The Liebster Award (with All New* 2016 Updates!)

Awesomely Stolen Bandwidth

I got awarded an extremely important award for Outstanding Achievement in Excellence.  Brikhaus nominated me, with others, for this Liebster Award thing.  Here is what it means:

The Liebster Award is given to a blogger who has less than 200 followers. Liebster in German means “beloved, favorite, dearest.” The goal of the Liebster Award is the help new or growing blogs connect with other bloggers. It’s a good way for readers to discover new blogs.

At first, I thought I shouldn’t qualify because this December will be my 5 Year On-And-Off-Iversary, so I wouldn’t say my blog is “new”, and my promotion is non-existent and my posting schedule is practically pre-menopausal levels of erratic.  I say that as a early-to-mid-30s man who knows nothing about menopause.  But being a man, I must assume I know everything, and that it’s either erratic, non-dependable, or basically non-occuring, which is how I like to schedule my posts.  So I wouldn’t call it growing, either.

Anyway, where was I going with that?  Oh yeah.  I probably shouldn’t qualify.  But since this thing is asking me to talk about me, and talking about me is easy, because I’m me, and I know what I’m thinking, I figured fuck it.  Let’s talk.

Dolph Double Dip

Bubbawheat, over at Flights, Tights and Movie Nights is running a little something called “The Comic Strip Double Dip Blogathon“.  The idea is to get all us writey types to focus our creative energies on one specific topic.  In this case, it’s exploring the performances of actors who have taken on more than one Comic Book inspired movie role.  He put together a big list, making it easy to pick out a topic, and right around the middle of it, staring back at me was the perfect excuse to re-watch two movies I’ve been dying to revisit for years.

That’s right…  Dolph Lundgren:  Frank Castle/He-Man.  Dolph plays Frank Castle in 1989’s The Punisher, and he plays He-Man in 1987’s Masters of the Universe.  I’ve got a few thoughts about these movies in general before we delve deep into Dolph dichotomy discussion.

Both of these films are widely viewed as completely awful movies that don’t do any justice to their source material. Oddly, in both cases, I remember thinking that they were, in fact, widely underrated.  On a more personal note, since I’m not a big Rocky fan (I like Rocky III, and acknowledge Rocky is something special), these two roles, for me, are Dolph’s defining roles.  I mean, I can name at least two other non-Expendables titles he’s been in, but these two movies I remember as Dolph Lundgren movies.

So, without further ado… let us determine the answer to the age old question that no one has ever bothered to ask…  “Who does Dolph Lundgren play better, He-man or Frank Castle?”

Who Is That Fat Guy With Glasses?

So…  It’s been a while now that the Blog has been going again and before real-life and virtual life start making it nearly impossible to show up here and complain about stuff, I’ve just started to amass some statistics.  While almost everyone that is visiting the site comes looking for Meanwhile in Canada… or the blank polaroid image in Fat Dad With Glasses:  Bachin’r, some people do come here actually looking for stuff to read.  It’s quite annoying.

However…  There are a number of viewers that are coming from various search engines.  Google, Yahoo, various bots, and whatever the hell Yandex is… which is, I’m guessing, some kind of Russian Yahoo/Google Hybrid wearing bikershorts and a fur hat.  About 90% of those people that get here from those search engines are looking for one thing:

“Who is that fat guy with glasses in…?”

Well, I’m nothing else if not helpful.  That’s why, to the best of my ability, I’m going to answer their burning questions.  As far as my statistics (both from here, and my old blogspot site) would imply, these are the 5 most important and often searched for Fat Guys with Glasses on the interwebs.  Even though they have obviously been given a numerical ranking, they are in no particular order.  There is also absolutely no empirical evidence to support my claims/rankings regarding the popularity of these fellows.  Absolutely no science was harmed in the making of this list.

2012 In Absolutes

I know, I know, only a Sith deals in absolutes.  Anyway, this is an obligatory end of the year post that’s a day late, because I never finish anything I start on time.  This kind of stuff usually works best with bigger lists.  Especially since I have such a hard time picking a best of/worst of anything.  But I’m going to force myself to pick a best and worst, and a biggest surprise for each of the main media type things I consume regularly.  For anyone just tuning in to my rants, that’s books, movies, video games, TV and toys.  I like to leave music alone, because I just hate so goddamn much of it, and there really isn’t any good reason for it.

But that’s another rant.  So… here we go with 2012 In Absolutes*.

*please keep in mind that I haven’t seen, played or read many things that were released this year.  In regards to books, I haven’t read hardly anything at all that was released this year, so I’ll be dealing instead with the ones that I did indeed read, many of which were only really popularized this year because of movie tie-ins.

A Muppet Family Christmas (1987/89)

I will be the first to admit that when it comes to almost all Christmas media, you might as well call me Scroogey McGrincherson.  I loathe almost all of it.  I can think of maybe 5 Christmas songs that don’t make me want to shove an electric drill into my ear, just to stop the screaming.  Quality “Christmas Specials” are fewer and farther between.  I can tolerate some of the old stop-motion specials.  Mickey’s Christmas Carol is decent enough.  I’ve been known to enjoy the movie “A Christmas Story”, and I’ll acknowledge the existence of some absolutely amazing Christmas episodes of NBC’s Community.  Jim Henson’s The Christmas Toy is also fantastic.  But there is one golden egg, one diamond in the rough, one sparkling jewel of Christmas joy amongst the media-stocking that is otherwise full of Christmas Coal.  That piece of greatness is “A Muppet Family Christmas”.

Paragon Forever

Patty Prestige at her favourite location.

Already Gone:

Well, it’s been a rough year for me electronically. All other aspects of life have been on varied. Most things, at times, have managed to be “Shitty”, “Poor”, “Negotiable”, “Great”, “Fantastic” and “Fan-fucking-tastic”. But, for me, on the electronic escapism front, 2012 has sucked copious amounts of sagging, wrinkly, greying, wiry scrotum hairs. That’s disgusting. I know. I won’t apologize though. That’s how I’ve felt about the handling of my two favourite video game franchises this year.

First off, this spring BioWare cut and pasted a picture of a steaming dung pile into where the end of the Mass Effect trilogy was supposed to be. I had intended to ride out the spring and summer months with near constant replays of ME3. Instead, the ending left me with a poor taste in my mouth and effectively killed any interest I had in ever replaying any game in the series. But that’s another post. (One that I’ve tried to write, but couldn’t find the words.)

Tonight (or today, if it happens to be daytime where ever you are right now) I want to vent about the shit that Korean publisher NCSoft took on one of their most successful games, City of Heroes.

Found On the Internet: Jedi Ninjas.

The title pretty much says it all, I think.

Some of the Force effects leave a bit to be desired, but this is still pretty choice.

Found On The Internet: Community on Beetlejuice.

Okay.  I want to make a post about my impressions of Season 3 so far.  I want to talk about how it’s just as good as the previous seasons, for the most part.  How each season has taken 3 episodes to set the stage, and then have the 4th episode shine brightly.  I want to talk about how this season’s Hallowe’en episode was a big disappointment, especially since the funniest line (“Teach me to read!”) was in the trailer.  I want to burst into “Kiss from a Rose” and fix some air conditioners with Black Hitler and an Astronaut making Panninis.

But I’m only on my lunch break, and I just saw this posted on Reddit, and I can’t help but share it.  So all those other thoughts will have to wait.

Watch the window as Beetlejuice’s 3rd mention on the show takes place.

I love this show. Please don’t cancel it NBC. Hell, aside from Parks and Rec, it’s the only show on TV I’m watching when it airs.

Found On the Internet: Li’l Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction’s Facebook page shared this today.  I enjoyed it.

Not surprisingly, the 265 comments or so were largely full of people pissing, moaning and crying.  Wah wah… the kids aren’t swearing.  Wah This is inappropriate!  Wah wah John Travolta is white!  wah!  Shoulda done DNS scene! Wah.  Won’t someone think of the children!?! Wah wah wah One of my favourite movies ruined! Fucking wah.

The best three that I saw in my quick glance:

I was hoping they’d shoot Marvin in the face.”  – James Partington

Wrong scene, asshat.

“this is terrible and a disgrace to pulp fiction. vincent vega isnt not a little mexican. get the races right before you make a li’l anything” – Scott Schober

That’s some really choice racism, sir.

“I don’t think Jules was mexican but ok.” – Morgan Shaffer

Also choice racism.  Even funnier to me is that you’re so upset about this detail change you felt the need to comment on it… without realizing that the character Jules was indeed played by a young man of African decent.  How do you get so worked up about one detail, when you don’t even know the character’s fucking name?

Found on the Internet: Floppy Drive March

Found this on the internet.  It made me smile.  I’m a dork.

Enjoy.