super dork

i guess i have to admit it. sarah already knows. i have a thing for "supers." i can't help myself. ever since i was little i wanted to be invincible, be incredibly fast or even have a ring that shot out green s#$%. but of course, i'm not super and reality caught up with me. i left the neon colored tights and secret identities behind.

thenwith the advance of technology, so too came the movies based on comic books. spidey was the first big blockbuster and they don't look like they'll be stopping anytime soon. i suppose there was mystery men...but does "the spleen" truly strike fear into the heart of men? and have i told you that the whole xmen adaptation where everybody wears black leather bothers me? why is it a stretch for wolverine to wear yellow and black duds but it's believable that he has knives that come out of his hands. please.

Anyway, back to the subject. superheroes. about a month ago, NBC decided to debut a show about people in the real world demonstrating supernatural abilities. maybe that was too wordy, lemme paraphrase. heroes = x-men ripoff. but don't get me wrong, the show isn't that bad. it has a lot of promise and is my current guilty pleasure. so it's out of the bag now, super dork has been unleashed.

quite the pickle

so i'm rather torn on what to do. i don't think we should have gone into iraq in the first place, but since we did, a precendence has been set. now with kim jong il waving enriched plutonium in our face, a decision has to be made. i mean the republicans are royally f---ed on this issue no matter what, but personally, i'm just not sure what the best reponse should be. clearly, the wonely wuler must be kept in check somehow, but simply dismissing their test as a failure is not enough. if they didn't hit it big this time, there's always tomorrow.

there is one thing i am sure about though. and that is CNN needs to get a better source for their pictures than the AP. at 4:05pm CST this is the headline picture that went with the caption: An anti-nuclear North protest in South Korea. i suppose this makes me think that the karaoke-esque protests overseas have to sound a lot better than the ones i hear across the street in the federal plaza - "si se puede! si se puede!"

Open Season

we're well into october now and visitor season has begun. on saturday, we met up with Physal (as the brother-in-law spells it) to catch the late showing of scorcese's latest flick - The Departed. i'd highly recommend it. good acting, solid plot, clean execution. i also recommend the hollywood blvd theater. with a group of 4 we begrudgingly took a table close to the front. neck-craning or not, the office chairs helped a lot. the you just don't get very many movies of this caliber anymore.

then on sunday, we met up with frank neil and Agent Wang to grab some brunch at a swanky place up in lincoln park. but we passed on a 2 hour wait and took some grub at another diner down the street. hightlights were we all learned about a french toast orgy, we learned the hard way that the switch near neil's kitchen controls the power to the TV (go figure) and that there's a large ohio state bar aptly names mickeys.

next up: brian, christie and mary this friday - sunday. tune in...

weekend wrap-up in 3 pictures

Picture 1: Our entertainment center is finally done. Besides some cord management and filling up the right side shelf, sammy is officially a part of the family. as a test run, i ran through a few movies with vivid scenes like hero and house of flying daggers. they both looked great. now i wanted to watch a movie that had some darker imaging to test the other end of the spectrum. it was midnight by then and i had just started lord of the rings: the two towers. it was damn late but the battle of helms deep made it all worth while.


Picture 2: despite the laundry list of errands and busy work that riddled our weekend, we found
2 hours to walk around the morton arboretum. nature really makes you question your priorities. check out this little guy. if life were only that simple - just trying to get a nut.

Picture 3: the arbortum as several sections of flora grouped by their native origins. i bring to you the Korea section. notice the narrow eyes of the plants, their affinity for acrobatics and their undying love of video games...