Today was a long-ass day at work.  Jeremy and I did price changes all over the store.  It was tiring, but we kept each other company.  I even came up with a new idea for an NP1 Film.  I'm too excited to talk about that one, but I will give you the codenames to a couple of other projects I have in mind.  Keep an eye out for installments of "Amazing Weirdness" and what may be the reality comedy of the year, "The Brick."  "A.W." probably won't get started until spring at this rate, but "Brick" is a work in progress.  And of course, "Victory Clipz" is always in production.

Dad just left this evening for Las Vegas.  He's got a big old trade show out there this week, so I hope he has fun.  Just not too much fun, that's when he might meet up with Grissom and the CSI gang.

Anyway... seeing as how the other day was Squirrel Appreciation Day, I can't believe I forgot to tell you all my greatest squirrel story of all time.  I've never heard the term "squirrel story" before, but I'm sure that everyone's got one.  I know that Dean does.  Okay, so onto the story, which is one of my earliest memories.  I was four years old and I still lived on Long Island at the time.  I was playing in the kitchen one late November afternoon and Mom was cooking.  A squirrel showed up at the sliding glass door, and Mom decided to give him some of our leftover nuts from Thanksgiving.  The squirrel ate a couple and took the rest of them with him.  We figured that that would be that with the squirrel and we went on with our lives, after dubbing him "Leo."

But Leo came back the next day.  And a couple of days after that.  Every day for almost a week this squirrel would show up and we'd give him nuts.  But we didn't have a whole back room full of nuts for this little guy, so one day he shows up and we're fresh out of nuts.  Mom told him, "Sorry, but we don't have anymore nuts for you."  And Leo went into a rage.  He flew off the handle and started to hurl himself into the door.  His little rage-filled body made this *thump* sound as he smashed into the door, like he was going to come in there and kill us.  It was without a doubt one of the funniest things that I'd ever seen.  Then again, I was only four, but to this day I remember Leo whenever I see squirrels out gathering nuts.  Hopefully people will never run out, because you never know what they're going to do.

Today was Martin Luther King Day.  I watched Spike TV's Star Trek Movie Marathon today, furthering William Shatner worship.  But the thing that really got me was the advertising they were playing for MLK Day.  They were more like PSAs, really, but I don't think they were very effective.  They featured a lot of people talking about racism.  Most of them consisted of white people sitting around and talking about how they are afraid of black people, and the black people sat there and listened to them.  "Sometimes whenever I see a black person on the street late at night, I'll walk over on the side a little bit..." and the rest of the white people start going "OH ME TOO!"  I'm not kidding.  And the ads tried to make this seem like normal, healthy behavior and that black people are not offended by it.  Meanwhile, I'm sitting there thinking, "This is trying to act as if it's anti-racism, but I think it's just the opposite."  Jeeze.

I got the Ben Stiller Show DVD from Amazon the other day.  I remember watching that show back when I was nine years old, and I already knew that Ben was going to be big stuff.  It also launched the careers of Andy Dick (regrettably?) and Janeane Garofalo (not quite regrettably, but she could stand to shut up these days).  The other guy in the cast was one of my heroes, Bob Odenkirk.  Yeah, I know you've never heard of him.  But if it wasn't for the Ben Stiller Show, Bob wouldn't have hooked up with David Cross to make Mr. Show on HBO.  The Ben Stiller Show is starting to show some age, but it's funny to see all the celebrities that did guest spots on the show and see how they've ended up... lots of laughs, lots of fun.

I did start writing a screenplay treatment, though.  It's going to be a short film based on a joke about a guy who gets dissed by a clown and how his quest for revenge destroys his life.  It might be a little ambitious for NP1 Films standards, but I'd still like to get it written.  Think Moby Dick with a clown instead of a whale.

The Patriots beat the Colts a little while ago, which was fun to watch.  I highly detest the Colts and Pretty Boy Peyton Manning, so it was pretty sweet.  Once again, I haven't had much time to watch the Pats this year, but it's good to know that for the most part, it's the same team every year.  Nowadays it seems that a football team doesn't hold together for too long.  The Patriots hold onto their players pretty well, and when the stars leave, the other guys take over like nothing happened. 

I'd go to the movies, but it's January.

As everyone knows, I share my birthday with Elvis Presley, but I'm not much of an Elvis fan.  Quentin Tarantino once said that there are two kinds of people in this world, Elvis people and Beatles people.  You can like both, but when the chips are down, you will invariably go with one over the other.  Without a doubt, I am a Beatles person.  However, none of the Beatles were born on January 8th, so I'm listening to David Bowie, who was also born today.  Also, many of his songs were used in The Life Aquatic (however, they were often sung in Portuguese by a dude named Pele).

Also born today, as I was delighted to find out not too long ago, was Soupy Sales.  That beats all other celebrity birthdays by a long shot, at least in my universe.

So it snowed a lot today.  Funny that not even a week ago the weather was great and since I last wrote, we've gotten what I would guess is a total of 8 inches to a foot of new snow.  Once again, the weather has ruined my birthday plans.  George and Kelly were supposed to visit today, and we are all going to have a grand old time.  Oh well, I'm used to it at this rate.  Nine years ago today was the Blizzard of '96, which of course is still overshadowed by the God forsaken Blizzard of '78.  Whenever they start talking about that on the news, I change the channel.  If you have nothing better to talk about in your allotted 22 minutes of news time than a snow storm that took place almost 30 years ago, I'll go look for a rerun of The King of Queens.

Here's a peculiar dream I'll share with you... last night I dreamt that I had to drive to Long Island for a multitude of reasons, one of which was to visit a nursing home or something.  Don't ask why because I don't know either.  So when I finished up there, I walked back to my car in the dark when I saw this man/scorpion creature coming at me at quite a speed.  I started to freak out (wouldn't you?) only to find when the assailant got closer to me in the light that it was actually a mime in a lobster suit.  The question is, which do you find to be more frightening?

Well, it should be dinner time soon enough, so I'll sign off for now.  Also, I need to watch Dean's new video.

I've been watching old episodes of Star Trek on DVD.  Mom and I got them for Christmas and we've been enjoying the old adventures of Kirk and Co.  We have been marveling at how much we love James T. Kirk.  People love to make fun of William Shatner's acting and such, but he's still a great character.  I think that at some point just about everybody really wants to be Captain Kirk.  He can make the big decision without breaking much of a sweat, and he's always been able to hold his own in a fight.  Not to mention the fact that Spock is a great character, too.  There's so much complexity to his character that you wonder if the writers knew what they were getting into when they created him.  He fascinates me more and more as I watch him.  (Ha ha, get it, fascinates?)  I know it's kind of humiliating to some people to know that I love Star Trek as much as I do.  I guess I'm sorry, but then again, what do I have to be sorry for??

Now that I think about it, if it stays this warm out, I might be able to do a video project I've had in mind for a couple of weeks. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I just saw a special on TV about Sim City, so I think I have to play that for a while.

If you wanna get around the site, you can use the buttons over on the right.  Eventually every page will have that.  The board is still over there on the left, obviously.  I got rid of the guestbook, and some other stuff might go out the window too (the archives, perhaps).  I just wanted to keep everything orderly.  Behind the scenes, I'm getting confused by a lot of the stuff that's in my server's directories.

Other than the redesign, I guess that everything is hunky-dory.  Other than the fact that it's 2005 now.  I was trying to think of the kind of things I'm looking forward to for the new year, and the only thing I can be really sure of is that I can't wait to see how the Yankees come together this year.  We've finally got Randy Johnson, we just brought back Tino Martinez, and we're closing in on Carlos Beltran, not to mention some other signings we've made.  Other than that, all I can think of is some movies that will be out this summer and other things that don't really matter.

Plus, just one more week until my birthday.  Not that I'm being pushy about it or anything.  So I hope everyone is being safe this New Year's.