Dudes in blue shirts with white collars...

I know it says pop culture reviews in the description of this site but I'm gonna go ahead and, on occasion review people, mainly people that annoy me of course.  

First on my list are dudes that wear blue shirts with white collars (hereafter referred to as BSWWC), I hate these guys.  Now, I completely understand that my hatred of men in BSWWC is mainly a personal thing and, possibly, it means that I am insane but I just can't shake it.  Every guy I see wearing one of these shirts comes off to me as an overconfident, greasy haired, slickster.  Maybe it is wrong of me to assign personal characteristics based on the shirt you wear but maybe you should stop trying to dress like Donald fucking Trump.  You look like an asshole and I'm going to just assume that this is the case.  

In all honestly I should be thankful for guys in BSWWC as it is a sure sign of who to avoid, much like animals in the wild will avoid a brightly colored spider, I am able pick my way through a crowd of assholes by looking for their distinguishing characteristics: leather jackets, BSWWC, pleated pants and so forth.

I guess I don't have much else to say about this but I also would like to point out that, just a moment ago I was looking around on the internet for a picture of dude in BSWWC to post here and, on a whim, typed in to Google "blue shirt white collar asshole" and sure enough found several other people making very similar comments to the ones I just typed.  To be honest, this sort of takes the wind out of my sails as I lost my enthusiasm for writing what has already been written many times but it also reassures me that others out there in the wilderness are aware of these tools.

New Ways to Die 1 - 3, Amazing Spider-Man

In the monthly Amazing Spider-Man the character Peter Parker has (relatively) recently gone through some major changes.  As a result of a story which was far too convoluted and terrible to convey here he is basically back to his traditionally normal status quo of the 60's, 70's and into the 80's.  This means that his marriage to Mary Jane has disappeared, friends that had died are back and generally most every change made in the last 20 years is out the window.  If you ask me, this is a good change even if it took some really poor writing to get here.  Also gone is writer J. Michael Straczynski which is a good thing as I never warmed up to his writing at all.

The latest story which has been coming out weekly for the last 3 weeks is New Ways to Die, it is the first major story published since the "reset" and so far I'm really enjoying it.  Written by Dan Slott with art by the John Romita Jr. (who is the greatest Spider-Man artist of all time in my opinion) this story reintroduces Spidey to Norman Osborne and Venom both of whom over the last year or so have become "good guys" themselves as members of The Thunderbolts who track down unregistered heros.  Of course Spider-Man is an unregistered hero and therein lies the conflict.  It's a very traditional ASM story where Parker is fighting the good fight while losing the public relations battle but is written with a very modern style.  The art is fantastic as is always the case with JR Jr. so I would say, if you are into super-hero comics at all this is highly recommended (at least for the life of this story and hopefully past that.)

Excellent!! Now let's make some LSD.

I just finished watching episode one of the new Fox series Fringe and I have to say I was impressed.  The story was a good mix of horror and science fiction and was along the lines of other J.J Abrams success stories like Lost and Alias.  This first episode was catchy and I'm sure will be popular but I hope it can keep up the momentum and that the story keeps moving.  Abrams' other shows thus far have always hooked me right away but I have yet to stick one out for the long haul as it always feels to me after just a few weeks that's it all just filler.

The set up is a good one, closer to Alias than Lost, in that it involves a group of people working together against a big bad guy.  In this case it looks, so far, like the antagonist will be a large corporation, Massive Dynamics, but I'm sure that will change several times throughout the season.  I really enjoyed Alias for quite some time as I found the soap opera and comedic elements blended well with some of the best action on TV at the time and this looks like it could offer similar opportunities.  My hope is that it won't get too bogged in the larger story right away and is more free just to show us smaller stories in the way X-Files did for years.

All in all the first episode was a lot of fun and I am cautiously optimistic about the series in the long run.

Plus, it's got Daniels from The Wire and that guy is awesome!

I was downtown St. Paul today... (more pics)

A few more pictures that I took.  

I was downtown St. Paul today...

I took a few pictures while there.  There were TONS of riot police completely surrounding these people that were protesting.  From everything I witnessed it was a peaceful protest despite the fact the Fox News reporter pictured below seemed to be implying there was some sort of dangerous environment there.