Break a Leg

Last Friday I turned 32 years old.  Which means I'm finally starting to feel like I'm in my late 20's.  27 possibly.  It was well celebrated - my crew and I went and saw Watchmen, then partied at my house.  I did not get the random birthday hook-up as has happened in years past, but neither did I spend all night praying to the porcelain god, so I consider the night a draw.  Then I had lunch with the family on Sunday.  My mom made me a ham.  I love ham.

People often say that birthdays are a time for reflection, summing up the past year, and seeing what you've learned and can carry over into the next year.  I say bugger that.  I try to learn from life as I go.  If I had to collect a year's worth of experience and then right down everything only at the end, I'd forget a crapload of stuff.  I mean, I have a hard enough time remembering a phone conversation I had yesterday.  Live in the now!  Woo!

*Cough* Ahem. 

 So, Watchmen was interesting.  I haven't read the graphic novel, so I had no expectations about it whatsoever.  I like not knowing anything about a movie before I go into see it.  That way I'm not distracted by the changes or what is missing, and I can just focus on the movie for what it is.  Overall I thought Watchmen was pretty neat.  I thought it was pretty cool visually and I didn't mind the acting.  I did think the guy that played Osmandius was a horrible casting choice.  From one scene to the next I couldn't tell if he was supposed to have some kind of accent or not.  I thought some of the violence was a bit gratuitous, as was the amount of blue penis.

But I tend not to be overcritical of movies.  During the course of watching a movie, if something happens that bothers me in some way, I tend to just ignore it and forget about it as soon as something else happens.  I tend to evaluate movies with the following criteria:

1.) Did stuff happen?

2.) Did I stay awake?

3.) Did I gnaw through anything that I shouldn't have gnawed through during the course fo the film?

If the answer to these questions is Yes, Yes, and No respectively, then the movie is ok by me.  People with opinions bother me.

But that's just my opinion.

Happy Jenday!

So everyone by now knows my story and (by extension, and analogy, and just plain same-ness) the story of almost everyone else associated with Break A Leg. I work, I go home, I work, I go home; and every once in a while Yuri calls me up, begging me to take acting classes so he can try and use me to play more than just a drunk version of myself. Drunk.

I'm extremely happy with this arrangement: it Just Makes Sense, as the Romans would say. Why try and fix something that ain't broke, right? It Just Works, that's my motto, or at least it has been since I started writing this paragraph. Or at least that last sentence.

Then something dawned on me, a realization. Not that I had been responsible for canceling Battlestar: Galactica, that was last week. No, this realization was more important, more primal. It penetrated me to the very core of my being, my soul wept at its beauty and simplicity.

That realization, my dear readers, came in the form of an iPhone application called iFart. You press a button, and your phone farts.

Why, you may ask, would you want to do such a thing? I don't, not really. I haven't even seen the damn thing. But that push-button phone-farting application has earned its "developer" $73,000 as of Christmas Day of 2008, the last day for which I could find sales data. If that kind of realization doesn't make your soul weep then you don't have a soul, which in the case of iFart is probably for the better.

Let's take a step back and have a BSG break. See this photo?

Is this a sneaky shot from the set, something someone grabbed with their camera-phone before being forcibly ejected from the studio? Perhaps it's an uberfan-made jerk-off console, or PC case mode? No kids, this photo is in fact of the inside of  a San Francisco Municipal Railway Metro car.

That's right folks, our subway cars are Cylon-ready. I ride Battlestar: L-Taraval to and from work every single weekday. I know you love and hate me for it in equal parts, it's okay, I understand.

Back to iFart. So I decided "Fuck it" (I probably decide that about one thing or another at least 12 times every day), I'm getting in on this action. It's going to take some work, some dedication, and a Really Stupid Idea, but I WILL develop an iPhone application that will free me from the bonds of my day-to-day existence. 

First step: I need to learn how to program. 

I'll keep you posted on my progress, maybe even solicit suggestions from the audience as to what you'd like to see. Maybe we can even do a Break A Leg application and charge you all through the nose for it?

What's the stupidest application any of you have bought for your iPhone/Blackberry/WinMo device? Can I make a copy of it and get you to buy it again?

So, this last Saturday I went to my first comic convention: WonderCon.  It was held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.  If you've never been to a comic convention, it's like this: they have comic books by the hundreds, toys based on comic books, shirts based on comic books, games based on comic books, guest stars, panels of discussion...all manner of geekdom and nerddom to sate all manner of geeks and nerds.  Now, I'm not really a comic book buyer, but I'll read one if somebody else owns it and they don't mind me getting my grubby hands on it.  I was going mostly for two reasons: 1) To see what these conventions were all about, and 2) to meet some online friends who I had never actually met in real life.

So the day started out like this:  I put on my kilt, got a breakfast burrito, and met up with several of the crew at my house and we caravanned into the city.  We drove around several blocks several times before we found a parking garage.  It sounds like it should be easier than that, but the driver is kinda stubborn about some things.

Finally we park, get into the convention center.  There are overweight and under-hygienic people everywhere!  We go down stairs and get into the registration line to get our badges.  This is when the nerd-herding began.  We got in one line where they packed us in, then once we acquired badges, we got in another line where they packed us in and waited for them to open the gates.  Finally the gates open and the herd shuffled en mass towards this basement city of capitalism.  We then spent the next 4 hours standing in lines, buying things, ogling the rare cute girl, and generally wallowing in our geekiness. 

There were many guess stars on hand that day.  Perhaps most notably were Mark Hamil and Carrie Fischer.  The line to get their autographs wrapped around the building and was guarded by storm troopers and jedis.  I skipped it.  My friend Nate got autographs from Bret The Hammer Heart and The Honky Tonk Man.  Nate also got his picture taken with Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Firefly).  Nate was wearing a shirt with one of my drawings on it.  Adam Baldwin complemented Nate on the shirt.  The drawing is of a cute little bunny holding a huge bloody butcher knife.  It was discovered that Adam Baldwin is in fact taller than Nate.  And Nate is a big guy.

I stopped to talk to one guest star because he was actually somebody I had worked with: Jeffrey Weissman.  He played Crispin Glover's part in Back to the Future III because Crispin Glover apparently was a tool and didn't want to wear old-man make-up and hang upside-down for all his scenes.  I acted with Jeffrey in 12th Night a few years ago.  Really nice guy. I think I offended him when he offered me an autograph and I declined on the basis that I was out of money.  When he said he didn't expect payment, I eagerly acquiesced in an attempt to rectify my ass-hattery.

But here's the thing: I've never gotten anybody's autograph.  I have never really cared that much.  And plus, to get the autograph with somebody I have worked with and have infrequent correspondence with just seemed..I dunno.  It's just not my thing.

There were many other stars there: Ray Park, the kid who played Bud on the Cosby show, Erin Grey from Buck Rogers (who went to highschool with my mom.  I didn't feel like going up to her and saying "Hey my mom said you were a bitch.")

And there were two other people who I really wished I would have gone up to and said something.  One was John Provost, of Lassy fame, and also a guest star on our beloved Break A Leg.  It was just that having never met the man and then walking up and saying "Hi, I'm Jennifer" seemed like a silly thing to do at the time.

The other was Felicia Day.  Remember that whole Yahoo Awards thing?  Where Break A Leg did absolutely phenominal, but lost out to a show called The Guild?  THAT Felicia Day.  She was actually walking around the con picking up some comics before she had to sit for hours and do her signing.  My friend Gail got her picture taken with Felicia.  Again, I felt hesitant about walking up to her while she was signing autographs and say "Yes, please make it out to 'Jennifer, I'm sorry for killing Break A Leg.  Best wishes, F."

But here's the stinger: I TOTALLY SHOULD HAVE!  Just so that this blog wouldn't end in such failure.

But like I said: I am not a fanboy.

Happy Jenday!

So does anyone remember a blog post I wrote way back in March or so of 2008, about how Battlestar Galactica sucks? I didn't think so. Well Yuri recently pointed out that it had lately been receiving some comments, and had pretty much been commented on sporadically over the course of the year. If you search "Battlestar Galactica sucks" on Google. that blog post is the second third result on the list. Pretty powerful stuff. Looking at the post now you can see that the latest comment is from February of this year.

I would actually highly recommend reading those comments, they are quite entertaining. I think one person even threated my life. Wait, nevermind, it wasn't a person. It was Sebastian. The overall tenor of the comments though is one of complete and total agreement. People are generally hailing me as a speaker of wisdom, a truthsayer; one commentor likened my revealing Galactica's lack of clothes as something to be memorialized alongside Bush's leaving office.

Look it up. This is all true.

What slowly dawned on me after reading these comments was something powerful, something awe-inspiring; and yes something very, very humbling. I know, I know, this is me we're talking about. Maybe it was just a little humbling. What I'm getting at here is the realization (and I can't help but believe this is 100% true) that I cancelled Battlestar Galactica.

Sorry kids, the truth's the truth.

Yuri wanted me to take the popularity of that single post and kick it up a notch. You know, like choose some popular, well-liked geek show and dress it down old school? He sounded just like a TV executive, "Let's ride that horse and beat it at the same time!" It was truly pathetic, I don't know what's happened to him. Doesn't Lost practically satirize itself?

Right, so I do intend to at least revisit BSG and see how she's faring (I haven't missed a single episode people, I'm actually a huge fan), but were I to try and write anything meaningful and topical now it would just end being like when George Lucas developed the story for Temple of Doom while he was going through his divorce. Hearts being ripped out of chests? Damn George, don't get too symbolic or anything, kay?

I have hemorrhoids a hemorrhoid right now so fuck, I'm really pissed off about shit. You try writing something interesting when your ass is on fire. 

Oh right, and my ass is on fire.

Tune in next week for less discussion of "cushions of tissue filled with blood vessels at the junction of the rectum and the anus", and more "BSG/Lost/Burn Notice/American Idol" sucks.

Last week I posted about one of my hobbies: Kingdom of Loathing, and the radio show associated with it.  On that radio show, one of the DJs mentioned repeatedly an amazing new product that they discovered: Bacon Salt.  At first I thought "You mean the salt they use to cure bacon?  What's so amazing about that?  I mean do they recycle it or something?  Cuz that'd be kinda grody."  But NO!  They were not talking about recycled pork seasonings.  This is what they were talking about:

A couple years ago, a couple guys got into a conversation about how much they loved bacon.  Then they started talking about how great it would be if everything tasted like bacon.  So they set out with that goal in mind.  The result: Bacon-Flavored salt.  You can read more about it here: http://www.baconsalt.com.

This sounded like a fantastic idea, because I Love Bacon.  But naturally I was skeptical.  I mean, have you tasted Baco's?  They...sorta taste like bacon might taste if bacon was in fact stale and slightly burnt tiny bread pieces.  But I was assured of that authentic baconosity of Bacon Salt.  Now, of course, I could have just ordered from some the site, but then I would have paid for shipping and then I would have waited for the shipment to come in.   And what if it wasn't all that good and I spent all that money just to get the stuff here and it was no good?

So I set out to find some.  And of course, I set out to do this when I got off work at 5:30pm.  During Rush Hour.  Now, if you look at the site, it shows a list of possible vendors, all of which are not local to my locale, or just don't exist anymore.  But some of my coworkers pointed out that some of those had been bought out by, or were associated with other major supermarket chains.  So, hopes up, I set off.

Long story short: it took an hour and a half and a handful of markets all over Marin, but I finally found my prize in Mollie Stones.  I raced home, overjoyed to make everything in my house taste like bacon: pizza, tater tots, ramen, chili, Funyuns, the cat...well ok, I don't have a cat, but if this stuff worked as advertised I would seriously consider getting one on a very temporary basis.  Anyway, I got home, fired up the oven, through the taters in there, grabbed a beer, and started writing this blog.  About halfway through writing this, my dinner was ready.  I sprinkled on an experimental dose of this potentially magical powder...and low and behold, my tots did, in fact, taste more bacony than before.  Though I will admit that there was not the complete Tater-To-Bacon conversion that I was hoping for.  I will have to experiment with the levels.  And there are several different types out there that I have yet to try.  Fortunately for science, I picked up a bottle of each, so I'll be able to explore the range of accuracy.

Anyway, if you have the means, I recommend picking some up.  And it's vegetarian, so if you love the taste of bacon but not the moral dilemma behind eating it, give Bacon Salt a shot.

Happy Jenday!