Give me a hand

There are a lot of reasons for you to go and see Pan's Labyrinth, but the number one reason is to see this guy in action. He is one of my top five favorite movie monsters and just looking at his picture makes me wish I could watch his scene from the movie over and over again a thousand times.

Sci-Fi Saturday

The latest in my pile of science-fictiony book reads is Fritz Leiber's short story collection, A Pail of Air (1964). Have you ever read Fritz Leiber? I'd never even heard of him, and now I can't wait to read more. This was awesome. To illustrate, I'll give you the first sentence of a few of the stories:

The Beat Cluster (pictured on the cover above): "When the eviction order arrived, Fats Jordan was hanging in the center of the Big Glass Balloon, hugging his guitar to his massive black belly above his purple shorts."

Pipe Dream: "It wasn't until the mermaid turned up in the bathtub that Simon Grue began to wonder what the Russians were doing on the roof next door." (so weird and great that I can't even describe it)

Bread Overhead: "As a blisteringly hot but guaranteed weather-controlled future summer day dawned on the Mississippi Valley, the walking mills of Puffy Products ('Spike to Loaf in One Operation!') began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas."

In addition there is a story that is actually called Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-Tah-Tee in which a drum riff and accompanying paint splatter take over the world, a future where the only mail ever sent is advertisements and a young man breaks the system by trying to send a love note, a family managing to survive on a frozen earth that got knocked out of orbit by melting pails of air from outside, and a long but surprisingly interesting exploration of a computer entering in an international tournament of chess masters.

I'd tell you more, but I think you should read it.

Back cover here.

The silver box

Since we got an exciting 80 GB Ipod for Christmas, I have been spending a lot of my time and money on purchasing and figuring out different cables, cords, chargers, and my latest and greatest purchase, a 320GB external hard drive that was, for some reason, designed by F.A. Porsche.

The design is nice, don't get me wrong, but isn't it just a little silver box? Kind of minimalist, right? I'm pretty sure that this would be the first design for an external hard drive that I would come up with if I had never seen a hard drive before and wanted to come up with the most basic thing. Is that what we should expect from "one of the leading luxury brands in the high-quality men’s accessories business" (according to their website)? I'm thinking maybe they could at least have put some flame decals on the side of it, or given it a little hat or a scarf or something. [Note: this is why I'm not asked to design products.]

Design questions aside, I am very pleased with my hard drive -- and since my whole computer is only 80GB, I really needed a little extra burst of storage to hold our entire CD collection plus any other songs that find their way onto our computer. And, you know, backups. I'll get around to those some day.

Secret Boyfriend Wednesday: Not-so-distant-future Edition

How on earth did I never before realize how totally hot Clive Owen is? He is practically a textbook Secret Boyfriend, and yet I just didn't see it until I spent a couple hours watching him try to help the only pregnant woman on earth in the not-so-distant-future of Children of Men (which, incidentally, I really liked).

Not only does his character have one of my Secret Girlfriends as a wife (Julianne Moore = yay!), he is also tough, gets shot at a lot, gets all dirty and sweaty, and takes care of business. All while looking very soulful and intense, but not in an irritating way.

I saw Sin City, and I thought he was okay looking in it, but the SB just didn't burst through. Maybe I was distracted by all the stylization? Maybe I don't love comic book characters? The world will never know.

Here he looks more goofy and dorky than sexy, but wouldn't you look dorky too if Goldie Hawn was laughing it up right next to you like that?

Serious Reading for the Serious Reader

My final reads of the old year wrapped everything up Achewood style with: Volume VII - Kiss My Ass, Bitch. I'll Be At Duane's (title based on this memorable strip); the new edition of Roast Beef's Zine: Man Why You Even Got To Do A Thing, Vol. 1 No. 3 (author pictured here); and the newest book by Peter H. Cropes (aka Nice Pete), A Hilarious Comedy.

These are all great, and you should buy them. And if you don't buy them, you should at least read Achewood every day. It is Spacebeer approved.

I Make a Very Wet Souffle

I have spent at least half an hour of my weekend searching YouTube and the internets for some video of Carol Burnett and Albert Finney (as Mrs. Hannigan and Daddy Warbucks) singing "Sign" from the 1982 John Houston film of Annie. Why can't I find this anywhere? It is driving me crazy and to compensate I have to sing the song over and over again while dancing around the apartment and making my husband insane. I might just have to rent the whole damn movie.

Xmas Super Recap

I am slowly starting to feel like my own self in my own life again after a fun-filled week of travelling, visiting, and not working. With the exception of the last two days of icy-snow driving, the trip was a success, although I wish we could have stayed for more than two days in each location. Some highlights include:

1. Getting to meet and play with a hairless cat, live and in person. He was a little weird at first, but you get used to him in minutes and then he is really rather charming. He is still a kitten so he jumps around and plays just like one. I am curious to see what he will look like all grown up, and secretly hope he gets kind of fat because I think a hairless fat cat would be cool. I also loved seeing one of my favorite cats with hair.

2. Snow! Even though it slowed us down, I still like it. I miss you, seasons.

3. Bartleby with a coat on.

And of course, all those family and friend types that we kept seeing all over the place. You guys make me all homesick, so maybe you should move down to Austin?

Full set of 149 pictures, each one better than the last, available here.

SBW: Geeky Comedy Troupe Edition

I know that one of the Kids in the Hall is a secret boyfriend, but I just can't pick which one. Each one is totally cute and awesome in his own way -- the secret boyfriend hidden among them can't be picked out and analyzed, instead you will have to bear with me as I inaugurate the first group SB in SBW history.

I'm not sure why I think they are all so cute. They are, in fact, rather normal to weird looking, and don't boast the usual manliness that I demand from my SBs. Maybe it's the comedy?







If I was forced to pick just one favorite Kid, I would have to cheat and pick two. First there is Scott Thompson. Really funny, really cute. (And really gay, but that doesn't matter in the land of SBs. If I can have dead SBs, I can also have gay SBs. So there.)

And finally, Bruce McCulloch. Who is very short, and yet totally hot. Just watch him in action in my current favorite sketch of all time: These are the Daves I Know. I promise it will be in your head all day, but you won't mind.

Hangoverless

I think this is probably the first new year's day that I haven't been hungover in about ten years, discounting the first year Josh and I lived in Austin and we stayed home playing trivial pursuit and not drinking that much because we didn't know anyone in town.

To all those who invited us out to do stuff last night, I'm sorry I didn't get to see you and I wish that I could have given you a new year's kiss, but after two 11 hour days in the car driving through ice storms and snow storms (more on that later), I wasn't very good company. And I couldn't stand the thought of getting back in the car, even just to drive over to your house. Suffice it to say I held it together until midnight and promptly went to bed at 12:01 for the best night's sleep ever.

So, Happy New Year, fools. Enjoy your hangover while I enjoy many tasty new year's beers.

Smell ya later

Dr. M and I are about to embark on our annual holiday road trip and family fun fest, so Spacebeer will be taking a break for a week or so. If you live in Lincoln or Western Nebraska, perhaps we will see you, although we will only be in each spot for a couple of days, so if we don't see you, don't get too sad. It just means we don't like you as much as we like our families.

If all goes as planned we will be back in Austin on the afternoon of New Year's Eve, and not stuck in the snow in a dry county in Oklahoma or something lame like that. If you are doing something fun on NYE, write me an e-mail and let me know. I would love to ring in the New Year with each and every one of you crazy cats.

Heads will roll

My latest random-book read is one of Josh's childhood favorites, Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In by Joe Bob Briggs [aka John Bloom] (1987), a collection of reviews of drive-in movies that originally ran as a weekly column in The Dallas Times.

Joe Bob Briggs is the chauvinistic and non-politically-correct alter-ego of journalist John Bloom. His reviews of drive-in movies are interspersed with a running narrative of the fictional girls and good-ole-boys in Joe Bob's life, and always end with a count-up of the number of breasts, killings, rolling heads, and kung-fu moves featured in the film.

The reviews of the movies are really fun to read, and I appreciate the handy statistics at the end of each column. Even the running gags with Joe Bob and his series of girlfriends are entertaining -- and almost read like a novel when you put all the pieces together in a book like this. Sometimes the dumb humor is funny, but most of the time it reads like bad Jeff Foxworthy or Larry the Cable Guy jokes (are there any good ones?), and kind of falls flat. Joe Bob's constant bating of NOW and the entire city of San Francisco also gets a little old. As you might expect, since it was originally published as a newspaper column, many of the references in the reviews are very dated, and reading the book takes one back to the 1980s with constant referrals to the Communists, Vidal Sassoon, and We Are the World.

Overall the book is worth reading, and the most disappointing thing about it is that hardly any of Joe Bob's beloved drive-ins have survived in the 20 years since this volume was published.

As Joe Bob would say: Check it out.

SBW: The Senior Correspondent Edition

Since I work at an enlightened institution that gave us a reduced schedule on Monday and Tuesday (9 to 4, dogs, with plenty of long lunch Christmas party action), and the rest of the year off, I've gotten to watch a little of the Today show this week, which I usually miss since I'm out the door by seven. Matt Lauer is apparently on vacation, and my SB David Gregory has been filling in. Nice.




You would think it would be easier to find pictures of Gregory, but there are apparently a lot of people out there with the same name. And if you are the senior White House correspondent for NBC, almost all the pictures of you will be the same press photo or a series of grainy screen shots from someones television. This does not make for compelling viewing.

If Wikipedia is to be believed, Gregory was actually being considered as a replacement for Matt Lauer in 2007, but apparently that has been dropped and Lauer's contract continued. So for now, all we can hope is that Matt goes on many more lengthy vacations on the days when I can catch a few minutes of Today.

[As you might expect, You Tube has many clips of David Gregory animatedly interrupting Bush and making him look stupid. It also has a clip of Gregory imitating Bush on the Tonight Show. I love it when I can find live-action SB shots...]

Josh and Kristymas 2006

We held our private Xmas celebration this weekend which included opening stockings, drinking a bunch of egg nog with brandy, and listening to our Christmas music compilations (including my personal favorite, the New Wave Hits of the 80s Christmas CD).

After our Josh and Kristymas weekend and tonight's Very Whisky Christmas party at our friends' house, we will probably have drunk enough Christmas cheer to see us through to the new year.

More pictures here.

Watch it

I bought myself this new watch as a special present with a small part of the big check I got when I cashed in my unused vacation from my last job (I had a little over three weeks, so it was almost a whole other paycheck! Yay!). My last three watches have been $9.99 watches from Walgreen's, and when their batteries ran out, I just got another $9.99 watch. They were all fine and served me well. Before that I had (and still have) a pretty nice watch I got for Christmas seven or eight years ago. I even replaced the band on it once, and replaced the battery twice. But then the battery ran out and somehow it was easier to buy a cheap watch from Walgreen's than to go somewhere and have the battery replaced. The thing about me is, I hate stores and errands, and anything I can do to avoid going to an inconvenient store I will do.

Now this watch is a fancy Citizen Eco-Drive watch that runs off of the ambient light it absorbs through its face. The idea is that the battery never needs to be replaced. It is a wonder watch, and even if it only lasts nine years, I'll have invested the same amount as nine Walgreen's watches. Plus it looks prettier.

Since I bought it off Amazon instead of at a jewelers (again, don't like to go to stores), the band is pretty big for my ridiculously wimpy wrist. Knowing me, however, I will just let it dangle for years before somehow accidentally being in a mall and thinking to ask someone at a jewelry counter to take out a few links. I think my watch will fit properly sometime around 2010.

Work Work Work

I read this book about my work at work for work. Not that I expect you to be all that interested, but it was a very helpful history. And since I'm a completest about these sorts of things, you get to hear about it anyway.

[Pictured, by the way, is the chapel at my work. It is very nice, as far as chapels go.]

SBW: Multitalented edition

Kris Kristofferson covers many of the SB bases with which we are now all so intimately familiar. He plays a guitar. He usually has a beard. He is in many good movies (and sometimes bad ones, but he is still good). He has eyes that can be super nice and crinkley, or ice-cold and freaky.







He is dead sexy as a young dude, and yet even sexier as an old dude.










He can somehow make a shot with Barbara Streisand look pretty hot. And I'm rather neutral toward Barbara Streisand.

And to top it all off, he is totally sexy laying in bed with Sinead O'Connor in the "This Is To Mother You" video, and I just spent 10 minutes searching the internet for a still or a YouTube version of this video with no luck. If you get a chance to see it, you will swoon.

Gleep Glop

After reading this article about a contest for cocktail making robots at Roboexotica in Vienna yesterday, I came home and saw a bit about it as the "funny" last piece on the local news. Obviously robot-mania is sweeping the nation.

The video in the CNN article has some nice robots-in-action shots [my favorite is the bot that utilizes those wine openers that look like little dudes with arms that go up and down], and You Tube provides some video of the German-accented awards ceremony [which shows a little tiny clip of a bunch of the bots, and also demonstrates that Roboexotica might not actually be as exciting as it sounds]. Finally, someone named their cocktail robot Cockbot, and I couldn't possibly think of a better name.

Just don't make these guys any more drinks.

Optimen and Cyborgs = Kristy is a nerd

Somehow I am still a couple of weeks behind on reporting my reading habits. I'm not sure how this happened... I do, however, have a distant memory of reading The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert (1966). Frank Herbert is the guy who wrote the Dune books, and this is the only thing by him that I've ever read. I do remember my dad reading all the Dune books one winter when I was a kid, which is unusual because he hardly ever reads fiction books. In fact, I think those Dune books are the only fiction I can ever remember my dad reading.

If The Eyes of Heisenberg is any indication, my dad must be on to something, because this was a very good little science fiction book. Let's see how I do with the plot: In the super-future, part of the human race has evolved into Optimen -- humans that never die (provided they take their enzyme supplements), but who are sterile and can't reproduce. The Optimen have learned a great deal about genetic manipulation, and have taken control over all reproduction by exposing all the regular humans to contraceptive gas and only letting them reproduce if the Optimen think its a good idea. Even then, the embryos are genetically modified to enhance beneficial traits like healthiness and obedience, and to get rid of any unique or potentially upsetting flaws. The embryos are then raised in machine-wombs and given back to the parents after birth.

Occasionally, however, an unseen force will change the genetic pattern of the embryo -- in some cases making it impervious to the contraceptive gas and able to procreate on its own. Obviously the Optimen don't like that. But the underground movement of parents loves it. They have temporarily teamed up with the Cyborgs to overthrow the Optimen -- the Cyborgs are another branch of humanity that enhances its nature by combining with robots instead of altering their genetics like the Optimen. The Optimen don't like the Cyborgs, and mostly pretend that they don't exist.

What will become of humanity? Can people figure out how to have sex the old fashioned way? Can immortal beings actually die? And do we really want to meld with robots?

These and other fascinating questions are explored in The Eyes of Heisenberg. So check it out.

Back cover is hanging out here.

And other versions of the front cover (which I love), can be found here.

I made this crappy stocking!

Josh and I decided to do stockings for each other this year instead of regular presents. The problem was, Josh already had a really nice stocking that his aunt made for him when he was a kid. Me, I've got nothing. So, to compensate I bought a $2 stocking from the HEB, cut out some crappy letters that spelled Kristy, glued them to a piece of construction paper that was accidentally a little too short, and taped the whole thing to the front of the stocking. And yet, somehow, I like it.

But if anyone knows a good place to get cool stockings, let me know. I'd like to upgrade for next year.

[In addition, this is my 500th Spacebeer post. Just in case you're keeping track.]

SB RIP

This week's Secret Boyfriend Wednesday comes to you from beyond the grave in the form of sexy voice + sexy guy = super sexy secret boyfriend Jeff Buckley.

[And I have to mention, that Jeff Buckley's father Tim Buckley is an SB himself, possibly making Tim and Jeff Buckley the only father and son sexy-voiced SB pair who both died tragically and young. That is an elite group, my friends.]

Have you heard Jeff Buckley sing? Because seriously, you really don't even need to see a picture of him if you can hear him. He could be a SB based on voice alone.

Naturally, playing the guitar and rocking out on stage adds to the S and to the B.






In conclusion, double SBs are never bad.