Saddest Image Ever

Seriously. I cannot go say enough about how great Pia Guerra's work on Y the Last Man was. The last issue could have almost went without dialogue, that's how great her work was in the last book. The picture above is probably the saddest thing I've ever seen in any medium of entertainment.

Why? The Last Issue

Y the Last Man #60 came out today, and I'm not going to go in depth on the review. I just wanted to lay out a couple things.

Perfect.

It was absolutely perfect.

It could not have ended in any way, and it was tragic and beautiful and funny all in one package. Massive kudos to Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Jose Marzan, and the rest of the crew on a job incredibly well done, and I will absolutely miss this series as much as any comic series I've ever read.

I've read it twice, and I think it may be my favorite single issue of any comic ever.

Quick note, Jeff Jensen from Entertainment Weekly has a great interview with Brian K. Vaughan and write up about Y the Last Man here. Its to coincide with the release of the last issue, and its great to see a major publication like EW shedding some publicity on this amazing comic.

Also, if interested, I did a detailed review with spoilers aplenty. See that here. Pretty darn good write up if I do say so myself. Very similar to reviews that I read after the fact. Maybe I should be writing comic reviews for a living?

Best Week Ever

This is definitely not going to sound like the best week ever to most anyone else, but I am incredibly stoked. This week is sort of a culmination of a lot of things that I've been interested in or things that have just been coming together for a long time, and they all just happen to be going on at same time. For a breakdown, let's go down to my friend the bullet list directly below...

• Tuesday: Humpy's Pub Quiz Day - Went last night, it was fun and insanely difficult, but we have a new trivia night!
• Wednesday: Comic Day - aka the release of the last issue of Y the Last Man. So excited...so sad.
• Thursday: Lost Day - The two hour season premiere of Lost, with Amy joining me as she has power watched the hell out of the third season to get ready for it.
• Friday: Review Day - My first annual review for my job is hitting. I'm alternately terrified and very excited, but it should be cool.
• Saturday: Battlestar Day - My sister and I wrap up all the existing episodes of Battlestar Galactica in preparation for April 4th (aka the beginning of season 4, or the season of seasons as I call it).
• Sunday: Super Bowl Sunday - New England Patriots. New York Giants. The Super Bowl. Party at my place, making pizzas, snacks, bunch of people. Should rock the heezy, although I'm a bit nervous - my boys better win!

So that's my week, minus one day of course. I'd say I'm most excited for the Super Bowl, but I may be lying as I secretly may be more excited for the last issue of Y the Last Man today. I'm really nervous, sad, and excited about it. It's the 60th issue, it's been going on for 5+ years...I just know it's so hard to end things well in a series. I have the faith that Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra can do it, but man, they face a lot of history to do that.

It's probably a tie with the Super Bowl though. It's going to be a great party, I just hope the Patriots don't keep it that close so I don't have to act like a freak amongst all of my friends. Only select few of them have seen me act like a crazy person while watching them play. Also really just for my sanity, because I get stressed enough during regular season games - the Super Bowl takes me to the limit. It's just awesome seeing them in the Super Bowl again, especially with how last years season ended.

I hear going 19-0 may be pretty cool too.

Maybe that's just me though.

The Butt Pat

Today I went to the gym to do my normal routine (start off with basketball to get my heart rate up, move to weights, do 20 to 30 minutes of cardio on bike or running, finish with abs), but I got caught up playing basketball. Whenever I get a chance to run some games, whether they are 1 on 1 (myself vs. Colver), 2 on 2, or even a full court 5 on 5, I take it. I was just practicing shooting when someone asked me if I wanted to play 2 on 2, so the rest of the work out went away essentially.

Now the point of this blog post is not to identify my workout habits. That would be a very, very lame blog post. Not that this isn't necessarily, but I do find this topic to be vaguely amusing. No, the topic of this is the title, which is the Butt Pat.

I was playing against this one guy in his 30's who plays often and is pretty solid, and then the other guy (the guy I was guarding and was guarding me) was a guy probably in his 60's who was wearing a Scottie Pippen Portland Trailblazers jersey. Of course, the guy who was guarding me, Scottie as he will be remembered, was a person who was a big time proponent of the butt pat, which is a tactic often used by teammates or opponents to congratulate someone for a job well done or nice try...or really anything of that sort.

After years and years of playing sports, I've gotten used to that. But when people are doing that randomly during the game and repeatedly, even if literally nothing has happened, well...that is just weird. He was doing this pretty much all the time. Looking back on it, I find it hilarious (especially given a certain friend of mine's travels on Craig's List in which she found out that the Alaska Club West - where this took place - is apparently frequented by many gay men). It was definitely a little weird...not that there is anything wrong with that.

I did get my revenge however, as his apparent focus on the butt pat led me to have open threes towards the end of the game, and we went from being down 12-7 to winning 16-14, largely in part because of myself catching fire. 4's threes and a turnaround jumper to win it. Count it!

Quick side note in here, entirely unrelated. A little while back I made a post about my coworker asking me if I got in a fight, because she thought I had a black eye. This was of course because the bags under my eyes were so intense it looked like that. This happened again today. Good lord, I'm a freak.

Maybe this happened because it's 10:52 pm and instead of going to bed, I'm writing a blog. Sometimes the answers to questions we have are pretty easy to figure out.

Oscar Talk

The Academy Award nominations came out yesterday, and I of course must chime in on them. As many who read this may know, I watch way too many movies. I go and see pretty much everything in theaters. Additionally, as some may point out (*ahem* KIM!) I tend to favor dramas and quirky movies. Strangely enough, that is what the good ol' Academy favors! So when I'm talking about Oscars, I'm not being some elitist, I'm actually just talking about things I like! I feel as if this is a win win situation for me, so I may carry on from here.

Quick tangent (because what is a post from me without a tangent?), I still love other movies. I can get behind great comedies and action movies and god only knows I'm a Sci-Fi freak most of the time. I just happen to prefer a well delivered and written conversation over a particularly large explosion or most jinks of hi-ness (that's hijinks for the uninitiated).

Back to the point, Paul Thomas Anderson's return film There Will Be Blood and the omni-present Coen Brothers No Country for Old Men tied for the most nominations with 8, both scoring Best Picture and Directors nods in the process. Joining them for the big category are Michael Clayton (7 nominations), Juno (Little Miss Sunshine v 2.0), and Atonement. I still have not seen Blood (this Friday! Finally!), Clayton (whenever my screener gets here...from the Internet...come on), or Atonement, but the general consensus seems to be that they got it right for once.

My prediction? Blood and Old Men cancel each other out with the edgy, auteur vote, opening it up for Atonement to steal it, as god only knows the Oscar folks love sweeping, epic romances. That's just my two cents right off the bat, but of course it remains to be seen.

However, I really just wanted to write this because I really liked some of the nominations. They really knocked it out of the park in a number of the other categories. I was particularly fond of them nominating Viggo Mortensen for his role in Eastern Promises, Michael Giacchino's brilliant score for Ratatouille, Tommy Lee Jones for In the Valley of Elah, Ellen Page for Juno, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Charlie Wilson's War, and the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford getting a nomination for Cinematography (and Casey Affleck getting a nomination for it as well).

The best category though? Best song. The Academy killed on this one, not only nominating the absolutely incredible Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova for their song Falling Slowly from Once, but they also nominated not one, not two, but three songs from Enchanted. Nothing like send ups of Disney animated songs to get the Academy to stand up and cheer.

But yeah, they did a good job this year. To be honest, no movie bowled me over enough this year to make me that animated about any snubs really. They did a fine job this year. Of course, ironically enough the actual presentation of the Oscars may not even go down because of the writers strike. The one year they get it right and could get some positive PR...and its likely that no one will watch it.

There's the rub right there.

Licensed to Blog

The Infamous Lineup

With Coachella 2008's lineup being announced yesterday, the Blogosphere went absolutely bananas in response. Everyone and their brother decided to blog on it, and I believe there were at least three backlashes just yesterday, ranging from the initial "the lineup sucks!" to the follow up of "stop being elitist, its eclectic" to the final consensus of "sure, it's good...but where are the real headliners."

Of course given the fact I'm Alaskan, I didn't post because...well...things in Indio, California rarely affect what I am doing here. However, I was debating on which Festival I wanted to take a trip to this year. Would I have my first venture to a mega-festival such as Coachella or Bonnaroo? Would I stick it to the Northwest and hit up Sasquatch or possibly the Bumbershoot/ Musicfest NW combo again? Well, after I saw the lineup for this, it's definitely not going to be the absurdly overpriced Coachella Festival.

Key Negatives to Coachella

• 3 day pass = $269. Wowza. If I went, the only thing left in my wallet would be a suicide note, because I would be broke, broke, broke.
• Indio, California in May? 100+ degrees. No shade? 110 degrees. Stuck amongst a ton of other concert goers? Feels like 125. This way I'd just say die straight out.
• Don't know a lot of people around Indio, so costs to stay would be higher.
• Headliners are not great enough to make the whole thing a true value proposal.

As much as I like a lot of the bands playing (Quick rundown...Day 1: Jack Johnson, the Verve, Fatboy Slim, Tegan and Sara, the Swell Season, the National, Animal Collective, Stars, Aesop Rock, Minus the Bear, Jens Lekman, Architecture in Helsinki, Rogue Wave; Day 2: Portishead, Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, M.I.A., Cold War Kids, DevotchKa, Flogging Molly, Islands, MGMT, Dredg; Day 3: Roger Waters (Sub-Parentheses! Doing Dark Side of the Moon!), the Streets, Murs, the Field, and Sia...phew), I'm definitely not dying to see any of them. Day 1 would be pretty awesome, but seriously, last year was headlined by Rage Against the Machine, Bjork, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with other luminaries like the Arcade Fire, Air, Interpol, and LCD Soundsystem playing. It just doesn't compare.

So in the first year I really, REALLY considered going, I'm just going to have to pass on you Coachella. Too many negatives, not enough big positives.

But I had to blog about it. I didn't want the blog police to come over and ask me why I didn't blog about Coachella. I just couldn't let that happen!