My Life and Code

(Updated 12/2/2018) I have a soft spot for TV, movies, and music that are considered...let’s say less than the best . Sometimes entertainment that is unintentionally bad is more enjoyable to me than something comparatively decent. And the Hallmark Channel Christmas movies fit that bill for me. Are they bad ? Well, not really. But they’re incredibly cheesy (IMHO). I watched them every chance I had during last Christmas season, and this year I plan to do the same. Here are the reasons I find these movies so cheesy, and why I love them so much. They’re essentially Lifetime  movies - Okay, now stay with me here. There’s nothing wrong with Lifetime  movies, and I don't want to give you the wrong impression. It's just that these movies follow the same general formula: the lead character is female (either a professional or a small business owner), the story deals with romantic relationships, and the male lead is unrealistically perfect and the type of guy that makes us real-li...

I have a friend who likes to send me random things through the mail from time to time, the most recent of which was the Imperious Leader  action figure from the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica  shown above. I decided to bring it to work and put it in my office. One day, after returning to my office from a meeting, I found that someone (my boss, it turns out) had constructed a throne for him using two paper cups. It’s surprisingly film-accurate, IMHO. My boss later admitted that he considered coloring it black with a marker but decided it wouldn’t be a productive use of time.

As mentioned in  a previous post , I often have people stopping by my office when I'm not here and leaving (often humorous) messages on my whiteboard. Here is another collection of messages I've had left for me over the previous few months. I don't get the wonderwall comment, but I found it funny nonetheless. A coworker left a message requesting assistance as if I'd written it as one of my own notes. A later addition, wishing me a nice trip up to Boston (for Visual Studio Live). I honestly am  at my desk regularly, but apparently I have a knack for missing someone's visits.

This is the second of three posts I'm doing concerning odd albums from the 1970s. It seems like if you were a television celebrity in the '70s you were sure to get one of two things: a variety show special or an ill-conceived album. Here, we have the latter. The Odd Couple Sings . Do they? Do they???  Well, sort of. Tony Randall (aka Felix)  sings. Jack Klugman (aka Oscar) not so much, and he even admitted as much. And it's evident from the very first track, entitled Johnny One Note , which seems to tell you right from the beginning "Look: Jack can't sing. I know it. Jack knows it. Now you  know it." How bad is it? Well, in the aforementioned opening track, Jack sings one note through the entire song. I'm not sure exactly which note that is , but it sounds like when you go to the doctor, and the doctor brings out a tongue depressor and tells you to say "Ah", and you say "Ahhhhhhh" with your tongue sticking out. Now imagine that fo...

The 1970s were a weird, weird time. It’s one of the reasons I have such a fascination with that decade. This is the first of three posts I’m going to do on novelty albums from the ‘70s, all three based on TV shows from producer Garry Marshall. And this first one is, IMHO, the most palatable of the three. Lenny and Squiggy Present Lenny and the Squigtones  is played for laughs. Recorded in front of a live audience and released in 1979, the album features Michael McKean and David Lander in character as Lenny and Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley . Several times on that series they performed as Lenny and the Squigtones , and this time they’re joined by a drummer and by future Spinal Tap guitarist Christopher Guest. Included here is the track Night After Night  which had been performed by the duo on the show during a Shotz Brewery talent show. But it’s not just music. The album also contains comedy bits that are interactions between Lenny and Squiggy. I gotta admit: this one ...

Sometimes someone will stop by my office looking for me, but I won't be there, so they'll leave me a note on my whiteboard. Usually the note has nothing to do with what they wanted and almost always doesn't identify who the person was who stopped by. Here are some of my favorites. When you move into the office of someone who'd kept it dark with a lot of atmosphere, but decide that you'd prefer it a bit brighter. Those comments are from three different people. "I was here!" I was never able to track down who "I" was. It remains an unsolved mystery. I worked from home yesterday and came in this morning to find the message in green waiting for me. It gave me a good laugh first thing in the morning. :)

I just got a new whiteboard, which is currently standing propped-up against a wall, still in the plastic packaging material, awaiting installation (Installation? Does one "install" a whiteboard? Anyway...). A friend of mine decided to take the opportunity to scrawl a message on it while it's waiting to get hung on the wall.

I've been on a bit of a Star Trek kick lately, and on my drive in this morning I was considering writing a bit about it here on my blog. And then I learned that today is William Shatner's 80th birthday, so that pretty much convinced me that it had to be done. I'll be writing in more depth a bit later, but for now, here is a video by Maurice LeMarche, a voiceover actor (along with one of his Futurama cast mates), instructing us all on the intricacies of sounding like William Shatner. Enjoy!

Okay, so this is a little late, but still funny. The 1982 Tron Holiday Special from Rip Taylor

Oh the humanity...

A funny comic from yesterday's paper.