And so with new futurephone in hand, I join the ranks of mobloggers worldwide, for no damn reason. I am quite sure that my boss will think this particular feature is as stupid as the push-to-talk thingy from Nextel; nevertheless, I am quite in love with the new gadget.

Other things I’ve wanted to talk about but haven’t bothered to compose a full post about:

Saw KILL BILL on Saturday night, managing not to have really read anything beyond a bare-bones plot synopsis about the film in advance. Trailers for RETURN OF THE KING and MATRIX REVOLUTIONS were the highlights; everything thereafter was more than a little disappointing (and I’m a Tarantino fan, so it’s not as if I have some snobbish opinion of him already.) As PJ pointed out, I didn’t hate it as much as, say, NATURAL BORN KILLERS (which was one of the worst films I’ve ever seen — don’t get me started on that one), but I wasn’t really all that jazzed about waiting to conclude the damn thing in February. Too bad. (Interesting how the violence of the thing has spawned its own little tempest in a teacup among the blogosphere cognoscenti.)

Only one more week of Lamaze childbirthing classes, which is good, because I’m not sure I can sit through another one like this week’s, where we discussed alternative forms of “pain management” for the laboring mother — i.e. the epidural, which apparently everyone believes is the ideal alternative until they tell you it’s a catheter in your back. This doesn’t even really affect me at all and I’m feeling squeamish about it.

Which also reminds me: wondering if I’ll be able to do the Kapital City Komix Drinkup on the 8th (with the date getting closer, I wonder just whether I can really bring myself to go somewhere else for a couple of hours…) Probably should get Sean to go out for those promised beers before then…

posted from Gus’s phone

I have a futurephone.

Judge Raps Out a Ruling In Favor of Eminem

In a footnote to the 13-page opinion issued Friday, the Macomb (Mich.) Daily reported in Saturday’s editions, Macomb County Circuit Judge Deborah Servitto added a 10-stanza verse that read, in part:

Mr. Bailey complains that his rap is trash,

so he’s seeking compensation in the form of cash.

Bailey thinks he’s entitled to some monetary gain,

because Eminem used his name in vain.

The lyrics are stories no one would take as fact,

they’re an exaggeration of a childish act.

It is therefore this court’s ultimate position,

that Eminem is entitled to summary disposition.

AWESOME.

spotted on donewaiting.com

Disclaimer: I adored School of Rock. That said:

But School of Rock was written with a new breed of adults in mind—and their driving fear isn’t that the youth of tomorrow will fall prey to what Frank Sinatra once described as “the martial marching music of every side-burned delinquent.” It’s that the kids might never get their rocks off in the first place. When Black first meets his school kids, who are young enough to be Dylan’s grandkids, Led Zeppelin takes a backseat to Latin, and rock ‘n’ roll is as sexy and redemptive, in their eyes, as a square dance at a retirement home. Which might explain why Stephen Holden’s New York Times review mentioned in passing that hip-hop has usurped rock’s place in the public imagination; if he’s right, it makes sense that the substitute teacher played by Jack Black should have to introduce his charges to the pleasures of rocking out rather than the other way around.

Mark Prior, Sammy Sosa and the Cubs cruised into the eighth with a 3-0 lead, set to end their 58-year absence from the World Series. At that point, it was almost as if the baseball gods woke up and realized these were the Cubs.

What followed was a sudden collapse that would rival anything in the Cubs’ puzzling, painful past — and the emergence of baseball’s most infamous fan since Jeffrey Maier.

A 26-year-old wearing a Cubs hat prevented Alou from catching Luis Castillo’s ball down the left-field line.

“When it happened, Mark Redman said to me, `Let’s make this fan famous,’” Florida’s Derrek Lee said.

They did.

Given the last-gasp chance, the Marlins broke loose. That’s about when security decided to escort the fan out. He threw a jacket over his face for protection, but not before other fans hurled beers in his direction.

“You cost us the World Series!” one fan yelled at him.

Joe Lieberman, right, converses with Ben Kenobi, left.

Yoda announces his candidacy for President of the United States.