with a 25% off Borders coupon).

musesfool

Nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning at the end of April 1981, and according to the giant illuminated figures at the top of the Mint Hotel the temperature was already ninety-two degrees. When we finally slid the things off--very carefully, I can tell you--Dimitri was characteristically pessimisstic. When Homer would tiptoe down to Nurse Angela's office, late at night, it seemed to him that Dr. Larch was always at the typewriter--and that he would always notice Homer's careful movement in the hall. It was a familiar but always touchy question, and one that I didn't answer just one, two, three. As the first stars came out, Coraline finally allowed herself to drift into sleep, while the gentle upstairs music of the mouse circus spilled out onto the warm evening air, telling the world that the summer was almost done.

Eye on a stick!
Eye on a stick!
I'm gonna stab!
I'm gonna jab!
Stab! Jab!
Eye on a slab!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Plants are often green
Now give me back my fucking Parliament tapes, dammit.

1. I'm unconvinced that Michael Rosenbaum is as good an actor as everyone says he is.
   
2. The whole Tom Bombadil section of FOTR was utterly boring and was rightly excised from the movie.
   
3. The only time Sarah Michelle Gellar might have deserved an Emmy nod for her Buffy work was in the first season.
   
4. Season 3 is the most overrated Buffy season for two reasons: horrible Faith characterization and an agonizingly bad metaphor driving the season finale.
   
5. Joss Whedon might have deserved an Emmy award for his Buffy work, but only for the work he did well before the voters/critics actually noticed.
   
6. "The Body" is the most overrated and overwrought episode of Buffy.
   
7. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone was a pretty lousy movie.
   
8. After Season 2, Buffy's character turned to a self-involved, slightly-power-mad child with less maturity than Season 5 Dawn. In fact, most of the Scoobies, with the exceptions of Giles, Tara, and Xander, are now petulant twits.
   
9. As well-plotted as it might have been, Babylon 5 had some of the worst dialogue I'd ever seen in any show.
   
10. Between Seasons 4 to 7 (after the departure of Dan Vebber), no one on the Buffy writing staff had any inkling of how to write Xander, even Joss, who made him the scapegoat of "Once More, With Feeling" when he wrote himself into a corner.

open_on_sunday

Pigs were popular subjects [in automotive impact testing] because of their similarities to humans "in terms of their organ setup," as one industry insider put it, and because they can be coaxed into a useful approximation of a human sitting in a car. As far as I can tell, they are also similar to a human sitting in a car in terms of their intelligence setup, their manners setup, and pretty much everything else, excluding possibly their use of cupholders and ability to work the radio buttons, but that is neither here nor there.

• Bring lots of money
  I probably spent over $300 buying crap. As previously mentioned, I got the all of Invader Zim on a bootleg DVD, as well as: Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Maison Ikkoku: Box Set #1, Escaflowne DVD #7, Deliria--an RPG edited by chinook_wind, a RedOctane Ignition Pad, a USB-to-Playstation2 controller converter, a five-dollar copy of NHL Hitz 2002, Ghost of the Robot's CD, two signed photos of James Marsters, and an autographed poster for Chance, Amber Benson's independent movie--the poster including a forthcoming DVD of the film. Luckily, I had the willpower to resist getting another $100+ leather (or metal) mask from Mansour Designs.
  
• Confidence is Hot
  Being that this is a science fiction/fantasy/comic book con, you'll expect that a large number of attendees are, well, let's just say, not the ideal Hollywood body-type. I do have to respect the number of attendees who squeezed themselves into tight-fitting costumes, and paraded around the Con largely half-naked. Aside from a bevy of "booth babe" types, there was one older woman, dressed as the Scarlet Witch, slightly overweight, but still looking quite good in her handmade costume.
  
• Overconfidence is not
  Really, as much as I admire the people in the costumes, the grossly overweight woman in the skin-tight lycra bodysuit with the plunging lacy neckline was really quite a turn-off. I don't really begrudge her her body-pride--hell, I donn't really have the balls to go near-naked/skin-tight in public--but I have a feeling that most of the Con-goers looked at her more as freak than fearless. It wasn't even a costume per se--it was just the outfit she probably reserves for evenings when she's feeling randy/kinky with her lover. I do not doubt she has a lover. Which brings me to...
  
• Costumers are more impressive than goths
  In the hierarchy of dressed-up con-goers, the people who make their own wings/armor/cloaks/latex forehead ridges (I saw a Reed Richards who created his own stretched-out arms) are generally more impressive than the people who buy their own medeival costumes/swords/corsets/underoos (Like the Supergirl who just had on a Super-S babydoll tee and Superman briefs) who are generally more impressive than the people who just buy latex ears or porcelain fangs. All of the above are more impressive than the goths who just show up dressed how they're dressed every Saturday for their visit to the local BDSM show.
  
• James Marsters has a lot of fangirls
  Quite possibly the biggest celebrity draw of the Con, James Marsters has a lot of screaming fangirls. Every panel that he attended was pretty much full (on Friday, the Con staff rudely expanded the room in the midst of his speaking), and his appearance pretty much caused every other Buffy track panel to get extra attendance. In the Saturday panel that I missed, one girl in particular asked him to take his shirt off, and to make a point, he asked her to take hers off. She did, apparently not getting the point...
  
• There will never be a Harry Potter track at DragonCon
  Because of behavior like above...
  
• It's good to know people
  Tricia, the Buffy track director, got me past the lines to see the Buffy Musical performance on Friday night because I'd been attending the Buffy track since year one. She also had me help out with crowd control on the Monday celebrity panel, so I got a prime seat.
  
• Wear comfortable shoes
  I did so much walking at DragonCon, I think I might have lost about five pounds. And, like Lt. Dan said, keep your socks clean and dry, or you'll get blisters.
  
• If you go to try to see some people that you've read online, it helps to be a little extroverted
  I met harmonyfb, and a few others, but being somewhat reserved and introverted, I spent most of my time in the periphery of the Con, wandering about to buy crap.
  
• ( More details about the well-known Angel casting spoiler )
  
• Danny Strong is quite short; so is Iyari Limon
  But he's really funny. I met up with a couple of fellow fans and we wandered about the Walk of Fame. We spoke with Danny about his upcoming projects, and he mentioned Four Guys Eating or something to that effect. He said he plays the "asshole" and indicated that that role is more in line with his personality. He then signed something for one of my compatriots, and when learning that the autograph was for the guy's (perceived freeloading) ex-girlfriend, asked him for his phone number so that he could hound him to kick her to the curb.
  
• Tom Hodges, the guy who played the bully in Lucas, directed James Leary (a.k.a "Clem, the foreskin demon") in Stunt Cocks. He plays poker with Lou Diamond Phillips, too.
  
• According to Marsters, James Leary in costume gets all the chicks, "because of the ears."
  
• ETA: If you're going to buy something, try for later in the Con
  I could have purchased a couple of the DVDs on Monday afternoon for a greater discount, and perhaps saved $20.00 on the Ghost of the Robot CD according to harmonyfb and her friends' reactions to the show...
  

• Watch the Homicide DVDs that I got from Netflix.
  
• Watch the BMW Films DVD that I got in the mail.
  
• Look at The Art of Hellboy.
  
• Read Matt Wagner's Trinity (Supes, Bats and Wonder Woman).
  
• Install a new video card in the computer and add the sound card from the other computer into there.
  
• Read Amarillo Slim's biography.
  
• Watch the Shawshank Redemption on TNT.
  
• Watch the fourth installment of the World Series of Poker on TiVo.
  

1. "The Future"--text only.
   
2. "Psychic Crimefighters"--Pic of the Temple with Agatha.
   
3. "Wood-Carving 3D Printers"--The Red Ball.
   
4. "Gigantic Transparent Video Displays"--The Entire Analysis Room.
   
5. "Wireless Interface Devices"--Cruise with his hands in those gloves.
   
6. "And really, really fancy SneakerNet"--Jad (Steve Harris) putting one of those clear-plexi discs into his terminal.
   

For those of us who have many times found ourselves trapped in discussions (if such they can be called) of this sort with adult Potter fans, but who have lacked the clarity or sensitivity to state our side of the case so well, Ms. Byatt's article is indispensable: a classic and precise piece of true criticism, neither bile nor reverence, but brilliant dissection.

Let children who love Harry read on. But let adults know that their obsessive devotion is feeding something far more frightening than the dark arts: a retreat from the complexities of adulthood in a dangerous world.

It's often struck me that many skeptics about popular culture succumb to one of its more obnoxious aspects--the reduction of complicated aesthetic issues to a hit parade--when setting forth what they think should or shouldn't be part of the curriculum or canon, or even when just expressing their conviction about what is worth knowing. What is the point, though, of pitting one type of music, or one work of art, or one type of knowledge against another, as if in a popularity contest? That seems to me to betray even very traditional notions of the attitude an intellectual life should instill.

• Positively Fifth Street
• Earnie's copy of Poker Nation
• Dumbing Down for the book club
• The Secret History
• Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth
• Girls' Poker Night
• China Boy
• The Rape of Nanking

• Find some way of getting those Texas Hold'Em hand pictures.
• Transcribe a bunch of Mandarin from Making Out in Chinese for taraljc.
• Hash out the plot/character problems in the Willow/Xander post-Chosen piece before July 15.
• Laundry.
• Dishes.
• Record and watch thirteen episodes of this season's Six Feet Under off of the TiVo for Jackie.
• Make the MP3 CD that I promised khubli a while ago.
• Fix the sound card problems with my mini-tower PC.
• Find some more ways of saving money before August 14.