Real Life Superhero

With Green Lantern and Green Hornet coming to theatres soon, I found this news nugget interesting:

A small Middle Tennessee town has its own crime fighting mystery man. His name is Catman, and he claims to be a real life superhero living in McMinnville, TN. The costume is complete with cat ears, cat tail and a utility belt with flashlight, tools, cell phone and first aid kit. While he leaves fighting crime to the police, Catman makes a difference by picking up trash, helping seniors and patrolling the downtown.

He’s one of 350 registered so-called super heroes.

If you are feeling the need to strap on the utility belt and spandex, here are the rules according to worldsuperheroregistry.com

Costume: The purpose of a costume is not simply to protect the identity of the Real-Life Superhero from criminals that might seek revenge, but to make a statement both to the evil-doers that you fight against and to the world at large: you are not simply someone who happened upon crime or injustice and made an impulsive decision to intervene. You have vowed to actively fight for the betterment of humankind and to serve as an example for others. The costume of a Real-Life Superhero must be of sufficient quality to show some care went into its creation.

Heroic Deeds: The purpose behind becoming a Real-Life Superhero must be for the benefit of mankind, and the Heroic Deeds must be of sufficient degree as to exceed normal everyday behavior. If proof of Heroic Deeds is not present, a listing may still be added to the Registry, however, it may be marked as “inactive” or “unconfirmed” in the description.

Personal Motivation: A Real-Life Superhero cannot be a paid representative of an organization, not even a benevolent one. The motivation to become a Real-Life Superhero must come from the individual: not an advertising gimmick or a public relations campaign.

Sadly, while these would-be crime fighters may be keeping the streets safe cleaner, they were unable to protect their registry website, which has been hacked by an evil villain and injected with virus laden software.

Where’s Superman when you need him?

Box Office Blues

As we get started in a new city, I’m living here in San Antonio solo while my girls are wrapping things up in Denver and getting the house ready to sell.  Being “temporarily single” is presenting a few challenges and it’s going to ruin my weekend.  Though I moved down here right after the New Year, this weekend represents the first time there are new movies coming out that I really want to see.  In order of importance, I want to see The Lightning Thief, Valentine’s Day, and The Werewolf.

Problem #1: Percy Jackson is a movie that is going to largely appeal to the teen set.  I’ve read the books with my 13 year old daughter – who is very disappointed with the casting, but that’s another story – and really enjoyed them.  Plus it was directed by the same guy that did the first two Harry Potter movies.  Going to this movie solo is going to make me look creepy, no way around it.

Problem #2: Valentine’s Day is a chick flick, plain and simple.  While my “man card” has been revoked for quite some time, men do not go to chick flicks by themselves.  And without having my wife as an excuse, I’ll have to skip this one for sure.

Problem #3(and most important): Jesse (my morning show partner) says that men shouldn’t go to movies by themselves. It’s pathetic. 

So, I find myself triply screwed. I guess it’s a DVD weekend!

Cult of Personality

As a self professed fan of Harry Potter, the subject of which movies are “cult movies” or not is a recurring topic on our show.  My co-host Jesse seems to be under the impression that it includes any movie in which he has no interest that makes lots of money.  LOL.  Let’s take a second to clear up the confusion…

From Wikipedia: A cult film is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but relatively small group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside of the small fanbases Cult films often become the source of a thriving, obsessive, and elaborate subculture of fandom, hence the analogy to cults. However, not every film with a rabid fanbase is necessarily a cult film.

The term cult film is used to describe a film that has had little to no success commercially and critically upon its initial release but has later spawned a small, but devoted and usually obsessive fanbase.

So movies that Jesse considers cult movies
Dark Knight – $158 million opening weekend – $997 million total.
Harry Potter (we’ll just take the first movie) – $88 million opening weekend – $878 million total.
Lord of the Rings (again… just the first one) – $47 million opening weekend – $870 million total.
Pirates of the Caribbean (yep… 1st one) $46 million opening weekend – $654 million total.

Movies he digs:
Friday Night Lights – 20 million opening weekend, 61 million total.
Road House – $5.9 million opening weekend – $30 million total.
Animal House – $276 thousand opening weekend.  141 million total.

So, if we are sticking to the definition of what cult films are rather than what is perceived to be cool… I don’t appear to be the one in the cult.  Ha ha ha…

I’ll check in with you next week, I have to go pick up my Hogwarts uniform from the cleaners.  Grif-fin-dor!

Date Night

I’m taking my wife out on a date tonight, just the two of us.  This is the first time we’ve gone out since last summer.  Why has it been so long?  We had a terrific babysitter who went and left for college.  Damn higher education! 

My kids are super easy to babysit.  At 11 and 7, they’re pretty self sufficient.  Not quite old enough to be left alone though… they’d kill each other.  That being said, Amy & I are still very picky – as everyone should be – about who watches our kids.  Also, being relatively new to town, we don’t really know enough people to have a lot of choices.  We’ve got a new sitter we’re trying out tonight for the first time.  She seems like a really nice kid, and she’s still got 3 years of school left, so I hope it goes well.

Our big plans: Dinner & “The Bucket List”

I may have to have a big steak.  I was really good yesterday.  Amy wanted to go to lunch at Taco Bell, so I tried one of the Fresco Chicken Burritos (only 9 grams of fat).  For dinner, my daughters made chef salad with lots of veggies and I had a nectarine for dessert.  This morning… Cheerios.

I did some cardio and crunches yesterday.  Today, back to the gym for circuits.  We haven’t done a weigh-in on the air in a few days, but I’m still hovering right around 200.  This morning – 199.6

Have a great weekend!

Golden Compass

There is a lot of talk these days about the new Nicole Kidman/Daniel Craig movie The Golden Compass which comes out this Friday.  The religious camp is upset because the book was apparently written by an atheist and the atheists are upset because they don’t feel the movie is anti-religious enough.

Here’s the deal.  Unlike most of the people doing the talking… I’ve read the book (the series actually – there’s three books).  The main gist of the books is there is this “dust” that falls from the sky and is less attracted to kids.  It starts collecting on them when they hit puberty.  The church believes it to be evidence of Original Sin.  Nicole Kidman and the Magistrate (the Church) are trying to find a way to destroy this dust.  The story centers around Lyra and Will(who we don’t meet until book two) who have to fall in love to put everything right with the world.

Don’t over think it.  It should be a pretty good young adult action flick and Nicole Kidman looks smokin’ hot.  The second book stunk in my opinion and the third, while still stinking, is pretty good to wrap everything up.