Happy Lupercalia to you and yours

From an article at Wikipedia...

In Ancient Rome, the day of February 15 was Lupercalia, the festival of Lupercus, the god of fertility, who was represented as half-naked and dressed in goat skins. As part of the purification ritual, the priests of Lupercus would sacrifice goats to the god, and after drinking wine, they would run through the streets of Rome holding pieces of the goat skin above their heads, touching anyone they met. Young women especially would come forth voluntarily for the occasion, in the belief that being so touched would render them fruitful and bring easy childbirth.

Years later the Christians would come to associate this holiday with someone named Saint Valentine - though nobody is sure which of the three Valentines it's supposed to be - "cleaning it up" in the process and turning it into a wholesome celebration of love without the need to sacrifice a goat.

Here's something that's grown on me in the past few years: why do we need a holiday like St. Valentine's Day? I mean, love is something you're supposed to share with that special person every day of the year. Real love doesn't need a "reminder" like Valentine's Day to keep it fresh and renewed. Do we really need to spend countless millions of dollars on cards and candy and gifts to give to our loved ones just because bigtime commecialism expects us to?

Well, just something to think about. And call me odd but when I think of Valentine's Day, this is what usually comes to my mind the most...

The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, Chicago 1929

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New look and other stuff

As both of my faithful readers have no doubt noticed, this blog underwent a dramatic facelift over the past few days. I'm still tweaking some things but for the most part I really like how it turned out. There are no more vast acreages of blank black space on the sides, and it's not so color-clashy as the original scheme was. It seems to read a lot easier too. The original template will still be "active" for posts dated before my "overhaul notice", if anyone's interested in what it used to look like. By the way, instead of trying to hash out a three-column template on my own, I found several very well-developed ones over at Thur Broeders's templates blog. The one I'm using here is adapted from his tb_b_20051225_black design. If you want to breathe some new life into your blog with a three-column layout, Thur really is your go-to guy.

I'm in the process of effecting one other change to this blog in the near future, but it's more one of philosophy than physical design. For the moment I'm considering it an experiment if anything: we'll see how it flies in "beta testing" before implementing it permanently.

Anyway, hope you like the new look :-)

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Bid on eBay for lunch with King Richard

This is one of the coolest charity fundraisers I've ever heard of: an eBay auction for lunch with NASCAR legend Richard Petty and his wife Lynda. All the money goes to Communities In Schools, an outfit devoted to encouraging young people to get their education. As of this writing the high bid (of 14 so far) is $760, with the reserve price so far not being met: I'd guess that's going to be at least a thousand bucks, if not more. I mean, this is Richard Petty - the greatest stock-car racer in the history of the known universe - we're talking about here. Best of luck to anyone out there who's gonna try to win this thing, 'cuz I'd be really envious for a chance to wine and dine with The King and his lady :-)

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Just realized something about Cheney...

Dick Cheney is now the first Vice-President to have shot someone since Aaron Burr. It was in 1804 while serving as VP under Thomas Jefferson that Burr had his famous duel with Alexander Hamilton. That was the first and last time a sitting veep got someone with a firearm... until this weekend.

(I always thought that it shoulda been Burr who got his face on the ten-dollar bill... I mean, he won that fight, didn't he?)

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Dick Cheney shoots fellow hunter: Is Ana Lucia on Lost really VP's lovechild?

This sounds way too much like what happened on Lost when Ana Lucia shot Shannon: The Vice-President of the United States unloaded his shotgun on a 78-year old man during a hunting trip in Texas this weekend.

Does this sound like someone who's very responsible with firearms to you?

Armstrong said Cheney turned to shoot a bird and accidentally hit Whittington.

Well, it was sort of easy to figure that Cheney was the trigger-happy sort. Never thought he'd ever be that literally though.

Let's be serious about something here: if this man cannot be trusted to handle a loaded shotgun, he should not be trusted enough to handle "the football", if you know what I mean.

Part of me is wondering if alcoholic beverages were involved in this thing...

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"Change, my dear..."

This place is due for an overhaul. I'm working on a lot of new stuff - template, graphics, etc. - that I'll be doing some trial-and-error with this weekend and the next few days. Hopefully a better/more fun and engaging blog will emerge from the wreckage. In the meantime if something goes way off-kilter on this page, it's prolly just me monkeying behind the scenes and I'll try to have it fixed in a jiffy :-)

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Look at what they've gone and done to Juggernaut!

The more I've heard about X-Men III: The Last Stand over this past year, the more I've come to dread it. The X-Men movies had two solid installments (X2 was in some ways much better than the original even, which is pretty rare) but if even half the stuff I'm hearing about this next chapter is true, well this is going to be a pretty sucky movie. Which is sad 'cuz it does have some potential, like the pics I've seen of Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Henry "Beast" McCoy.

And then there is stuff like what I'm about to show you that goes and deflates my hopes for this all the more...

One of my all-time favorite X-Men characters is Juggernaut: Professor Xavier's half-brother with a lot of attitude and way too strong for anybody's good. Juggy's power is that once he starts moving in any direction, nothing on Earth can stop him. He's not a mutant though, his power is all magical, but I can understand it if they make him to be a mutant for the movie series.

What I can't understand is this: Here's Juggernaut from the Marvel Comics...

I wanted to find a good pic of him along with someone else (in this case Wolverine) to give a sense of just how big Juggernaut is supposed to be.

Now here's Juggernaut (as portrayed by Vinnie Jones) in X-Men III:

Crap on a crutch... he looks like a reject from that old Masters of the Universe movie! Check out those boots: Gene Simmons should sue the producers of X-Men III for ripping off his footwear. Couldn't they have done something to make Juggernaut look bigger? I mean, remember how big Hulk was in his movie a few years ago? THAT is how massive Juggy is supposed to be. How the heck are we supposed to be convinced that this Juggernaut can run toward a building and plow his way straight through it? If he put his helmet on he'd look just like Ram-Man from... holy smokes FROM MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE! At this rate they should put Dolph Lundgren in dual roles as Cable and Stryfe in this thing and just get it over with.

What a letdown. I've been looking for a good pic of the movie's Juggernaut, and this is what I find. There'd better be some darned good word-of-mouth on this movie, if they expect me to plunk down five bucks to see it.

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Phil Brown passes

It's being reported at this hour that Phil Brown, who had a storied and colorful career but is probably best known for playing Uncle Owen in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, has died today at the age of 89.

One thing I always found interesting about Brown was that he was one of the American actors who got "blacklisted" during the McCarthy witch-hunt of the 1950s. Brown never had anything to do with the Communists though, not so far as anyone's been able to find anyway. He moved his family to England and continued work as an actor there. It was some years later that he got picked to play the part of a simple farmer in a science-fiction epic that practically nobody felt sure about. The rest, as they say, is history.

I met him very briefly in the spring of 2002, at Star Wars Celebration II. There's a story about that, and it would be really neat to share that because there was a certain kind of irony to it, but I'm gonna hold off on it right now. Just wanted to take that opportunity though to pass along that I got the impression that he was a very nice guy and it was an honor to have met him.

EDIT 6:47 PM EST: Okay, here's the story...

As part of TheForce.net contingent I shared a hotel room with the site's creator Scott Chitwood during Star Wars Celebration II in 2002. The day before it officially kicked off, it was him, editor Joshua Griffin and me up in our room when the phone rang. Someone asked if we could go pick up a wheelchair for Phil Brown. So we hopped in Josh's minivan and off we went. It was on the return trip back that Scott noticed something: we were helping to get a wheelchair for the man who played Uncle Owen, while in Star Wars Episode II Owen's father Cliegg Lars is confined to a "wheelchair" following a Tusken Raider attack.

It was later that night at this fancy dinner-thingy that I got to meet Brown. Like I said before, he was a really neat fella. Wish now I'd gotten his autograph.

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If the Internet was around in 1944...

...would Yahoo! have betrayed Anne Frank to the Nazis?

The web portal giant is helping the Communist government in China track down political dissidents. At least two of them are now sitting in prison because Yahoo! handed over records that led to their arrest... for the simple crime of sending an e-mail.

Why the hell is a U.S. company like Yahoo! dealing with a government that would rather see this nation destroyed? Why is any American company dealing with China, for that matter.

I mean, will somebody please explain to me why it is that China enjoys Most Favored Nation status with us?

This deal with Yahoo! tells me something: that too many parties, from the elected politicians on to corporate interests, are willing to sell out this country's principles for sake of a fast buck. There is no possible way that this can be defended, no matter who it is that's dealing with for all intents and purposes the sole superpower threat that exists to the United States today.

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Found a Spudtrooper!

Last week I went driving around for no particular reason and wound up at the new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Mayodan (I'll refrain from once again ranting about how it makes no sense whatsoever for Rockingham County, North Carolina to have three Wal-Mart Supercenters). Anyway it had just been open for a day so I figured they might have some of the newer Star Wars loot. Including this one thing in particular that I'd been looking for some time now.

And on the Star Wars toy aisle, there it was. I bought it immediately and brought it home. Behold the Spudtrooper...

It has somehow become a big deal among our circle of friends to be able to find a Spudtrooper (helped no doubt by Darth Larry's very disturbing infatuation with Star Wars Mr. Potato Heads). With that in mind I'll post the requisite "meeting" photo between my Darth Tater and Spudtrooper:They should make a Palpatine Mr. Potato Head: it could be all wrinkly-skinned. But in the meantime I'm just happy to have Darth Tater and the dreaded Spudtrooper sitting atop our TV set where they now reign over our living room.

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"Crazy Dave" Hoover is the new Meat Loaf

Three guys stick out in my mind from last night's American Idol, the first covering the "Hollywood week" part of the contest: Garet Johnson, Taylor Hicks, and "Crazy" Dave Hoover. Johnson is the cowboy who broke down in tears after seeing the ocean for the first time in his life (and he sings pretty good too): Lisa especially wants him to go far. Hicks is the gray-haired guy from Alabama who really seems to be a standout individual in terms of his style and personality, and he's a darned good performer too: I really like this guy. And then there was Hoover: the guy who showed up barefoot at the Chicago auditions and claims to be able to talk to the animals. This guy's theatrics totally destroyed whatever chances he had of moving forward in the competition, because the thing of it is Crazy Dave can sing on the level of the other contestants. Jumping from the stage to the judges's table probably didn't help his chances though, given how he almost scared Paula Abdul to death. But I think Hoover is yet going to wind up with a good career. He reminds me too much of Meat Loaf, and the style and theatrics that he's been known for. There's a real niche for that kind of personality and Crazy Dave fits it well.

(Yeah, I know: I said before I wasn't going to watch this, but I'm now a little interested to at least see how the people from the Greensboro auditions do in this competition. North Carolina has produced Clay and Fantasia, and we've a good shot at putting a few more notches on our belt with Idol this season :-)

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Song Tapper: Search for music by tapping your spacebar

Lisa found this really cool website through a music educators mailing list she's on: The Song Tapper. Tap out a tune with your spacebar and the site returns you a list of songs that it probably matches. I tried this with the Dukes of Hazzard theme and the Imperial March from the Star Wars movies, and the site figured both of them out. May be good to bear this one in mind if you ever know what the song sounds like but don't know its title.

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"HEY YOU GUUUUYYYYSSS!!!" The Electric Company lights up on DVD

Hitting DVD as of yesterday is The Best Of The Electric Company! At last, the breakout PBS hit of the 1970s from the creators of Sesame Street comes home in a four-disc set. They're all here: J. Arthur Crank, Easy Reader, Jennifer of the Jungle, Fargo North: Decoder, Letterman, Paul the Gorilla, Spider-Man, the Cranky Director, DJ Mel Mounds, Road Runner, Lorelai the Chicken, the Short Circus players, those send-ups of 2001: A Space Odyssey... All brought to life by one of the most bizarre ensembles in television history: Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman, Luis Avalos, Jimmy Boyd, Rita Moreno, Gene Wilder, Joan Rivers, and plenty more.

Definitly worthy of consideration of buying. I mean, where-ever else are you going to find Morgan Freeman looking like this:

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Duke beat UNC tonight

87-83 at the Dean Dome (that's Carolina's home turf for anybody not from around here). One of the best played games I've seen in awhile. Have never been much of a Tarheel fan but I gotta say, they were in pretty fine form tonight even though they lost.

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Idol contestant sings Jigglypuff lullaby

This must be said: Donnell Bolton is a pretty bold guy. The 20-year old showed up at the American Idol audition in Austin, Texas. And how did he try to impress Simon, Randy and Paula? Donnell did the Jigglypuff song from Pokémon! This one must be seen and heard to be believed, folks. I mean... just daaaaarrn...

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Greatest Star Wars action figure ever

Why am I posting so much about Star Wars lately? We were in a lull for a good while there, but in the past few days I've made three posts about it. And there's at least one more coming up in the next day or so. But in the meantime Scott Johnson has this picture on his ExtraLife blog of what may be the best Star Wars figure of all time. Thanks to AfterShock for sending the heads-up on this...

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