Ocean City made the news over the weekend when Dough Roller on the boardwalk caught flames. No one was hurt and the damage wasn’t THAT bad, but what I find funny is that the every newspaper/online article I could find about the incident quoted people I know, including my own cousin:

The fire, reported about noon yesterday, resulted in no major injuries, said Jessica King, a spokeswoman for the Ocean City Police Department. A firefighter was treated for a minor eye injury, she said.

The other people always quoted were Big Rick (Rick Meehan the current mayor and father of my old roomate), Mathias (the former mayor and current county delegate), and Steve Price the OCPD PR guy. Makes me a tad homesick plus for a split second I actually miss my newspaper reporter days.

Holy crap! Marvel Boy’s predictions from last week were apparently true. Marvel sent out a press release today announcing that Joe Quesada is no longer the editor and chief of Marvel Comics. NY Times ran the following article:

In a move designed to enhance its existing management team, Marvel Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE:MVL - News) announced a strategic re-alignment of existing management to position the Company for the next phase of growth. Editor and Chief Joe Quesada will be shifting into a non-executive role with the new title of “Chief Marketing Officer.”

I have the full press release after the break, of course no word yet on who will be replacing him. (Read on …)

Found this old-school “Saturday Night Live” skit from before I was born.

Can you guess which of the odd animals above is real? (Read on …)

I’m a boy. So when in elementary and middle school I was busy reading “Lord of The Rings,” “Dragon Lance,” “Belgariad,” and just about every other fantasy series out there. So although I’ve read “Freckle Juice” and a few other of Blume’s books I had never ventured into the world of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” (Read on …)

A 360-degree tour of the Office set has been posted at NBC.com (via Pop Candy).

It’s a rainy spring day and I’m stuck on campus instead of getting to chill in bed like Edit.

Watched the two “Battlestar Galactica” specials that are airing all this week on Sci-Fi channel. In the first, the show’s producers basically talk about how smart they are. In the second some tv celebrities/personalities talk about how they obsess over the show. You know what I thought when watching both specials? That “Lost” kicks “Galactica’s” fraking ass!

In a huge huge case, the heirs to Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel were awarded yesterday the rights to Action Comics Vol. 1. Issue 1. This is a big mess and and of course everyone is scratching their heads saying “What does this mean for the Superman” I can’t answer that for you because I’m not a law-guy, but a great FAQ to check out can be found here which states the following:

Do the Siegels have creative control over Superman comics?

A: No. The court explains, quoting an earlier case, that “each co-owner has an independent right to use or license the use of the copyright. . . . A co-owner of a copyright must account to other co-owners for any profits he earns from licensing or use of the copyright.” (p. 66) However, if the Shuster heirs regain copyright in a few years, then the future of Superman comics gets rather complicated, since all domestic copyright in the Action Comics #1 material & its derivative works will vest in the two families.

It’s taken decades, but its nice to know that for once a publisher is getting screwed instead of the creators.

Earth Hour Day is happening today and the way I found out about it was because I thought google was broken. Personally I think the whole concept is silly and a lame marketing stunt that serves no purpose. The amount of electricity saved/carbon emissions reduced is really fishy and all the “real” news sources are glossing over the details. The event itself is described as:

Earth Hour is an international event that asks households and businesses to turn off their lights and non-essential electrical appliances for one hour on the evening of 29 March at 8 pm local time until 9 pm to promote electricity conservation and thus lower carbon emissions.

You know what I doing instead? I’m going to turn on all my lights, my two TVs, my two vcrs, my desktop PC, my laptop, my cell phone, and my xbox 360. Take that stupid marketing people!

Did you see the second cover to Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book?” I personally like this one better then the one Dave McKean did.

Make sure you mark your calendars and plan on attending this year’s SPX! I’ll be there.

When did “Smallville” get so bad? It used to be a decent show. Not a great show, but a decent show. However the past two seasons have been hit or miss (mostly miss). Even so I have several big spoilers (including a major death) for when the show returns in April. (Read on …)

I’m not one of those film guys who thinks “Citizen Kane” is the greatest movie of all time, but I do think it has the best montage that I’ve ever seen. In a matter of minutes, the famous “Breakfast Table” montage not only sums up the destruction of a marriage, but it does it with humor and a terrific visual twist.

I was trying to find a picture of Da Vinci’s helicopoter and radomly stumbled across a steampunk Stormtropper and steampunk Alien.

You see these non-exciting pics yet from the set of the new “Star Trek” flick (click to enlarge)?

Click here to listen to the world’s oldest known recording. This was apparently recorded in 1860 and is a woman singing “Au Claire de la Lune” into a barrel-shaped horn , etching the sound waves into a soot-covered piece of paper. This type of recording is called a XXXX and you can read more about it here.

It’s a tad scary when the Pentagon basically says “Um… are we sure we know where all our nukes are?”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has formally ordered the Air Force, Navy and Defense Logistics Agency to conduct an inventory of all U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon-related materials to make sure all items are accounted for, according to a Pentagon memo released Thursday.

Until now I couldn’t figure out why Eliot Spitzer looked so familiar. Then I remembered he played Golumn in “Lord of the Rings.”

I miss the “The Office.”

Guess who will be attending SPX to premier their first graphic novel.

Sarah Wayne Callies who was beheaded last season on “Prison Break” will return full time next season. She left the show because of a contract dispute (and pregnancy) so the producers killed her off. But it seems every-one has made nicey-nice and they plan to resurrect her.

The former OC actress won’t be returning full time to “Dirty Sexy Money.” The studio is being all hush hush about it but come on… it soooo has to do with drugs and her stint in rehab.

EW has 15 pics from the new “Speed Racer” movie. I’d be more excited about the film if the Wachowski brothers weren’t involved. …are they still even known as “The Wachowski Brother” since the one had a sex change?

Josh Holloway isn’t the only “Lost” cast member to have appeared on “Angel.” Daniel Dae Kim appeared in 12 episodes as an evil lawyer named Gavin.

Man it’s Thursday and I’m totally depressed because “Lost” isn’t on.

Galatica’s Helo joins Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse.”

Whedon has tapped Galactica stud Tahmoh Penikett (aka Helo) to play Eliza Dushku’s “twisted romantic foil” in Dollhouse, a spokesperson for Twentieth Television confirms.

The pilot of the series is  supposed to have 12 “larger” roles with  3-4 main roll. So even though he’s cast about 5 actors there is still plenty of room for other Buffy/Angel vets. Man I’d love to see Emma Claulfield and James Marsters as series regulars.

“Battleship Potemkin” was the first film to ever make use of a montage. It’s not the most visual or entertaining montage in the history of montages, but because it was the first it’s worth mentioning.

Holy crap. China can literally control the weather. They plan to alter the weather during the 2008 Olympics by shooting down clouds!

I was under the impression that comics were either mainstream or borderline mainstream. So I was shocked when I used the term “Graphic Novel” with two different people this past week and neither knew what it was. The first person was 24, smart, very into pop-culture, and she thought “Graphic Novel” was something related to porn. The second person was 25, absolutely loves “Heroes” as well as “Lost” and he thought a “Graphic Novel” was a very gore-filled book.

Both incidents made me very sad.

Every South Park episode is legally online for free viewing.

It would be wrong to talk about montages and not mention “Rocky.” Now I know a lot of people think that the montage from “Rocky IV” is better than the training montage in the original, but I have to completely disagree. The montage with the Russian was too obvious… too in your face. It tries too hard and comes off forced. Plus the original made better use of a metaphor by starting with Rocky literally training in the streets and then having him literally rise above them when he ascends the staircase.

I’ll be the one to say it. I just don’t like Ben Templesmith’s artwork. It’s always a struggle to see whatever the heck it is he’s drawn because everything is all muted and bleeds together.

I must be getting old or have taken too many writing classes or something because I re-watched “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and all I wanted was for Ferris Bueller to get caught. I wanted to see the conflict and drama that would have occured if he was caught and instead of being awed by all his schemes I got annoyed at them.

An ice-shelf 7 times the size of Manhattan broke off antarctic in February.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a broad plate of permanent floating ice on the southwest Antarctic Peninsula, about 1,000 miles south of South America. In the past 50 years, the western Antarctic Peninsula has experienced the biggest temperature increase on Earth, rising by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) per decade. NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos, who first spotted the disintegration in March, said, “We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years. But warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up.”

Thought it was just me but it seems Netflix completely crashed yesterday and it still isn’t up and running right.

I really love “How I Met Your Mother” but I was seriously disappointed by last night’s episode. It wasn’t Brittany Spear’s guest spot it was that we’ve seen the exact same plotline on the show before.

Last December there was an episode called “The Platinum Rule” where Ted falls for his doctor and starts dating her. Things quickly went horribly wrong. So now, just a few months later it doesn’t make sense that Ted would so quickly try to date his doctor. Nor does it make sense why his friends don’t give him a hard time about it.

Watched “Gremlins” 1 & 2 over the weekend (GREAT movies!) but at the same time they made me sad. In the first film, Billy the main character, is all into drawing and wants to make comics when he grows up. However in the second film he’s all grown up and working as an architect with no mention of his dreams to be a comic book creator.

Yesterday we looked at a very comedic take on the montage. Today we are getting all serious by checking out The Baptism sequence from “The Godfather.” What’s great about the above montage is that it juxtaposes Al Pacino literally becoming the godfather of a baby while at the same time becoming The Godfather crime-boss.

Re-watched last week’s episode of lost and is it just me or did the old man in the hospital bed next to Micheal’s look like Alvar Hanso, the founder of the Hanso Foundation?

The “Gossip Girl” books have several gay and bi-sexual characters (google wikipedia if you don’t believe me). So it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that one of the males on “Gossip Girl” will soon be coming out (though it may or may not be one of the guys pictured above).