Check it:

This week's big Entertainment Weekly fall preview, which I was digging through in researching this John Ritter appreciation piece.

From the "8 Simple Rules," Returning Shows description:

Be afraid John Ritter.
"We've earned the right to go some darker places," says creator Tracy Gamble. "I would like our characters to become more real and bleed more."

Gah. Stop being the doomsayers of death, EW.

I'm writing a Ritter piece for the paper (beware what you unintentionally volunteer for), but I also have something that ran in today's paper.

It's a piece about pitching video games that I quite like, mostly because I had to write it in addition to my editing duties, so it caused no small amount of stress in my life this week, but ultimately got done and ... whew. I get a headache just thinking about it. But there ya go. I'll let you know when the Ritter thing appears

I'd already read this morning that Johnny Cash died, and as sad as it was, it wasn't completely unexpected given his health problems lately. (Plus, I'm convinced his wife's death in June had something to do with it. Ever notice how long-time married couples tend to go one right after the other in short proximity if they don't die together in an accident?

But John Ritter? John fucking Ritter!? Who saw that one coming? Man. This is sad. Very sad.

About every other day, we get a newsroom-wide e-mail about the status of the microfilm machine in the library.

It's broken. It's been fixed. It broke down again. The repairman is coming tomorrow. That sort of thing.

I've become emotionally attached to this microfilm machine that I've never used or seen. For me, it's become like a good mini-series, maybe starring Richard Chamberlain. I expect to get a message soon that the microfilm machine is running away to Sao Paolo with the Epson fax/copier in a forbidden affair that will bring down the office supply partriarchy in scandal.

Perhaps I think too much.

American Splendor: MAN, I want to see this. I read a big omnibus edition of the American Splendor comics in college and I loved it. In fact, I don't know where my copy ended up -- I imagine it's sitting in a box in my garage. But it was a great contrast to the required reading of graphic novels like The Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns to read these everyday stories about this guy I'd never heard of. Paul Giamatti has yet to disappoint me in any role he's played (he was even funny in the awful crap that was Big Fat Liar). The only thing I'm worried about now is whether this movie's already been overhyped. Regardless, I plan to check it out this weekend.

Cabin Fever: This movie was getting a lot of film festival buzz, and then it's kind of died down, unlike 28 Days Later, which was riding an enormous crest of anticipation right before its U.S. release. They really want this to be The Blair Witch Project, but I have a feeling it's just not going to live up to expectations. Still, halfway decent horror movies are rare and Freddy Vs. Jason did great. But I'm guessing the testosterone movie dollar this weekend is going to go to Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Derrida: Never heard of him. This movie would have had a much better chance with me if they had called it Dorito. Next.

The Magdalene Sisters: Let me get this straight. I'm going to pay money, actual American dollars, to sit in a theater and watch wrongly accused women scrub floors and get abused within the Catholic church system? Were there no little boys available? If this were in a prison, wouldn't it be called Caged Heat? And the only possible happy ending is that they don't die and get to go outside? Tell you what. You go see that. I'll meet you after I get out of American Splendor.

Matchstick Men: They made a big mistake not releasing this last week when its only competition would have been Dickie Roberts. It's going to get completely buried, which is a shame because Ridley Scott is always at least interesting as a director and this movie has been getting decent-to-great reviews. Sorry Nicholas. But we loved you in Adaptation.

No Good Deed: Another movie burial. No press, no screenings. They didn't even keep the original name of the movie. What the Hell is happening to Samuel L. Jackson's career? He'll make a well-received, successful movie (Changing Lanes, which is good, I don't care what you say, S.W.A.T.) and alternate it with completely invisible crap that people won't remember two weeks after release (I was going to put some titles here, but I can't remember them either). Sam. Slow down. Damn. Give Quentin a call.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico: Okay, now we're talking. I saw this last night and it's great. Maybe it's because Robert Rodriguez was there and he was so cool, talking about how much he loves Austin and how he pulled so much off in just seven weeks. Robert Rodriguez should just go to every theater in the country that shows this because you get so much out of hearing him talk about the movie and how he made it (of course, you'll hear all this when the DVD comes out eventually). He was just so thrilled and jazzed to have people watching his movie (they clapped and hooted after a lot of scenes), his enthusiasm was infectious. The plot doesn't make a ton of sense, and according to him, so much of the film script was improvised on the spot, (as were props, costumes, even actors — they'd just grab whoever was available, which explains why a lot of the movie is in Spanish and subtitled since they shot in Mexico) that you can't help but feel some sloppiness in the story. But the action delivers, the movie looks gorgeous (we saw it projected digitally and it was just completely flawless, visually) and Johnny Depp is the coolest man alive. He just completely steals the movie, just like he did Pirates. You will love him. I have no idea if I like this movie so much because of how I saw it (and with Rodriguez giving out prizes to people who asked questions after the movie), but he's done with about $29 million and seven weeks of shooting what Hollywood can't do with $120 million and a year. The guy scores the music in his damn garage. What more do you want? Go see it. It's really, really fun.

On DVD: Still working through Alias -- Season One, which is just insanely great and entertaining. Probably won't have much time to watch anything else this weekend.

Right now I'm very, VERY pissed that none of you told me there's a movie called Sweet Sweetback's Baaad Asssss Song.

How did you expect me to go through life without that knowledge?

Oooh, Blogger just updated its software. I'm liking this "Upload File" feature.

So Pineapple Girl is someone who you won't hear from for weeks and then she comes out of the blue with an idea to do something and you're like, "FUCK! Brilliant!" and of course you have to go along with it because she's three country-style barrels of fun.

She just had an idea for something that sounds so fun, I'm likely to burst. I'll keep you posted if we actually do it. Damn. Fun.

And in case you haven't heard, Pamie's got a blog and stee is back so bitches and playa' haters are cowering the world over.

Tonight I'm going to a screening of Once Upon a Time in Mexico at Ye Grande Paramount, the lovely downtown theater. I bitch a lot, especially lately, but things are really kinda cool today. Perhaps I was too harsh about this thing called life.

The laptop is back in daddy's arms after an extended stay at The Shop. The guy there is really smart and really good; I mean, he didn't have anything to do with my warranty expiring or shit going out of whack on the system board.

He even gave me a little helpful advice -- apparently, he figured out that a beverage of some sort had spilled very close to the network ports. He said he didn't think that caused the system problem, but that I might want to be more careful with sodas in the future.

I was appropriately shamed, but that's a good thing; it's like going to the vet and he gives you a dirty look when he finds out what kind of cat food you feed your cat because you're not willing to spend an extra $2 a bag for the IAMS. It means he cares.

Now I need to re-install about a year and a half worth of software, Word and Final Draft files. And here I thought I was going to go to the gym tonight.

Seriously, this spam thing is getting out of hand. I'm getting a bounced e-mail every two minutes now from multiple AOL addresses saying someone from terribly-happy.com spammed them.

The one address that keeps coming up is this: rly-xh04.mx.aol.com as a relay.

Anybody know how to track a spammer down and do something about it? I tried sending some headers to abuse@aol.com, but I imagine they won't get to it for another week. Any Internet detectives out there wanna help a brother out?

Pop Culture Omar returns with another XLent Blog entry.

I do really like that headline, though. Reporters/writers at newspapers typically don't write their own headlines (I sure don't), so sometimes you see a bemused reporter answering an angry call from a reader who thinks the headline was wrong or misleading. He didn't write it.

That's all for now. Today's going to be a busy day.

Some jockknocker used my domain name as a reply-to on a spam sent out, apparently, to every current AOL member and several hundred who don't exist anymore. So since late last night, I've been deleting bounced e-mails that I never sent with wacky subject lines like "Now viagra promise kept sasdfa sfilj!! ADV ADV"

Now I'm afraid that AOL is going to block off my domain as a spam-producer and refuse to deliver any future Notify List e-mails I send.

Beware the spam jockknocker.

I think in the lifespan of every blog or online journal, there comes a time when the writer will sit in his little hot office, stare up the wall clock, look back at the screen and think hopelessly, "What would Doogie Howser write?"

This is such a moment

The weekend got worse and then it got a lot better.

I'm not sure why I put so much pressure on myself to be in a good mood. Sometimes you're not, you know, but when I feel stressed or trapped or unwilling to find something fun to do, really fun, I blame myself for being uninteresting and unadventurous.

I'm not sure why I do that, but I'm working on it -- typical trait of mine, not being able to sit still or enjoy inactivity.

How was your weekend? I fixed a fence. Well, me and my dad did. I was so thrilled that we actually pulled it off that I plan to post photos. Fence mending. Now there's a positive-sounding weekend activity if I ever heard one.