My birthday is quickly approaching so Edit and I have packed things up and gone to Cleveland (hehe we’re driving NOT flying). Not sure how long we are staying, but since she is coming, it will be for awhile. I had planned to make posts when I was there, but since my laptop is now dead that’s not possible. So I guess I’ll just see ya’ll on the flip side!

There were two political skits on SNL last night. One bashed the media for giving slant coverage on the Obama & Hilary. The other involved an appearance of Mike Huckabee, who after the skit ended he metaphorically overstayed his welcome. So which skit did CNN mention on it’s front page and which they did they avoid completely???

With the new computer that actually has some power, I decided to check out “World of Warcraft.” I wasn’t interested in playing the game (I pretty much loathe MMORPG’s). It was the art design I wanted to see first hand. Also I didn’t want to pay for the game so I did the 10-day free trial and then deleted it after two days. Now that the game is like 3-4 years old the graphics are a tad dated, but the art design is still incredible.

I spent hours traveling around the world and visited all the major cities. I also took over 600 screenshots (including the ones above) and really enjoyed exploring (though running from MOBs due to ARRGO was not fun). I wouldn’t recommend the game to anyone because its an MMORPG but if your any kind of fantasy fan then do some googling or check out the WoW Artbook.

Decided to check out “Second Life” since my new computer can handle it. It was an interesting experience and it’s very hard to describe. On a basic level it’s a standard MMO, but the catch is that all the content is user generated. Everying in the massive world is created by the players and they literally have everything there. If you want to go go-karting then… you can. If you want to play putt putt golf… you can. If you want to go to a strip club… you can.

The catch is that EVERYTHING cost “Linden Dollars,” the form of currency used in the game. What gets fishy is that $L’s can be converted to good old American Dollars. So now instead of playing a game, Second Life is really a place where millions of people are doing their best to get you to give them $L’s so that can turn them into real money.

Stay away from this DVD. This is possibly the worse adaptation I’ve seen of anything… EVER and the problems aren’t how close or unclose it stayed to the source material. The problem is that it physically hurts to watch the movie.

Before we get to other things let me first mention that this is a very gratuitous film. Fanboys will be in cleavage heaven. Now don’t get me wrong, I like boobies, but the cartoon took it too far for something marketed to kids. There’s one scene where a character is introduced and her boobs jiggle and a guy spends a few seconds staring at them. Then the rest of the movie is just filled with breast. I mean in the pic above, that woman with the torn shirt, she just has it torn for no reason. She wasn’t attacked or tripped or anything. (Read on …)

Hasbro and Universal have partnered up to produce the following properties into movies: “Monopoly” “Magic the Gathering” “Candy Land” and “Stretch Armstrong.”

I can understand “Magic the Gathering” because its epic and fantasy-based so it will make a decent summer tentpole movie. I get “Candy Land” because the world its set in is very 80’s cartoon-ish and it could work as a retro kid movie. However I have no idea what the heck they are thinking with Monopoly and Stretch Armstrong!

Within the next few weeks “Magic The Gathering” will now be downloadable in the Xbox 360 Arcade. It will be a ported version of the PC card game and supposedly people with established accounts and decks will be able to use them on their Xbox.

Playboy is launching an energy drink and had a recent sponsor party in Massachusetts crashed by the cops. It wasn’t because of drugs or anything nefarious. The police closed down the event because Playboy hired midgets to dress as oompa loompas while bartending and apparently that’s illegal in Massachusetts:

Chapter 272: Section 33. Exhibition of deformities
Section 33. Whoever exhibits for hire an albino person, a minor or mentally ill person who is deformed or a person who has an appearance of deformity produced by artificial means shall be punished by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars.

This list isn’t who I think will win. This is who I think SHOULD win. I’ve left out a few categories like documentaries (seriously how did they leave off “King of Kong?”) and music. But I covered all the big ones.

• Best motion picture of the year - “Juno”
• Actor in a leading role - George Clooney in “Michael Clayton”
• Actor in a supporting role -Casey Affleck in “Assassination of Jesse James”
• Actress in a leading role - Ellen Page in “Juno”
• Actress in a supporting role - Cate Blanchett in “I’m Not There”
• Best animated feature film of the year -”Persepolis”
• Art direction - “Sweeney Todd”
• Cinematography - “The Diving Bell and Butterfly”
• Costume Design - “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”
• Directing -”Michael Clayton”
• Editing - “There Will Be Blood”
• Adapted Screenplay - “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
• Original Screenplay - “Juno”
• Best Picture - “Juno”

The third installment of Pop Candy’s Crash Course in comics was posted this week.

The trailer for the animated version of Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline” has been posted online. If you want to see a higher quality version then go here and watch it. Man this looks so pretty.

I thought this was pretty cool. Scholastic has put out a teaching guide for how to read comics/graphic novels as wells as how to use them in classrooms and libraries. If you want to read the pdf you can get it here.

Cracked an egg open today and got two yolks. If it hadn’t been something I was going to eat I would have thought “Hell yeah two for the price of one,” but since I was going to eat it all I could think was that it was laid by that three-eyed-“Simpsons”-fish.

Monk is coming back for another season. Although it’s ratings have dropped in the past year it’s still a hit when talking about cable TV. Though personally, I gotta say that the show hasn’t been as funny as it used to be and Monk’s OCD is become annoying as opposed to humorous.

The pics above were leaked onto the web this week. They are clearly early shots, but at least we now have an idea of what the movie will look like.

If you haven’t already heard, blu-ray won the war. The HD-DVD is officially dead with all manufactures stopping production. So if you see one on sale don’t think you’re getting a good deal… its places trying to sell them before the prices hit absolute rock bottom.

Did you hear the one about Johnny Knoxville almost losing his testicles? No really its true. He just posted about it on the “Jackass” website:

Just got back from Oklahoma where I was shooting Mat Hoffman’s tribute to Evel Knievel. Had a ball, too, even though I almost lost my own balls in the process. Don’t want to give too much away because the tribute airs Feb 23rd on MTV, but let’s just say before letting Travis Pastrana teach me how to do a backflip on a motorcycle I should have had him teach me to ride one first. Heh-heh…bad for me, good for our viewing audience at home. Have to go now. Have to empty the piss bag on my leg that I have to wear for the next two weeks until my torn urethra heals. Ouch, and see you on the 23rd. By the way, lots of great stuff in the Evel Knievel tribute besides my trip to the hospital—lots!

The newest Eskimo Dave is up, but you’ll have to read it at Drunk Duck because Mike’s baby has a bad fever and he didn’t get a chance to post it on the Th3rd World site.

Also, some behind-the-scenes drama… when I saw the inks of this week’s strip I was like “Why is Gandolfini holding a salt shaker?” And Mike said “No you idiot it’s the coin like you scripted.” Now in my defense the b&w version or the artwork does look like one of the ghetto salt/pepper shaker, but even so he won’t stop brining it up!

The cast of “Wolverine: Origins” was seriously fleshed out this past week. Left to right we have:

• Agent Zero – played by Daniel Henney
• William Stryker – played by Danny Huston
• Sabertooh – played by Live Schreiber
• Beak – played by Dominic Monaghan
• Gambit – played by Taylor Kitsch
• Silverfox – played by Lynn Collins
• Deadpool - played by Ryan Reynolds

Did you see that Warren Ellis is now doing a webcomic?

If you’re a fan of Torchwood then make sure you check out the video above

Wanna read the longest thread ever on the Marvel Forum? Then go here. Of course it’s all Tom Brevoort’s fault because he asked the internet public to post about what they gripe about.

So let’s all gripe here for a second. What is there about what we’re doing at the moment that you don’t like? You can be specific if you like (although I don’t really need to read the same four posts about “One More Day” again), but I’m speaking more in broad strokes, in generalities. By the same token, I’m not really looking to control the terms of your gripes.

Did you see that clip of “Where The Wild Things Are” that leaked onto the web at the end of last week? It’s hard to find now because the studio is quickly hunting it down. It was an early test and legitimate footage. However the studio is very unhappy with the current cut of the movie and rumor has it that they may be doing a complete reshoot.

Since clear images of the Cloverfield Monster have hit the net bloggers have been trashing the design, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the monster’s creator is now defending his work:

Honestly, the biggest inspiration is less about one or two other animals, but rather inspired by biological plausibility in general (ignoring the fact that something that big could never live on land). Sometime the cart has to lead the horse and you make it cool first then justify it later, but I always try to give the creatures I design a “good reason” to be. As for the parasite, I knew that I wanted something thin and vertical and light. Kinda like a flea.

I’m up and running. It’s crazy that the cheapest computer I could possible buy was still an upgrade from the computer I used to have. So at least that’s a good thing. Though it was a bitch to re-install all my COUGH* legal COUGH* programs that I use on a regular basis. Windows Vista just does not like some programs.

It’s also weird to go back to using a desktop PC because I’ve been using a lab top with an external monitor and second monitor for three years. Even typing on a normal keyboard is strange and will take me some time to get use to. However my desk is wayyyy less cluttered now.

Priced the cheapest bottom line computer possible and it’s faster than my old computer which died (it was 4 1/2 years old) so I’m buying it this afternoon. I’ll probably spend all night installing programs and stuff so expect the blog to get updates again sometime tomorrow.

always something right? Edit is finally doing better but when I woke up today my computer was dead (posting this via my cell). Even though I don’t want to spend the money on a new computer, its a non-negotiable. I have to be able to write and get my work done. Dammit!

Got a whole THREE hours of sleep last night. Edit still isn’t doing well and I’m finding it hard to do anything else but take care of her. Even when I try to get work done she cries and tries to get me to hold her. The pic above is her last week getting her head stuck in my printer. I had to rip the top of the printer off to get her out (it’s ok cause it was already broken, only the scanner worked). I’m hoping to go to class today but if she’s still doing bad I don’t want to leave her alone.

It’s Friday, but I’m not on campus. Instead I’m taking care of Edit who got spayed yesterday. I picked her up from the animal hospital about two hours ago and ever since she’s wanted me to hold her nonstop. Overall she seems ok, except that she 100 percent despises the cone that she has to wear. Updated On Sat @ 9:29am: She was a mess last night and I got less than an hour of sleep. She kept crying and would only stop when I held her. Then when I tried to sleep she kept bumping me in the face with the cone because she still wanted me to hold her. I really hope things aren’t like this for the next 10-14 days.

Three dumb cartoons I drew and sent to people today. (Read on …)

Paramount announced that they are bumping “Star Trek” from Christmas 2008 to May 8^th, 2009.

‘Star Trek’ is moving to summer because its has so much boxoffice potential,” Par spokesman Michael Vollman said. “It does not need any script tweaks. They’re two-thirds of the way through shooting, and we would have delivered a great movie at Christmas.

Normally I’d call “bullcrap” and say that the delay is because of production problems, but contrary to what Vollman says I think its because of the strike. The strike has delayed a lot of big tent-pole movies and chances are, whatever big film that Paramount had originally planned to release in May ‘09 is delayed and so they are bumping back “Star Trek” to kick off the summer season.

The trailer for “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is now live.

So here is what is going on… the current season will run for a total of thirteen episodes. Eight are already done and five more will be written and then air in April/May. This means that after the current run of seven episodes (they picked seven since the eighth episode has a large cliffhanger they don’t want to last for several weeks) the show will start up again on April 24^th to air the final six episodes of the season. Crazier still is that when “Grey’s Anatomy” returns on May 1^st, “Lost” will be bumped to 10p.m. timeslot. Obviously ABC is trying to take out CBS’s night.

This is so weird. The creator/executive producer of “My Name is Earl” spent the strike working in a fast food restaurant for research.

I’ll be completely honest with you, there’s so much math involved in all of [the strike], I don’t understand any of it. So, my whole thing during the strike was just stay out of the way…So, I just got a job at [a major fast food chain], and I was working there for a month. I’m serious. I was a cashier. I just checked out. It was great.

“Greek” one of the funniest new shows of last year will be returning on March 24^th. The show was supposed to have 10 more episodes to finish out the season but because of the strike they only filmed eight. I’ve got a few spoilers after the break. (Read on …)

Neil Gaiman’s newest book “Graveyard” will be released on September 30^th (here in the U.S.).

There will actually be a “One Day Laydown” in the US, which means that the book won’t just wander into the shops over a couple of weeks. Instead there will be one day when it goes on sale everywhere. Probably bookshops doing on-sale-at-midnight, graveyard-themed, kick-off-Hallowe’en-month parties. All that sort of stuff.

For the past few months he’s been posting about the novel on his blog and it’s been interesting to read his thoughts and reactions during the writing process.

With the monster sales that “Mass Effect” brought in over the holiday season it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that EA greenlight the franchise to become an official trilogy. Like with the original, BioWare will make the second and third installments of the game for both the Xbox 360 and PC.

Not only did EA announce that they will be publishing “Knights of The Old Republic III” but that BioWare, (the makers of the original KOTOR) will be the ones developing the game. No dates or game systems were mentioned but just the fact that BioWare is involved again is AWESOME.

Episode 44 of “Eskimo Dave” is online. The reference to cheese, specifically brie cheese should make it more than obvious that I wrote it, but putting aside my brilliant skills as a writer, I think now is an excellent time to say just how awesome the art looks this week. Mapping out the long term storyline and overall tone of “Eskimo Dave,” we really wanted it to have a Ducktales/Bone-like feel to it and this week’s art completely accomplishes that (specially when you see the colored version).

Want to show your special someone that you really love them? Then send them a “Lost” valentine (click the pic above to enlarge).