Getting Back To Blogging...

Wow...I can't believe how much I missed you.

You haven't changed a bit. You look -exactly- the same as when I last saw you...

I know it's been a while, and I can't possibly expect to pick up where we last left off...but maybe we can do some stuff in the future, right?


...I missed blogging. I used to have lots to blog about. Some days, I still do. It's high time I got back to it.

More soon...and some back logged stuff from my MySpace blogs, too.
-j

Brilliance makes an exit

Not once, but twice in the past week, we have lost exceptional individuals in the entertainment industry. While I have no worthy tidbits on my existence today, I wanted...no, more like needed to address the passing of such gifted people, and recognize the effect they had on our lives.

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Stan Winston had his hands in so many different films...if you haven't seen his work, you just weren't paying attention. On of my all time favorite movies is "Jurassic Park", and honestly...Winston's work on the film is every bit as important as Michael Crichton creating the story. Period. He was beyond incredible.

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George Carlin was family. Well, practically...well, kind-of. Let me explain that statement.
Growing up, I had this uncle...so confident...well, often too confident...He had this descriptive way of speaking...like you knew the arrogance was present, but so was the truth, so "you'd better listen up 'cause you're only gettin' this once".

My uncle spoke like Carlin. He didn't mean to imitate him. It just happened that way.

Years later, I would realize that it wasn't only Carlin's humor that had my attention...it was the delivery...like I'd seen this before, only the dissertation was on parking, or his time in the service, or growing up in Wilmington.

Even as I type this, my eyes are fogging a bit. I can't be the only one, I'm certain.

You'd have to know my uncle to understand this. You just would.

As a youth, I had no business watching "Carlin at Carnegie" or "Carlin on campus" on HBO...I learned to wait until Mom had gone to bed on a weekend night, and try to time that with when one of these shows would come on. The "campus" one was a bit more acceptable...nope...just easier to view. Mom must have been slipping.

Carlin was funny beyond his years, I thought. His perspective was golden. In the article below, they actually fail to mention his short-lived cable TV show on HBO called "Apartment 2B".

George, there were none like you before, and no one will take your place...

STAN WINSTON

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Friends, relatives and show-business colleagues gathered Sunday to remember Oscar-winning special-effects maestro Stan Winston, the man responsible for bringing the dinosaurs of "Jurassic Park" and other notable movie creatures to life.

Winston died at his home in Malibu surrounded by family June 15 after a seven-year struggle with multiple myeloma. He was 62.

Winston's son Matt recounted his father's last day as being filled with laughter, hugs, kisses, tears and music from the Beatles. At the end of the private memorial service at the Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary, Matt played the last song Winston heard before he died: the Beatles' "All My Loving."

Colleagues including "Iron Man" director Jon Favreau, Sigourney Weaver, Tom Arnold, Ernie Hudson and Robert Patrick joined Winston's family and friends to reminisce and listen to personal stories from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rabbi Judith Halevy, brother Ronny Winston, uncle Mitchell Karlan, son-in-law Erich Litoff, and directors James Cameron and Steven Spielberg.

"What Stan did is that he took our dreams -- he took all of our dreams -- and he blended them with his own dreams," Spielberg told mourners in attendance. "He then workshopped those dreams with pencil, clay and later years on the computer. He would basically give life to all of our ideas. He would make them come to life."

In a career spanning four decades, Winston created some of the most memorable visual effects in cinematic history. He helped bring the dinosaurs from "Jurassic Park," the extraterrestrials from "Aliens," the robots from "Terminator" and even "Edward Scissorhands" to the big screen. He was a pioneer in merging real-world effects with computer-generated imagery.

Winston won visual effects Oscars for 1986's "Aliens," 1991's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and 1993's "Jurassic Park." He also won a makeup Oscar for "Terminator 2." He was nominated for his work on "Heartbeeps," "Predator," "Edward Scissorhands," "Batman Returns," "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" and "A.I."

Frequent collaborator Cameron told those gathered he spoke with Winston the day before he died. Cameron said Winston expressed something that he never had before: Winston told his colleague and friend that he loved him. Cameron also let "the fans speak for Stan" by reading several messages posted after Winston's death by users of the movie news and gossip Web site Ain't It Cool News.

"He inspired a generation of fans," Cameron said. "I think that just maybe the words of a bunch of people who didn't even know him personally may be his best tribute."

Winston's survivors include his wife, Karen; and his son, daughter, brother and four grandchildren.

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...and last, but most certainly not least...GEORGE CARLIN

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- George Carlin, the influential comedian whose routines used profanity, scatology and absurdity to point out the silliness and hypocrisy of human life, has died. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, died of heart failure Sunday, according to publicist Jeff Abraham. Carlin went to St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon, complaining of chest pain, and died at 5:55 p.m. PT.

Carlin performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, and maintained a busy performing schedule, which included regular TV specials for HBO.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

Carlin was "a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy. He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave, and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining. He was one of the greats," actor and comedian Ben Stiller said in a statement.

Carlin was often quoted, his best lines traded like baseball cards. "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" began one famous routine. Another pointed out the differences between the pastoral game of baseball and the militaristic game of football: "Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park. The baseball park! Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium."

Then there were the non sequiturs: "The bigger they are, the worse they smell," he observed.

He filled three best-selling books, more than 20 record albums and countless television appearances with his material.

He appreciated the impact his words made on fans.

"These are nice additional merit badges that you earn if you've left a mark on a person or on some people," he told CNN.com in 2004. "I'd say it's flattering, but flattery implies insincerity, so I call it a compliment."

Carlin was probably best known for a routine that began, "I was thinking about the curse words and the swear words, the cuss words and the words that you can't say." It was a monologue, known as "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," that got Carlin arrested and eventually led to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The "Seven Dirty Words" bit prompted a landmark indecency case after New York's WBAI-FM radio aired it in 1973.

The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 that the sketch was "indecent but not obscene," giving the Federal Communications Commission broad leeway to determine what constituted indecency on the airwaves.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," Carlin said. "In the context of that era, it was daring.

"It just sounds like a very self-serving kind of word. I don't want to go around describing myself as a 'groundbreaker' or a 'difference-maker' because I'm not and I wasn't," he said. "But I contributed to people who were saying things that weren't supposed to be said."

In November, Carlin was slated to receive the 2008 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, given by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

"In his lengthy career as a comedian, writer and actor, George Carlin has not only made us laugh, but he makes us think," Kennedy Center Chairman Stephen Schwarzman said in a statement. "His influence on the next generation of comics has been far-reaching."

In a typically wry response, Carlin said, "Thank you, Mr. Twain. Have your people call my people."

Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, in New York. He dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and joined the Air Force, where his misfit ways continued -- he received three courts-martial and several punishments.

After leaving the military, he spent a few years in radio, where he met Burns. In 1960, the pair left to pursue a comedy career in Los Angeles. Burns told the AP that the Carlin of those years was "fairly conservative," but things changed when the two saw Lenny Bruce in the early '60s.

"It was an epiphany for George," Burns told the AP. "The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

Carlin remembered a similar feeling, he told CNN.com.

"[His career] represented a lot of such honesty on the stage, the willingness to confront a lot of sacred cows and expose them," he said of Bruce. "He did it with a great deal of irreverence and with a lot of brilliance."

Carlin went solo in 1962. For most of the decade, he was a conservative-looking presence: clean-shaven, attired in jacket and tie, making his amused observations to audiences on "The Tonight Show" and "The Ed Sullivan Show."

But as the times changed, so did Carlin. He let his hair down, grew a beard and dressed in jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts. It was this Carlin who became a hit with college audiences in the early '70s and made such albums as "FM & AM" and "Occupation: Foole."

Carlin hosted the first broadcast of "Saturday Night Live" in October 1975.

He also appeared in movies, including "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (1989), Kevin Smith's "Dogma" (1999) and "Cars" (2006). For the latter, he was the voice of Fillmore, the Volkswagen bus.

He starred as a cabdriver in his own sitcom, "The George Carlin Show," which ran from 1993 to 1995. He also played the character of Mr. Conductor on the PBS series "Shining Time Station" and lent his voice to two episodes of "The Simpsons."

Carlin was blunt about his own struggles. He suffered several heart attacks, one at Dodger Stadium during a baseball game. He also underwent treatment for drug and alcohol abuse.

He was relentlessly amused by humanity -- in one of his most famous lines, he pointed out that "if you're born in this world you're given a ticket to the freak show. If you're born in America, you're given a front-row seat" -- but refused to consider himself a cynic. He preferred "disappointed idealist."

It all went into his comedy. He was fascinated by language and euphemism, noting that "there's a reluctance to confront reality and a desire to soften unpleasant realities." In a different life, he said, he may have been a teacher.

Which he was, anyway.

"Part of what my impulse is with things I've said or done, I think it is an attempt to demystify these things, to take them out of the realm of the forbidden and the disgusting and the off-base, and to at least bring them into the discussion," he told CNN.com.

He is survived by his wife, Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin. Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997.

Ignored Blog

My blog sent me an e-mail last week, telling me it felt ignored and under-appreciated. I tried to be logical, but you know how that goes sometimes...

BLOG: You know...you could take a moment and focus on me, couldn't you?

ME: Aw, c'mon babe...it's not like that...you know I love you. Work has really got me stressed and-

BLOG: Those are just words...when was the last time we went out to dinner? Why don't we see our friends anymore?

ME: Well, Ted & his wife are busy with the baby, and-

BLOG: THAT'S JUST ANOTHER DAMNED EXCUSE TO GET OUT OF THE TRUTH!!!

ME: Huh? Now, look here..I'm jus-

BLOG: ADMIT IT!!! IT'S 'CAUSE MY MOM BROUGHT THAT PLAID BEDSPREAD OVER AND I INSISTED ON USING IT!!! YOU NEVER LIKED MY BEDSPREAD!!!

ME: Wha? Now, baby-

BLOG: DON'T YOU 'BABY' ME, YOU BASTARD!!!


...needless to say...we've got some issues to work through.


Look for a blog with real content soon.

...and 'thank-you' for your support...

-jimi

i can has cheezburger

I love this pic...


more cat pictures

Tonight was a long night of entertaining the inebriated. I just was -not- in the mood for that kind of crowd. Waffle House was no better with it's "Jerry-Springer-via-Winston-Salem" class of drama. The only thing missing was the failed paternity test and the goofy look on the trailer parks Mama's face when she says "well I don't know who else could be the father...".

One can only assume it's because she lost track of names after the fifth guy in the train serviced her. Yeah, that was dirty. So what? Next time...don't look.

Anyway, at night's end I found myself sitting at the computer and scoping out the numerous pics that have captions added in Leet Speak. The site I was at was http://icanhascheezburger.com/.

I enjoy this site more than you can imagine.
A. I like cats. Not cute cat shit, either...awesome stuff...or stuff that makes you laugh.
B. Anything worth laughing at once is worth laughing at twice. They've got so much that you don't wind up seeing the same thing twice.

Bad days become good days when I look at this site. It doesn't take long to find something to make me laugh on here.

If'n ya gets a moment...go scope it out...and tell 'em Charlie sent ya!

New Blog Inspired

Oh, this was bound to happen eventually.

I like to write. I'm not the brightest duck on the pond, but expressing myself this way has always seemed so natural. It's a good fit for me.

I like to blog, and to read others' blogs. I started on MySpace, and realized that the more Red Bull I drink, the deeper I dig and the more truthful (and sometimes cynical) I write.

My cousin has been blogging pretty steady here for a while now. I made sure to subscribe to her blog this morning...just because. :) Her perspective on things is funny. She lists the people in her blog with abbreviated names...don't ask me why, it just the hell outta me.

Check her blog...
http://elizabethobsesses.blogspot.com/

Speaking of my MySpace blogs...I guess I'll have to do some digging and post some of that stuff here. There are some interesting moments that I was almost too open about. I'll have to go through and re-read (and edit) some of that stuff before I post it.

Oh...about me...
I'm a struggling self-employed divorced white male with 2 daughters, a girlfriend, her daughter, 10 cats, a music job, and two Suzuki Samurais.

I'm not feeling very bloggy right now...the caffeine is wrestling control from the muscle relaxer I took last night. I hate taking medications that bog me down, but that knotted muscle that's been giving me trouble since Saturday morning was causing me to lose too much sleep. Waking up this morning was more challenging than it ever should be.

I've got issues, and they'll be written about on here soon enough. I'm about three steps away from calling a therapist. This might be a bit less expensive. :)

Okay...lists to make, work to do.

I promise I'll blog about something interesting...or at least entertaining...soon enough.

-j