So, a few things have changed. The wedding is now DEFINITELY on May 23rd 2009, not May 2nd as originally planned. Still super excited. Got lots of fun ideas and a lot of monies to save.

Also, my first book of poems, There is Nothing Poetic About Fish, will be out soon, and I’m having a book release party! More details will follow, but I think dinner is definitely in order 5pm January 18th 2009. Stick around after that as I’ll be a featured poet at the Corners of the Mouth poetry reading that evening at 7pm at Linnaea’s coffeeshop! I’ll be reading with Los Angeles’ own Sherman Pearl. From what I’ve read of his work, he’s a fantastic poet and I’ll be in good company. Check out some of his poems here (especially “Who’s Next?” and “Rocket Science”).

Whoo. Time to catch a breath.

I just found this video I took back in January 07 with Nicole and Mr. Fish, the Professional Swimmer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Man, that takes me back. I remember this interview… Mr. Fish had a major hangover that day. Boy, that guppy can party!

So, a couple months ago, I was emailed by a representative of Screen Printing Magazine, because they wanted to print an article that combined all of the “7 Steps to Effective Large Format Graphics” that I had written for BIG Images newsletter, as well as one new article that I wrote that answered a particular topic they wanted to address.

Well, yesterday I received a very nice check from them. This makes me a nationally published columnist. I believe that’s one step away from sexy international spy.

So, love the Dark Knight. Everybody who sees the Dark Knight falls in love with it, but yeah, I’ve got a couple of gripes. Number one is Christian Bale’s voice when he is Batman: the first movie had him with this very laughable growl… not sexy or intimidating by any means. Dark Knight ups the ante with, on top of the fake emphezema, a lisp. I swear to you, listen! It’s there. It is tough for me to get past that…

However, looking back on the rest of the summer’s blockbusters, I really feel like Iron Man filled me with far more joy. Certainly, Dark Knight had a far more compelling villain, but Iron Man wins with a far more interesting hero, and a much higher excitement factor. I like dark and gritty as much as the next guy, but Iron Man proves that modern day superhero flicks don’t have to be dark: they can hit the emotional rollercoaster while serving tons of “OMG that’s cool” scenes. That’s why Speed Racer was such an amazing film for me: it served the source material well, even if it didn’t make people feel dirty, like a Sin City would.

Evidently, Robert Downey Jr. also finds his movie wins. In an interview clip I read from here, he said:

“I feel like I’m dumb because I feel like I don’t get how many things that are so smart. It’s like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I’m like, ‘That’s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie…Didn’t get it, still can’t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I’m like, ‘I get it. This is so high brow and so f$%&ing smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.’ You know what? F%$# DC comics. That’s all I have to say and that’s where I’m really coming from.”

I love that guy.

So, for over a year I’ve had a dream of starting an online version of Apple Crack (or Apples to Apples, whatever you want to call it). In it’s most awesome form it’d be a place of technological wonder that would take several months to code and a crackpot team of web experts willing to debug and make it their entire life. In it’s simplest form, it’s a blog.

So, in the interest of actually finishing something I’ve started, behold! TheShork.com!

The main idea is that a series of moderators will take turns posting topics, once every two days. For two days, common people can visit the blog and comment on the topic, and after two days, comments are closed and the moderator updates the post with information on who they picked to win. Very exciting!

If you’re at all interested in being a moderator, let me know! It’s really fun and you’d only have a responsibility to post probably once a month or so.

Let the game begin!

Last night Clawed caught his fifth mouse in the last two months. I’m very proud of him except when he and I get in this grotesque tug-of-war, the wide-eyed mouse trapped between Clawed’s maw and my paper napkin. Then I just feel a little creeped out.

At BIG Images, our street has notoriously horrible parking. Walking a block (or just biking from our houses) isn’t too much hassle for the people who work here, but sometimes people park in our parking lot and go to other businesses nearby rather than walking a block themselves. If they ask us if it’s cool, we pretty much give them the go-ahead, never mind that we have signs saying “PARKING FOR BIG IMAGES AND iii DESIGN” right in front of every parking spot.

Heck, sometimes people even stop and leave their car fully blocking the driveway. That really grinds my gears.

My mind often fills with possible avenues of revenge:

• Slapping a few BIG Images stickers and letting them advertise for us around town, you know, as a trade for our inconvenience.
• We have a giant slab of styrofoam that looks an awful lot like a boulder. We just pick it up and set it behind their car.

Friday a “gentleman” in a gigantic Ford F250 blocked our driveway to go next door. Completely blocked.

I wrote a note on a piece of paper saying,

“Please be more considerate to others. Respectfully, BIG Images and iii Design”

and stuck it under his windshield.

A few minutes later, he walked out to his jerkmobile, grabbed the note, and yelled back at the shop, “next time I’m going to block the entire f***ing driveway!” before peeling away. What a class act.

Something I re-learned yesterday: sometimes when I’m cranky, I need a nap.

The answer is yes.

Sure enough, that is a canine next to Apollo, and not a mop, or a bush, or a cavernous maw into the underworld.