Happy Leap Day, Everyone!

Today is February 29th, which signifies that this year has both a Summer Olympics and a Presidential Election! Oh, yeah, and it's Leap Year, one of those years when February gets to shuffle off its inferiority complex for a single day, which only happens 25% of the time.

Historically, this is the day that Columbus convinced the Native Americans that he had the power of a god and could make the moon disappear from the sky for a few hours. He then tossed several blankets filled with small pox at the natives and took their gold and anything else he could find (like their dignity).

Also, Hattie McDaniel won an academy award in 1940 for her roll in Gone with the Wind, making her the first African-American to win and Oscar.

A few years later, Dwight D. Eisenhower announced on February 29th, 1956 that he would seek a second term in office. People around the country declare that they like him. Again.

Not much else seems to happen on this day. It's like it pops up once every four years or something. Sheesh.

Also, today is the birthday of my childhood friend, Chris Long (not the dude from UVa also known as "Howie's Kid"). Happy Birthday, Chris, you're 8 years old. Hope you get that bike you've always wanted. Take heart! In another 32 years, you'll be old enough to drive! In 40 years, you can buy smokes, lottery tickets and porn, and in 60 years, you can have a drink.

He shares a birthday with Carolina Hurricanes (ah, local flavor) goaltender Cam Ward, New England Revolution forward and U.S. Team stud Taylor Twellman, sax man Jimmy Dorsey (not to be confused with Texas gunslinger Jimmy Dorsey), and Pope Paul III, who rocked a seriously badass beard.

So go out, enjoy the day, and be sure to tell February you love it, because it needs this propping up from time to time.

Throwdown! Kelvin Sampson versus Brock Samson

A few have complained that I've been a little sports heavy on the site recently, so I have been trying to branch out a little bit. Diversify. You know, like all those investment commercials keep telling me to do. I've brought you the Meet the Characters feature and the Lives of the Saints (though that's only run once...there's been a paucity of good saints to make fun of talk about lately). So now to add to the mix: Throwdown! And, of course, this week's version is...sports related. Sorry.





By the way, this could be the most inspired post I've come up with since the ACC Football teams as Clerks characters one that ran back in September.





The matchup today: Brock Samson, the buff, blond bodyguard (alliterative) from Adult Swim's "Venture Brothers" versus Kelvin Sampson, the dial-happy former coach of my beloved Indiana Hoosiers basketball team. Here are the rules: we go ten rounds, whoever is left standing at the end emerges victorious. Gentlemen, keep it clean. Let's get it on!

Round One: Looks Like:
Brock: Former Notre Dame TE and current NFL draft hopeful, John Carlson.
Kelvin: Former Food Network poobah and Martha Stewart's new bitch, Emeril
Lagasse.
Advantage: Brock. The Bammage just can't come through in the end.





Round Two: Shares a Name With:
Brock: Biblical strongman Samson, who had a soft spot for Delilah, killed 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, burnt their fields with the flaming tails of foxes, and could not be felled until he sported the Michael Stipe look.
Kelvin: Centigrade's arch-nemisis. Incidentally, one could say that he slew the dreams of thousands of Hoosier fans by talking on the phone too much, thus killing them by wielding the jawbone of an ass.
Advantage: Did I mention Samson killed thousands when he dropped the temple of Dagon on his followers? The Old Testament beats the absolute temperature scale.

Round Three: Enemies
Brock: The Monarch, Baron Werner Underbheit, Phantom Limb, the Cocoon's henchmen, Mol's celibacy
Kelvin: The NCAA rules infraction committee, Michael McRobbie, referees, bad reception, three-way calls, Bruce Weber
Advantage: Brock. Phantom Limb is terrifying; Myles Brand, not so much.

Round Four: Personal Hero
Brock: Race Bannon
Kelvin: Chad from Alltel
Advantage: Brock. While neither will be put off by a bunch of nerds in their van, only Race Bannon has the balls to actually do something about them.

Round Five: Signature Look
Brock: Blond mullet.
Kelvin: Blue oxford with red tie.
Advantage: Kelvin. A mullet versus looking respectable? Hands down this one goes in favor of Kelvin, though it does appear that Brock keeps his hair nice and clean.

Round Six: Leading Lady
Brock: Take your pick. I'll choose the sultry, comely red-headed sexpot and international spy Molotov Cocktease.
Kelvin: Wife Karen, who is a rather fetching lady and steadfastly supports her husband.
Advantage: There's something to be said of the unconditional love of a good wife, and, while Karen is a lovely lady, she's not going to totally kick your ass during foreplay, nor tie you to a bed, set the hotel on fire, and take away your smokes. Molotov Cocktease wins.

Round Seven: Brush with Fame
Brock: David Bowie, who then turned into an eagle and flew off, eliciting the "Dude, the guy from Labyrinth just turned into a bird and flew away!" monologue.
Kelvin: John/Johnny (Cougar) Mellencamp, IU alum and big donor to the school, who once told Bob and Tom: "The sun never sets on the cool".
Advantage: "Blood on the Scarecrow" is one of my favorite songs. David Bowie has two differently-colored eyes and a package that makes women swoon. I'm going with Mellencamp on this one. Advantage Kelvin.

Round Eight: Anger Management
Brock: When he's angry, he kills henchmen, trashes supervillains, and hollows out hot women. Also, has a tell-tale facial twitch which warns you that you're about to die.
Kelvin: When he's angry, he takes his jacket off, yells, waves his hands, and stomps. Also, will bench your ass if you don't match up in the 2-3 zone.
Advantage: Brock; you don't want to be a member of the Monarch's cocoon when he goes off. Even if it is just to amuse the Monarch.








Round Nine: Best Defense
Brock: His own two hands; also, once defended Zepplin as being more than "jock rock" and explained that "they were on a lot of stuff" when they sang a song about Hobbits.
Kelvin: 2-3 matchup zone
Advantage: I always prefer man-to-man defense. Brock wins.

Round Ten: Fall from Grace
Brock: In college, killed the deaf quarterback of his varsity squad while in practice, thus getting him expelled from school. Got drunk, trashed his roommates, and joined the army.
Kelvin: 577 illegal phone calls at Oklahoma, 106 illegal phone calls at Indiana. Was bought out and quietly slipped into the night.
Advantage: Brock, again. Kelvin's violations were lame, but they were violations nonetheless. After trashing his roommates, Brock became the body guard of one of them, Thaddeus "T.S." Venture (later known as "Rusty").



At an impressive 8-2 clip, Brock Samson emerges victorious in this initial run of the Throwdown. Better luck next time, Kelvin. Maybe you could call for backup (too soon?). Now, why don't you take a break from kicking ass and go celebrate, big fella.

I Can Has Komuhdee Now?

Long about the sixth grade, I thought Garfield was the funniest thing going. This was fostered by my teachers, as Jim Davis--Garfield's creator--was from Muncie, IN. Being a born and bred Hoosier, I was spoonfed from an early age that all things Indiana (minus the things sullied by Purdue) were practically set upon the Earth by the Almighty himself. I guess feeling proud about your state meant that you had to love Garfield (and Robert Frost, but he's still pretty cool, and beside the point). It was impossible to check out a Garfield collection from the school library; all the copies of all the books were already taken in someone else's name (incidentally, the picture book that came out about the Return of the Jedi was also impossible to get ahold of...when I finally did lay my hot little hands on it, I was underwhelmed...but I digress). We would sometimes have a reading of the daily Garfield strip aloud in the class. My teacher, Mrs. Van Dyke, would read it in her awkward, not-quite-connecting-with-the-kids old lady way. I think that actually made the strip a lot more funny than it was.

A lot of things have changed since then. For instance, I've found a sense of humor. And some common sense. Both of these things have led me to realize that Garfield is pretty lame. Imagine my confusion a couple of years ago when the computer-generated fat cat made it to the big screen (only about 13 years too late, as I feel Garfield's height of hilarity was sometime in the late 80s). To date, I have not seen either of the Garfield movies, and I don't plan on them, either. I don't care if Jennifer Love Hewitt appears topless and is rolled in a vat of honey. I have zero desire to see those movies.

I think the big downfall for me was the introduction and continued use of Nermal, the world's cutest kitten. About the only thing that I gained from that was a sense of where Abu Dhabi is on a map. Also, what the fuck ever happened to Lyle, Jon's buddy who came over from time to time? Concurrently, the Garfield cartoon on Saturday mornings sucked. Hard. The only saving grace was that there were also episodes of U.S. Acres included in the episodes, and even calling those a saving grace is a stretch. And by "stretch", I really mean "my ass is way to fat for these black spandex pants". Again, the cartoon suffered from way too much Nermal, who was not only most definitely not the world's most cute kitten, as he claimed, but also had one of the most historical instances of a really bad name. Odie is saved from this title simply because I made a joke in the ninth grade during a vocab section of English. We were discussing the meanings of our new vocab words, and I defined "odious" as "Garfield's Latin friend." Mr Cotton (my English teacher) and Kathy Jeandevin, the girl who sat in front of me (and who I thought was cute until she wore a Purdue t-shirt to school one day--no lie!), thought the joke was great.

I did find a new appreciation for Garfield a couple of months ago when I was shown the following cartoon:


Yes, that would be a near perfect mixture of Garfield and lolcatz, two things which, taken separately, are annoyingly unfunny (I will admit to being mildly amused by lolcatz for a brief time, but the grammar-and-spelling Nazi inside of me has since won out and now I simply find them tiresome), but put together are suddenly sheer, comedic brilliance.

Another thing that I've learned, thanks to my stumbling across "Garfield Minus Garfield", is that Garfield is hilarious once Garfield no longer exists in his own world. Feel free to follow either the link provided to you above or the one listed in the sidebar. I feel that the brilliance of the man behind Garfield Minus Garfield knows no bounds, and he should be celebrated for the magnitude of his comedic genius often and loudly.

If you're a Robot Chicken fan, you should also appreciate the greatness that is the sketch titled "Cat Court" in which Heathcliff sues Garfield for being a copycat. I won't ruin the end, but it's very satisfying. The final joke of the segment is hilarious, especially if you sat through the shorts during the Saturday morning cartoons as a kid during the 80s.

EDIT: Ok, I found this. It's totally nerdy, but if you've dedicated time to any of the Final Fantasy games (I think this is a take off of the American Final Fantasy III), you'll appreciate the hell out of it: Youtube Link

Meet the Characters: House John

I know, I'm a day late on this, but I had some back issues last night and so I didn't hang out and blog like I should have. And, based on the reaction to the story of Red Paul, I can tell that everyone is clamoring for more Character Introductions. Who am I to withhold such treats from my ravenous fan-base? I'd be a black-hearted bastard if I did, that's who I would be.

Today, let's meet House John, one of the first sets of characters I developed for The Hundred Kings Saga, and thus one of my favorite clans in all the land of Kallabria.

House John:

House John is the oldest of the Houses of Kallabria and all the known kingdoms. Sailing from the ancient empire of Rengor in antiquity, Arken John [1] first discovered Kallabria by following a red comet in the sky. When he first sighted the shores of what would become the kingdom of Kallabria, the comet seemed to set behind the high, stony walls of the shore. Arken John established his kingdom from the aptly named city of First Landing and named the land Kallabria in honor of his wife, Kallah. Little is known of Kallah, other than she was the daughter of a minor lord of Rengor. Aside from his "heroic" exploits in discovering and founding Kallabria, little is known of the character and background of Arken John, and much of what is known is mired in myth and lore. For instance, nothing is known of why he was on the voyage from Rengor in the first place.

After several generations, House John lost control of his own kingdom, being defeated by Bron Aevan, and the kingdom that was forged by Arken John was reduced to a mere dukedom in the southern-most part of Kallabria. The current Duke of First Landing is Stuart John. Stuart is an older man, but still tall and powerfully built. He casts quite a regal pose with his long, silvery-white mane and close-cropped white goattee. He has a brilliant mind and a sharp wit and is fair and friendly with most all of his sworn men, but he demands excellency from those who serve his house as well as those who are in it. Currently, he is squiring Nathaniel Montgomery's eldest son, Alexander as well as Vincent Giles' only son, Stephen. [2]

The heir to House John is Stuart's grandson, Patrick. Patrick is a young, handsome man with curly brown hair and bright, brown eyes. Like his grandfather, he is tall and solidly-built, though he is not as deft with a sword as Stuart was as a younger man. Patrick has a brother, Jeremy, who is taller than Patrick and just as handsome, with darker hair and more angular features. He is a young knight of some renown, though he is mostly untested in battle and has only been knighted (by Vincent Giles, the Duke of Irvington) two years prior. Jeremy dreams of founding a landed holding near the mountainous western border of First Landing, where he could guard his home against the restless threat of Jesportrock, the neighboring kingdom to the west.

During the time they are together, Patrick, Jeremy, Alexander and Stephen become fast friends.

Patrick and Jeremy's father was killed in a horsing accident when he was thrown over the neck of his steed. Stuart's son (also named Patrick), was killed instantly when he broke his neck. Patrick and Jeremy's mother, Jessica, died two years later of severe melancholia, leaving Stuart to raise his juvenile grandsons.

Patrick is married to Jillian Tallhart, the daughter of Royce Tallhart, the Duke of neighboring Tellchester. She is slight and blonde, but bold of heart and character. Patrick jokes that her strong nature helps keep him in line. Together, they have an infant son, named Stewart. [3]

House John is symbolized by a comet gules upon a field Or (a red comet upon a yellow field). Their motto is "First to Land, Last to Fall".

[1] Arken John was originally "Prester John", a tip of the cap to Tad Williams' character from Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. I even had permission to use the name "Prester John", however, as I developed the character more and more, I decided to give him his own identity, and thus he was converted into "Arken John". The tallest mountain in Kallabria is named "Mount Arken". There is also a holding within the dukedom of First Landing named "Mount Arken".

[2] This becomes very important as the action of the story begins to heat up, so that's why I threw it in.

[3] Stewart's name was originally "Saban", which was a tip of the cap to a character from Final Fantasy III (the American version) named "Sabin". However, when Nick $aban arrived on the college football scene, I changed his name out of disgust.

Kissing Zelda: Link's Time to Shine

I'm feeling lazy, but I'm also amused by the misfortune of others this fine afternoon. So I thought I'd just toss up some goofy stories and let you all enjoy.

My daughter's basketball team lost last night, booting them from the tournament and thus ending yet another bittersweet year of youth basketball. The final score was 16-12 (her team had an 8-3 lead at halftime). Of course, their night was not nearly as bad as Scotland Country Day from Pennsylvania's District 3. The final score puts me in mind of the 124-12 whipping my girl's high school team put on Wabash my senior year to open sectionals. Story.

No word about wheather a prehistoric man locked in a block of ice was found: Story.

Screw KU; check out where she went to undergrad! Somewhere, Bob Broadman is smiling. Story.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! Story.

And then of course, there's this. You didn't think I could let a day go by without bringing it up, did you? Story.