Tonight LOST melted my face; punched my brain (my physical brain); and then sprinked salt on my tounge, just because it could.

And I am the kind of person who likes these sorts of storytelling conventions.

Warning, mild language.

Every once and a while the lust bug jumps up and bites me hard. Each time this happens I get uncontrollable feelings of lust for some object. I’ll spend hours and hours stalking this item of my lust. I am a technophile. There is a newish line of laptops poping up everywhere - the subnotebook computer. They are cheap ($400-$600), light (2-3lbs), and seem perfect for reading/studying on the go. And as a grad student, I am on the go just about all the time. The two subnotebooks I am lusting after the most are the Asus - Eee PC 900 and HP’s HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.

Look at how pretty they are!

Just the idea of a little book-like computer that is light, has long battery life, is stylish, and user-friendly is incredibly appealing. But, as Meredith said, my current laptop is awesome and works great. As I responded to her wise words, I think I would like to play with it for a week.

Anyone want me to review one of these for them? Hewlett and Asus, I am talking to you.

Speaking of lust in conjunction with unnecessary technological products, I am also eying a skin for my lappy. HP has these cool skins you can pick out for your product. Being a fan of comics and more specifically the Avengers, I scoped out their comics section and came across this beauty:

I think this is what I want for my birthday next month.

Simmons on the Suns:

Why did they fall short? Because they squandered three winnable games down the stretch, all because of execution mistakes that teams tend to make when the players aren’t totally comfortable with one another yet. What stood out about the Spurs in Round 1 was their infallibility in big moments — they knew what to do and where to go, and then they did it. You don’t get there by accident; you get there by picking a nucleus and building around it. Back in 2005, the Spurs had the right nucleus (Duncan, Ginobili and Parker) and so did the Suns (Nash, Stoudemire, Marion and Johnson), but only one of those teams kept it intact. And that’s why the Spurs won two titles (and counting), and that’s why the Suns won the title of “critically acclaimed” and that’s it.

Basketbawlful :: Word of the Day: thug
I have been loving the NBA playoffs. All of the series, with the exception of the Magic/Raptors pairing was full of plot lines and intrigue. And even that series was filled with good basketball. There has been a lot of physical play of which I am a huge fan. I hated the ticky-tack league. Some of the hits have been vicious and I have loved it. Earn those points, boys, earn ‘em. This post gets the nod because it contains a series of videos detailing the physical play… and for the picture of the Bad Boy and Bird. How can you not love a post like that? You can’t, that’s how.

Marvel mines more precious metal with `Iron Man 2′

• Marvel Film Productions
  • Iron Man - Out now
  • The Incredible Hulk - Scheduled for June 13, 2008 release
  • Iron Man 2 - Scheduled for April 30, 2010 release
  • Thor - Scheduled for June 4, 2010 release
  • The First Avenger: Captain America (working title) - Scheduled for May 6, 2011 release
  • The Avengers  - Scheduled for July 2011 release
  • Ant-Man - Writer/director engaged
• Licensed Film Productions
  • Punisher: War Zone - Lionsgate - Scheduled for December 5, 2008 release
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Fox - Scheduled for May 1, 2009 release
• Marvel Character Animated TV Projects
  • Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes - Moonscoop SAS (France) - 26, 30-minute episodes airing internationally.
  • Spectacular Spider-Man - Sony - Currently airing on Kids’ WB
  • Wolverine and the X-Men - First Serve Toonz (India) - 26, 30-minute episodes in development; scheduled for Spring 2009 release on Nicktoons.
  • Iron Man: Armored Adventures - Method Films (France) - 26, 30-minute episodes in development; scheduled for Spring 2009 release on Nicktoons.
  • Hulk Gamma Corps - In development; scheduled for Spring 2009 release.
  • Super Hero Squad - In development; scheduled for Spring 2009 release.
• Marvel Character Animated Direct-to-DVD Projects
  • Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow - Lionsgate - Scheduled for Late-2008 release.
  • Hulk Vs. - Lionsgate - Scheduled for Early-2009 release.
  • Thor: Son of Asgard - Lionsgate - Scheduled for Late-2009 release.
  • Planet Hulk  - Lionsgate - Scheduled for Early 2010 release.

I hate (celebrating) Cinco De Mayo (and seeing white people celebrate it with their all-white friends). I’m not Mexican; I don’t care about the first military victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla back in 1862.  If you are of Mexican heritage and you wanna celebrate your actual history - wonderful, go ahead and knock your self out.  If you are a white person looking for an excuse to drink and attempting to be “authentic,” give it a rest - we have appropriated plenty of other people’s holidays in an effort to have reasons to get smashed.

The End.

No, this is not a post about the perils of media consumptions, just some spastic comments touching some of the media I have consumed recently.

Iron Man - Wow, great summer superhero movie.  The folks contributing to Rotten Tomatoes got it right, this one is a gem. From the effects to the story to the the dialog, everything was very well done.  I went with a large group of friends late Thursday night to see the opening.

JR, Jake, Grant, Q, Meredith, and others went with me.  Jake’s wife, Dawn, was too sick to go Thursday.  On Friday Meredith was out of town helping with a wedding shower, so I invited Jake and Dawn to go see it with me Friday.  Jake replied to my offer saying that Dawn was still sick and therefore could not make it.  So, I bought my lone ticket to the 10:45 showing thinking that it was better than sitting around preparing for the review session I am teaching Monday.  About 5 minutes later, I get an email from Jake saying that Dawn urged him to see the flick a second time.  And so we went and reveled in the glory that is Iron Man for a second time.  Afterwards, we got to thinking and happened upon a funny, yet sad fact: we entered into Friday watching Iron Man in the theater and we exited Friday watching Iron Man in the theater.

I appreciated all of the small tie ins to the comic.  From the mentioning of the ten rings to the War Machine plans in the credits, there were lots of little things to notice and look for in the sequel.  The final scene after the credits?  Perfect.  Although, if Fury is Samuel Jackson, then the suit is all wrong and Stark should have been bald and blue-skinned in his young pictures. (i.e. should have been Ultimate Iron Man to go with Ultimate Nick Fury)  However, anything is better than Baywatch Nick Fury.

Fear Agent - This campy, grisly space comic is well worth your while.  As my friend Jake says, it is a 1950’s space comic.  Buy this now.

Super Mario Galaxy - I bought this game with Christmas money.  I played it some over Christmas break and loved it.  After leaving it at my in-laws for 4 months, I am playing it every once and a while.  It is truly a great game in all respects, save one.  The graphics are gorgeous; the game play and storyline are imaginative and fresh (for a mario game).  The one problem is the boss battles, which are often repetitive and simple to beat.  Beyond that, however, the game is spectacular.

Mario Kart - Everything they say is true.  At once, the same is immaculate and ridiculous at the same time.  The new courses are beautiful.  The multiple control schemes allow for fun for everyone.  The only problem?  Item bloat.  The items are simply punishing.  You can go from 1st to 8th in a matter of seconds.  This is all fine and dandy when you are racing your friends, but when you are trying to unlock Daisy for you wife and all you need is to finish Rainbow Road in the top three, getting bombarded with a redshell, lightning, blue-shell and the pow block in a 10 second span on the last lap becomes rather irritating.  Group play?  Fan-tastick, with a k.

Justice League/ Justice League Unlimited - I watched this series the last couple of months while working on Greek or preparing to teach.  It follows the creation and exploits of DC Comics’ Justice League.  The first few seasons only deal with the 7 founding members (in this incarnation, anyway), Superman, Flash, Martian Manhunter, Batman, Wonder Woman, Hawk Girl, and the Green Lantern.  In the last few seasons, they expand the universe to include all of the members of the Justice League.  Because of this, the last few seasons are great if you want little side stories on minor DC characters.  However, this also has the side effect of series loosing focus.  It is at its best when mantaining a cohesive storyline with the main seven characters.  Overall, it is worth watching on netflix, but not collecting the DVDs.

I just love watching this video:

Not only will we see who is the better director, we will see who is able to fight more for that what he wants

This video from GameSpot takes a look at the various incarnations of tracks and how they have chagned throughout the Mario Kart series. 

The Raymond Babbit Award
To Ray Allen, the subject of a mesmerizing Jackie MacMullan piece about his monotonous routines and borderline obsessive/compulsive habits. (In retrospect, it’s a shame the Knicks didn’t trade for him last summer just for comedy’s sake — I could see a rattled Ray taking a leave of absence in January after Isiah Thomas moved the team’s shootaround for the fifth time that week.) You could make a case the Celtics have two crazy people on their team — Allen and Garnett — who would be thrown into a mental institution if they behaved in a grocery store like they did during the average NBA playoff game.

(By the way, that would be a funny “SNL” skit — TCIKG intensely shopping at a Whole Foods, grabbing the last box of Fruit Loops from the shelf and pounding his chest, woofing orders at the deli guy and chest-bumping him after a particular good cut of American cheese, then getting in a customer’s face who made the mistake of bringing 14 items into the “13 items or less” aisle. I continue to believe cameras should be following Garnett at all times.)

Yup, I said it.  I love spyware.  Well, not in general, but when I heard via Lifehacker that I could get a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate in exchange for installing a feedback program on my desktop, I jumped at the chance.  For three months I had to run this feedback data collection program on a computer.  At the conclusion of the three months, I would be shipped a free copy of Vista Ultimate.

I did not really care about the data collection because I only use my desktop for a media server now-a-days, so there was nothing about usage habits they could really collect.  I’ll let someone look at my computing habits and settings on a computer I don’t use for three months in exchange for a 200+ dollar software license.

My package shipped today.