7/28/07: Vacation here I come...and a Playboy covergirl? (450th blog post!)

Yeah, that's right, I met Ashley Massaro from the WWE today. She was walking around the mall at 9:30 in the morning and looked lost. My computer had just crashed, so I figured I'd go find someone to talk to. I look back, and I see a hot blondie, and I'm thinking, "She looks DAMN familiar." I keep walking but then turn back, and she smiles, but she looks lost.

"What are you looking for?" I ask.

"Heh, is it that obvious? I'm looking for the Apple store."

I just look at her and say, "Okay, follow me." And I proceed to walk her to the Apple store, then making the asshole comment of the day..."Yeah, it's normally the one with the BIG APPLE on it..."

She thanks me, and then I look at her and ask, "Are you?"

Her reply..."Yeah...I am."

Me: "Cool."

Then I walk off...at this point, I geek out a second. Here I am, having helped a Diva in distress, and all I thought to do was leave...and NOW, I think, "Great, she'll think I'm stalking her..." But I went back, and simply asked, "Ashley, I know you get this all the time, but..."

Now here's where the story many years down the road will change, but tonight, it'll remain the truth...

"Can I get a picture with you? Otherwise, the guys won't believe me when I tell them this story..."

She was happy to oblige, and I became the freak fan, and she told me, she's currently dating a wrestler, and it isn't Matt Hardy...the funny thing here is she asked her mom to take the picture (I guess she met mom at the mall, because she wasn't with her originally when Ashley looked lost.) Her mom declined, very much like mine would, and the Apple employee helping her had to take the picture.

No autographs, no lies about how I made out with a Playboy covergirl, just a good old fashioned "I met a hot famous chick and because I never leave home without my phone...I got to prove it," moments.

Now, I've got to get some sleep before my long 8 hour (if I'm lucky) drive tomorrow to the Jersey Shore.

Wish me luck, all, Monday and Tuesday I'll be in my favorite visiting spot, Atlantic City, and yes, I'll be bringing the laptop, because I want to finish writing something.

Who knows, maybe when I get back, JK and I'll have updated the TAVA site.

And here's the pic, guys, since I know EVERYONE wants to see it.

7/23/07: It's actually after midnight already...

So my wife had some serious issues with co-workers based on her blog that she writes. She basically talks about her day to day experiences on her night job, and overall, it seemed like it was all a matter of time where one or more of her co-workers would feel like she was talking crap about them behind their backs and then retaliate.

Well, it happened. And Christy was really upset this morning about it, but now seems alright with most of it.

Now I love an support her, so I'm not going to go into much more, other than hopefully she knows what to do, say and how to act to prevent this type of thing again.

My problem with this situation is simple. My wife explains HER perception of the truth in her blog. She writes about what she sees, what she does, and how it all pertains in the overall scheme. However, the people that read her blog, in most cases are her customers, and not necessarily her coworkers. Because of this, when her coworkers found that she was writing things (funny or not) at their expense, they didn't take kindly to it. So they started making up stories to tell about Christy. She feels she was telling her side of the truth, but they were making things up about her.

Me, I'm 100% honest, 100% of the time, to the point that it can get me in trouble, because there's no reason to lie, because it just digs a larger hole that you need to come clean on later...that's me. A lot of bar patrons that aren't where they want to be in life will make up whatever they can to get the means and results that they want, because of whatever reason they come up with.

I have a guy that works for me that lies so badly, that it seems like he truly believes the lies in which he tells me. He told me he went to Wrestlemania, which was in Detroit, even though he has no money, no car and no wherewithall to actually set up the trip and get back in time to work the following week. Yet he truly believes he was there when he talks to me.

He told me he has a Nintendo Wii...however, when his sister came into my store and she said, "Really? It wasn't at the house when I was there..." His reply? "I hid it, because I didn't want anyone to play it."

And finally, and my personal favorite..."I am working on Assassin's Creed." Its a game being made in MONTREAL...QUEBEC...CANADA. yet he was explaining "how cold" it is up there, and that part of the reasoning behind it's lateness is because he lives in NC and can't make it up there for all the meetings.

I understand why people lie. I'm a writer. Lying is an essential portion of writing fiction. You have to place yourself into the mindset of someone or something else, and yet truly believe it yourself so that you may get others to believe it themselves.

Where am I going with this? Who knows. I love my wife. I'm not mad at her for writing her feelings or blogs, but I explained that if people don't feel they are being talked or written about, they always take it wrong...much like my employee that I wrote about would have every right to be, even though he hasn't been honest about much since he started working for me...and he has a nasty case of the funk.

That's why mostly, I write about me, as vain as that probably is, at least it means the only one that I can make mad is me, right?

Vacation is 5 days away, and it can't come soon enough. I'm hoping to take copies of THIEF and TAGGER so I can try to get inside them again, since I'll actually have some good free time for the first time this year.

Oh, and if anyone has any suggestions for when I go to Vegas, I'd love to hear'm... I've never been there, and want to take in the town when I'm there, because who knows when I'll go back, unless the company makes it a regular gig.

7/22/07: Break the walls down...

So here's the thing I'm pissed off about. What do you do when you walk up to your friend who's been drinking all day, and you ask him his opinion on something and he tells you you're an asshole...?

Well, you can do what you want to do...in living colour.

I'm tired of listening to assholes who want to do things their way. Here's my opinion to people who look at this pretty religiously...IF YOU WANT TO NOT DO ANYTHING just keep going.

Tonight, I walked into a bar that I've been going for years. I asked the owner of said bar, "What happens when people haven't been here, and want to be treated fairy..." And do you want to know what the answer was?


"Don't talk to me like you are above me, rob." And then when I flat out looks at him like I was upset and wanted an answer, instead of expecting a response...his response was, I'll walk to where other people are...

Here's my problem with this...I've been YOUR FRIEND for how long? I've expected you to call me out when I'm wrong, just as like I'd expect you'd hope friends would call you out when you are wrong...

Problem is...someone asks me when they think they ought to sing, and I ask the owner of a bar?
I DO NOT expect an anser after the fact...I expect MY FRIEND of 5 years to tell me that we are or ARE NOT hanging out that weekend...if we aren't...you're GOD DAMN LOSS. TOO GOD DAMN BAD. So glad to hear you'd rather hear if someone wants to hang out rather than live.

Here's the thing. I ask you a question as your equal. Why? Because you KNOW I've earned it. You want to feel as though I ask the question in a a way where I'm not the boss and you are on the wrong planet.

If you think you know something I don't...you are on the wrong planet... if you think you deserve a statement about this...YOU ARE WELCOME.

Get over yourself. I'm tired of everyone accepting your asshole attitude, when all YOUR FRIEND asks is a question. If you have an answer, then answer the goddamn questions... Don't get mad because I ask a normal and standard Q, get mad because I answer something you already know...

Like why my wife got to sing twice before I did on Saturday? Simple...she paid the DEE JAY... meaning?

Simple...it meant, since she paid him to let her sing her second song of the night, WE no longer had to wait until the song was over, and more impotantly, we could ALL get along with what further was to come, WITHOUT a bias interjection, or someone BRIBING to get to sing of anyone else.

I'm so glad we are all so honest, ALL THE TIME...

7/21/07: Long Fuggin' day...soooo tired.

Tonight, my buddy, Rich, and his lovely bride, Julie, are having the after wedding party they didn't have when they got married a couple months back.

Truth is, since I was invited, I'm going, but no offense to Rich, I'm just not up for it. He's an awesome former co-worker, and I am as good as my word is gold, so I will stay true to my statement and make sure I travel to chapel hill before him and Julie move to NY...

Last night, I went and saw my buddy Tino's band play. Nice mix of music, so it was a fun evening. My friend John, a cop in NY was in town so we went and hung out, had a beer or two and then decided we'd hit one of his old favorite bars, since he's not been back to Raleigh in probably 4-5 years.

We go to a place called O'Malleys, an ol' Irish pub, and are having a good time. We get into a discussion of college football and whether or not they'd be able to make an 8 team playoff and utilize the structure of the current bowl formula to help it along...he says no, and I say yes, which I'll explain in a future blog, btw.

Suddenly, at like 5 after 2, a dude starts fighting with ALL the bouncers and the bartenders AT THE SAME TIME...its' like 5 on 1. CRAZY. He wraps his arms around a pillar because he doesn't want to leave, and they start pounding on him and they pull him so hard they break a support pillar OUT OF THE FLOOR AND CEILING!

Un'fuckin'real.

Needless to say, after that, I went home, but saw him still trying to fight his way back into the bar as we left.

Couple that with the 10 hour day I had at work this morning, and I'm working on like 3 hrs of sleep, and had to deal with the best pre-order day probably in my store's history (we had 26 when I left). This made up a percentage of 89.7% reservations to transactions...

Wow.

I know it doesn't mean much to others, but I'm exhausted, now. And I now have to put a happy face on even though I don't really have the energy to do anything.

Ah, to get old.

7/19/07: About as crazy as a rainbow trout in a carwash...?

We'll start here with an update on THE ARDY VANSTARR ADVENTURES. Recently, I made a comment about the creators of this webcomic being hacks...well, we are not really hacks, folks. Both JK and I work very hard with our respective portions of the comic, and have fallen behind because we are doing everything we can to support our families. Unfortunately, TAVA is not a paying gig. At some point, we would love it to be, but at the moment, its not. Because of this, we both have day jobs, and we both enjoy a little free time to be ourselves...this causes, on occasion, a lack of ample time to complete the pages we are trying to deliver at top quality.

I have seen the next seven or so pages from JK, who is now going to a left to right panel structure to give it more of a webcomic feel than its current iteration, and they are just as high on quality as all the other pages he's delivered, so when we've got them lettered and ready to post we will conclude the current story and jump into the next one.

Anyone who watches professional wrestling knows who Jim Cornette is. The old manager that used to carry a tennis racket down to the ring. But it wasn't just any tennis racket, this racket (covered in its case) was strong enough to take down even the biggest opponents. Well, the subject title for this blog comes from him, tonight, since that's a direct quote from him as he was speaking to a near-naked Kurt Angle on tonights TNA IMPACT. It just struck me as one of those lines that makes no sense, but suddenly you want to say it a couple times to see the kind of reaction it gets.

Recently, Eric Kent, a longtime collaborator of mine on comic projects, asked if he could show some of his pages from his work on two of our long delayed projects, TAGGER and THIEF on his upcoming website. I told him I had no problem with it, but I didn't want him to show off all artwork, because I didn't want to give away the whole stories...of course, that's part of the problem. I've had next to no time to overlook these scripts and figure out where I want them to go, and this has caused Eric to move onto other projects, even though, like me, he knows both are solid comics, and deserve the best treatment. A couple days ago, I got the itch to start updating the Elisalandis.com website with new material, ie, TAGGER. TAGGER was always to be the sequel of sorts to LANDIS, while explaining the past of recurring character, Janus Tagger. He was such a great character as I wrote the initial LANDIS series, and I really wanted to develop him alone, and his origin, which takes him to different corners of the globe. Eric has drawn probably 25 pages of this story already, and I've asked him to send me high-rez copies of the pages, or 600dpi jpg files so I can start lettering and inking them, so that hopefully, by the start of next year (at the latest), TAGGER begins on the elisalandis.com website under the same update terms as LANDIS originally did.

No timetable on THIEF, since I want that story to be perfect before I display it to the world.

In the world of comics, this week, I'd recommend ALL the World War Hulk books (except Ghost Rider), Justice League of America (which reminded me of the Tarantino episode of CSI) and I actually enjoyed the Wolverine Origins ANNUAL that came out this week. Oh, NEXT WEEK the Death of Sabretooth I mentioned earlier happens...Gotta hand it to Simone Bianchi, that man KNOWS how to leave little doubt that its over for him...and amazingly, its NOT on the last page.
Yes, I've seen it, since Marvel included it in their preview books this week.

Next weekend starts my vacation, where I'll be in the usual family spot of Sea Isle City, NJ, as well as my normal trip to Atlantic City the follwoing week. I can't wait. It would be easy to say I was burned out, but I don't think it really says it all. I'm exhausted with all the stuff going on, I've got a pulled hamstring and other things going on at work, so I'm just beat.

7/12/07: The lack of Rob on here...

All of you have probably noticed the lack of updates here on the blog, and the reason why is for the past week, I've had ailments preventing me from doing much else other than go to work, and sleep. And no, those ailments DO NOT include going to work and sleeping.

In fact, since early last week, my left gland has been swollen to the point that it had been giving me headaches. Not just those, "Oh, I have a headache" headaches, but the...stop breathing you are too loud kinda headaches.

I've suffered migraines before...the ones so bad that the only comfortable place in with the lights out, laying on your bathroom floor to be as cold as you can on where it hurts, and the throat problem has been getting me to have headaches very similar to those. I was up until after 4am last night just waiting for the 4 tylenol maximum strengths I took to finally kick in. When I woke up, I didn't feel refreshed, I felt weak, tired and ready to grab more tylenol.

I'm in constant pain from my knee. I attempt to not take ANY medications for it unless it really really acts up, because I don't want to become dependent on any outside medications. These headaches, however are making me scream for a morphine drip or a vicodin in hopes of a good night sleep.

TAVA is pretty much offline for the time being, as well. JK said he had pages coming to me this week, but I have yet to see them, which I'm not blaming on him, we both have our own lives outside of the webcomic world, and we both have regrets as to how the actual website for the comic looks at this time.

We want the comic to be a place where when you go, it doesn't look like a couple of hacks putting up a pretty nice looking comic on a horrible website. We want it to look like a couple hacks doing a decent comic on a cool looking website. JK will have to forgive me for calling him a hack, but I think I've heard him use the words himself recently, so I don't think he'll mind too much.

He wants the comics to be more episodic, like 8 comics, and then background / DVD extra materials, and I think its a cool idea, so we'll see where we go with that.

So my company commissioned the makers of BioShock to create 20 "Big Daddy" busts, which is a ceramic figure head of the big ugly from the new game, and decided they were going to have a contest about it. The top 20 stores in the nation get one...right now, my store ranks...boo...1200. BUT, here's the really cool thing, 2K also sent all of our stores a ULTRA LIMITED EDITION Bioshock faceplate for the XBox 360. These are serialized to only 5000 (or so, I haven't seen mine, just yet), but that makes them ultra-rare, whoopie! And although I thought they forgot about mine for my store, it arrived today, on my day off.

For the other contest we're in (we're actually in about 5 right now, but this is one I have a chance at winning), I'm second in my region, and the top 5 get the prize, which is pretty sweet. All we have to do for this contest is get everyone who reserves a game or buys game informer magazine to give us their email address. Pretty simple, huh? Only problem? There's one other store in my district, not just region, but district that is about 14% HIGHER than me...meaning catching them will be next to impossible. and the prize for the top in the region is a chance to win a Nintendo Wii...which I don't need, since I already have one, but I could trade it in and put the trade-in value towards my upcoming games...which would be nice.

well, enough rambling...I hope everyone isn't upset at how long I've been away from the computer, and to all you video game nuts, check out the downloadable content on your PS3 and 360's, because there is some AWESOME stuff on there, now.

7-6-07: Wolverine: THE DEATH OF SABRETOOTH!

Since NO major comics website has posted this ANYTHING about this story, I've decided I'll run with it.

Marvel Comics recently sent an email to all major retailers across the country, letting them know that for every ten copies of Wolverine #55 they ordered, they would be able to order one Limited Edition "Decaptiation" Variant Cover for the conclusion of Jeph Loeb and Simone Bianchi's 6 part arc.

While it's cool that this cover is going to be another rare cover in the variant scheme of things, this isn't the ONLY piece of news here...

Marvel ALSO intends to KILL OFF SABRETOOTH. Loeb had been on record saying that this was going to be the ultimate chapter in the story between Wolverine and Sabretooth, and Marvel is planning on capping it off (Ha, no pun intended, Cap(tain America) fans) with the death of his ultimate villain.

Rumors are already starting that Daken (what a horrible name), Wolverine's recently found son would then take up the mantle of Sabretooth as another kick in the face to his father's attempts to be a good guy.

Of course, this wasn't the only thing Marvel told retailers to keep their traps shut about. The other big news from them is that it seems they've pretty much locked up the rights to Stephen King's THE STAND as well, and now the really bad rumors about how to get rid of Mary Jane have turned into, "Who's a Skrull?" which MOST of us fans are hoping doesn't turn into, "Mary Jane is a Skrull!" God no!

In fact, let me comment on that. My local retailer and I had a discussion about this, and we agreed, if Mary Jane turned out to be a Skrull, just to "put the cat back in the bag," wouldn't it turn out to be JUST LIKE THE FAILED CLONE SAGA?! Marvel tryed to give us an unmarried Spider-man at one point by taking a clone from issue #150, and telling us that he was the real Peter Parker...then, realizing the uproar, they came up with a horrible fix, and the Peter Parker we always knew and loved turned out to be the true Peter Parker again...and now I think, if they combine their "Who's a Skrull?" Story with "Let's get rid of Mary Jane" Story, we run the risk of fans going, "I HATE YOU! THIS IS THE WORST THING EVER!" Of course, if you put Brubaker on writing it instead of Bendis, and then I may read it first.

Well, these are this month's major rumors...enjoy!

7-4-07: Three movies in a few more days than that...

So I have now seen three movies this holiday week, and two are the movie blockbusters, LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD and TRANSFORMERS, while the other is the sleeper hit good family flick, Ratatoulie.

Saturday night, I was getting off work after a week which saw things just turning for a change. Times to move on and move forward, get the store back to ranking well, and be successful, and I decided early that night that I was going to see LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD because I needed an adrenaline moment that gets the blood moving, makes you realize that Bruce Willis still has it at age 52 (and hell, read his Playboy interview this month for his changes on how he deals with things, including his stance on american politics as well as his movie performances), and is just fun. Did I really feel John McClane in the character...no. I have to state that first, because with his bald head and it being PG-13, I felt that the character was watered down and missed the most important aspects of his character...his whit, his disregard for his personal health and his charm. When you look at this against the original DIE HARD, HOW did he catch up to the bad guys in this? In the first film, they are in the same building...EASY TO CATCH THE BAD GUY... here, he somehow drove through NY to get to Washington, then went to WV, MD, and then back to jump on an F-37 fighter jet...NOT John McClane, but definitely Jack Bauer. HOWEVER, I enjoyed the movie for the simple fact that it did what I expected it to...entertain me, and make me realize that if they ever wanted to put these two FOX properties together (DIE HARD and 24) I'd be perfectly okay with a 50 year old NY detective taking over for the other 50 year old CTU runner. Yes, that's right...if FOX were able to talk Bruce Willis into taking over for Keifer Sutherland, *I* would continue to watch it, and probably be happier, so Keifer could go back to being a villain in movies...I'd even suspend Disbelief that a man named Detective John McClane was being brought in to run the tactical of CTU...Anyway, I give DIE HARD a strong 8 for being fun, funny, action-packed and just overall enjoyable. I do wait for the UNRATED version, which is guaranteed to have different lines used in certain spots, and for those that have seen the movie, Bruce Willis mentions that you can only use the word, "fuck" twice in a PG-13 film, but you can kill all the badguys you want...so I guarantee you will KNOW where other things were said and new lines were spliced in...its obvious in a couple spots...

TRANSFORMERS...hm. This one is a little tougher to review. On one hand, you can ask my wife, I was literally giddy in my seat bouncing back and forth making sure I was going to be one of the first to see this movie on Monday, that's right, Monday, and then I was going to let all my friends know I saw it. Christy was less than enthusiastic about seeing it, but was a good sport and went along, while texting to her friends, instead of watching the robots smack each other around.

Okay, so I'm watching it, and when you first hear Peter Cullen's voice of Optimus Prime, you just feel 8 years old, again, and you just wait to hear Bumblebee, Jazz and IronHide...unfortunately, Michael Bay decided that returning all the voices for their characters was not important, and neither were the 29 year olds in the audience of this film that was created to make 8 year olds giddy. Yes, I had problems with Transformers. At one point, and I don't call this a spoiler, but it may be, Optimus Prime is telling the 16 year old Sam Witwicky, "Can you hurry up, looking for those glasses?" While hiding from his parents, and I watched as this scene took up 10 minutes of screen time, and I found myself thinking, "Can you hurry up and get to Megatron?" Some of the action scenes were great...some were underwhelming like the climactic scene of Prime versus Megatron, which was WAY TOO short, and since when has Optimus Prime been such a puss? Inclusion of lines like, "More than Meets the Eye," "One shall stand, and one shall fall," and "Roll out" were great, and nostalgia builders...but lets be honest, this, ONCE AGAIN, was another film where the director had a great vision but then missed the audience that it was important to appeal to...THE AUDIENCE THAT GREW UP AND WANTED TO SEE IT...originally, I gave TRANSFORMERS a 7, but now, I rethink it a little more and drop it to a 6.5, based purely on Peter Cullen and the awesome special effects...that's good enough for a 5.5, and Megan Fox is good enough to add another 1.0 to the score for her beauty...that chick is flat out HOT, and didn't have a horrible aussie accent like the blond girl, but if I could shut her up by shoving something in her mouth (if the wife would let me), I'd be MORE than happy to oblige.

Finally, Ratatoulie...I loved this film, and very well think this MAY be PIXAR's best film ever. It's tough to say that, but it seemed it, and was adorable. You feel for the rats, and the one thing I loved MORE than any other part of the movie was that people didn't suddenly understand what rats were saying...they squeaked to humans, but could understand each other, but humans just heard a rat...it was a great move on their part...though you suspend disbelief that a rat can A) read and B) understand a human. But you have to, as it is an animated movie. I won't spoil a lot from this simple yet delightful plot, and the fact that I got to see it with my niece and nephew made me enjoy it even more, especially after my brother dumped his popcorn and my niece kept stepping in it to make it crackle on the floor. This is a wonderful family film, and it makes you hungry by the end, but I'll say this...just see it. I'd assume PIXAR will take home another Oscar for best animated picture, and the visual aspect of what Pixar did with Paris is just amazing. I give this a 9, and by far say its my favorite film of the summer season so far... though I did NOT go see Pirates, since I hadn't seen the second one.