Happy National Gorilla Suit Day, everyone. Sadly, I must go to class, and my school doesn’t allow for celebration of this most sacred of holidays…

…commies.

Click the title of the post for more information on National Gorilla Suit Day.

Anyone who knows me is aware that I am, by all accounts, a super-DC Comics nerd. For those of you who aren’t as nerdy as I am, and that’s pretty damn nerdy, DC Comics is the publisher for comics like “The Flash,” “Green Lantern,” “Green Arrow,” and some other no-name properties like “Batman,” “Superman,” and “Wonder Woman.”

Anyway, about 20 years ago (when I was but a wee lad), DC did what is generally considered the first major comics crossover, an act that is done so often in today’s comics that it’s usually just boring. This crossover, Crisis On Infinite Earths, written by Marv Wolfman with art by George Perez on pencils, featuring Dick Giordano and Jerry Ordway on inks, was a landmark in the fact that (A) it was the first of it’s kind, which I already mentioned, and (B) it consolidated what was the DC-”Multiverse” down to one planet. For a background on this multiple-Earth craziness, check out Scott Tipton’s always informative Comics 101 on MoviePoopShoot.com, with an article on the multiverse here and the article on Crisis here.

Well, with the 20th Anniversary of Crisis upon us, DC decided that it should mark the occasion in a big way. In fact, they decided to mark it about 2 years ago, when Geoff Johns, Jeph Loeb, Greg Rucka, Gail Simone, and some other writers who’s names escape me at the moment, started laying out the groundwork for what was to be Infinite Crisis, a 7-part series written by Johns that would serve to streamline the DC Universe for the next 20 years.

To some of the older fans, some of what was done to various characters in the DCU was blasphemy: Max Lord, once a kinda slimey-but-lovable rich guy, became the head of a covert Government operation, CHECKMATE, and had in his possession a spy satellite called Brother I (that’s “I” like “eye,” not roman numeral “1″), which not only collected information on every metahuman in the DCU, but also controled the OMACs, kinda-sorta robot soldiers that could go toe-to-toe with Superman and get out alive. Oh, and Max Lord, who once ran the Justice League, shot his former JL associate, Blue Beetle, in the head, after Beetle figured out what was going on. For the whole story, go pick up a copy of The OMAC Project in trade paperback. Hit up Villains United and the far-from-all-ages Identity Crisis while you’re at it. They’re awesome. Rann-Thanagar War and Day of Vengance, the other two titles that led to Infinite Crisis? Not so much.

This was an affront, in some fans eyes, to the more “fun” days of the Justice League from the 80’s, an era that they had great affection for. Personally, I kinda found the issues I’ve read of it kinda lame, and the Formerly Known As Justice League! reunion series to be pathetic. I’m sure some writer still had some good Blue Beetle stories left in him, or had some awesome idea for Max Lord, but, really, after reading those older stories, they woulda sucked. Because the characters were kinda dumb by the time the writer of the aforementioned series, Keith Giffen, was done with them.

Anyway, getting back on track, Infinite Crisis is currently at issue 4, and, if you have even a passing interest in comics, I recommend you catch up. It’s amazing, a series I cannot wait for every month.

And, once it’s done (actually, after issue 5, I think), the entire DCU will be jumping ahead a year, giving new readers a shot to jump into the comics game, and gives the writers room to do new things with previously stagnant characters.

Which brings me to why I currently hate DC Comics. They’re too damn good. As of March, check out the lineup:

• SUPERMAN: Written by Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek, two of my favorite writers in comics. I will be getting this.
• BATMAN: Detective Comics will be written by Paul Dini, one of the people behind Batman: The Animated Series. Awesomeness to follow.
• GREEN LANTERN: Still with Geoff Johns. He could write The Phonebook of the DC Universe, and I’d buy it.
• 52: A project that will come out weekly, giving us the story of what happens after Infinite Crisis and before One Year Later. I’m there.
• FLASH: Written by the guys who brought us the fairly awesome TV Show. Nifty.

Yeah, and there’s others, I just don’t want it documented how much I may very well be spending on all this. So, DC Comics will now get all my money.

Thanks, guys. Thanks bunches.

I’m kinda weird, I’ll admit it. I’ll redesign site after site and, after the 4,000th go at it, I’ll finally be happy, and promptly not update the damn thing. Take here, for example… we all see how often I update on here. By “We All,” I mean the two of you who haven’t lost total interest in this. Which, as far as I can tell, is my Dad and some guy from Souix City, Iowa.

But, you know, every so often, things just line up and you get tired of paying money every month to host these sites and not do a damn thing with ‘em, so I am. Really.

The sites in question are, naturally, eDTheMusical.com (”Now In It’s 47th Redesign!”), and Lame-Ass.net (”Where Good Comedy Goes To Die”). Here’s what’s the deal:

• eDTheMusical.com:
  Basically, I’m gonna update this damn thing, whether I have something to say or not. I’ve been trying to hold myself to the standard of “If you ain’t got nothin’ goin’, shut up,” but, see, that’s been the downfall of this site. And the exact opposite philosophy has made other blogs explode into pop-culture legend, which is where I deserve to be. Since I’m awesome. Ask my Mom, she’ll tell ya.
• Lame-Ass.net:
  Kraft and I now both have camcorders. We both do crazy things. We got a whole lotta sketches ready to be shot, and, as soon as their edited, they’ll be going up. This one isn’t going to be updated as often as eTM will be, but that’s ’cause the content takes a lot more thought and time than eTM does. Watch this space for details on updates and whatnot.

That’s basically the idea that I’m going with. If you have any suggestions for topics to be covered at either site, drop me a line at requests (a) lame-ass.net or requests (a) edthemusical.com, depending on which site you wanna see the stuff on. Just change the “(a)” to an “at” symbol. Or else I won’t get ‘em.

I was just reading some stuff on Yahoo! Answers, and came across a piece that just reeks of unwashed “fanboy”…

Who would win in a fight: Batman, Superman, or Spider-Man?

This question, like most other “Who would win in a fight” questions, is stupid, because there is no rational way that they would begin a battle, let alone get far enough that there would be a clear victor, since they would realize that some stupid misunderstanding caused them to go to blows, and thus they team-up to beat mystery villain team #362, which, given the general IQ of most people that would even write this trash, would be Killer Croc, Toyman, and Typeface. Yes, Typeface is an actual Spider-Man villain. I am not making that up.

Anyway, most people said the obvious answer: “Batman, ’cause he’s a human who is super-trained and doesn’t need powerz! Batman roxxxxxx!!”

This answer is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, right behind “Batman would throw(!) kryptonite at Superman, taking him out of the fight.” Point 1: Superman could dodge a kryptonite-throw. This isn’t the George Reeves series where bullets bounce off of him, but a thrown handgun is terrifying; let’s talk about the real Superman, thank you kindly. Point 2: Kryptonite isn’t the be-all and end-all of the Superman universe that everyone thinks it is. Yes, it hurts him. Yes, it can kill him. But it takes a slightly longer exposure to it to make him completely powerless than a piece of it in the area. Take Superman/Batman #1, for instance. Superman was shot with a kryptonite bullet by Metallo… it was embedded in his skin, and yet he didn’t die. He wasn’t powerless, either… he could still rip a grate, that would electrocute a human on impact, outta the wall, and still move.

We can all see where this essay is going, can’t we? I’m gonna figure out a way for all three of these guys to fight, without it being some stupid “Hey, I guess you didn’t steal my Eggo! Let’s go kick Gorilla Grodd’s ass!” situation (yes, it’ll be a lame excuse for a fight, but it’ll be better than usual, I hope), give you the rundown on how the winner won, and have it make sense in the continuity of the character’s individual comics.

Before we begin, I want to clearly define the characters, since they are all currently going through some form of change in each of their individual series. If you are not a comic nerd, or just know the characters from their movies, feel free to skip this… I’ll let you know when to come back.

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For the past few weeks/months, I’ve been having some trouble: my laptop was going straight to hell (or Jersey, whichever), the keyboard for my Mac/Desktop was shot (hard to write anything without the letter “m”), and I couldn’t update this since I couldn’t decide what to do: reformat my hard drive, just install Mac OS X on the laptop (with the developer version for an x86 processor that I could get my hands on), or, you know, let the site languish until I decided to stop being a goon and try this blogging thing again.

Well, as it turned out, I just reformatted my hard drive on the laptop, with the intention of, at some point, getting the Mac OS on it. Problem is, the only two things I really wanted from the Mac OS was the dock (which beats the pants out of the taskbar), and the iLife suite (iTunes, iPhoto, iDoSomethingElse, Garage Band and iDVD). But, see, software support for Macs is limited, since they only hold about 5% of the market share, and, as an added bonus, Mac software costs about 1 gajillion times what PC software does. How in the hell was I to get around all this?

Answer: make your own iLife suite, and get a program that simulates the dock.

Making my own iLife suite was fairly easy, although the fact that iLife comes with every Mac and some of the stuff you have to pay for on PC is kinda a bummer. But, hey, anything with computers comes with a financial risk, so I just jumped on.

The programs I’m using for my iLife Knockoff are:

• For iPhoto, I’m using Picasa 2, by Google. By far the best photo-organization/basic editing software that money can’t buy, since it’s free.
• For iTunes, I’m using iTunes. Why mess with a good thing, especially when it’s also free?
• For iDVD and their Moviemaker, I’m using Adobe Premiere Elements. Yes, it costs money, but it’s far less expensive than what I wanted to use…
• For Garage Band, I will be using Sony SonicForge and Acid. I would go all the way with Vegas+DVD for video editing, but, you know, Adobe was cheaper. These are the last two pieces of software I need to buy before my task is complete.

Now, for the dock, you can find a few programs: MobyDock, which sucks. Aqua, which also sucks. But, just as I was about to give up on the whole idea, I came across ObjectDock, which, if you were to click the title of this post, it’d bring you to their website.

ObjectDock comes in two versions, the free one, which does almost everything, and one for $19.95, which adds support for multiple monitors, tabbed docks, system tray support, and some other stuff. I, of course, went with the free one, because I’m nothing if not cheaper than dirt.

This is, by far, the closest dock to the one in OS X, by way of look, feel, and ease of use, that I have come across. Adding and deleting icons from it is a breeze, it looks swank, and doesn’t use up all the graphics memory that MobyDock, in particular, did.

So, if you wanna get a feel for what OS X would kinda be like, this is the way to do it. And when the new Intel-based Macs come out, then you can go buy one… since, and I can tell you this from a former Apple-hater, it is so much better than a PC. But the comparisons will be something for another blog.

For a screenshot of what it looks like, all put together, click here.