Which is bigger news today: Castro resigning...or HD DVD resigning?

Fidel Castro finally resigned as dictator of Cuba overnight last night. The old coot is just too weak and feeble to run an island anymore. Hopefully this will be the first step (of probably many) to Cuba becoming democratic one of these decades. Hopefully Raul (Fidel's brother who will probably take over) will be coming under pressure worldwide to open the island up, and Fidel quitting can only be a good thing. Maybe one day I'll be able to take a cruise to Cuba, instead of having to bypass it on the way to other islands in the Caribbean. I mean, the last few decades, Cuba would have had money coming out the WAZOO with all the American tourists visiting the island. But no, Fidel had to ruin it for everybody, not just American tourists willing to pay money down there, but the Cuban people who would have reaped the benefits. Instead they're all dirt-ass poor while Fidel's been living the high life. Well, up till now anyway, since he's about to kick over.

As to the other resignation making news today, Toshiba, the folks behind HD DVD, have announced that they're ceasing HD DVD. Which is wonderful news, because the format war between it and Blu-ray Disc was just pathetic. There should have only been one high definiton disc from the start. So when Blu-ray Discs and machines get a little bit cheaper, I'll be ready to go all Blu!

Star Wars event in Memphis? And I get on TheForce.Net for it!

Scott stumbled upon a webpage yesterday about a Star Wars event planned for Memphis for November 7th-9th, 2008. The page is here. So I told TheForce.Net about it, and they posted it, saying that I told them about it! Check out their article about it here!

Another cool bumper sticker

It seems like every time I go on an out-of-town vacation lately I see a cool bumper sticker on a car! Two months ago, on my Gatlinburg-area trip, I saw a bumper sticker that said "Pro-America, Anti-Bush." (Check it out here.) Well, this weekend I went to Huntsville, Alabama, to visit the Space & Rocket Center, and on my way back home, I saw the below bumper sticker...and on a Navy person's car to boot!

Heat suck

Hey, ain't it funny that the Miami Heat have the worst record in the league? That's what Pat Riley gets for forcing Stan Van Gundy to quit two years ago so Riley could take over the coaching job and get the coaching glory when the Heat won the championship that year. And now they've gotten rid of Shaq, which sucks, cause now Shaq is on a good team. It'd be funny if the Suns started sucking now that Shaq is on their team, even if it did make Suns GM and ex-Bull Steve Kerr look bad. But Shaq probably won't be able to bring them down THAT much, though, although I'm sure he'll try. HAHA!!

My birthday on Deal or No Deal (again!)

In my 11/5/06 column, I commented on an episode of Deal or No Deal in which the final two cases in a game were 12 and 23, which are my birthday numbers. (December 23.) Well, here's a picture of a Deal or No Deal home game that also just happens to have my birthday on it! Maybe these are signs that I should apply for the show, eh?

East Tennessee rules! Bush sucks!

I just got back yesterday from my vacation to Sevierville/Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It was the first time I had been there since 1994, so I was ready to go back. And it was awesome! One of the highlights of the trip was the following bumper sticker that I saw on a vehicle while I was there and just had to take a picture of. It describes me to a tee!

Steroid Man Barry Bonds finally indicted

Barry Bonds, baseball's all-time leading home run hitter & all-time leading asshole, was finally indicted by a federal grand jury yesterday for allegedly lying about using steroids. About damn time! This guy has always been a first class jerk, and for the past few years he's made himself look even worse by pumping up with steroids. So he's finally going to start getting what he deserves, especially if he gets 30 years in prison like he should. (Although he probably won't get any, since he's a celebrity.) This is why Mark McGuire, another steroid-using baseball player, kept saying "no comment" a few years ago when he was under oath and was asked if he used steroids.

Yet another comic book movie at #1

Yet another comic book movie leads the pack, as 30 Days of Night opened in first place at the box office this past weekend. Not a movie that would ever I care to see, but nevertheless...comic book movies rule!

My video posted on trekmovie.com!

I've noticed that trekmovie.com (the best Star Trek site on the Web) has been finding and linking to various cool Star Trek videos that are on the Internet. I had a cool video of my own that I wanted them to link to. It is of two back-to-back episodes of Entertainment Tonight from July of 1987, showing one of the first, if not THE first, looks at footage of The Next Generation. This was a full two months before TNG was to premiere.

So I e-mailed trekmovie.com and told them about my video on August 23. They wrote me back and said they loved the video and would link to it on August 31, and sure enough, they did! They put it right there on the front page. Earlier on August 31, before trekmovie.com linked to the video, the video had 133 views, but within a couple of days, there were more than 1,600 views! And as of right now, there are 2,069 views! Pretty awesome if I do say so myself!

And here is the direct link to my trekmovie.com article!

Tom Welling to finally be Superman?!?!?!

I just heard one of the most awesome rumors ever: Tom Welling has been approached to play Superman in the upcoming Justice League movie!! Now THAT would be bad-ass! I always thought he got screwed over a few years ago when Warner Bros. decided to make a new Superman movie. They should have waited until the TV series Smallville ran its course, and then made a Superman movie starring Tom Welling. Now don't get me wrong, Brandon Routh was damn good as Superman. But Welling had played Clark Kent for years and wasn't going to get to wear the Superman costume at all, except maybe for the last scene of the last episode of Smallville. So this news today is totally cool. Hopefully it isn't too good to be true and Welling will be Supes in Justice League.

(And maybe this Justice League movie will FINALLY kick-start DC into making a gazillion movies about ITS superheroes, just like Marvel's been doing for the last few years...)

Teacher (finally) in space!

The Space Shuttle Endeavour lifted off about an hour ago with Barbara Morgan on board. Morgan was the backup to who was going to be the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe, in 1986, when McAuliffe died in the Challenger accident. After the accident, NASA told Morgan that she would fly eventually. Well, it took 21 years, but she finally did! Awesome!

Today is the 20th Anniversary of TNT Collectors Hut

20 years ago today, an awesome store in Osceola, Arkansas was opened. Why was it so awesome? Cause it was mine! Mom, Dad, and I opened TNT Collectors Hut on August 1, 1987, after we spent the previous two months getting it ready to open. The store was open for business until the mid-1990s. We've had other stores since then, but this one was the most special, because...it was right next to our house! I worked in it every day the entire time it was open. Now that did get tiresome, especially working every Saturday, but it was a cool place for me and my friends to hang out.

Following are some pics of the outside of the store from shortly after it opened.

Mom and Dad:


Mom and me:

I order you not to buy so many cars!!

The Osceola City Council tried to pass a stupid resolution last week that said that you could only park four cars on your property, or one car per licensed driver, whichever was greater! It was also going to say that you couldn't even park on your own grass! There were various other stupid things in the resolution. How stupid is that crap, telling someone they can't own as many cars as they want? Mary Milton and Gloria Copeland had a petition going around for people to sign who did not want the resolution to pass, so Mary brought it to my house and I gladly signed it. So when it came time for the vote in the City Council, a lot of people showed up to fight the resolution. So many people, in fact, that the Council didn't even vote on the mattter! It just flat out DIED. Bwahahaha!

Star Wars Post Office Adventures

Star Wars and the U.S. Post Office have joined forces this year. There are new Star Wars stamps, and mailboxes made up as R2-D2! There was also a cool big Star Wars display at the post offices that featured R2-D2 and C-3PO back in the spring. My good friend Gary Chipman, who works at Osceola's post office, tried to get me Osceola's display, but he said that the post offices had to destroy all of them. I figure he probably just took it home himself! Ha ha! But I told him that some would escape destruction, and sure enough, I saw one on display at the Hollywood Americana museum in Metropolis, IL last month!

Here I am with some R2-D2 mailboxes last month!

At Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock, AR:


At Little Rock National Airport:


Doing my C-3PO impression, and wearing a Star TREK t-shirt, at Texaco in Jackson, MS:

What do the San Antonio Spurs and the Lord of the Rings movies have in common?

I like them both...but they're both boring!! But how can that be, you say? Well, I've always like the Spurs and their players, and I liked the Lord of the Rings movies with their cool fantasy elements. But the Spurs are about to win another championship, something I've known was a sure thing ever since the two Phoenix Suns players got suspended for a game in the second round for coming off the bench after Robert Horry decked Steve Nash intentionally. This championship will be their fourth in nine years, and yet...none of them were back to back! They've never had a dynasty, which requires a team to win at least TWO championships back to back! In the past 20 years (counting this year), there have been seven NBA champions. Four of the seven have either repeated or three-peated. Two of the three teams that didn't repeat were the Pistons and Heat, but they only won one championship apiece (not counting the Pistons of the late 80s-early 90s which of course repeated). But the Spurs have won four out of nine years, and none of them were repeats! So I mean, I'm just tired and bored with seeing them win every other year. But it could be worse! It could be the Lakers or Heat or Knicks winning every other year! And as for the Lord of the Rings movies, I liked them. Except for the hour's worth of extra footage that could've been cut out of each movie because the extra footage dragged down the story and made me sleepy. At least, that was the case with the first two movies. I've never seen the third one. I've heard that it's the best one, but something tells me it has an hour's worth of boring footage too.

Gene Simmons reads Justice League

A couple of weeks ago on Gene Simmons Family Jewels (the episode where he finally reveals his new face after his facelift), he's shown reading a recent issue of Justice League of America! I always knew he was a comic book fan, so it was nice to see him in action!

I'M OFF WORK FOR NINE WEEKS!! OHHH BABY!!!

Today was my last day of work for nine weeks!!! Every May, my job gives me a voluntary layoff called Company Convenience. It lasts between eight and ten weeks. This year it is going to last nine weeks. And I get paid unemployment while I'm off. In other words, I get paid for doing nothing. Pretty dadgum awesome situation, wouldn't you agree?

Latest comic book movie to rule the box office: Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3 made $151.1 million on its opening weekend, which was this past weekend. That broke the record for biggest opening weekend for a movie EVER. What's funny is that Spider-Man's actual weekend gross turned out to be higher than Sunday's estimated gross for the weekend, because Spider-Man didn't have as big of a Sunday drop-off as most movies do on Sundays! And oh, this makes yet another comic book movie to dominate the box office...hell, not dominate it, completely DESTROY it!!

I watched it Tuesday night on one of the DIGITAL screens in Memphis! And the movie was friggin' awesome to boot! Bring on Electro and the Lizard! Or whoever the villains might be in Spider-Man 4! Ha ha!

Grizzlies prove they were just faking being so bad this year

The Grizzlies had the worst record in the NBA this year, which gives them the best chance of receiving the #1 draft pick in the lottery next month. Last week, when they lost to Sacramento, it guaranteed them the worst record of the year. At that point, they had three games left. Also at that point, I said that they would win those last three games. And as of just a few minutes ago, they did. Considering that this winning streak was only their second of the year, it may seem surprising to folks, but it's not. Because, y'see, the Grizz aren't as bad as their record shows. Lemme explain. With Gasol injured for the first two months of the season, all the other injuries, the firing of the coach, the replacement coach only being an interim coach, and issues with possible buyers and non-buyers of the team, they were losing a lot of games. When it became clear they were going to be one of the worst teams in the league, they made absolutely sure of it. In my opinion, they didn't try hard to win games, because they wanted the best chance at the #1 draft pick. But once they were guaranteed the worst record and the best chance at the #1 pick, they decided to show the rest of the league that they were just faking being that sucky all this time. And I predicted it before it even happened.

Why did the Grizz not try to win? Because last year they won games down the stretch and got screwed over for it. A flaw in the NBA's playoff system led Memphis to have to play a better team in the first round than they would have if they had lost games down the stretch in the regular season. (I talked about it in my April 23, 2006 column.) And, of course, they were promptly swept out of the first round of the playoffs four games to none. That flaw in the playoffs was fixed by the NBA after the playoffs were over with, but, of course, it was too late for the Grizzlies. So this year, instead of winning games that they possibly could have won down the strecth, the Grizzlies lost them instead. They learned their lesson last year. Because apparently in sports, sometimes you have to lose to win.

So I predict that the Grizzlies will be like the Spurs were a few years ago. The Spurs were a good team in the early 1990s, with David Robinson leading them, and then all of a sudden one season (the '96-'97 season), they had an awful year. Well, that year gave them the #1 draft pick, and they picked Tim Duncan with it. The Spurs would then go on to win three championships with Duncan, with possibly more to come. So since the Grizz have made the playoffs the past three years, and then this year dropped down to the worst record in the league, maybe they'll get the #1 pick and then shoot back up next year and win a championship one day soon! So if it happens, remember, you read it here first! And if it doesn't happen, well, I'll just blame it on Memphis suckin'.

Memphis Grizzlies to leave Memphis after end of season [APRIL FOOL'S JOKE]

The Grizzlies have been suckin' so bad this year that they're going to go to another city! When the season's over with, they're packing up and moving out. Top contenders as to where they'll wind up are Louisville, Oklahoma City, and Los Angeles (yeah, I know, LA already has TWO teams, but they can always use another! I mean, they're LA!) Another possibility is New York. So it looks like Memphis will go back to being a sorry no-pro-sports town and be stuck with the FedExForum bill for years to come. Of course, with the Grizzlies about to end the season as one of the worst teams in the league, if not THE worst, they'll get a high draft pick, possibly the #1 pick. And considering that the Grizz aren't that bad on paper, and they've had a lot of injuries this season, they could conceivably be a pretty good team next year. But another city will reap the rewards of that next year, even though Memphis had to suffer through the current awful year. But according to Grizzlies majority owner Michael Heisley, they have to leave Memphis this year. Says Heisley, "If we stay in Memphis past this year, and we're not out of here before the NBA Draft Lottery happens, we probably won't get a top ten pick. I know that's supposed to be impossible with our worst-in-the-league status, but Memphis would find a way to do it. I mean, look at how we lost LeBron James a few years ago."

So there you have it, folks. Throw away your Grizzlies stuff and start collecing Xplorers and Hounds Dogs merchandise. For more info on this craziness, click here.