Hello, Blogosphere!!! ¡¡¡Estoy aquí!!!

As is usually the case, this last few weeks my life has been interesting enough to blog about, but I have been too busy to blog.

And my life remains interesting, so I don't so much have the time to blog, but I'll hit you with a key-note blog in hopes of (more or less) catching you up and sharing with you stuff. (A more eloquent sentence, I am sure, has never before been crafted.)

Okay, the big deal is that last week I went on a Texas Spirits Research Team (TSRT) investigation -- which is a Meetup.com group organized by Texas Spirits Paranormal Investigations (TSPI) for people who aren't necessarily interested in working on client cases, but want to actually investigate paranormal phenomena themselves -- and it was a BLAST! TSRT investigations are great fun for me because, since we aren't investigating for a client (who may be afraid of their home or workplace), there is no time limit on when we can review the evidence. We're just out there to see and hear what we can, and have a good time!

And since Brian is a member of TSRT, I got to investigate with my li'l bro!!! :D

This one was a a cemetery in Kyle, TX, where there is a "hanging tree" used, reportedly, to hang folks back a long time ago.

Or was it that a single person was found having been hanged from the tree one time a long time ago?

I need to do more research.

I haven't reviewed my audio yet, but I didn't have any specific incidences there that night.

Except...

Well, there were odd temperature fluctuations, and a general sense of not being alone in the cemetery, and several times I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye, would turn to look at it, and found an odd pattern of shadows that ALMOST recreated what I thought I saw -- but not exactly.

Scientifically, I would have to say that the shadows were mere illusions, no matter how imprecise the shadows were when I took a second look. But the experience added to my general sense that there were "folks" who inhabited the cemetery, and had done so for a long time. You know? Like they understood how to remain unseen by visitors?

I really need to listen to that audio.

And we have another TSRT investigation Saturday. The Courthouse in Gonzales, TX. I'm told that there are sections of the courthouse that the local police don't like to go into!!! :D

You know where Brian & I will be spending a lot of time Saturday!

Checking my notes here...

Right!

Okay, the last time I blogged I was listening to HEAT WAVE by "Richard Castle". Last week I read I AM THE NEW BLACK by Tracy Morgan!

Awesome book!

It was a great deal more raw and straight-up than I ever would have imagined a comedian to write! I mean, Tracy Morgan is such a mystery -- his characters are crazy, and he comes off as pretty nuts when he's interviewed on Conan O'Brien or where ever, but for him to cultivate this persona of insanity, one would assume that he's fully aware of how he is being perceived, right?

Like, we joke about people in Hollywierd being crazy, but it's hard to imagine folks making that much money for that long ACTUALLY being mentally unstable, right?

After reading his book, I think I have an idea about who Tracy Morgan really is. (Maybe.) He's an actual, honest-to-god street kid from the Bronx! Not like a rapper who grew up in a tough 'hood and then built a mystique to make him seem tough. Tracy's stories do not cast him in a "cool" -- or even flattering -- light. The way he tells his story, you totally get the feeling that he's has to be letting you in on his life, because otherwise the stories would be neater and tidier and Tracy would be the Hero, rather than an emotionally jacked-up kid just trying to sort out what Life is supposed to be about.

Dude! I CRIED a few times reading his book! It's kind of powerful!

I mean, I was moved to tears once or twice reading George Carlin's autobiography, but I expected that. Carlin has always shown himself to be a very deep, thoughtful person. His comedy was based on his insights and observations.

But Tracy Morgan's comic persona is kind of the opposite: He's Chico Marx, he's Jerry Lewis. He plays the fool. The comedy in his characters usually come from the fact that the character thinks he understands what's going on, but we -- the audience -- can clearly see that he's clueless. (And maybe a little unbalanced.)

Plus, Tracy's characters tend to come off as cartoon-ish (in the very GREATEST way!), so perhaps that contributed to why I was so surprised to be so deeply moved by Tracy's story.

Whatever the case, I was MOVED!!! If I didn't love Tracy Morgan before, I certainly do now! This is a beautiful cat, and this planet is so much better because he's swapping oxygen with us!!!

On a much lighter note: I'm finally watching GILMORE GIRLS, Season 7!!! :D

See, I was this HUGE GILMORE GIRLS fan back when it was on. Some of the best writing and acting on TV!!! And the bonus, for me, was that it aired on one of the station I work for, so I got to watch it at work! :)

But then, toward the end of the Season 6, my job kept me running around while GG aired, and I started missing episodes... Then it was announced that creator Amy Sherman-Palladino was leaving the show after the 6th season... Plus I didn't like the way the Luke & Lorelai storyline was going...

So I allowed myself to fall out of the show completely.

And a few years passed.

I never lost my love for the show, though. And I always intended to eventually finish the series.

Then last September (I believe) I got that familiar itch again. I needed to return to Star Hollow!

I don't remember if I blogged about it then, but I spent money I didn't really have and bought Season 1 on DVD so I could, at least, begin from the beginning.

AND IT WAS AWESOME!

And I was out of money.

But my friend Traci is just as big a fan as I am, and she owns the whole series on DVD, so I figured I would borrow the rest of the series from her eventually.

But then Christmas brought a BUNCH of money to me, and just after Christmas Walmart had a sale: The entire series for $20 each.

So I bought the rest of the series.

(I feel like I probably have blogged about this before...)

And I watched the first 5 seasons in January, and it was good! :D

But then I came up to Seasons 6 and 7...

And I stopped watching.

I got busy, but I didn't resume the series when I could have because I was afraid of the frustration I remembered from when Season 6 was originally airing, and of the complete UNKNOWN of Season 7.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, after I finished up my evidence on the Pflugerville case, I popped in the first disc of Season 6 and was transported back to Star Hollow.

And it was much better than I remembered Season 6 being!!! :D I just fell right back in step with the Girls and their lives.

So I am now poised to watch the 4th disc of Season 7! I am SO CLOSE! The story is almost told (well, in American TV terms, anyway.) Just 7½ more hours!!! (Approximately.)

So that's exciting for me! I remember hearing that Amy Sherman-Palladino knew what the last line of the series was going to be. I'm curious to hear what the last line of the series is! Plus, I'm hoping that there is some sort of retrospective featurette for the series in the DVD Extras. (The series has painfully FEW extras, so I'm not holding my breath. But I don't want to even check before I finish the series, lest my curiosity lead me into spoilers that I can't un-see.)

And then, my biggest news at the moment: I GOT TO ATTEND A KEVIN SMITH Q&A

LAST NIGHT!!! :D

He came to the Long Center for the Performing Arts and talks for, like, 3½ hours!!! IT WAS BRILLIANT!!!

It was my second time to see him live, and I was a bit freaky because I listen to SModcast weekly, and I just never get tired of hearing the cat share his take on life!

I mean, it's very much like this: Imagine your favorite band produced an hour or more worth of new songs EVERY WEEK, and they put them in a podcast.

You have all their albums, you've seen them in concert once, and you have heard EVERY SINGLE PODCAST they released -- and they were good about releasing them pretty much every single week. And then a close friend, who is just as obsessed with the band as you are, invited you to see them in concert again. You've just listened to their latest podcast maybe 2 days ago. You go to the concert... AND YOU LOVE EVERY SECOND OF IT!!!

Like, you've got to be thinking, "I'm kind of a freak, right?"

I mean, luckily, I'm fully aware that I'm a freak. But still... my fascination with Kevin Smith has to border on stalking, lol. ;P

Oh, and I don't think I mentioned that not only do I own all 3 "An Evening With" DVDs and have watched them multiple times, but I have watched the audio-commentary for all his movies (except ZACK & MIRI, which didn't have an audio-commentary) multiple times.

And I STILL can't seem to get enough of him, lol.

Outside my concern for my mental health, however, the evening was really amazing for me! I took the night off work and got to go out for an evening!!! (I NEVER do that!) And the show was followed by hours of cool conversation. Then I got to come home and crash WITHOUT SETTING MY ALARM!

:D

If you check the time-stamp on my blog entries, you may notice that it is still technically Friday morning as I write this. I came home, fell asleep to Disc 3 of Season 7 of GILMORE GIRLS, then woke up and wanted to enjoy my day off.

Which I am about to do.

You interested in HOW?

Lats night, on my way home from the show, I stopped off at a new Walmart to grab some food for the week, and I found that they still have several of the re-releases of the FRIDAY THE 13TH flicks WITH THE 3-D SLIP-CASES!!!

Now, my excitement requires a bit of explaining...

I grew up with Mr. Voorhees, and the FRIDAY THE 13TH series was MY series!

HALLOWEEN had stalled after III: SEASON OF THE WITCH, and didn't resume until I was almost out of high school. So Jason was my boogeyman! (Brian's was Freddy, but I connected more with Jason, for some reason.)

And, as I KNOW I've stated more than once here recently, I am a 3-D WHORE!!! I can not get me enough 3-D! In the '80s I watched every 3-D movie that came out, JUST BECAUSE IT WAS 3-D!!! (You can imagined how psyched I am now, though I usually don't have the time/money to see most of the flicks in the cinemas.)

But when FRIDAY THE 13TH 3-D came out, I was still too young for Mom and Dad to let me go see it. :( I went to see YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE in 3-D (or something like that) and snuck into FRIDAY THE 13TH 3-D to watch a single kill (the dude who just gets out of the shower) but I was too much of a coward to brazen it out and watch more of the flick.

And that was a huge disappointment for me.

I mean, I know it's lame, but it was.

I had found this LP of music from the first 3 FRIDAY THE 13TH flicks, and it has this AWESOME 3-D cover of Jason smashing an axe throw a window, and all the glass shards were blasting out at you!!! But that was all the 3-D Jason I had.

And that album is gone, now, naturally. It disintegrated into the mists of Time.

So now imagine how stoked I was the first time I walked into Walmart a few years ago and saw the first re-releases on DVD IN 3-D SLIPCASES!!!

But there was one problem...

Since I have been Artist-poor for decades now, I have developed certain mental mechanism to prevent me from spending money that I shouldn't. One of them is the line "I already have that; I don't need another." Before these 3-D-cover re-releases came out, the entire series (the first through VIII: TAKES MANHATTAN) was released in a box set. And (naturally) I couldn't afford to buy the box set when it first came out, but I managed to buy it for a great price a couple of years later.

So I already owned all the movies.

So I had no practical reason to buy these new releases with 3-D art. :(

So I didn't.

Then a couple more years pass...

I don't know if you've noticed, but 3-D artwork is on the rise. You can buy birthday cards that are so badass you want to hang them on your wall! And -- for whatever reason; maybe it was the release of the FRIDAY remake -- I started missing my single LP cover with Jason in 3-D... And then I started regretting not having bought a couple of those DVDs with the 3-D cases.

My reasoning was like this: These cases had badass, don't-need-glasses-to-see-it 3-D images, and they were GOOD! (The ones with the hokey mask had the striping of the fake Jason in Part V: A NEW BEGINNING, but at least the artists had the decency to change the striping from blue to red. And the images WERE GOOD!!!) By now, buying one of those DVDs JUST FOR THE COVER would cost me about the same as buying just the artwork would cost. I mean, I have 2 discs that I don't need, but...

So last night, when I checked out this new Walmart, I saw that they had my 2 favorite covers: PART 3 and PART IV: THE FINAL CHAPTER.

AND THEY WERE $7 EACH!!! :D

So I broke down and bought them.

Now, the particularly cool part is that PART 3 IS IN 3-D!!!

I mean, not REAL 3-D. it's in that anaglyph where they leave the images in color while still coloring each eye blue or red, which tends to render the image in close-to-black-and-white while also rendering a 3rd image that prevents a TRUE 3-D experience (rather than simply rendering the film in black-and-white and then coloring the different eyes, which would create a PERFECT 3-D experience, like they did back in the '50s), but still... Its sort of A version of the flick in 3-D.

So now, after I sign off, I am going to -- for the first time -- watch

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3 IN 3-D!!! :D

(Part 3 is the one where he gets the hockey mask, btw!)

Hope you have a PHENOMENAL weekend!!!

:D