The Seven Year Itch

Well... I auditioned for "Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol" at Venture. I didn't get cast. Naturally. At this point I'm pretty certain I'll never get cast in anything... at least until someone comes up with another twitchy, moaning mental patient role.

Ah well, after reading the book I think they made a mistake not doing the classic Dickens version of "Carol". It is afterall one of my favorite stories of all time. Or they could do my version... Twas the Night Before a Wonderful Christmas Carol on 34th Street.

Recently my station has started offering a weekly poll for viewers to vote for which NFL weekend games they'd like us to air.

Great idea, right?

I thought so too... when I thought of it like THREE FUCKING YEARS AGO!

*sigh* And I don't even like football.

Earlier this week it was brought to my attention that my 7 YEAR ANNIVERSARY at the station has come and gone. Ugh! What a fucking nightmare.

Recently I had a (albeit brief) flash of confidence and I sat down with a list of the schedules and shows available for both stations and I came up with my own ideas to improve upon our current "monkey with a dart board" daily lineup(s). I was so confident in the results I came up with that I forwarded them to our general manager along with some promotional ideas I also had .

Friday morning I spoke with our GM about the material I sent him. And he said that I had some "great ideas". However he also said that our current program directors does a "very good job".

Whaa--!? NO. SHE DOESN'T! That was part of my reasoning for sitting down and trying to figure out how it could be done BETTER!

My conversation with the GM ended with him telling me "Small market television is not the place to get rich." WTF!? I wasn't trying to get rich! I was trying to add something to my resume besides "button pushing monkey". I was attempting to turn our station into something besides the punchline it is to many local viewers.

I am so fucking sick of going to a job that makes me feel like coming home and simultaneously sticking my head in the oven and slashing my wrists while OD-ing on illegal narcotics.

I'm tired of giving 110% at everything and feeling nothing but pissed on... Oooh and FUDDBUCKS!

Last weekend when the station was in a constant state of CLUSTERFUCKDOM... due to the first blizzard of the year... there was an attempt to soothe my frustration with the suggestion that there might be more Fuddbucks in it for me.

Y'know I actually attempted to use some of my Fuddbucks a while back. Unfortunately I was at Rimrock Mall and the the F'bucks are only good at the Overland Ave. location. Hmmmmph... some bonus.



"Where's my golden shower?" Does Michael Scott know how to throw a baby shower or what? Last night's episode of The Office was another classic... an awkward, awkward classic. The last scene with Jim and Pam's phone messages was kind of cheesy... but I loved it.



This week TWO different Ghostbusters comics were released. The first in what may be a series of manga graphic novels from Tokyopop. And issue one of IDW's 4-issue mini series. Ghostbusters: The Other Side.

To be honest I was more interested in the "traditional" IDW series than the manga book. However after having read them both... it kind of saddens me to say that the manga was better than the IDW series.

Tokyopop's Ghostbusters: Ghost Busted. Was funny and charming, but now without it's flaws. However you can tell it was created by people who love Ghostbusters.

IDW's Ghostbusters: The Other Side is terrible. It's like rancid fan fiction. In fact I'm pretty sure there is a lot better GB fanfic out there somewhere on the internets. I'm also pretty sure that there are a couple of big name comic book creators who would do a Ghostbusters comic for FREE! Instead we get this... P.O.S.

I actually began to worry about The Other Side back in July when I read an interview with the guy who wrote it - Keith Champagne. He really didn't seem to be that big of a fan of the source material, not that you'd have to be a GIANT 'bustin fanboy to write a decent Ghostbusters tale... but this guy just didn't seem to get Ghostbusters.

The Other Side pits the Ghostbusters against a group of Ghost Mobsters. The end result is lukewarm at best.

I'd pull some examples of horrible dialogue/script issues for you guys... but I've already passed the issue on to a friend to see if he thinks it's a god awful as I do, or if I'm just being too much of a geeky fanboy.



Not to mention the Ghostbusters have already fought Ghost Gangsters... Twenty years ago (Yipes!) is issue 7 of The Real Ghostbusters comic book series.

This makes me ponder if there's anyway someone could revive the RGB property in comic book form!? Why can't they use the eternally young versions of the boys to keep telling stories for years? It wouldn't be any different then all of those seemingly ageless guys in tights and capes who have been around for sixty and seventy years.

Oh... the weather outside is spiteful...

HOLY CRAP! It's Captain America... ON THE ROCKS! Heh. This is a screencap from a deleted scene on the upcoming DVD release of The Incredible Hulk.

There's a point when Bruce Banner gives up on his quest for the cure and decide to kill himself. So he travels to the Arctic Circle. The result was a very dark scene, which Marvel considered to be too hard for young audiences to take.

For those of you unfamiliar with Cap's origin: sometime after WWII he winds up frozen in the arctic, decades later he is thawed out so that he can join the AVENGERS!

Speaking of the HULK dvd... wouldn't it be cool if there was a Hulk Head case like the recent IRON MAN collector's edition!? Ah... a geek can dream. Can't he? The Incredible Hulk hits DVD on October 21st.



I had the weekend from HELL at the tv station. A 12 hour shift that felt more like THIRTY-SIX.

I lost a good chunk out of one of my fingers on the fence outside the station while I was attempting to sweep snow off of the satellite dishes at work. I swear there's a nice slab of Travis meat still hanging outside the station.

Not to mention I fell... TWICE! If I had twisted my leg or cracked my head open I would been stuck laying in the snow until about 9 in the morning when the new guy showed up.

Let's see... the phone rang every 5-10 minutes between the Miles City transmitter, the douche from Dish TV calling and bitching about the audio, our engineer having to go up and work on the iced over KSVI transmitter.... Argh!

To top it off the new guy comes in bitching about how he's "so sick". FUCK YOU! I've never even been able to use a sick day without getting a major fucking guilt trip & this includes the time I spent 5 days in the hospital. And newbie sure as hell wasn't letting his illness prevent him from going out for a cigarette every 5 minutes.

Then the new guy proceeds to bitch about his wife and how I should "avoid getting married at all costs". DOUBLE FUCK YOU!

*sigh*

After the e-mails I sent out to my supervisors about how I thought my talents might be put to better use... who knows if I'll even have a job at the station much longer.

Kind of scary. But it would also kind of be a relief.

When I got home from work the POWER WAS OUT! Hallelujah! I was actually kind of relieved to NOT have to deal with technology for a while.



Dad got an update from the doctors. It seems they were rather puzzled by what they found and had to send their findings out of state for further studies! Apparently he has some extra PROTEIN deposits growing inside his lungs. WTF!?

Apparently this is rare enough that they can't just look it up in some medical book.

The Apocalypse? Sweet!

The Umbrella Academy is difficult to summarize without sounding outlandish. I suppose this is part of its appeal. Part X-Men, part Wes Anderson flick.

The Umbrella Academy starts with the birth of "forty-three extraordinary children", born on the same day at exactly 9:38 pm, mostly to unwed mothers who showed no sign of pregnancy in seemingly random locations around the world . The children who survived were all either abandoned or put up for adoption.

Enter, Sir Reginald Hargreeves a.ka. The Monocle. He adopts as many of the children as he can find (seven) and shows them so much love that he doesn't even bother to name them!

The Umbrella Academy has all the absurdity, vibrancy, and energy of 1950s or 60s-era comic book. In the first issue when the Eiffel Tower, commandeered by Zombie-Robot Gustave Eiffel, attacks Paris before blasting off into space, it's baffling and hilarious at the same time. And when an appreciative Parisian mayor gives the kids the key to the city and declares "ice cream for everyone" immediately afterward, the tone and pace are set for the series.

Issue 1 ends with this note, which made me incredibly giggly upon reading it:

This is the end of the first part of the Umbrella Academy adventure: Apocalypse Suite. There are five more chapters to the series, with twenty-two pages per chapter, totaling one hundred and thirty-two pages, there are seven members of the Umbrella Academy, and Seventy-Two names on the Eiffel Tower. There is no connection between these numbers.

The Umbrella Academy was created and is written by Gerard Way (lead singer of My Chemical Romance). Instead of doing a tradional "on going" series, Umbrella Academy is being presented as an infinite series of mini-series.

The first six issues, dubbed "The Apocalypse Suite", are avaiable in a handy trade paperback. The next ssix-parter titled "Dallas" begins next month.

I highly recommend this book for hardcore OR casual comic book readers. Especially those who have recently boarded the ol' Watchmen bandwagon.

Yeah, cuz believe it or not... Rumor has it.... (Ha! You'll get that when you've read the book!) that Umbrella Academy has been optioned by a "major Hollywood studio".