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Don’t Point That Thing At Me. Dave Martin recommended this book to me. I’m halfway done, and it’s already one of my favorite books ever. It’s a crime novel, technically. But it’s more like a Jeeves novel in the way the main character fusses over his drink selection, and espouses on the benefits of eating at this time of day versus that. And how he orders around his devoted servant Jock. But there’s also murder, alcoholism and art theft. Here’s a quote from the first chapter, just after a member of the secret police is subtly accusing the main character of having stolen a Goya masterpiece.

‘That,’ I said crisply, [...]

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My kittens have turned into 2 big fat cats.

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I was catching up with my bills today when I found a Jury Summons. Apparently, I was supposed to report to Jury Duty July 7. More specifically, I was supposed to phone the night before and see if I needed to report.

I didn’t phone. So that means I ignored a summons. I’m a criminal now.

I guess there’s point in following any of the rules anymore.

RecIEve! There! ‘I’ before ‘e’ EVEN AFTER c! Take that, rules! You can’t stop me! I’m from the wrong side of the law!

Good night.

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Okay, here’s my problem with the Fantastic Four movie. Yeah, Jessica Alba was miscast (The Denise Richards syndrome of trying to pass off an eye-makeup laden sex doll as a world-class geneticists doesn’t fly with this former honors geek). And the special effects weren’t quite there. And the villian — the unfortunately-named-if-you’re-trying-to-avoid-stupidity-in-your-movie Doctor Doom, wasn’t given enough time to develop. I think I could ultimately forgive all of that.

No, my problem is one of personal taste. And that is that by the end of the movie, it was clear to me that the only character the director REALLY related to was the Human Torch, and the Human Torch was a dirtbag bully piece of trash — exactly the kind [...]

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Tomorrow, Kevin and I will see the new movie The Fantastic Four. We plan on being disappointed. Brian will be with us in spirit, even though he will be recovering from his Sinatra-like week in Las Vegas.

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In an effort to practice my editing skills, I updated the short film “Guy Talk” which I made with Terry Jinn and Sean Conroy. It features a frank discussion between Swamp Thing and Man-Thing. I reduced it from 3 min 45 sec to 2 min 33 sec. That’s worth something, I guess.

• Guy Talk .mp4 (whatever that is) - 8mb
• Guy Talk .mov (QuickTime) - 18mb

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Kevin and I went to the Film Forum on Sunday to see a double feature of Marx Brothers movies: Horse Feathers and Duck Soup. Much of the comedy has dated badly, but that just makes the stuff that works all the more amazing to me. Although right in the middle of Duck Soup was this joke which I had forgotten about:

Groucho, to Teasdale and a few others: “I guess I am a little headstrong. I come by it honestly, though. My father was a little headstrong. My mother was a little Armstrong. The Headstrongs married the Armstrongs, and that’s how darkies were born!”

Ah yes. “Darkies.” Nice, Groucho. Nothing like a little racism to remind us what decade the movie [...]

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I’ve done some computer tinkering just for fun recently. Among the tasks I’ve completed:

• Added a past screenings page to the Channel 102 site.
• Added an RSS feed to the Channel 102 site, so people could theoretically subscribe to the site.
• Drastically reduced the amount of style commands on both my blog and on Channel 102. Also consolidated the PHP code on Channel 102. The improvment in speed is not noticeable, but having the code be cleaner makes me feel a sense of satisfaction as if I just untangled all the phone cords in my house.
• Deleted all unnecessary files from my web server.
• Adjusted the blog so links to specific posts look like “www.willhines.net/2005/06/24/something” rather than “www.willhines.net/index.php?blah=this”

None of these tasks are that [...]

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Kevin and I performed two-man improv at Variety Underground last night. It was a fine time, and we included a decent number of references to our hometown of Danbury, Ct including our old A&P and Martin’s tuxedo shop. Actually, Kevin probably didn’t know that Martin’s was a real place. But it’s where I rented my tuxedos for both the junior and senior prom. For the junior prom (1987) I wore a silver tuxedo with a pink cumberbund. That decision was made during my month-long Era Of Fashion Boldness, which was followed by an 18 year period of Blue Shirts And Khakis Are Good. Martin was an actual person who owned the store. He was an old man, and [...]

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