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Kevin

[ card blog | The Great 1965 Topps Project ]
[ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ]
[ archive | journal archive ]
[ website | NumerOlogy ]

Embracing conformity. [Apr. 4th, 2008|01:31 pm]
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[Current Music |Chalk Farm - Lie on Lie]

If you wish to laugh at my awkward acting sensibilities, Mike Barron has uploaded his eight-minute short Figment Newton to the YouTubes. Do I really sound like that? And what the hell am I doing with my hands? Is it some sort of palsy? Watch it, or skip down to the part of this entry that's about my new iPod.



That's right, I've been a hermit all week because I have a shiny new toy. After three years of faithful service, I have retired my 20GB Dell DJ and upgraded to an 80GB iPod Classic (audio and video). It's much less bulky, and the screen displays all of my album covers in beautiful bright colors, and it even comes with games. When I signed up for iTunes, they offered me a free download of an old episode of How I Met Your Mother, which is a fantastic show that doesn't call my sexuality into question in the slightest. As I watched it, I came to the humbling realization that I own a handheld device with a better screen resolution than my 19-inch television. Since I ordered directly from the Apple Online Store, they even offered me two lines of free engraving. After debating something along the lines of "Don't bother stealing this, it's mostly Pearl Jam" I went with "Property of Kevin. I wish I were more clever.".

The reason it's taken me all week just to upload 800 songs from my modest 2600-song collection is that I'm copying them straight from the Dell DJ. Although I made sure to tag every song in an anal-retentive fashion (artist, title, album, year, and track number), in the early stages I was doing the tagging after the tracks were already on the device. However, the songs are exported with the same tags they had at the time of uploading, so much of my obsessive handiwork has been undone. Ugh. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for AllMusic.

So to sum up, I am loving the iPod. While a small part of me feels like a sellout for owning such a trendy and ubiquitous piece of hardware, I'd like to think that my music collection is single-handedly undermining the coolness of the iPod. I have a playlist of several dozen wrestling entrance themes, after all. Then there's my extensive cache of Nineties crap. Anyone up for some Crash Test Dummies? How about Candlebox? I've got so much 311, Mikey is rapidly losing any respect he had left for me.
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Have you seen this man? [Mar. 25th, 2008|11:42 am]
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[Current Music |The Format - On Your Porch]

Wow...three weeks away from my LJ? I suppose I'd better update things before I wind up on the side of a milk carton. What's new in this guy's world? I'm still a writing fool:

-Over at Crunchable, I discussed the horrors of sprickets and the ups and downs of traveling up I-81 to my family's cottage in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Hopefully the site stops freaking out by the time you read this. If not, I'll update later with the article links.

-I even did some sports writing, submitting an NCAA basketball tournament capsule for Mount St. Mary's University for Deadspin, which is just my favorite sports blog, don'tchaknow. 

I'm also trying to motivate myself to look for a new job, along with a new place to live. Yep, Mikey's striking out on his own when our lease is up in June. As luck would have it, Heather is moving to Indiana for school and Mel is going to be in the market for a new dwelling as well. Will we combine the mystical powers of the Condo of Chaos and the Apartment of Awesome? Stay tuned!

I just had a restful Easter weekend at home with my family. I hadn't been back since January, so it was good to see everyone. Saturday morning we had a big group breakfast at Uncle Eddie's, a restaurant we used to frequent. There were 14 of us - aunts, uncles, cousins, and even my great uncle Dan. After breakfast, we visited the cemetery so we could leave flowers for Grandma Boots and my great aunt Bee. We had to cut it short, because it was ridiculously cold and windy and there were two burials taking place a little later that morning; we didn't want to get blocked in by two funeral processions.

Sunday we got together at my aunt and uncle's house in Harford County and had our annual Egg Picking Tournament (if you have no idea what that means, read this.) When we were dyeing our eggs Friday night, I arbitrarily scribbled a little angry face with big fangs on one egg using white crayon and dyed said egg green. I started calling it "Eggula", and decided that it would be my weapon of choice in the competition. We picked numbers to determine seeding, and I drew my favorite number, 13: a good omen. In the first two rounds, I showed no mercy to my fourteen-year-old cousin Ashley and my aunt Dina, reaching the Final Four with both ends of my egg unbroken. This was a year for the Brotzmans, as my parents and I were three of the last four combatants standing. My dad made short work of Brandon (another cousin) and I faced off with my own mother, who was still racked with guilt based on the events of the 1994 Tournament, when just moments after I defeated her in the semifinals, she accidentally knocked my egg off of the table and broke it, leaving me vulnerable to a defeat in the finals with a replacement (and presumably inferior) egg. History repeated itself, as I showed Mom no mercy and moved on to a once-in-a-lifetime showdown with my father to determine who would reign as the dominant male of the pride...and to a lesser extent, who would have his name engraved on a gaudy, egg-shaped plaque that would then hang in his home for the next year. Having learned from my past mistakes, I kept Eggula securely cradled in my hands between the semifinal and final rounds. It was all for naught, as Dad dispatched me in brutal fashion, cracking both ends of my egg without losing even one of his own ends. Thus my Chicago Cub-like streak of futility in the Schenning Family Easter Egg Picking Tournament continues unabated. But wait 'til next year.

...And yes, my family is a loose confederation of mental patients. But so is yours.
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Egghead likes his booky-book! [Mar. 4th, 2008|11:33 am]
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[Current Music |Keaton Simons - Nobody Knows]

Right, so I need to keep updating my book list in an ongoing effort to prove my literacy. Avast! We left off in January with...

3. The Long Pursuit  by Roy Morris, Jr. As I had mentioned, this is the latest of 423,182 books written about Lincoln. It juxtaposes the lives and careers of Lincoln and one of his chief contemporaries and rivals, Stephen Douglas. It was a relatively short book at 272, and touched all of the important points. Douglas often gets overlooked for his role in history, as he was one of the more dynamic and complex political figures of the mid-1800s. It was compelling to read about his doomed Presidential campaign of 1860; once he realized that he had no chance of winning, he sacrificed his health while stumping all over the South, begging the lower half of the country not to overreact to a Lincoln victory. Of course, it's also endearing to read about Lincoln's early years as a lawyer, traveling the circuit and entertaining the locals with his favorite jokes.

4. Game of Shadows by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. I went into this book expecting it to be all about Barry Bonds and his steroid saga. However, the authors did a great job of weaving the controversial baseball player's story together with that of Victor Conte, the sleazy mastermind behind BALCO, the performance enhancing drug company that supplied not only Bonds, but a few dozen other athletes, most of them Olympic track stars. Some of the details of what got injected into where made me squirm; it's really amazing to see how far some athletes will go to be the best and the highest-paid in their fields. Though Bonds' incredible arrogance and erratic, controlling behavior made for some of the most vivid stories (one example being a series of bizarre voicemails he left his girlfriend, Kimberly Bell), the most galling aspect of the subjects of this book was their hypocrisy. Former Olympic sprinter Marion Jones takes the cake; while the FBI's grand jury investigation of BALCO was coming together and the 2004 Summer Olympics were on the horizon, Jones released a fluffy ghost-written autobiography. It included a two-page spread stating plainly and boldly that she did not (and never would) take illegal performance-enhancing drugs. She has since plead guilty to perjury, admitting that she used. Among other penalties, she has been stripped of the five medals she won at the 2000 Olympics.

5. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. I haven't seen the movie, so I went into this book more or less blind. I have enjoyed Lehane's Patrick Kenzie detective thrillers in the past. Though this book does not feature Kenzie and his cast of characters, and therefore contains less humor to cut the mood, it is just as suspenseful and gripping. Following the main characters as they struggle to suppress their true nature and their darkest desires makes for a fascinating and heartbreaking journey.

6. What's Science Ever Done For Us? What the Simpsons Can Teach Us About Physics, Robots, Life, and the Universe by Paul Halpern. It won't surprise you to learn that the nuts and bolts of science (particularly physics) are outside of my comfort zone. So it was helpful to have the Simpsons as a leaping off point. While the author is clearly a huge Simpsons buff, his work is not in any way endorsed by the show or the people who work on it. I thought that Halpern's use of scenarios from the show to examine actual scientific theories and dilemmas was clever (i.e.: Can you create a tomato-tobacco hybrid plant, and how? Is it possible to transport matter?) and the answers he provided were fascinating. It seems that phenomena such as time travel is a possibility, no matter how remote. He's made most of his essays easy to follow, but I still got a little lost when it came to the less concrete disciplines such as physics.

7. The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes. Another golden find from the old office free table. This is the author's first novel, and it's a good effort. It follows Edward Moon, an aging, disenchanted illusionist in turn-of-the-20th Century London. Moon solves crimes on the side, aided by the Somnambulist, a mute, milk-chugging giant of a man. They are trying to uncover a sinister and mysterious plot that threatens the well-being of London and its inhabitants. The story moves along briskly and has dashes of humor mixed in with all of the horror. It tends toward the supernatural, so you'll be required to suspend disbelief. Still, I recommend it.

8. God Save the Fan by Will Leitch. I touched the surface of this book in my LJ last week, and I've just finished it up. This is a collection of sports essays by the editor and chief contributor of the Deadspin sports blog. It was good to get some more in-depth opinions from Will, as his writing style on the site is more hit-and-run. He takes some contrarian stances to conventional sports fandom, for instance suggesting that we should not cease rooting for a favorite team just because they relocate for greener pastures. While I might not agree with all of his views, they're presented in an intelligent and witty manner. Though I got a chuckle out of the "glossary" features at the end of each section, in hindsight they were every bit the cheap filler that the author self-deprecatingly claims them to be, mostly rehashing easy jokes from the blog. Two of the most memorable essays detailed Leitch's depressing foray into conventional sports journalism as an undergraduate at the U. of Illinois and his ability to let his more enlightened, detached facade melt away in the shared experience of a crucial Cardinals playoff game with a bar full of Cardinals fans in the middle of enemy territory in New York. This book has its flaws, but there's enough good stuff and humor to keep it going.

Whew! Currently I'm reading a series of Swamp Thing comics on loan from John Hefner for something of a change of pace. This has been Kevin's Book Corner.
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In which our hero geeks out over a blogger. [Feb. 28th, 2008|12:33 pm]
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[Current Music |The Kinks - Picture Book]

As I mentioned to some of you over the weekend, I actually stayed in Georgetown late into the night last Thursday, something I generally avoid. I had good reason, as Will Leitch was in town for a book reading and signing at the Barnes and Noble (two blocks up the street from my office). Who is Will Leitch, you ask, and well you might. He's best known as the editor of Deadspin, a witty little sports blog where I waste much of my time. When I'm feeling especially clever, I even chime in on the often-amusing comment threads. Will has just had his third book published: God Save the Fan, a collection of insightful and funny essays about the pitfalls of being a modern sports fan. For anyone who's seen Empire Records, this was like my very own version of Rex Manning Day.

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You're still here? Good news and bad news edition. [Feb. 20th, 2008|12:02 pm]
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[Current Music |Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!]

I'm referring to myself, but I could just as well be talking about winter. As I told Mikey this morning, I am tired of waking up and immediately freezing. It makes it so much harder to face the day when you're too cold to process coherent thoughts. To paraphrase Lewis Black, February is the time of year where you wake up one day and it's the grayest day you've ever seen...and the next day is EVEN GRAYER! Some time after Valentine's Day, you start thinking about slitting your wrists just to see a little color.

On the upside, I had a date last Saturday. A double date to be exact, expertly arranged by dear Molly. For the first time in a long time, the prospects of a second date look good. She even thought my facebook photo was "hilarious", as opposed to "creepy" or "nightmare fuel". So chances are that we might be on similar planes, humor-wise. That's a biggie, folks. I'll keep you posted.

I'm involved in one of those tasks at work that makes me most miserable; verifying our survey contacts at each school. More than anything else that goes on here, this process makes me most acutely aware of the passage of time and my continued languishing in said job. Either the same contacts I've dealt with for the past three years write back to say, "Still here" (reminding me that I'm still here as well), or somebody new slides in to replace them (meaning that everyone else is moving on with their lives while I stagnate). Some people even make it a point to notice that I'm still here. I guess it's a comfort to them to work with someone familiar and reasonably competent, but it's little consolation to me. The problem here is that I don't have a clue what to do with my life. So I'm financially secure and my job is secure and that keeps me nailed down.

In more amusing news, I bought a box of the newest baseball cards from Topps, the oldest baseball card brand on the market and one of only two remaining. Think of them as the PAAS of baseball cards. Anyway, they included an insert (rarer than the regular cards) set of the major presidential candidates...at the time of printing. Of course, by the time I started opening packs, only five of their twelve featured pols were still campaigning, and only three even have a snowball's chance on Mars of getting a nomination. I pulled seven of the twelve, which I've scanned for your enjoyment: 
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Sheer genius... [Feb. 11th, 2008|11:30 am]
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[Current Music |See below]

Because it's Monday morning and you probably need this as badly as I do, consider yourself rickrolled...Mario Paint Composer style.



Meanwhile, back at the ranch, new Snackable. It attempts to explain exactly why I spent eight months putting together my new website, and links to some of the kudos I've received in the blogosphere. There's even a link to an interview I did with The Daily Times in Salisbury. I am my own pimp, after all.

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Ho. Lee. Crap. [Feb. 6th, 2008|11:20 am]
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[Current Music |R.E.M. - Shiny Happy People]

It was quite an eventful weekend in my world. Friday night, I put the whip to each of the 100 monkeys at 100 PCs, and finally launched my long-talked-of website! It is rightchere - NumerOlogy: The Uniform Number History of the Baltimore Orioles. Check that out, it's got a real domain name and everything. Classy. Since it launched, I've already gotten some great feedback. One guy sent me some snazzy graphics that I'll be uploading as soon as I get a chance, and somebody in Salisbury interviewed me for the local newspaper. So it's a relief to actually achieve a goal in the midst of all of my regularly scheduled slacking.

Sunday night I had some folks over for the Super Bowl. I was surprised when my sister told me she and her boyfriend Mark were coming and bringing a few friends. I was even more surprised when they showed up with armloads of  food and drinks. I was absolutely dumbstruck when, as I was in the midst of trying to lay out all of said food and drink and introduce everyone, my sister said, "Guess what?" and showed me this:

So, um, dude. My little sister's getting married. Not until Fall 2009, which gives me time to deal with it. I like Mark a lot, and we've known him since high school, even though they just started dating last October. But yeah...everyone is getting married now. I knew this time would come. Oh, and the game was very exciting and praise Jebus the Giants won and I had lots to eat and drink. Now if you'll excuse me, I need a little silliness to break up the mush...

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This week in Kevin history... [Jan. 29th, 2008|03:29 pm]
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[Current Music |Interference - Gold]

In a time-killing maneuver last week, I took a glance back at my LJ archives. I was a bit shocked to see that this journal spans FIVE years; I started it in November 2004 and here we stand in January 2008. The march of time is wonderful and terrible and inescapable. So if you're at all curious about what came before, I present to you a few snippets of my late January archives.

On January 25, 2005, I was coming off of a weekend of hanging out and drinking and watching wrestling with Boothe. The less things change, the more they stay the same. However, this post also has the rules of Braveheart: The Drinking Game (not for the faint of heart).

Five days later, I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and did some navel-gazing. Was I still trying to get over a certain ex-girlfriend at this point? I'll never tell.

Jump to January 28, 2006 and my first-hand account of an incredibly busy Saturday that primarily consisted of a hiking trip with Val and company. I don't like to toot my own horn, but rereading this two years later I think it's hilarious. Your mileage may vary.

Zipping along to January 26, 2007, I was planning an Orioles Spring Training Trip to Fort Lauderdale and pimping Much Ado About Nothing.

Finally, I inundated everyone with pictures from the Servant of Two Masters photo shoot on the last day of the first month of 2007.

No, you're not imagining things. This was an exceptionally lazy update.

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Casting about. [Jan. 22nd, 2008|11:19 am]
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[Current Music |Glen Hansard - Say It To Me Now]

I've started to wonder what to do with this here LiveJournal. As I get more involved with blogs and writing projects elsewhere, it gets harder to stay engaged with this one. Maybe I can only write about myself for so long before even I get bored with it. Or maybe I'm just spreading myself too thin. One thing I certainly want to do is keep track of the movies I see and the books I read throughout the year. Just so I can remind myself of what I've been doing with my time, reassure myself that as the weeks and months and years of my life go roaring by, I have been trying to expand my horizons...that I haven't been wasting all of my time in front of the television, jaw slackened.

I generally try to read a book a week, which is quite feasible given the hour-plus commute home each day (the commute to work is spent sleeping). So far, I'm running a bit behind, but it will even out somewhere.

1. Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane - I haven't seen the movie yet, nor have I seen Mystic River, based on another of his novels. We'll put those on the to-do list. Last year I read two others, A Drink Before the War and Darkness, Take My Hand. Lehane's Patrick Kenzie crime thrillers are entertaining, tense page-turners with a cast of colorful characters. I always appreciate books that actually make you want to read. Plus, with GBG I suspected one of the culprits halfway through the novel, which allowed me to feel smart even though the scope of the crime was beyond anything I'd expected.

2. The Pitch That Killed by Mike Sowell - This is, of course, a baseball book. It's the gripping nonfiction account of the 1920 pennant race between the Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees, a contest that went right down to the final weekend but was marred by tragedy. In late August, the Yankees' Carl Mays accidentally hit the Indians' Ray Chapman in the head with a pitch and killed him (batting helmets had not yet been invented). The book deals with an emotionally charged event fairly and evenly, giving the rich back story of both Mays and Chapman. I'm a soft touch to be sure, but most people would probably get choked up while reading about the reactions of Chapman's teammates, opponents, fans, and of course his family to his untimely death. The fact that this book was first published in 1989 and is still in print speaks volumes about its quality.

3. The Long Pursuit by Roy Morris, Jr. - Plucked this one off the free table at work. It appealed to the US History buff in me; it's about Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas and their political duels. I haven't finished this one yet.

In the queue for the coming weeks are Game of Shadows (about Barry Bonds and the steroids he loved) and Mystic River, as well as What Has Science Ever Done for Us?, which is apparently some juxtaposition of science matters and the Simpsons. That one was a gift from Mikey, so its quality will determine whether he lives...or dies. Ooooooooo.
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Memes smell like sunshine... [Jan. 16th, 2008|12:38 pm]
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[Current Music |Richard Shindell - Lazy]

First order of business: Ye Gods on a pogo stick is it COLD.

Order the second: this meme from [info]entropicalia , [info]aeonata , and [info]droidboy010101 : 

Presenting the album cover for my fake RAWK band:


 
The picture is ridiculous and cutesy and seems to fit the title somehow. The band, however, is named after a genocidal Rwandan politician. Hooray?

How to play:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
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True stories of an angry man. [Jan. 9th, 2008|02:59 pm]
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[Current Music |Rilo Kiley - Go Ahead]

Two for the price of one over at Crunchable this week - I wrote a feature article about all the shitty stuff that happened in pro sports in 2007, and a Snackable piece about how much I suck at seeing movies. Check it out!

In other news, I made a rare weeknight appearance outside of my own apartment Monday night. Heather and Mel were hosting a game night, and I had the pleasure of joining the two of them and the inimitable Mike Barron for my favorite infuriatingly luck-based card game, Phase 10. If you've ever played games/watched sports/sat in traffic with me, you know that I have a bit of a temper when things aren't going my way. Monday night, with the aid of a glass of wine and the company of a few friends who aren't often exposed to my darker side, I was trying to keep my emotions in check. But I was also being destroyed with military precision by the whims of the cards, and I may have directed my frustration at the player immediately to my left, same Michael Barron. I am relatively certain that all of the following happened over the course of the game, which ended with Mike victorious and yours truly lagging far behind in third place:

1. I may have told Mike that he was a "bad helper monkey", because he was not discarding anything of use to my person.

2. I may have uttered the phrase "Jesus Christ on a Cracker", which I could have sworn was a real saying, but which seemed to be new to my companions.

3. I may have instructed Mike, during a particularly infelicitous hand for moi, to just cut out the middle-man and discard a cyanide capsule so that I might ingest it, rather than continuing the game.

4. On at least one occasion, possibly more (considering the multiple hands he won and his occasional uses of the "Skip" card for its intended purpose), I just might have called Mike a "horsefucker".

I wish for all parties involved to know that I meant no harm and that I thoroughly enjoyed the card game and the evening as a whole, despite outward appearances.

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Who's the Man? [Jan. 4th, 2008|03:02 pm]
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[Current Music |Valve - Still Alive]

...Best Man, that is.

That's right, Boothe has asked me to be his best man for his upcoming wedding to Molly (

[info]ortugatay ). I'm really honored and excited. I've never actually been part of a wedding before. Well, I was the ring bearer for my aunt's wedding in 1990 and HOLY CRAP that was almost twenty years ago, but that's different. I was essentially chosen because I was small and would follow simple directions and then get the hell out of the way. I showed my gratitude by walking off of the altar in the middle of the ceremony to find the church's restroom.* This is two of my closest friends, who are having a very small low-key ceremony and celebration, and want me to share in it. Plus, now I don't have to worry about what I'll wear that day. ;)

So now I've got five months to put together a bachelor's party and a toast that won't horrify parents and grandparents into a coma. Wish me luck.

 

 

 * = I'm fairly confident this won't happen again, but Boothe has assured me that I can wear Depends under my tux, if need be.

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New toy! [Dec. 30th, 2007|11:04 pm]
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[Current Music |Jack Johnson - Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer]

That's right, my big gift for Christmas this year was an HP scanner/printer/copier combo, the better to scan baseball cards and photos for my new website, which is coming tantalizingly close to launch. But I just got it hooked up and tested, so I thought I'd share one of my favorite photos ever with you guys. The following is from Christmas 1986, when I was all of four years old. Also pictured is Grandma Boots, who was just plain cool.

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'Twas Christmas [Dec. 26th, 2007|12:36 pm]
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[Current Music |Fiona Apple (yes, really) - Frosty the Snowman]

Happy Boxing Day, everyone! I don't know about you, but I punched the first three people I saw today before someone explained to me what "Boxing Day" really meant. Whoops.

Here are the highlights of my Christmas experience this year, bullet-pointed and in more or less chronological order:

-Driving home to join the family on Saturday, I listened to John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together and began crying. I couldn't control it. God, I miss John Denver...but seriously, it's no secret that I'm a soft touch. Hell, it was probably tears of joy, considering that I don't go back to work until 2008.

-We hosted the annual family Christmas party at our house on Saturday night. Though it's technically for my father's side of the family, only two of his five brothers attended; conversely, three of my mom's four siblings were there. The highlight was my sister's boyfriend Mark making fast friends by presenting my father with a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey. My dad is not much of a drinker, but his brother Phil (the 300+ pound Vietnam Vet) spotted the dark green bottle from across the room and barked, "Is that Jameson?". Before the night was over, we'd poured two rounds and toasted both of my dearly departed grandmothers. It was a nice touch.

-Mark also brought over his Wii, so I played a round of Mario Party 8 with my sister's friends. Like Mr. Burns choosing a box of Count Chocula cereal because the vampire spokescartoon looked like him, I selected Waluigi as my character. I spent the entire game mimicking his ridiculous "Wah-aaaahhh!" war cry. However, during a break from the action, Waluigi got his revenge. I slipped off to the little boys' room with the Wii-mote still strapped to my wrist. In mid-stream, that unmistakable "Wah-aaaahhh!" emanated from the Wii-mote. I'm lucky I didn't spray all over the bathroom walls.

-New holiday reflections from yours truly at Crunchable. Click home to check out the fevered Yuletide musings of Mikey as well.

-I've barely been to church all year, lapsed Catholic as I am, but Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve was a thoroughly pleasant experience. The mass began with the congregation lighting handheld candles to illuminate the church. The priest processed down the aisle by himself, singing a beautiful rendition of "O Holy Night" and placing the baby Jesus statue in the manger. His homily was also thoroughly entertaining, as he referenced holiday favorites like "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and even "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" (snicker). It's sad, but it's rare to find a priest that actually seems to enjoy what he does. When you do, it's pretty infectious.

-I spent the lion's share of December 24 and 25 tearing through FIVE old VHS tapes full of recorded holiday specials. In addition to my sentimental favorites (most of which I've mentioned here previously, save for the wildly obscure and under-appreciated Ziggy's Gift), I found my Mom's favorite incarnation of A Christmas Carol, 1970's Scrooge. Albert Finney plays the most pitiful Ebenezer Scrooge I've ever seen, while still managing to chill my blood with his sneers and snarls. There are musical elements to it as well, giving it a different spin. Check it out if you get the chance.

-The old commercials on these VHS tapes...my God. Most of these shows were taped between 1986 and 1989. Talk about feeling old. There are so many examples I could give...but let me just say that Teddy Ruxpin ruled with an iron fist, the Geo Prizm was apparently at the forefront of automotive technology, and Toys 'R Us had a slogan of "You'll Never Outgrow Us". Brilliant AND true.

-My Dad started making fun of the "Best of Badfinger" CD I gave him as soon as he'd unwrapped it. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

-My sister and I bought each other the same book: "Gone Baby Gone" by Dennis Lehane. Great minds think alike. She also bought me a pack of Garbage Pail Kids stickers. Awesome.

-The Secret Santa gift exchange with the extended family (Mom's side) ran smoother than it possibly ever has. For my part, I got the Simpsons Movie on DVD and a pack of card sleeve sheets for my baseball cards, so I'm pleased. My sister had drawn the name of Ethan, my cousin Chris's ridiculously adorable little boy. Chris had bought him a PSP for Christmas, so she'd suggested buying him a PSP game based on Disney's Cars. When he got the game, Ethan asked my sister how she knew that he was getting a PSP. Thinking quickly, she told him that she had been unsure of what to buy, so she asked Santa, who told her that he was bringing the PSP on Christmas. A moment later, Ethan sidled up to his mother and whispered, "She asked Santa." Ah, lies for the greater good.

This was a pretty damn good Christmas. I hope your Christmas/Hanukkah/Yule was just as relaxing and enjoyable. See you all soon!
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A To-Do List for You [Dec. 10th, 2007|10:26 am]
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[Current Music |Bob McGrath - Keep Christmas With You]

-Inconsolable over the Writers' Strike that is now causing a further proliferation of insipid reality television? Desperately need a break from Christmas shopping before you snap and run rampaging through the mall roaring and slashing at fellows shoppers as though you were a bear? See Zero Hour Theatre Presents The Hefner Monologues (the extended anniversary DVD collection), tonight and tomorrow only at Hartford Arts Collective in Baltimore! 8 PM, $10 cheap! (Or $7 if you are a student.) Laugh, cringe, rub elbows with celebrities!*

-Want to know just what I think about those giant inflatable snow globes and Johnny Mathis? Read my new Crunchable article!

-Ready to laugh your fool head off? Check out what happens to Oscar the Grouch in the opening segment of Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. (Cue the video up to the eight minute mark to see what I mean.)

-SEE THE HEFNER MONOLOGUES ALREADY! (Please.)

* = Celebrities may just be me dressed as Burt Reynolds.

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Making (or rehashing) a list. [Dec. 5th, 2007|02:20 pm]
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[Current Music |Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem - Little St. Nick]

 This week, I found another entertaining feature at Progressive Boink, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite sites. It's Mike's 100 Favorite Christmas Shows. Though it appears to have been written in 2004, this truly is the list that keeps on giving. Because I was raised by a man who seeks out radio stations with an All-Christmas format as soon as the air starts to chill, a man who will watch any piece of drivel on TV as long as it has a jolly guy in a big red suit, I've seen a surprising number of the holiday specials and movies on this list. It probably doesn't hurt that the writer is by my calculations two years older than me, so there's a bit of generational bias. Behind the cut is a rundown of the 54 shows on this list that I've actually seen, along with a thought or two about them.

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The holiday season? If you insist. [Nov. 29th, 2007|03:47 pm]
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[Current Music |You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch]

Yeah, somehow my favorite holiday has snuck up on me again. There's less than a month until Christmas, and for some reason I wasn't in the festive holiday mode just yet this year. But I think we're getting there.

The ABC network has contributed, as this week alone they've aired "A Charlie Brown Christmas", "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", and "Shrek the Halls", which was actually pretty damned entertaining, considering that I've avoided Shrek the Third like the plague. I still think those ogre babies are creepy, to say nothing of the hybrid Donkey-dragon babies that are a crime against nature. I'd also like to say that whoever had the idea to cast Boris Karloff in the dual roles of the narrator and the Grinch in the Dr. Seuss classic was a genius.

I got my first Christmas card of the year...from Georgetown University's School of Business. That seems a little bit sad, that it would be work-related, but it's nice to be thought of in any capacity. Plus, the picture on the front is a lovely autumn view of the C and O Canal.

I did all of my gift shopping today (praise Jebus for Amazon.com), making sure that the first purchase was for my favorite charity, Penny Arcade's Child's Play. For the uninitiated, Penny Arcade is a thrice-weekly web comic and news post about video games. I've had the good fortune to meet Mike (aka Gabriel) and Jerry (aka Tycho) once before, and they are just regular geeks like you and me who got the idea to harness the power of gamers from all walks of life and to do something positive. Every Christmas they collect money and gifts for children's hospitals around the world. They've helped set up wish lists on Amazon for the hospitals (45 and growing, including locations in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Iraq), so you can donate directly to the hospital of your choosing. In just a few years, Child's Play has grown beyond belief - the campaign topped a million dollars in monetary and gift contributions last year, and receives donations from industry giants including Microsoft and Ubisoft. Bottom line, this is just one of the coolest philanthropic projects around, and you should check it out.

For my part, I was glad to see Johns Hopkins Children's Center on the list, a hospital where a good friend of the family spent much time before succumbing to leukemia in 2005. I hope that the kids there who don't have much else to do enjoy their new copy of Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, although I can't for the life of me remember which game console I bought it for.

So yeah, I feel more prepared for Christmas already. Now let's see some damn snow.

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A friendly memo. [Nov. 15th, 2007|10:45 am]
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[Current Music |Glen Hansard - Say It To Me Now]

 To: The jackass in the green car who nearly hit me as I crossed M Street this morning

Re: Red lights

RED MEANS STOP. Warmest regards,

Kevin
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What? Good car news? [Nov. 14th, 2007|03:23 pm]
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[Current Music |Rufus Wainwright - Across the Universe]

Yep, just one day after my latest Crunchable article was published, in which I detail my many trials and travails as a motorist, I got my policy renewal information from Geico. Between making it through a whole calendar year without totaling a car and reaching the milestone age of twenty-five, my monthly premium has been slashed by $52. That's a pretty big deal; we're talking about over $600 a year. What's more, after December I will have finished paying my folks for the car, which they sold me last year. It's just good to know that Geico doesn't waste all of their money on goofy commercials. Also, I still say Allstate can suck it, and suck it hard.

Wow, the holidays are sneaking up on me this year. After a trip home this weekend to attend a Ravens game with my dad (complete with a free ride from my uncle, and tailgating with said uncle), I've got a three-day work week and another trip home for...pretty much more sloth and football. Oh, and gratitude. I guess you've got to throw gratitude in there.
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Because that's what I need, another blog. [Nov. 9th, 2007|11:56 am]
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[Current Music |Kansas - Carry On, My Wayward Son]

Wow, I took off from work on Monday, and this has still been a helluva long week. Wednesday I went straight to Mike Barron's apartment after work to finish filming Figment Newton. We got started at 6 PM, and finished at 12:30 AM, with a dinner break thrown in there somewhere. Cleanup took us until 2 AM, and then I collapsed on the futon. Got up for work at 7:15 AM, found out that the shower was occupied by Mike's roommate, and trundled off to the Metro with greasy hair. But we're done filming! Whooo!

Anyway, in some free moments this week, I put another one of my bright ideas into motion. For anyone who's familiar with the story behind One Red Paper Clip (short version: guy starts bartering with one red paper clip, trading "up" each time, and within a year, ends up with his own house), the power of the Internet can be pretty amazing sometimes. So I've created The Great 1965 Topps Project, in which I try to complete a classically designed set of vintage baseball cards by trading away more modern cards from my collection. If nothing else, it gives me a sounding board for my baseball card fanboy ravings, so I can keep them separate from this LJ. I post this link here on the off chance that anyone's interested. But since I've mentioned it...

At the bottom of that other blog's page, I've installed some Google ads. This is a fairly simple way for me to actually make some money off of this crazy thing. (Or at least to defray the costs of postage when I start trading cards.) If you would be so inclined as to check out the blog, click one of those ads, and then click one of the links on the proceeding page, I will actually have a small bit of money deposited in my AdSense account. When and if I earn $100, I'll get a shiny check in the mail. I've checked out the ads, and they're on the up-and-up as they're sponsored by Google. I'm not inviting spyware onto your computers. So yeah, give to a worthy charity: me ;)

With the ad pitch out of the way, let's all enjoy Friday! I have no plans for once, and I'm going to enjoy it, dammit.

Yes, that Bob Uecker.

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