SB

I don’t mean to brag, but my off-work life is a little too awesome. Of course, work is a punch in the face I get to endure five days a week, but hopefully I’ll get that part figured out eventually. For now, I’m just glad it lets me live it up with Laura before, after, and on the weekends.

About three months ago, Laura found out Jack’s Mannequin would be playing in Norfolk, VA on my birthday weekend. Considering Jack’s Mannequin is one of our favorite bands (in fact one of the first conversations we ever had with each other revolved around our mutual agreement about how awesome Andrew McMahon is) we HAD to go to the show, and decided we might as well spend a couple days there since we were going to be driving five hours anyway.

Day 1

Day 1 saw us getting up nice and early so we could drop two of the dogs off with Laura’s awesome mom in Smithfield, NC. Our great friend Brandy agreed to watch Roxy for us so Laura’s mom wouldn’t be overwhelmed (she already has two dogs in her house herself).

Luna had no idea about the abandonment that lay ahead.

We arrived in Norfolk around 1PM, just in time to grab lunch at No Frill Grill, a local hot sandwich restaurant chain that Laura discovered with the help of urbanspoon.com – our new go-to website for deciding where to eat. I got the delicious Funky Chicken Sandwich (a grilled chicken breast with TONS of bacon on toasted rye bread with some sort of special sauce) and Laura got a nice big cheeseburger (I can’t remember the contents, but I tried a bite and it was just as tasty as my sandwich).

Afterwards, we headed to the hotel to sign in so we could grab a nap before the show, so we’d be fully awake for everything we’d been waiting three months for. The Norva’s doors were supposed to open at 6:30, so we woke up around 5:30 to head downtown to try to get a good position on the open floor venue.

After purchasing our t-shirts and getting our stuff to the coat check so we wouldn’t have to hang on to it, the show finally kicked off at 7:30 with Vedera. If you remember Sixpence None the Richer or Plumb from the late 90’s early 00’s, then Vedera is kind of like the latest version of that song. Though they were the band we were least excited about, but the lead singer’s astonishingly beautiful voice made it a very pleasant addition to the venue. She’s not remotely a screamer – she just has a very pretty voice, and it was impressive to see her hold her ground against the rock guitar and the Nirvana-wannabe bassist. (Hear them here)

Vedera

Round two brought Fun., the most aptly named band ever. Prior to this concert, I had never even heard of them, but when I found out the opening acts, I downloaded all the necessary albums so I’d be fully prepared to get the most out of the concert. While I enjoyed Vedera’s cd’s, I absolutely fell in love with Fun.

Fun.

Fun. (the period is part of their name) is unique indie pop-rock band, that might be the mostly blatantly anti-emo band I’ve ever heard. In an age where whining is what sells albums to teenage consumers, Fun. prefers to rock their keyboard, trumpet, and violins with the most optimistic, happy lyrics you’ll hear outside of preachy Christian rock. A month ago I had never heard of them, and now they’re one of my new favorite bands ever.

As far as their live performance goes, I was slightly disappointed at first (though not surprised) to find that the violins on the album had been completely dropped, but realized as soon as they started playing that it absolutely didn’t matter. The energy this band carries with them is insane. I felt like I was one of about 10 people in the audience that could sing along (one of the others being Laura), but everyone else seemed to be having just as good of a time anyway. Basically they were amazing. (Hear them here)

Jack's Mannequin

Lastly, the “band” we were there to see was Jack’s Mannequin, which basically Andrew McMahon making three other people play music he wrote while he rocks out on the piano and hundreds of teenage girls scream at the top of their lungs. McMahon is an incredible entertainer and the show was more than I’d even hoped for. Jack’s Mannequin’s first album Everything in Transit is one of my top ten albums of all time, and they played all but three songs from it. My only disappointment was he didn’t play “Dear Jack”, from his latest EP, but you can’t win ‘em all and he played just about everything else that would have fit the energy of a live concert. (Hear them here)

Andrew McMahon likes to stand on his piano.

After having our minds blown by three outstanding performances, we headed to Kelly’s Backstage Bar, a little late-night place just behind the Norva.We decided to split a couple appetizers of cheese fries (LOADED with bacon) and buffalo chicken bites, which I topped off with a Guinness, making for a perfect after-show meal to energize our throbbingly sore muscles from standing 6 hours straight.

We got back to the hotel around 1AM, and passed out almost immediately.

Day 2

We woke up the next morning around 8AM to try to get as much out of our day as possible. After getting ready and heading out we arrived for breakfast at The Broken Egg Bistro around 9AM and were seated by 9:30 (THAT is how good this place is). Another urbanspoon.com discovery, Broken Egg Bistro might be the best breakfast I’ve ever eaten – and that’s coming from somebody who typically skips breakfast and only eats it on special occasions.

Both of decided to get the combo meal. I got two eggs over easy, cinnamon swirl french toast, hashbrowns, and bacon. Laura got two eggs scrambled with cheese, pancakes, hashbrowns and bacon. Now, over easy eggs are hard to mess up so long as they don’t break, but this french toast might have been the best balance of tastiness I’ve ever had for breakfast. Likewise, Laura’s pancake were bigger than my head and cooked to perfection – not too fluffy, not to stiff. Just perfect. The bacon had a pretty optimum meat to fat ratio and while it wasn’t seasoned like a lot of breakfast places do, it didn’t need it. The hashbrowns were also cooked flawlessly with an astonishing amount of flavor for diced potatoes. In case that isn’t impressive enough, let me go ahead and warn you that neither of were hungry again for the entire day until we ate dinner at 7:30. That means our breakfast lasted nearly ten hours.

After breakfast we headed to the Virgina Beach Aquarium, which had everything a good aquarium needs to have short of penguins. There were sharks, otters, crocodiles, pettable stingrays (which Laura went into full girly mode for and refused to touch), a tunnel aquarium and the easiest scavenger hunt ever.

Sure it was designed with five year olds in mind, but Laura and I were determined to prove we could do it just as well as the girl scout party that was there. Even though they had an IMAX, we were only going to be in town for the day and were determined to see as many animals as possible.

We hung around the aquarium until 2PM before we decided we should head over to the zoo so we’d have plenty of time to walk around before its 5 o’clock closing time. The Virginia Zoo has a mere $8 ticket cost, and while it’s not outstanding, I’d love to live in a town with something even this simple. Most of the main African animals are on display including ostriches, antelope, giraffes, zebras, and lions. Supposedly there are rhinos but I guess they put them up for the winter because we couldn’t find them anywhere. Other attractions included kangaroos, a nocturnal hut, quite a few birds, and what I can only assume was the Food Section that consisted solely of pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys and goats.

Simba and Nala

Aside from being attacked by geese (because geese are CRAZY), there also seemed to be a rogue peacock roaming around the park. We first came across it in the prairie dog area and thought that was an awfully strange mixture of animals until the peacock jumped over the back wall and later appeared near the Food Section. “Birds won’t hurt people” seemed to be a strongly held belief throughout the zoo as there were also free roaming turkeys to compliment the rogue peacock and velociraptor-geese. Clearly someone needs to catch up on their Hitchcock movies.

We left the zoo around four and headed back to the hotel to take a swim and relax our sore legs in the spa before heading back downtown so Laura could get some pictures.

Dinner was a disappointing $121 meal at Virginia Beach’s over-priced Brazilian Steakhouse Espeto na Brasa. “They served us raw chicken,” should sum it up. This was the only low point on the entire trip and I take full responsibility. I was blinded by the thought of all-you-can-eat meat, and foolishly ignored the 65% approval rating on Urban Spoon. Most of the food was still decent and we left completely full, but slow service and raw chicken insured we would never return or recommend it to anyone else – especially when it comes with such a steep pricetag.

But enough of that. The rest of the day was fantastic, just like the day before.

Day 3

The third day of the best weekend ever was highlight by an afternoon with my family. Laura and I arrived back in my hometown of Rocky Mount, NC around 12:30. My amazing family had prepared an equally amazing lunch of steak and potatoes and even surprised me with a few restaurant favorites that they had my brother and sister pick up before we started.

Elijah got rolls from Golden Corral (which my parents had bought some nacho cheese for – one of my favorite weird combinations since I was about 10 years old). My sister and her husband picked up T.G.I. Friday’s peanut butter pie, a dessert I was terrified I’d never get to have again. We had discovered it in some random airport two or three years ago and for some reason thought it was a Chili’s so the next time we went to one we tried to order it but they didn’t have it. It was my dad that somehow remembered the actual restaurant in time for Sarah and David to get it for my birthday “cake”.

Afterward we played a game of Man Laws and Woman Rules, the newest addition to my massive board game collection. Sexism abounded and laughs, scowls, and scoffs were all had.

It was a great joining of the families (sister, brother-in-law, brother, brother’s girlfriend, parents, and Laura) to end the best weekend ever. Unfortunately my older brother Seth couldn’t make it, but I at least got to talk to him on the phone.

We left around the same  time as Sarah and David to go back to Laura’s parents’ house to grab the dogs and finally head home.

Best. Birthday. Ever.

Jaws by Peter Benchley

(published 1974; 278 pages)

As most of my close friends and family are well aware, Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of Jaws is my favorite movie of all time. Some may challenge my reasoning on that, and if you really want to argue about it at least read my 1,000 word diatribe about it found here (it was one of the first reviews I ever posted after starting the original Bullshish).

After Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park damn near ruined Spielberg’s amazing adaptation of that for me back in the early 2000’s, I’ve been pretty terrified of reading this one for fear of the same result. I’ve since been able to get over the fact that Jurassic Park the book and Jurassic Park the movie are two completely separate entities that must be appreciated on entirely different levels, and with that realization came a renewed desire to take on Jaws. Since Laura is awesome, she was totally game for tackling it with me once we started our two person book club.

For the first fifty or so pages, the book seemed almost completely in line with the film. The opening scene was practically shot for shot, with just as much terror and a little more gore as the night-swimmer gets her comeuppance. As the story continued, it still seemed pretty close to the film I’ve grown to love, albeit with the additional detail into character and setting backgrounds that literature allows. And then it took one major turn (and several little ones that are destined to happen during the adaptation process).

While all of the pacing involving the shark attacks is just as beautifully orchestrated as the attacks Spielberg put on the silver screen, there’s one particular subplot that occurs on land that was extremely nerve grating. Basically, two characters engaged in a completely superfluous affair that didn’t accomplish anything besides making one of the leads completely detestable and padding the pages a little (I’d estimate around 50 pages total). Thankfully, Spielberg knew better and ended up turning this prick into one of the film’s most likable characters.

Another subplot also left out of the movie was far more interesting and did well to explain why the mayor is so intent on keeping the beaches open, in spite of the obvious danger. While the movie’s pacing flows far better without this diversion, it’s a welcome bonus for reading the book. Another major positive of reading the book was that Chief Brody is still awesome and now gets to stand as one of my favorite heroes in both literature and film, and the book actually made me like Quint considerably more than the movie (though Laura still hates either variation).

Benchley is a very talented writer and his knack for suspense is seen perfectly in just about any scene the shark shows up in. I’ve been afraid of the ocean ever since I saw the movie when I was eight, and while I’ve solely credited Spielberg for that in the past, I’d now have to say Benchley deserves just as much blame. The intensity he builds up and the way the shark’s instincts are explained gave the film director a hell of a lot to work with, and every scene where Jaws shows up in the movie follows a very clear guideline for terror that Benchley outlined every time the shark took another victim in his book.

Overall, I’m glad we read it. Despite my fears, it didn’t come close to making me question the movie, as I’d happily stand by Spielberg’s adaptation as the superior version of this story if only because of book’s waste-of-time side story. Adultery is stupid, Mr. Benchley. Keep it out of my horror books.

Spielberg also made the better ending. By a lot.

The next book we’ll be tackling is A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. It’s Laura’s favorite book of all time, and I know practically nothing about it aside from the famous opening line. Ironically, were I forced to read this when I was in high school there is a 99% chance I only would have read the Cliff Notes. I feel so grown up.

Bonus Rounds include books that might not be read in their entirety or shorter material that isn’t quite hefty enough to qualify as an official choice.

Twitterature by Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin

(published 2009; 224 pages)

Laura and I headed back to my hometown of Rocky Mount this past weekend to attend my little brother’s Homecoming. It’s a two hour drive each way, and thanks to a little Southern Snowstorm, we ended up with six total hours to blow. Fortunately, Laura, being the brilliant woman that she is, thought to buy a book pre-trip that would be easy to pick up and drop just as easily without worrying about remembering silly details like characters or setting or plot. The result this go round: Twitterature.

Twitterature is a humor book that takes over eighty works of literature and rewrites them in 20 “tweets” or less from the perspective of the lead character. If you’ve heard of Twitter (seriously, everybody HAS to have at least heard of it), but don’t understand how it works, imagine a crappy version of Facebook where they take away everything but status updates and limit users to 140 characters per update. The books tackled range from classics like Hamlet to modern fair such as The Da Vinci Code to books so old we don’t even know who wrote them (Beowulf).

The front of the book features a quote from The Wall Street Journal that states, “Do you hear that? It’s the sound of Shakespeare, rolling over in his grave.” The other quotes on the first page continue this streak of honesty:

“Sincerest apologies to Shakespeare, Stendhal, and Joyce: how were we to know it would come to this?” – Mashable.com

“Twitterature makes me want to punch someone, preferably the ‘authors.’ They’re in Chicago. I’m gonna take a road trip.” – @damig, Twitter

“Just f***ing shoot me now.” – Mike C., grouchyconservativepundits.com

While I see where they’re coming from, it still doesn’t stop the fact that the book had both of us laughing out loud on a regular basis. You could choose to view it is as the ultimate low in disrespect or a perfect high for geeks around the country. While the cover and introduction play the comedy angle where the purpose of the book is to simplify boringly long books for an ADD generation, we realized as we went through that it only really worked for the books we had previously read.

Really, we only read about 75% of them after this discovery – sticking solely with the ones we read in school, for fun, or were at the very least familiar with (I’ve never read nor will ever read Twilight, but you can bet your ass we read the Twitterature for it). If you want an awesome coffee table book or find yourself in need of something to make a roadtrip a little shorter, I absolutely would give this a vote. If you can’t find the humor in this idea, you need to lighten up. Funny is funny. Anyone that doesn’t already have an appreciation for the books lampooned on these pages isn’t going to get it. No one is going to use Twitterature to pretend they’re suddenly a scholar, so let’s not go numbering the signs of the apocalypse just yet.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

(published 1980; 394 pages)

Laura’s and my two-person book club is officially under way, and things are off to a rather brilliant start. A Confederacy of Dunces is a Pulitzer Prize winning comedy novel set in 1960’s New Orleans and wrapped around about three or four “main” characters that are among the worst human beings you can imagine. Not that they’re all naturally evil, they’re just all selfish, whiny, and miserable — but fortunately for the us, they’re also hysterical versions of all the above categories.

The book overall revolves around Ignatious J. Reilly, a 30-year-old, obese, mustachioed man that still lives with his widowed mother. On the one hand, he’s such a horrible human being that I absolutely despised him, but at the same time I just could not get enough. I had to see how much more ridiculous he could get. Peter Griffin, Homer Simpson, Eric Cartman, Will Ferrell… they all owe about half their schtick to Ignatius, the original.

His mother is second lead; a poor old woman who makes it difficult to feel too much sympathy for her just because she’s the one that let her son turn out the way he did, and it’s obvious she’s still supporting it by spoiling him continuously as he rounds his 30’s. Mrs. Reilly also provides a major pivot point as one of the few characters that actually grows throughout the book.

The book has what feels like 17 side stories that eventually all intersect beautifully – and I don’t mean that sarcastically at all. The easiest way I could think to describe this book is a cross between Love Actually, Step Brothers, Adult Swim, and 1960’s New Orleans. The characters are all fantastically colorful and the setting sells the story perfectly. While the characters talk in accents (with the writing to show you exact pronunciations), it can grow mildly annoying at times, but typically speaking it sells you on the characters far better than straight dialogue would have.

Above anything, John Kennedy Tool’s ability to describe these insane character’s thoughts, actions, and surrounding is entertaining on a level most classics could never attain. Where some books just paint you a satisfactory picture of what’s going on, Tool forces you into his own world and makes you drown yourself in the absurdity of it all. If Charles Dickens was the Leonardo Da Vinci of authors, then John Kennedy Toole is Picasso.

Sadly, the author killed himself before the book was ever even published, but a posthumous Pulitzer Prize insured it would survive the years. I absolutely loved it and would recommend to anyone that enjoys a good laugh. It was an awesome way to start out the book club.

Those of you who really know me, likely read that post title and said to yourselves, “Caleb has a favorite football team?” Well, my friends, less than 24 hours ago, you would’ve been completely  on point. While most men pick their favorite teams at a far younger age based either on geography or family ties, I honestly have never cared about football at all. Sure, I watch the Super Bowl every year, but what true American doesn’t? (Only the pretend Americans; that’s who) When it came to trying to follow a team, I never brought myself to keep up. But now, as of about 8:10 on January 16, 2010, I am a hardcore Baltimore Ravens fan.

(My instincts tell me that the “B” stands for “Best”)

I’m sure all three of you reading this are a little perplexed as to how I reached this decision, so let me explain (like you have a choice). Yesterday, Laura, my awesome girlfriend, and I were house-sitting in Smithfield, NC for seven hours. Aside from feeding her parents’ horses and making sure our dogs didn’t run away, we didn’t have much to do. I had taken both Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X so we could finish up the Friday the 13th series once and for all, but when it turned out that Jason Goes to Hell might be the worst movie ever made (even worse than Twilight!) I wasn’t exactly in the mood for seconds. We decided to finish up our night with a game of Scrabble while watching the NFL play-off match between the New Orleans Saints and the Arizona Cardinals.

I have a large family base in Louisiana that I’m pretty sure matches the entire population of Arizona, so we were jointly rooting for the Saints when the topic of what team could be “our” team came up.  When I was in college, one of my best friends was a die-hard Colts fan that followed the NFL like his life depended on it, and the thought of having a team that could be “mine” always intrigued me just because it seemed like football’s Sunday/Monday only schedule would make it far easier to follow than any other sports. After three minutes of talking, Laura and I decided we did, indeed, need to have a team to call “ours”.

Laura grew up in Boston and has always been super into the New England Patriots. While generally apathetic, I’ve always cared enough to at least root for whoever my friends were rooting for, and with a best friend that loved the Colts and another best friend that really liked the Giants, I had a pretty rough history of rooting against the Patriots just by default. Because I have morals, I couldn’t bring myself to suddenly root for a team I’ve been against in the past, so to Laura’s sadness the Patriots were out of consideration. As a Patriots fan, she quickly informed me that both the Colts and Giants were also out of contention, and in the name of equality we also ruled out the Saints because it wouldn’t be fair for us to follow my family’s favorite team when her family’s favorite team had already been given the boot.

A long series of elimination left us with a handful of possibilities. It had to be somewhere neutral and someone that didn’t completely suck, but wasn’t completely awesome either. A team that would be fun to root for because they stood just as good of a chance for winning as they did losing. On the way home, it was decided we would root for the Baltimore Ravens and here are our top three reasons why:

1. Location

Baltimore is six hours away from Wilmington, NC where we live. Baltimore is also six hours away from Boston should we eventually find ourselves living up north. It’s not in South, but it’s not exactly the Northeast either. It’s perfectly in the middle.

2. Edgar Allen Poe

Geekiest reason ever? Maybe so. I love writing and reading, and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” is a favorite short story of mine. During our post-decision research, we actually discovered the team was named after this short story since Poe lived and is buried in Baltimore. Awesome.

3. Neutrality

You know how many Ravens fans I know? Zero. Not that they don’t exist, but they’re hardly a legendary franchise either. They haven’t won a Super Bowl in ten years, and as of last night they got knocked out of this year’s playoffs by those damn Colts (I can say that now because I’m a Ravens fan). They aren’t a complete crap team, so it’s not like we’re pulling for the permanent underdog (the Bengals and the Browns were among the first teams eliminated), and they seem to have a decent shot of making it to the playoffs just about every year.

-

-

And there you have it. It is official. Laura and I are die-hard Ravens fans and we’re pretty sure next year is the year we’re finally gonna go all the way. After about four hours of research getting caught up on franchise history, coaches names, current stars, and the old stars we need to know about, it’s obvious they’re long overdue for a Super Bowl and we’re going to cheer them to victory next season. February book of the month is going to be Football for Dummies, and we have until August to memorize the roster and learn which players and teams to hate based on selfish trades for more money. I really hope we get a good placing in the draft (whatever that means). It’s gonna be a good time.

Go Ravens! We’ll get those damn Colts back next year.

My cousin Kaye started a little game over at her blog where you walk to your DVD collection, close your eyes and grab five DVD’s. Since I own over 500 DVD’s across three side-by-side bookcases, I decided to grab one from each shelf (I have ten completely full shelves in the movie section of my collection; five for the TV-DVD’s).

Here are the ten movies I ended up with, since I decided to ignore the TV case. In alphabetical order:

Random DVD #1: 101 Dalmatians Platinum Edition

There are only two genres in my entire collection that singled out with their own shelves: Disney and musicals. Something about the innocence of the time of my life that first introduced me to these films makes them a very mood-based viewing choice, so I need them to be separated from the bulk of the rest. 101 Dalmatians isn’t my favorite of the sub-genre by a longshot, but it’s a great piece of animated history regardless.

Random DVD #2: The Alien Quadrilogy

This one might seem like cheating since this gigantic box would obviously feel bigger than any of the other DVD’s on the shelf, but I just grabbed the first thing my finger touched. This boxset includes 2-disc editions of all four Alien movies – a total of over 40 hours of documentaries and commentaries. I got this during college when I actually made a point of watching every single special feature on my DVD’s, so for a week or so this was literally the only thing I watched. Alien and Aliens are both among my favorite films of all time, Alien 3 is on the opposite side of that as one of my most hated movies of all time, and Alien Resurrection is a fun action movie.

Random DVD #3: Daredevil 2-Disc Special Edition

The PG-13 version of the Daredevil (the one I grabbed) is not remotely a good movie, but the special features include a two hour documentary about the history of the comic book character and THAT is why I bought this. If you’re going to watch a version of Daredevil, make it the far-superior R-rated Director’s Cut. If there ever was a movie that got completely changed because of a ratings jump, Daredevil is one of the finest examples I can think of.

Random DVD #4: Frequency

This is just an enjoyable time-bending flick. It’s nothing extraordinary, but at least it treats time travel sensibly.

Random DVD #5: Interview with a Vampire

If you’re a regular reader, I’m sure you’re well aware that I absolutely despise the abomination known as Twilight. Interview with a Vampire is among the best when it comes to the blood-sucking genre. The rules are traditional, the setting is beautiful, the rating is R, and the acting is incredible (Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Anotonio Banderas, Christian Slater, and a very young Kirsten Dunst). Basically, it’s everything Twilight isn’t.

Random DVD #6: No Country for Old Men

I’m a huge fan of the Coen brothers (The Big Lebowski, Fargo), and No Country for Old Men is the movie that finally got them an Academy Award for both Best Director(s) and Best Picture. The movie isn’t for everybody due to the non-traditional story-telling and an ending well worth arguing over, but the film has some of the most intense scenes I’ve ever watched in my life. I love it to death, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone.

Random DVD #7: Planet of the Apes 35th Anniversary Edition

As I’ve mentioned before, Planet of the Apes is one of my favorite movies of all-time, if only for sentimental reasons. The film is the first movie I ever remember watching from beginning to end with my dad, and will always hold a special place in my heart for that reason alone. This special edition is one of the few movies post-college where I still made myself sit down and watching all 6+ hours of special features, and it was awesome.

Random DVD #8: The Shawshank Redemption 2-Disc Special Edition

The Shawshank Redemption is probably on more “Best Films of All Time” lists than just about anything, and for good reason. The movie is brilliant. It’s two hours and twenty minutes of perfection. If you haven’t seen it, change that immediately.

Random DVD #9: Stuck on You

So sue me, but I really enjoyed this movie. Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear are both awesome, and the two of them working together in a Farrelly brothers comedy about conjoined twins worked for me.

Random DVD #10: You’ve Got Mail

Tom Hanks is the most likable actor on the entire planet, and Meg Ryan holds a special place in my heart by default of co-starring in When Harry Met Sally, my favorite romantic comedy of all time. Tom and Meg’s chemistry is perfect so both You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle could easily find their way into my top ten chick flicks.

It’s the New Year and everyone else is doing resolutions, so I guess it’s my turn. Hopefully I’ll succeed in completing at least two of these.

1. Read at least 12 books

When I was a kid, I full out LOVED reading. Third grade was spent as the nerd that read during recess with giant glasses and a full retainer to accentuate my status of dorkiest child imaginable. I continued reading as I got older, although mostly just one or two Michael Crichton books per year (plus the cliff notes for whatever book we were assigned at school), but as movies and video games beautifully murdered my attention span, books fell to the back burner – eventually disappearing from my to-do list entirely.

Well, it’s time for that to end. I miss reading; I genuinely do. My girlfriend Laura used to read quite a bit before we happened, and as we happily hurl ourselves into “coupliest couple ever” what better way to do that than to start a two person book club? I’m aiming low with only one book per month in hopes of actually meeting the goal for once, so we’ll see how it goes.

Right now the tentative list is pretty small. We’re kicking off with A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole – allegedly one of the funniest books of all time. We also plan to read at least one of my cousin Kaye’s romance novels, leaning towards Menu for Romance as the key target (though I might have to make Laura read Stand-In Groom to catch up). I’m also hoping to squeeze in a Michael Crichton novel, a Stephen King short story collection, and maybe the first Harry Potter.

If you have any recommendations for easy reading, throw them out there. My crippled attention span has led to me being a horrifically slow reader since I often find myself getting distracted by one small detail, allowing my mind to wander while I continue “reading”, and then realizing I haven’t been paying attention at all so that I have to backtrack to the last thing I actually remember happening. Recommendations under 300 pages are welcome.

2. Budget a little

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m addicted to buying DVD’s. Right now, from Black Friday through Christmas, I have about forty DVD’s sitting on my fireplace mantle that I haven’t even TOUCHED. I’ve recently suspended my Netflix account to force me to watch them, and after that I have a bunch of old favorites I need Laura to watch for the sake of our relationship. Fortunately she also loves movies, so this won’t be a problem and should save a considerable amount of money.

3. Write More

I know Bullshish has been dissipating since June-ish (excluding Horrorfest), and it’s not something I’m proud of. My life no longer revolves solely around watching a movie and talking about it, so it’s inevitable that the movie reviews will die down to only one per week on the latest theatrical release, but my hope is that I’ll be able to kick SuperBull into high gear as I ramble about my brilliant opinions on Taco Bell, board games, and the books we’re reading.

I also really, really, really need to get back to my script writing, though I’m fumbling through about eighteen different writing ideas, from webisodes to marketing a slasher movie game, and haven’t quite decided which idea will be my baby for a while which brings me to #4…

4. Pick a project

I need to edit Script 1 to be more taut. I need to finish Script 2 before I start the preliminary steps of Script 3 and 4 simultaneously. I need to sit down and make myself write.

Here’s to 2010!

If the tree of life were a factual piece of foliage, I’m pretty sure it’s sap would be Lava sauce.

The Double Decker Taco

What is it?

The Double Decker Taco is a hard shell taco filled with beef and cheese that has a soft shell stuck around it with refried beans all for the beautiful price of $1.49. It normally comes with lettuce, and the day I morph into a cow I will GLADLY allow that lettuce to stay on my food. In the meantime, “No lettuce” is an essential part of my preferred ordering etiquette.

How is it?

Really awesome, plus, it has alliteration in the title for bonus points. I’m not sure why I hadn’t ever ordered one before now, but for a buck fifty this has to be one of the most filling low-budget items on their menu. Fortunately for me, I have the body of Jack Skellington and the stomach of a Rancor. A hint of fire sauce put this above and beyond my old favorite, the $.99 soft taco, and the soft shell wrapping keeps things from getting too messy with the crumbling crunchy shell.

How is it with Lava?

Oh my f*cking god. That’s how it is with Lava. Take an item that’s really good with out Lava, and add Lava to it and the result is obviously going to be really, really insanely good. That’s science. I didn’t make the rules, I just enforce them. Considering this still comes out to a measly $1.79 when you add Lava, I’d have to admit it comes highly recommended.

Good work Taco Bell. You have redeemed yourself for the rip-off known as the Ranchero Chicken Soft Taco.

You may or may not know this, but Taco Bell’s “Lava Sauce” (the special sauce on their Volcano-coined creations) is the best sauce on the entire planet. What few people realize is that you can order this addictively delicious ingredient added onto any item on the entire menu for an additional thirty cents. Ever since I discovered this, my need for the sauce has nearly consumed me. While I’ve gotten my self-control up to the level that allows me to only indulge in God’s personally prepared topping once or twice per week, there was a time for about a month where I was going literally every single day. Fortunately (or unfortunately?) for me, I was able to get my girlfriend hooked on the sauce just as bad. If we missed a day, we’d go twice the next day. It was THAT consuming.

Now that I’ve gotten myself weened down to a solo or double dose every week, I’ve decided to push the limits of the lava by gradually ordering it on every single item on the menu. Every week I’ll get two versions of a single item on the menu: one with lava, one without, and record my findings here. My only rules are no lettuce (because what the FUCK is the point of lettuce?) and no onions because I’m allergic. It’s like Super Size Me but a billion times more delicious because LAVA SAUCE.

First up:

The Ranchero Chicken Soft Taco

I’m going to start taking my own pictures with my phone, but I totally forgot this time.

What is it?

The Ranchero Chicken Soft Taco is basically their $.89 soft taco, except somewhere along the way they think it’s justified to charge an entire goddamn dollar to add ranch to it. It also comes with “fiesta sauce” which includes raw onions, and I wasn’t really in the mood to puke so I passed on that. Lettuce is also included because this is a clever way restaurants have found to pack all foods with flavorless rabbit food so their items will look bigger. No thank you.

How is it?

It’s good, but it’s not worth $1.89 to get ranch dressing on your dollar menu taco. Come on, Taco Bell. THINK.

How is it with Lava?

As my girlfriend pointed out when I floated this idea out there, this is going to quickly get redundant as hell because the answer will almost always be “better”. Well, guess what, it’s better. The ranch and lava actually worked together pretty awesomely to rock my taste buds just right. Is it worth the final cost of $2.29 for one taco? Nope, but you really probably shouldn’t bother with this option to begin with. Go home and add your own ranch if that’s really what you want.

Almost weekly I get a day off work in the middle of the week in exchange for working Saturday. This is called a comp day. This is also slowly becoming my official DVD Buying Day, depending on how recently I last bought DVD’s. Believe it or not, sometimes I like to watch movies without writing two pages essays on them, but I hate the idea of buying a bunch of new (or used) DVD’s and not even getting one blog post out of it.

And thus we have Comp Day Minis.

Fifth Edition: Wednesday, July 15th Purchases

I had some errands to run today, none of which involved buying DVD’s, but I passed Blockbuster and couldn’t help but see what they had on sale since I hadn’t been there since the end of April. Turns out they were running a 3 for $20 sale and now is like the prime time to pick up all the Oscar nominees that came out last Winter. I ended up grabbing six titles from that sale, then grabbed three more at Wal Mart for $3 each when I was checking out.

So…yeah. That’s nine total. Most of which I already have full reviews for on CA: The Original Bullshish.

1. The Wrestler

Full review here.

2. The Reader

Full review here.

3. Gran Torino

Full review here.

4. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Full review here.

5. Kung Fu Panda

Full review here.

6. Iron Man

Anyone that knows me knows I love comic book movies. So why did it take so long to get Iron Man? Well, I had been holding out for the two-disc special edition, but in the past month or two I’ve realized that between trying to keep Bullshish updated, trying to keep my job, and trying to keep my dog alive (and my floors unsoiled), I just don’t have as much time to watch special features as I used to. This is one of the best comic book movies to come out (though last year was a GREAT year for the genre between this, The Dark Knight, and Hellboy II). I’m very happy to finally have it in my collection.

7. The Wedding Singer

I’m a fan of Adam Sandler’s stupid style of humor. Happy Gilmore and Big Daddy are two of my all-time favorite comedies, and The Wedding Singer is just as rewatchable as any of them. It also has a considerably more solid chick-flick romance vibe going towards that seems to make a favorite among girls, but not so sappy that guys can’t dig it too.

8. The Sandlot

This is one of my favorite childhood movies and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t own it before now. The Sandlot is essential summer viewing.

9. Blades of Glory

This…well, this was $3 dollars and when I saw it in theaters (which was also the last time I saw it at all), I remember it making me laugh a decent amount. If you were looking for an example of my obsessive compulsive DVD buying habits, this is a pretty good example.