Happy Birthday Dave.

Get ready...

Our Wedding Day: The Highlight Reel

I couldn't begin to properly describe the magical, surreal wonder of May 1st, 2010 in blog form. To do the day justice I would need to write with the quill pen of William Shakespeare's ghost on a mystical scroll retrieved from the waters of some enchanted lake.

However in an effort to give you a glimpse into the day I present a highlight reel done by my very best of men, Jay Garrison. Watch it soon, the powers that be over at Youtube may decide to take it down because of some faulty use of The Temper Trap's beautiful song "Sweet Disposition". Hope you enjoy...

What a day.

The Grammys were wrong for this one...

A glaring omission from the In Memoriam part last night.

Keith Edward Elam
GURU
July 17th, 1961 - April 19th, 2010

It's Kind of a Funny Story

See this movie, like yesterday.

5 years ago today...

...the girl that would become my life and I "made it official".



What a wonderful adventure it's been so far.

...and the nerds owned the night.

Sure the other night was all about the game, sports fans everywhere enjoyed themselves along with the jocks and meat heads of the world that reveled in all of their saturated fat glory. But there was something else going on that evening, something a bit below the artificial grass. The nerds were winning.

Take the best commercial of the night (and possibly the best Superbowl commercial ever)...the Darth Vader Kid. Sure it was aired in an abbreviated form during the actual game, but the original, a minute long opera that's better than the last three Star Wars films combined, has been watched an astounding 16 million times since it hit youtube. In a night filled with overblown attacks on the senses rather then commercials, this simple use of the Imperial March and a pint-sized Vader trying his darnedest to use the Force until Dad makes a little bit of magic happen is winning hearts everywhere, and for good reason. Here it is in case you missed it....



Plus it accomplished what an ad should accomplish, my next car may be a Volkswagen.

Then there were the trailers. So many extraterrestrials and superheros, so little time. First up was the TV spot for Cowboys and Aliens...



This movie has no choice but to kick a whole lotta ass. Just look at the title....COWBOYS AND ALIENS. Seriously though, show me a guy that doesn't want to witness cowboys shoot the fair one with aliens.

Next it was Marvel's turn to deliver, and in my humble opinion they did so with a swift shield shot to the thunder gods if you know what I'm saying.

Back in the mid nineties, I vividly remember a two inch by two inch box on one of the last pages of an issue of Wizard magazine. It mentioned a Spider-Man or X-Men movie possibly in the works. I lost sleep over those simple words on a page for a month because back then that's all we got. Nerds these days are living in a much different universe.

But the highlight for me personally was watching a double ax handle by my favorite of all creative geniuses, the one and only Mr. Steven Spielberg. He produced both of these upcoming projects...

First up, something that looks like it could possibly be the next LOST...except this time we're sure to get Dinosaurs and not a smoke monster...



And finally, surely a throw back to the wondrous Amblin days of the filmmaker, a movie coming out this summer directed by this generation's answer to early Spielberg, J.J. Abrams...

There has never been a trailer that has gotten me this excited for a movie by showing so little. Every frame of these 32 seconds transcended the screen and became more then just a preview. Sprinkled with the Cocoon theme and sparkling with a hint of Close Encounters, The Goonies, Stand by Me, E.T., etc....there's some kind of intangible Spielberg/Abrams wizardry happening here, but whatever it is...it was an unexpected cherry on top of totally nerdtastic Sunday night sundae.

Just because I came across them...

CLASSICS.

Small thoughts on the big game.

Come Sunday families all over will be jammed together on couches and recliners, guzzling cold beers and softly elbowing each other for the last of the dip. Fathers will be lusting over Fergie at halftime, Moms and Sisters will be pretending they're into the game, Grandmothers will probably be wondering which teams are playing. I'll be looking forward to the Captain America trailer, and so forth and so on.

Being a guy that really isn't into football in any respectable capacity I could check all the hoopla on Super Bowl Sunday off as overblown mass hysteria, but I feel like that would be not so manly of me and ultimately Un-American. That's a term I hate hearing and never speak but in this rare occasion it's called for. As Americans this particular Sunday is a true day of worship. Every element that is woven into the fabric of this country is intensified: sports, eating, drinking, consumerism. It's all fine tuned into a surge of noise and colors, coated with a fine gloss and delivered to us out of hi-def flat screen televisions in almost every living room across the country.

This is all something I undeniably get caught up in myself, sort of. Sure I know which teams are playing and have a basic understanding of the game but I'd be lying if I said my Wife and I didn't look more forward to the commercials. It's maybe a bit sacrilegious to say but we are a couple that on most Sundays throughout Fall and Winter are catching a movie, or walking around the mall or a museum. On more than one occasion we've been taking a relaxing stroll around Smithville on any given game day during the season and I see women toting their husbands around, he'll be wearing Eagles gear and surely checking his watch every couple of minutes to see if it's close to 4 because there's a late game on. Of course I'm not knocking this type of behavior, most of my closest friends and family members are avid sports fans, but I could only imagine this level of dependency on the sport to be a bit like perpetually clenching your butt cheeks together in an attempt to hold in a fart. But I digress.

This Sunday is a day for every warm blooded American that knows how to work a remote controller to eat, drink and watch football.

Side note: I do miss the Bud Bowl.