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I volunteer as a tutor at 826 Chicago. It is a pretty wild gig with kids running all over the place all ready to learn whatever I can teach them. The gig is ostensibly a creative writing program, but we work on homework and art and all manner of cool stuff.

Lex goes (more than I do, in fact) and makes brains smart as well.

The Boring Store, 826 Chi’s hard-copy meat-space front-for-sure is a super secret spy supply as much as it is a great place for kids to go to get their minds blown. 

There is always a fun project to be done to make The Boring Store more interesting for teh kiddehs.

I took on a little electronics project recently to create a Super Secret Agent Phone with all manner of interesting bells and whistles. It’s like the Bat-Phone, only way cooler.

So far I’ve got a working prototype of all of the hardware connectivity rolling like an Autobot.

What do you think?

Lex, Edward and I saw Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” a few days ago and were each of us stunned by the piece. I could be called an Aronofsky detractor in any other circumstance, his earlier work like fingernails on the chalkboard of my brightest hopes. The Wrestler, however, delivers.

It delivers a lot more than merely an amazing film, though. To me, it rekindles a secret appreciation for Aronofsky and his relentless desire to reveal a perfectly described bubble, warn you that he is going to pop it and then still manage to make you think, if even for a second, that there is hope – that this bubble won’t pop just this one time – immediately before popping the shit out of it. 
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During lunch conversation yesterday I told CLAW about an interesting situation that occurred a few days back while Lex and I were tearing the shit out of the Locust horde in the interest of preparation for GOW2.

Somewhere between popping heads and blender-busting boomers we got to talking about Duke Nukem 3D. For a few days I had been, annoyingly, saying “Damn! I’m lookin’ goooooood” in my best (terrible) Duke voice and I think I was saying it every time I blew the face off of some poor slob in aviator goggles – which was a lot. A lot.

So I wanted to show her the first few levels of the good ol’ DN3D. A history lesson in ass kickery, if you will; an example of the refinement of a genre we both enjoy. Also, a suprisingly candid view into my very much younger self.

The game holds up. It’s not UT3 or anything, but it holds. So I’m showing Lex the strippers, showing Lex the toilet secret, showing Lex the dead Doom Marine. She’s totally into this. Almost every turn brought a “Sweet!“, “Dude!” or “This is, like, a 13yr old’s dream!”

Somewhere in there she says, “This is so awesome! Why didn’t they make a sequel to this?”
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One of my favorite films when I was an impressionable young squirt was Bloodsport. Cyborg and Universal Soldier (Dolph Lundgren!) were not far behind. A few years into puberty and I realized that Jean-Claude Van Damme couldn’t act to save his own life and  movies like Timecop and The Film That Shall Not Be Spoken Of only cemented this idea.

I can’t help but think that JCVD wil rock face, however. The trailer, at least, rocks mine. Give it a look, it may rock yours as well.

Also, did you know they are making a Universal Soldier III? I didn’t even know there was a Universal Soldier II…

I stopped watching Transformers the day after my mom took me to see Transformers: The Movie in 1986. I was traumatized in what I think is a very unnatural way by the death of Optimus Prime.

If only I had known he would be back. Back and ready to tear it up. 

[by "it" I mean a butt]

This is what has been happening in Outworld. This kind of shit. Which is exactly why they are sending Batman in to set the place straight. 

The Batman doesn’t do scented oil.

I remember this one time I went into the woods near my house with this guy I used to hang out with in high school to shoot at soda cans with his air rifle, only he didn’t want to shoot soda cans at all and ended up shooting the living shit out of a squirrel before running around the forest with his shirt half off screaming that he was going to “kill absolutely every goddamned thing on this ball of ash before the end of it” and that he wanted to see if a frog’s tongue would come out of its mouth if he shot it in the ass.

One of the most shocking sights in my young life was watching this poor squirrel go shooting into the air and land, squirming and writhing in an insane kind of fit while half of his head was split open, and the kid telling me to put it out of its misery.

I did put it out of its misery and went back to shooting pop cans and trying not to throw up.

Because I helped destroy another life? Because I rent the bond between an innocent being and it’s mortal engine? Because I ended the cascade of all that was to come of that animal for the sake of this crazy devil child and his need to kill?

Mostly, I think, because I missed a serious opportunity to munch.

Post Script: THIS BITCH IS CRAZY!

The jokes in the above video are funny but are not always exaggerations. I have worked in development positions in which every single one of those statements are true.

I am proud to be in a position now in which my boss sent me that video, cringing at first and then asking me if he is at all like that.

No, Kevin. You aren’t at all.