It's a live blog!

Given the fantastic success of KC in HD, I have extended the brand and helped create "It's a live blog," a website dedicated to live blogging.

I've already sunk money into this venture (ten bucks) so I am highly invested in its success.

What will we be live blogging about? Everything.

But so far that translates into one episode of American Gladiators. We hope to branch out soon.

Check it out: http://www.itsaliveblog.com

Mive most marvelous Marvel movies

When computers became advanced enough to reliably create realistic moving images of men in spandex crashing through brick buildings, Marvel knew the time had come to make lots of movies about nerdy guys getting really buff to beat up bad guys and then get moody about it afterwards.

Most of these movies were not very good, but five stick out as success stories.

Well, ok, only four do, but four doesn't seem like enough for a substantial list so I threw one more in there.

The movies that occupy slots 5-3 are all from franchises wrecked by truly atrocious third installments. I haven't re-watched any of them so I don't remember much about them. As such I will glibly gloss over them in a few short paragraphs.

#5 - Spider-Man
I'm pretty sure Spider-Man is the first in a series of movies that establish the origins of Bruce Campbell. There was also a guy in a red suit portrayed by a particularly athletic CGI gummy bear.

#4 - Spider-Man 2
Settles once and for all who would win in a fight between an arachnid and an octopus. Who can forget when Alfred Molina goes to the arcade and a radioactive claw machine bites him? In all, Spider-Man 2 was a good movie that might have been great if only Sam Raimi had thought to throw in more inappropriate references to past movies he's made.

#3 - X2: X-Men United
The touching story of men with two X chromosomes. Movie tagline: "Some call them mutants... others call them women."

#2 - Iron Man
Who knew Jeff Bridges could be so menacing? Better yet, who knew all it would take to make Jeff Bridges menacing was to shave his head? Bald is the new black hat.

I have only one substantial complaint against Iron Man: Samuel L. Jackson should not look like a pirate. I don't care if that's what his character looked like in the comic book. There are only two accessories on the planet that can make Sam Jackson look like he isn't capable of blowing up another man's head simply by shouting the F-word really loudly. One is an eyepatch. The other is a lightsaber (though to be fair, maybe it wasn't the lightsaber. Maybe it was the fact that his goofy jedi name sounded like a combination cleaning product/self-protection spray... Use it to combat grime on your windows or to fend off rapists! Mace Windu, new from Procter and Gamble!)

#1 - Captain America
It shouldn't take much to prove to you this is a cinematic masterpiece.

"But KC," you begin to ask me before being interrupted by a comma and a quotation mark, "how could you possibly know whether or not Captain America is a great movie?"

Well I watched parts of it on YouTube.

"Is a tiny pixelated recap of a film really enough to judge its greatness?"

Must one watch an entire sunset to determine its beauty?



This is a film about a guy who becomes a superhero not because he felt an overpowering urge to help people, but because he drove off a cliff and someone reminded him people used to make fun of his dad. This is a film about about a guy with a 12-inch vertical leap complimented by the incredible ability to teleport dozens of feet in the air using nothing more than very basic linear editing techniques. This is also a film about another guy named Christopher Lee who has been in some pretty cool movies, but who could never escape the typecasting that resulted from playing "Miguel" in this one.

In other words, this is a film that appears to have only a coincidental relationship with the comic book character it gets its name from. Despite this and the fact that the title does not contain a noun for the masculine gender, I assure you this is most definitely a finely crafted superhero movie.

Friends, I need only write three words to convince you to go pick this up at Blockbuster in the American Flag-themed vehicle of your choice: Reb Brown. You see? I only needed two. Truly Captain America is a film that surpasses all expectations.

Reb Brown, star of Space Mutiny and many other quality films that I haven't yet looked up, is a spectacular actor perfectly cast as the title character. Brown's emotional range is superb. He uses a variety of facial expressions to communicate things like, "Oh" and "I am studying your eyebrows intensely for mites."

I can't be the only one waiting with bated breath until the Avengers crossover movie Marvel has planned for 2011. Right now I'm trying to suppress a grin thinking about the inevitable scene depicting a crotchety, 63-year-old Reb Brown scolding a spry, 46-year-old Robert Downey, Jr. for using his rocket boots to kick up mud on the American Moped of Justice. Oh that Iron Man! He'd learn a thing or two about crime fighting if he'd had to face bad guys with nothing more than a plastic shield and the vacant, slack-jawed stare of a TV-show high school jock!

The movie critic critic: The Host, The Incredible Hulk, Kung Fu Panda

Welcome to an exciting new feature. For every movie I see, I'll post my analysis of a critic's opinion about that movie.

What you should expect from this exciting new feature: A full, nuanced explanation of a movie review based on an explanation given to me by the critic himself that is entirely fabricated. That is, I will write as though I have interviewed the critic about his review when in fact I have magically pulled the interpretation that follows from my behind.

What you should not expect from this exciting new feature: An opinion backed up by research or even a full reading of the movie review. It is much faster and easier for me to read blurbs and then make a mad dash to judgment.

The Incredible Hulk

"By the time the Hulk is battling the Abomination it's simply watching two special effects go after each other. Were Norton and Roth even on the set?" - Daniel M. Kimmel, Worcester Telegram & Gazette (review)

I would have enjoyed this film more had it been acted out with sock puppets. Also, every character should have been voiced by Rowlf.


The Host

"Can 93% of American movie critics be wrong? On the soft and squishy Rotten Tomatoes website, an amazing 70 out of 75 critics gave a thumbs up to The Host, a hokey South Korean monster movie that makes Godzilla look like The Godfather." - Thomas Delapa, Boulder Weekly (review)

I work for the newspaper from The Flintstones. I spent the majority of my review talking about stuff entirely unrelated to the movie I was supposed to be writing about, but when I finally got around to it, I boldly raised my voice in opposition to the unjust enjoyment reviewers experienced while watching The Host. If it were up to me, all monster movies would feature rubbery dinosaurs knocking over Playmobil sets.


Kung Fu Panda

"And honestly, it’s the most entertaining DW Animation project since, well, ever. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t formulaic or dripping with bullshit sentiment about how 'everyone can succeed if they just believe in themselves.' I don’t know where this started, but I don’t think it does any service to children to feed them that line of crap." - Pete Vonder Haar, Film Threat (review)

RAAAAAAR! MOVIE THEMES AIMED AT CHILDREN BAD! TEACHING CHILDREN SELF-CONFIDENCE BAD! CURSING IN A REVIEW OF A CHILDREN'S MOVIE BAD-ASS!

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Today's bonus discussion question: Should I have made a "HULK SMASH" joke somewhere in this post?

Christine Brennan knows more about being a national columnist than I do

This is follow-up to an earlier entry. Expect another piece on some of the issues raised in the previous post a little bit later after I've done all the legwork. You can read the first part here.

When I write things on my blog about people I don't know personally, I do so secure in the knowledge that they will never read what I've posted. I assume they are too stupid to use advanced Web 2.0 tools like Google. I'm veiled in an impenetrable cloak of Internet anonymity that allows me to disclose how much I hate other members of college basketball message boards without risking physical harm.

I rest assured that I'm completely untraceable... except when I'm not. Who would have guessed that putting my name in the title of my blog would prove my undoing?

On April 1, I wrote about USA Today columnist Christine Brennan. I titled it, "Do you understand what your job entails?"

"Ha!" I thought. "Take that, newspaper lady who graciously agreed to speak to my sports journalism class senior year! You thought you were talking to a group of timid college students. Little did you know you had a blogging superstar in your midst!"

Then I turned off my computer, sighed contentedly and waited for my readers (a strong, three-person support group, nearly half of which publicly admits to visiting my site) to pour over my latest offering. Brennan would never know how badly I had damaged her e-reputation, but my flock of rabid fans would.

And that's where the story ended. Or at least, that's where it would have ended if not for the fact that Christine Brennan owns at least one computer that is capable of using the Internet.

The next day I received an email from my professor. Brennan had found my blog and she wanted to talk to me.

Oops.

I had written primarily to criticize her for saying that she didn't often look at the reader comments under the online versions of her USA Today columns. Having been a part of an online newspaper in high school, I have strong feelings on the subject. The Internet has changed the way news media operates and I don't always feel that people who joined the industry when "dot com" sounded like editing shorthand for forgotten punctuation get that.

I read back over what I'd written after I received the email and wondered if perhaps I'd been a bit... overzealous. In hindsight, calling her "smug" and "cocky" might not have helped strengthen my argument.

Her offer to sit down and meet with me also failed to lend credence to the aloof portrait I painted of her.

We met at Politics & Prose last week to discuss what she took issue with in my blog. She'd already told me on the phone right after I'd written it, but I'd been a bit too shocked at the time to think to take notes. This time I was armed with pen and paper.

"We're not talking about the cure for cancer here," she told me after we shook hands. That put me at ease. It was good to know that my blog entry fell somewhere below matters of life and death on her list of important things to talk about.

We then got down to the matter at hand. I'm going to break into a pseudo-Q-and-A format here, which my old high school newspaper adviser would tell me is a very lazy way to do things, but hey, this is a blog and I'm not getting paid.

Where, in her opinion, had I gone wrong?

Well, to start off, she felt I may have gone a bit overboard when I wrote the following: "Did you know she gave Tony Kornheiser the ideas for many of his columns back when he actually still wrote for The Washington Post...?"

Fair enough. I was trying to be funny, but I guess I took what she said out of context. She clarified for me: "When I covered the Redskins, Tony and I talked about column ideas." That sounds similar to what I wrote, but there is a distinction. My statement makes it sound like she told him what to think. Her explanation defines her role as more of a sounding board. She was the Post's Redskins beat reporter and what I believe she means is that they would sometimes discuss what was going on with the team.

As for the main thrust of my post, Brennan agreed with my central point, she just didn't think she "was the person to make that with." As she noted, she had told our class she does her best to respond to every email that comes her way.

But what's the difference between comments and email and why does one deserve a response while the other sometimes gets ignored?

Here she reminded me of the way anonymous Internet tough guys work. She referred to the "food fight" going on in the comment section on several occasions. Under many articles, she said, the commenters end up attacking one another, leaving a messy argument she doesn't always have time to wade into.

"Even if I wanted to email Dirtydog37, how would I do that?" she asked.

I checked out the USA Today comment section briefly and even registered, but I'm not entirely sure if there's a way to publicly display your email address in your user profile. There's an option to send a message, but I don't know whether or not USA Today discourages its writers from using that feature. Dirtydog37, if you're reading this, email me. I've got her number.

I looked through some of the comments on her articles and the tenor of the discussion and the number of replies varied widely based, as one would expect, on what the topic was. Certainly there are instances of personal attacks ("She is a media Tiger butt kisser. She's also an Obama butt kisser as well. It's true about meida [sic], and especially media "chicks", they're Obama-girls and Tiger-girls"), but some of the articles produced fairly focussed replies that stuck to the issues she brought up in her column.

That isn't to say I don't see where she's coming from. In addition to her obligations at USA Today, her website describes her as a "commentator for ABC News, ESPN, NPR and Fox Sports Radio." That doesn't leave much time for anything else. "At some point you have to go, 'Where are the hours in the day?'" she explained.

I should explain that I wasn't advocating that she spend the day constantly clicking the refresh button on her column nor was I saying that I thought she should respond to every reader. I simply felt it was important to get a sense of what people thought of her writing and possibly to acknowledge the readers from time to time.

Clearly she does that. She even took the time to sit down with a recent college grad who essentially depicted her as an egomaniac based on one very limited interaction.

I suppose I can maybe cut her a little slack.

So did anything positive come out of what I'd written initially?

"Since our conversation [on the phone], I do look at the comments more."

Ha! Take that!

A man called inclement weather: Introduction

Most people have bosses with names like "Todd" or "Bill" or "Think of common female name to show I'm not sexist and can imagine a woman in a leadership role."

These are good names. They are normal names. They indicate a dependable upbringing and in turn a likely well-adjusted individual.

If your boss's name is Bowser, you are a video game character and none of this applies to you.

And if your boss's name is Storm, you should follow these steps to determine if your chosen job is the appropriate one for you:

1. Examine yourself for mutant powers.
Likely outcome: You are unable to shoot elemental projectiles or shape-shift in some way.
What that means: You are not an X-Man and your boss is probably not a white haired lady who looks like Halle Berry.

2. Note whether your salary or hourly wage sounds impressive when you say it out loud.
Likely outcome: Announcing your income out loud elicits laughter from third parties or an involuntary, exaggerated clown frown on your face.
What that means: You are not making enough money and you have embarrassed yourself in public.

If your results match the likely outcomes above, consider the following: Your boss has a really stupid name. You have associated yourself with him.

I tell you this because I worked for a man named Storm. He was a strange character with delusions of grandeur and a shady past I've only just recently discovered.

He provided me with a job I would describe as simultaneously the worst job I've ever had and the most hilarious job I've ever had.

So join me - won't you? - on a journey of immensely bizarre proportions. Or, if you lack a time machine, please read my description of a journey of immensely bizarre proportions.

NEXT TIME ON A MAN CALLED INCLEMENT WEATHER: Signs of Stormy Weather! (I meet Storm)

Texas and Connecticut in the house

I was poking around my site numbers tonight and I saw the predictable locations: Silver Spring... DC... Silver Spring... DC... oh look, someone from Laurel. Shocking stuff really. I don't know specifically who these readers are, but I can make some educated guesses and the Florida visit (Hi, Nicole!) is fairly self-evident.

There were a couple that had me completely stumped though: Wallingford, Connecticut and Frisco, Texas. Who are you? Frisco sounded vaguely familiar, but I may have been thinking of Brisco County Jr. or quite possibly even The Count of Monte Cristo. Wallingford I've never heard of before in my life, but I'm sure it's a fascinating place full of... walls. It also makes me think of fording the river in Oregon Trail so I assume you know something of losing oxen where you come from.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say: Hey! There's no reason to be ashamed of visiting my totally awesome blog. It contains at least trace amounts of fun and many words that I claim are hilarious.

If you are long lost acquaintances from my distant Facebooking past, oh dears Wallingford and Frisco, you should definitely let me know so we can rekindle our no-doubt-once-vibrant friendship.

Perhaps you both prefer to remain unspecified readers. I apologize if I've just overstepped some privacy boundary. If you'd like to keep this all hush-hush, you could always call me on my cellphone and whisper your identities to me. No one else would know. I promise.

Of course, if you were random visitors passing through on your way to other corners of the Internet, you most likely will not see this and that is sad. I'm considering making road trips to your respective towns and plastering your public meeting spaces and telephone poles with printouts of my entries and big bold words up top that read, "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BLOG?"

Most extreme escalator challenge

I have a strange feeling many words have been written about this subject already, but I must succinctly add to the cacophony of dumbstruck voices.

When I see a man with six pack abs wearing a blue unitard boarding an escalator, my assumption is generally that he will make it to the top. He has the muscles to get him there and the tight clothing he needs to prevent snags.

This is why watching American Gladiators is so disappointing. When your competitors are too exhausted to run up a gently sloping travelator, it's time to come up with a new final act. There's no doubt that it's hilarious watching the pained expression on a grown man's face as he is gently laid to rest on a rubber mat after an agonizingly slow descent from a three-foot climb, but at the same time, it's sort of tough to swallow an ending where two physically fit contestants are defeated by the moving walkway we so often see children run across in the opposite direction at an airport.

The producers need to do something to give this at least the appearance of difficulty. I understand the contenders are tired after a grueling battery of tests against gladiators with giant tumors for limbs, but it just isn't satisfying. While I must admit that "travelator" sounds sort of like a vacation-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger and therefore kind of lends the event some action cred, I think in this case it's alright to force some company on well enough and make some changes. Let's at least douse the ropes in gasoline so when one of the competitors makes that shameful slide back down to the bottom, there's a chance the friction might cause the whole thing to light up.

Also, while I applaud the effort to more severely punish the competitors for not making it across the obstacles this season, a six-foot deep ball pit is somehow less terrifying than a wall of fire. These are two concepts that really don't gel all that well. For consistency's sake, you've got to go with one or the other.

I guess what we all need to take away from this is that if toddlers routinely use an element of your obstacle course, it probably won't look all that intimidating on television.