Hobgoblin’s “Special” Ability

Do you remember The Hobgoblin? He was a mysterious Spider-Man villain of the ’80s, a spin-off, if you will, of the classic Green Goblin character. Comic Book Resources’ Legends Revealed column this week looks at The Hobgoblin, and includes this amazing image:

I don’t remember much of this character, but at least now I know his superpower: goblin farts. You can tell what it is by the looks on the dudes’ faces behind him. Heinous!

Captain America: The Movie

Thanks to these images leaked from the set of Marvel Studios’ production of Captain America: The First Avenger, here’s what we know about the film.

1. It takes place in England, and involves a guy wearing an American flag as a costume. At some point, he’ll probably say  “Oh, you mean soccer.”

2. Captain America is small and kind of pudgy.

3. His motorcycle has all kinds of extra crap on it, like water bottles and … tubes.

4. I thought Chris Evans did his own stunts. Evidently, that scene in The Fantastic Four where he stunt-jumped a dirtbike and burst into flames was special effects. Bummer.

5. In this movie, Captain America isn’t fighting Nazis. He’s fighting Cobra.

The Dating Game, Canadian Style

Darleen just couldn’t make up her mind between Jean-Guy, Scotty and Big Al, so she went for the tried-and-true Stroke My Piglet test. Scotty won, but mostly because his T-shirt kind of turned her on.

It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! It’s … Clint Eastwood

So, here’s Clint Eastwood, lounging around in the early ’70s. He gets a phone call from his agent: “Clint, baby, the Broccolis want you to take over for Connery as James Bond.”

Clint: “Don’t call me ‘Baby,’”

Agent: “Sure, okay, but —“

Clint: “And what the hell is a Broccoli?”

Agent: “They’re the producers of the Bond movies.”

Clint: “Bond’s a pansy. Connery wears a wig, for Christ’s sake. Pass.”

A few years go by …

Agent: “Clint, they want you for Superman.”

Clint: “Are you joking? Do I look like I want to wear tights and fly around?”

Agent: “But it’s big! It’s huge! Gene Hackman is in it!”

Clint: “Tell them to call Connery.”

This actually happened, as reported today by Movieline.com. I’m trying to picture a parallel world where Clint Eastwood played Bond in Live and Let Die, or Superman in the first movie. And I can’t do it. It’s just wrong. While Daniel Craig would later adopt a Dirty Harry style for his take on Bond, the time was not right in the early ’70s.

And as for Superman … actually, I’d like to see Clint take the part of Batman in a film version of The Dark Knight Returns. That’d be sweet.

Strangest of all: Clint tells Movieline he would have jumped, or, well, swam at the chance to play Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner. “That’s the one I always liked. I had all of those comics when I was a kid,” he said.

It’s A Boy! And A Girl! And Another Boy!

I’ve been slacking off with regard to my onlinery of late. I have an excuse: my three children have come to live with me full-time. This is a big adjustment for all of us, but it’s the best thing for all parties concerned. However, it has eaten into my hobby time; sorry about that. The podcasts will be back on track soon, and I should have some new things for you here and at the other Weather Stations.

Meanwhile, I should also point out that today is the second anniversary of operations at this particular web address. It was two years ago that I migrated away from a failed version of the Weather Station at a blogging site that shall remain nameless and landed here, where I toil for the amusement of all five of my readers, and also you.

Thanks for tuning in, folks.

p.s. The most popular article on this site remains the Killer Power Ranger. No. 2 is the naked porno teachers in England, and No. 3 is the Turds of Misery. In fact, the Turds got me on Chicago’s nightly news. That’s blog power, baby.

Plugging In

So here’s the current state of the Weather Station computer systems.

1. iMac G5, my workhorse, is starting to fade. I have that blue line on the monitor, and the fan is getting louder and louder. Now that my financial circumstances have changed, I believe I will treat myself to a new iMac by the end of the year. I like that big 27-incher, but I’ll probably go with the 21.5.

2. Power Mac G4, my new audio unit. The noisy iMac is no good good for recording audio, so I bought today a banged-up Power Mac tower. It’s that odd blue-grey colour they came out with between the green version and the silver model. So far, so good; I have it hooked up to a 17-inch flatpanel, and it’s a quick, basic machine; once I add some of this RAM that seems to be lying around my lab, I’ll have it humming.. Just right for Cubase, MixPad, Levelator, Audacity and GarageBand. Plus, its hard drive had a few hundred songs on it, mostly classic American rock and the Arctic Monkeys.

3. The Netbook. My Compaq goes where I go, and is a quick, snappy way to get online, write, edit photos or even record field audio. Heck of a gizmo; I can’t remember what it was like to not have it.

4. The Vista PC. Another Compaq, this one now lives upstairs in Mrs. Weathereye’s newly equipped home office. I still have my iPod synched to it because I haven’t had time to manually move 100 gb of music down to the basement. I plan to devote the G4 to my music files.

5. The Old Man: my 2002-ish Compaq Evo laptop remains a trusty, battle-ready laptop; right now it’s set up with an emulator and my kids use it for old Sega Genesis and arcade games. Still my favourite Windows computer, ever.

6. The Fat Little iMac: I bought this today for twenty bucks; it’s an early-generation iMac, Bondi blue, with a 6 gig hard drive, running OS 9. I haven’t played with OS 9 in years, and I’m having fun with this lightning-quick little computer. Eventually, I’ll probably make it into a fishtank.

7. The Other Compaq: My son has a Windows XP machine in his room. It has trouble accessing our wireless network, so it doesn’t get a lot of use, but it’s a solid, basic home computer.

8. The Graveyard: my workshop is full of monitors, keyboards and assorted parts from a variety of old computers. I’m working on a robot, hopefully one that transforms into a tank.