Hit and I'm runnin'.

Y HALO THAR! Its Wednesday, May 25, 2011, everything's a tad soggy, and this is The Side. This one's gonna be pretty short. The power was out all last evening. I nasty thunderstorm blew through the area. Winds kicked up to about 70 miles per hour. A funnel cloud did a little touchdown in the neighbor's yard, busting up a bunch of trees. No power. No internet. No cell phone service for the most part. Pretty much sucked. Everyone is fine though, so I can't complain too much.

QUICK BITS

*Old Rapture Dude is now saying that the Apocalypse won't be until October 21 now. Happy birthday, Mom! Hopefully it won't hit until after the cake.

*Paddy Obama? The Pop Star-in-Chief is in the UK today and stopped into a school in Ireland saying he felt like "he's come home", tossing out a bit of Gaelic, and saying that there's an apostrophe missing from his last name. Cripes. He really is in campaign mode now.

*Anna Kornakova will be a new trainer on The Biggest Loser. The trainers they introduced this season won't be returning. I'm imagining the next season now. The contestants who really want to lose weight will train with Bob Harper. The one who want to check out a hot, Russian girl will train with Anna.

*This week's comic reviews will be delayed. Just got word from Mike at Comic Kings that there's been a little shipping delay. That's OK because Barry Allen will fix it somehow.

ASK NOZZ DAY

Joe Arnold - How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop?

T consulted Mister Owl on this and the answer according to him is "three". If you are myself or Gene Simmons it only takes one. I couldn't even get a straight answer from the company of this one. Bastards.

MUSIC!!

In honor of crappy weather.



Alrighty, I'm off to work, because that deck won't stain itself. See y'all Friday.

Perfect, Black and Blue Swan

Get out of your mind! Its Wednesday, March 30, 2011, my brain is going a bunch of different directions, and this is The Side. The reason for my brain going so many different ways will be apparent soon considering my recent viewing habits. Fortunately, I've got a good audience to keep me rooted in reality.

ASK NOZZ DAY #3

Darren Brown had questions. I have answers.

Hey Marty, is the Uraken Uchi a fake or a nose buster?
The Uraken Uchi, or back fist, is a favorite technique of mine. It works much like a jab in western boxing. Its great for setting up combos and creating openings. It can be used as a fake or feint to try to open a hole in an opponent's defenses, but when I throw it, I'm throwing with force. The technique can work great for stunning someone. Pop them in the eye, nose, or upper lip and you'll definitely get some good results. You're not likely to get good,reliable knockout power from it, but its still a great technique. But then again, the missus put her previous sensei in a hospital with an Urakan Uchi so there's always exceptions to the rule.

How's the toe?
Diseased! Or infested. It ended up being a case of athlete's foot which I'm currently dosing and hoping will go away soon. Looks like I'll be wearing shoes to the dojo for a while. I think One spot on my toe got rubbed raw when I got sand in my work shoe and had a hole in my sock. From there it make catching a nasty fungus that much easier. It had a hole in my mighty foot callous armor.

HEAD GAMES!!

A while back I went to the movies and saw BLACK SWAN. For those who haven't seen it, its a psychological thriller centered around a repressed ballet dancer. Its a very, very good movie and quite a head trip. We currently live in a comparative society, meaning when we experience something we automatically try to compare it something else. I'm guilty of this too. The movie I could best compare it to was an anime feature from the 90s, PERFECT BLUE. There's been a bit of back and forth as to whether PERFECT BLUE was an influence is creating BLACK SWAN, but one way or another there's a lot of similarities.

PERFECT BLUE was a complete head trip. It centered around a young pop star who was venturing into acting. Both films featured likable, sweet, young women as protagonists. Both also had their protagonists being put through a change in character. Both involve performing arts. Both have a heavy sexual element to them. I have a copy of it which I hadn't watched in probably ten years. I had a VHS player hooked up the other night and came across the old tape so I fired it up.

I do have to say that this movie is a lot more graphic than I remember. While the fake rape scene stuck in my mind, I had forgotten about the brutal murders that took place. That's another thing the two have in common: quite a bit of stabbing.

Now, this movie came out in 1997 in Japan. It was loosely based on a novel and was originally going to be a live action film but a major earthquake damaged the movie studio. Now, let's keep this time in context. 1997. The internet was still fresh and new. One of the pivotal points in this film is the main character, Mema, discovering a website called "Mema's Room" which was pretty much a blog for her. In it she talked about what she did, and shared her thoughts with her fans. The problem was she didn't write any of it. This is way before the social media boom, back when e-mail was the hot new thing.

So we've got an early version of a blog as well as a case of identity theft going on. In this respect its almost as if the movie was ahead of its time by about ten years.

The main thing the stories both revolve around is aspects of a performance have a major influence in the performer's real life compounded by hallucinations. BLACK SWAN is good with this to the point that I was questioning whether or not the mother even existed. However, as good as BLACK SWAN was at making me question what I was seeing PERFECT BLUE does it ten times better. It ratchets it up to Hitchcock levels to the point where the viewer is completely thrown barely having any idea what it real, what is imagined, and what is on the TV show Mema is on. So people really don't like being confused by the stories they're working through, and as a general rule its not a good idea to confuse your audience, but stories like this are the exception. It gives the audience a better understanding of what the character is going through.

MUSIC!!!

This is my jam, yo!



OK, that's all for the whiskey portion of your week. I'll see y'all on the foxtrot.

Q, A, and Dough-ray-me!

Here we go! Its Wednesday, February 23, 2011, I'm one hard workin' dude, and this is The Side. I'm very glad to be working. After crawling around under houses looking to shore them up a bit I was sore an tired. So on my lunch break when I see some asshole from Wisconsin bitching and moaning that thinks the unions are getting crapped on I had little sympathy. The woman interviewing him told him a lot of people support teachers and think they need great pay and benefits, but they don't like that they're getting fraudulent doctor's notes so they can go protest. She asked the guy if he supported them doing this, and he blatantly avoided answering five times.

State senators are hiding to avoid a vote which wouldn't be taking away any pay or pensions from anybody. Its just unions getting pissy because they won't be able to throw their weights around as much. And some people wonder why I think unions suck. Get back to work, you whiney bitches.

ASK NOZZ DAY #2!!!

Joe Arnold had a bunch of questions that demand answers. Who am I to refuse his demands?

Why do we drive on a parkway, and park on a driveway?

Here in Virginia we have Skyline Drive which overlooks Shenandoah National Park. Its a very lovely drive. Very scenic. It was deemed a "parkway" due to it overlooking the park. Since then many very long, scenic roads have been referred to as "parkways". Driveways used to be much different than we know now. Many very large homes and manors had very long driveways leading from the house to the main road. Back then you really did drive on the drive way, since if you had the money for a personal carriage or the like you usually had a lot of property.

What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Assuming you're referring to the European swallow, around 24 miles per hours.

Can't we all get along?

Yes we can. As long as everybody agrees with everything I say and does everything I tell them then we'll all get along just fine.

How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?

Usually the answer is blowing in the wind, but that's the kind off crap answer you can expect from some hippy, and this here is a no hippy zone. The path to being a real man isn't about the quantity of roads, its about the quality. You can walk a hundred roads, but if they're all named "Easy Street" then you won't be much of a man. Its those long, rough roads that make you a man. The ones with lots of detours and shortcuts that look real tempting but don't take you anywhere worthwhile. And a real man is always walking that road and sometimes showing the way to those who need guidance. Those who stay true to the road get they're reward when they reach that destination, and hopefully leave clear footprints so others will know the path they walked.

IT'S A TRAP!!

I got the call Sunday evening after a full day or working and torturing children. "Dave just about cut his finger off, so I'm really needing you to work this week." The details were sketchy but when fingers are possibly missing its time to spring into action. Seems Dave had an accident while splitting wood over the weekend and took off a good portion of his middle finger. He'll be needing a skin graft which hopefully he'll be able to get soon to speed up his recovery. Nonetheless, I was out at the beach on Monday to try to help out and Dave made it out too hoping he'd still be able to work in his condition. Turns out he's still pretty capable, but every so ofter he gets a nasty jolt for wound.

So we were destroying a few walls and cutting up some floor and one thing we had to do was more an amour in the next room so it wouldn't get damaged. There was a small TV in it so I picked it up to move it and there he was: Ben Franklin.

I've found a lot of things in houses as I've worked in them. I've found porn stashes and sex toys. I've found things that home owners really should have cleaned up before I've gotten there. I've found a few bucks here and there that I never touched because that's a damn good way to lose your job.

This was different. This was a winterized beach house that no one had stayed in for months. We don't even know the last time the owner was there. But there was the most money I've ever found in a house that was essentially deserted. Was it a trap? Had the home owner planted it to test the honesty of the people working there? Had the last renter been just really absent-minded?

Oh how that one bill tormented us as we worked. It was like a test of our moral fortitude. We could have split it. Dave needed more bandages for his finger. There's a book I really wanted to buy. What could we do?

I won't tell you what we did.

But I will say I'm going to the comic shop happy today.

MUSIC!!

Those schmucks drive around in their cars blasting bass to the point to rattling windows. There used to be competitions to see whose car's sound system had the most bass. People would buy those stupid cars that look like toasters on wheels for the acoustics so they could really get their bass going.

Dumb bastards don't know shit about bass. Hit it Les.



That's the shooting match for today. I'm going to get some more work done. See y'all Friday. Behave yourselves. And if you can't, send me pictures.