Box Office Blitz Week 9 Results!

Thanks for patiently waiting for the official results to come in.  There wasn't really a change in the order of the movies, so that was good.  "We're the Millers" actually lost ground on "Instructions Not Included" in the official tally.

The official results are:
Riddick $19M
Butler $8.4M
Instructions Not Included $8.1M

My picks were:

1. Riddick $20M
2. Butler $10M
3. One Direction $9M

Shouldn't have bet on horny teens twice in a row.  I get 200 for Riddick and 300 for Butler for 500 total.

David Walston picked:
1. Riddick $20M
2. The Butler $9M
3. instructions Not Included $6M

Which is a trifecta for 900 points.

Michael Offutt picked:
1) Riddick $19 million.
2) The Butler $9 million
3) We're the Millers $8 million

Which is also 500 points.

Maurice Mitchell picked:
1. Riddick - $21M
2. The Butler - $10.1M
3. Instructions Not Included - $10

Which is a trifecta!

Rusty Carl picked:
Riddick - $21 mil
The Butler $11 mil
We're the Millers $10 mil

For 500 points.

And Chris Dilloway picked:
Riddick - $20m
Butler - $15m
Millers - $12m

Also 500 points.

Since David is closer than Maurice on Riddick he gets the 300 bonus points!

With the win David also claims second place.  And I'm inching closer to a respectable 4th place position.

1	Rusty Carl	500	5600
2	David Walton	1200	5200
3	Chris Dilloway	500	5100
4	Briane Pagel	0	3700
5	PT Dilloway	500	3500
6	Andrew Leon	0	3200
7	Maurice Mitchell	900	3100
8	Michael Offutt	500	1900

Comic Captions 9/9/13

NOTE:  Box Office Blitz Week 9 Results will be posted this evening once actual results come in.  Right now it's really close between "Instructions Not Included" and "We're the Millers" for third place and since that will affect the outcome it's better to wait.  I will say at this point I think it's either going to be David Walton or Michael Offutt who wins depending how #3 shakes out.

In the meantime, it's time for another Comic Captions, where your job is to recaption a comic book panel.  The goal of course is to make it as humorous as possible.

This week's comes from Ultimate Spider-Man #4

I'll go first

Spider-Woman:  Come on, let's make the beast with eight legs!

Now it's your turn!  This is another where I encourage being as dirty as possible.

Phony Photos: September

From the SIMply the Best Calendar it's time for September's page!  To wrap up the Perfect Worlds series is Krisee the girl who seduces Kari (last month's pin-up girl) and steals her away from Val.  Maybe you can see why...or not.

On the left is teenage Krisee in her hot cheerleading outfit.  In the center is a slightly older teenage Krisee going through an awkward phase with pimples and turning to the dark side with a leather jacket.  That wasn't really the one I wanted to put in the center but it was the one I had to because the program kept complaining the others weren't high-res enough.  On the bottom right is the same Krisee as the center only in a pink wig.  And then at the top is an adult Krisee in a sexy nurse outfit.  OK it doesn't look so sexy there but the bottom has fishnet stockings and little else.  For some reason the nurse costumes people make only come in the sexy variety.

So maybe you can see why Kari would trash her relationship with Val for Krisee.  Or not.  Whatever.

And here's the Sims 3 version:

Next month gets back to more familiar ground.

Box Office Blitz Week 9 & Temporary Anne Cover Reveal!

Before we get to the latest round of Box Office Blitz, today I'm doing the cover reveal for Briane Pagel's new horror novella, Temporary Anne.

I've already read it and it is some scary stuff.  The gist of it is that a woman named Anne in order to avoid going to Hell does all sorts of terrible things while slowly becoming more and more of a ghoul.  As a bonus you get short stories from me, Andrew Leon, Rusty Carl, and Nigel Mitchell.  My short story "Adoption" is sort of like "The Handmaid's Tale" if you've ever read that, sort of a political dystopian story.  As a Fun Fact I wrote it in a Subway in Manistee, Michigan while on vacation and waiting for the weather to clear up.  That was actually the highlight of that day as the weather never really did clear up and my car almost got stuck in sand.

Anyway, last week the scores on Box Office Blitz picked up while there was a photo finish to determine the winner.  Rusty won the extra points to solidify his hold of first place.  There's only one new major release this week, so largely it's the same list as last week.

Here's the list from my local megaplex (* denotes a new release):

• 2 Guns 
• Blue Jasmine
• Closed Circuit
• Despicable Me 2
• Elysium 
• Getaway
• Grown Ups 2
• Instructions Not Included
• Jobs
• Kick-Ass 2
• Lee Daniels' The Butler
• Mortal Instruments:  City of Bones 
• One Direction: This is Us
• Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
• Planes
• Red 2
• Riddick*
• The Conjuring
• The Grandmaster
• The Heat
• The Smurfs 2
• The Spectacular Now 
• The Ultimate Life*
• The Wolverine
• The World's End
• We're the Millers
• Winnie Mandela*
• You're Next

I'm having a hard time believing in Riddick with its R rating and lack of The Rock to go with Vin Diesel. That and almost every new movie has bombed in the last month.  Still, there doesn't seem like a lot of competition right now.

1. Riddick $20M
2. Butler $10M
3. One Direction $9M

Now you make your picks in the comments!

Thursday Review: Middlesex

It's been ten years and I still don't know what the point of this book was.  I keep meaning to reread it but I never have the time.  Maybe if Amazon puts the Kindle version on sale I can listen to it at some point.

Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
March 26, 2003
(3/5 stars)

I'll agree with a lot of reviewers that "Middlesex" is well-written (mostly) and I enjoyed it very much. However, what keeps gnawing at me is, "what was the point?" In my quest to find meaning to this book I even read most of the Amazon reviews hoping for a clue, but it still eludes me. So, for now, I can only see "Middlesex" as a book where a lot of interesting stuff happens.

My first big problem with this book is that it focuses too much on the past generations and not enough on Cal/Calliope him(her)self. I just didn't see why so much time was given to the grandparents and parents. I think the incestuous relationship between the grandparents was in there because that was the "cause" of Cal's condition, but it seemed to me that he also said that because of all the prior inbreeding in the little village that defective gene already existed, so was the brother-sister marriage of the grandparents really the "cause"? I'm not convinced it was and so I don't see any reason to give them such a huge chunk of story.

I also didn't understand the point of Cal's relationship in Berlin. Was this just to give us a glimpse of how he lives as a man? The other part I didn't understand is why after 26 years of not revealing himself, he does so with this woman. It seemed tacked on.

I largely suspect that most of the historical facts and elements in this book are correct (I'm from Michigan but not Detroit so I can't say otherwise), but there are at least two inaccuracies in this novel. First, Cal says they made B-52s in automobile plants during WWII, but the B-52 was not around until the jet engine was perfected in the '50s. The person who read the book before me actually made a note of this in the book. Second, Cal talks about Al Kaline as a great first baseman and it's true that he did play 135 games at first during his major league career, but he was far better known as an outfielder for the Tigers (2,488 games in the outfield). So what? you say, A couple little slips don't matter. I don't know about you, but when I see the author making mistakes in their research, it shakes my confidence so that I have to call everything into question.

The pivotal problem in my mind is that the reason Cal decides to run away from home seemed weak and contrived. He find out that he is male in terms of organs so he decides to just up and start living like a man? Instead of running away, why not confront the doctor and postpone the surgery? Why not just say, "Hey, I want some time to think about this." When Cal does run away, I really didn't like the "Showgirl"esque strip club scenes. It seemed like a shortcut to get Cal to accept being a hermaphrodite instead of really coming to grips with it on his/her own.

Anyway, I have a number of complaints with this book, but it is an entertaining narrative. It does keep you reading through the end. I was just hoping for more. And if someone does figure out the overlying point of this book, don't hesitate to share it.

Elegy for Butler Blue II (2004-2013)

Sad news yesterday afternoon that the bulldog mascot I'd been using for my avatar for 3 years now, Butler Blue II, has passed away.  It doesn't come as a surprise as about a month ago he was diagnosed with a fatal heart condition.  English bulldogs are notorious for health concerns, so nine years isn't really a bad run for him.  The saddest thing this last month was while all of us humans knew he was going to die, poor Blue had no way to know his heart was a ticking time bomb.

Of course I didn't really KNOW Blue II.  We never met in person; I never got to pet him or pat his head or anything.  Thanks to social media I was able to follow him since I first saw this picture during the Final Four in 2010:

Since then I used Blue as my avatar on Blogger, Twitter, and other sites.  You can read more about that and see more great Blue II pictures from my retirement tribute in March.  Here's ESPN's tribute to Blue.  And here's the official tribute video for Blue.

Lest I get too sad, Blue did have a good life.  Actually in his nine years he did a lot than most people.  I mean have you been to multiple Final Fours, the Super Bowl, and the Indy 500?  Or appeared on Jimmy Fallon and Dan Patrick?  Or hang out with supermodels and NFL cheerleaders?  Or have college girls fondle you on an almost daily basis?  Yeah, I don't think so.  He had it pretty sweet.

When someone important to a sports team passes away, it's traditional to make a patch to wear on their uniforms.  Last weekend I thought of one for Blue; maybe I had a premonition.

RIP, Blue.  You will be missed.

Box Office Blitz Week 8 Results...Epic Conclusion!

OK, it's not that epic.  According to Box Office Mojo, the actual results for the weekend (Friday-Sunday) were:

1. One Direction 15.8M
2. The Butler 14.8M
3. We're the Millers 12.7M

This means that Rusty Carl, who picked One Direction at $16M is the winner and gets the 300 bonus points.

And now here's the updated scoreboard:

	Box Office Blitz
	Scoreboard
		8	Total
1	Rusty Carl	1200	5100
2	Chris Dilloway	900	4600
3	David Walton	600	4000
4	Briane Pagel	300	3700
5	Andrew Leon	600	3200
6	PT Dilloway	900	3000
7	Maurice Mitchell	900	2200
8	Michael Offutt	0	1400
		5400	27200

Two-Cent Tuesdays: More Cover Madness

You know how much I love goofing around with covers, so here's another one!

This one is for the proposed sequel to the story I released not long ago, Girl Power.  In the sequel (which at this point is only in the planning stage) we have the female Super Squad of Apex Girl, Velocity Girl, Mermaid, and Midnight Spectre who became women a year ago thanks to a supervillain's weapon.  Anyway, a year later another Super Squad made up of their former male selves (Apex Man, Velocity Man, Lord Neptune, and Midnight Spectre) shows up out of the blue.  The world embraces the male versions, which becomes a problem when they start to abuse their power.  This leads to male and female versions of each hero slugging it out.

Anyway, I had an idea for the cover, but as usual stock photo sites are really disappointing in their selection.  I mean if you want a mom, a little kid, or a business guy wearing a cape for no reason you're all set but if you want an actual superhero costume then you're screwed.  Finally I said the heck with it and just found a normal man and a normal woman and put a mask on them.  Like this:

Is it extremely obvious I added the mask after the fact?  I can probably recolor around the eye holes a little to fill those in better, but the noses and stuff might be more difficult.  I made them black-and-white to go with the cover for the first one, plus it might disguise the contrast of the mask I added a little bit.  If you recall this was the first cover, which you guys picked:

So the black-and-white is kind of a theme and I used the same font and everything.  Am I on the right track here?  Again, my options are pretty limited as far as stock photo sites go and obviously I can't draw my own, which always puts me up shit creek.

You can't find decent superhero pictures on stock photo sites, but you know what you can find?  Scary clown photos!  Check out this mock cover for a proposed 3rd story in the series:

The third one would borrow from a story I did for the We Are Now anthology about a bunch of villains getting together to form a Legion of Doom to fight the good guys.  Probably one of the heroes is going to die in this one too in order to save the day.  I have a pretty good idea which one.

 Tomorrow is another Recap entry!

Comic Captions 9/2/13

It's time for another Comic Captions, where your job is to recaption a comic book panel.  The goal of course is to make it as humorous as possible.

This week's comes from Green Arrow #8

I'll go first

Old Man:  Hey guys, it's role-playing night!

Now it's your turn!

Box Office Blitz Week 8 Results...Part 1

Yep, we're doing this today.

The top 3 this weekend were:
One Direction $17M
The Butler $14.7M
We're the Millers $12.6M

After a rough few weeks, I finally nailed it!

1. One Direction $18M
2. The Butler $15M
3. We're the Millers $10M

That's a trifecta!  Which means 900 points.

Maurice Mitchell also gets a trifecta:
1. One Direction - $20 mil
2. The Butler - $15 mil
3. We're the Millers - $12 mil

Andrew Leon picked:
1. The Butler: $18m
2. One Direction: $15m
3. We're the Millers: $10m

That's 100 for Butler and Direction and 400 for Millers for 600

David Walston picked:
1 The Butler $11M
2 This is Us $10M
3 We're the Millers $9M

Also 600 points

Rusty Carl picked:
One direction - $16mil
The butler $14 mil
We're the millers $12 mil

Also a trifecta!

Briane Pagel picked
1. One Direction: $25 mil
2. Getaway $15 million
3. The Butler, $10 million.

That's 200 for One Direction and 100 for Butler for 300 total

And Chris Dilloway picked:
One direction $18 mil
Butler $12 mil
Millers $10 mil

OK so Me, Rusty, and Chris all got trifectas and all were only 1M off on One Direction.  And only 300K separate mine and Rusty's picks on #2.  So you know what...to be continued!  We'll determine the winner once the official results are in as this is too close to call as they say during elections.

So Tuesday I'll announce who gets the 300 bonus points.