If you're in Austin and you have no plans tonight, might I make some suggestions?

My friend (and one-time bedmate on an LCP trip) Trejo is starring in a very good play called Blue Surge at Hyde Park Theatre in Austin this weekend and next. It's one of those rare plays where the acting and the writing are both great and work in harmony to produce a tone that reaches the upper registers of "hmmmmm!"

Bonus? The play features Mical in a nude role. That's right. You get the full Lt. Dangle.

And if you want to see my lazy ass on stage, I'm part of a staged reading of a screenplay called "Digging Up Roots" at the Dougherty Arts Center tonight at 8.

A "Staged Reading" means that we have our scripts in our hands and that the blocking is kind of rudimentary -- don't expect a laser light show or memorized monologues. It's a work in progress, but a lot of the folks from LCP are in it with me and it's been fun to work with them on something that's not under-pressure sketch comedy.

Or you could just stay home and read Space Monkeys over and over again. Your choice.

The Space Monkeys are back with an all-new comic strip conveniently housed in the shell of a brand-new Terribly Happy entry. Go check it out, monkeyluvahs.

Is it just me or is the Condoleezza Rice stuff on TV way more interesting than anything going on at the movies this week? All right, fine. Maybe it's just me.

Movies!

The Alamo: This movie was called The Alamo and then they dropped the "The" so it was just Alamo and now it's The Alamo again. Regardless of the exact title, they want you to remember the shit out of this movie. They make it sound like you're going to see this movie and then 50 years later, on your deathbed, you'll be telling your family goodbye and a little tow-headed boy will come to your bedside and ask, "What do you remember most about your life, Pa-Papa?" and you're going to squint at him with your withered little dying eyes and croak, "Well, there was this film called The Alamo. My God. What a moviiiieeeeee... (death)." Well, not to deflate this clever marketing campaign, but it's not All That. It's maybe a little better than Half That. It's Somewhat That. It wasn't bad when I saw it at the premiere in San Antonio. It moves faster than you'd expect a bloated semi-fictional historical movie to be and there are some very good performances, namely Billy Bob Thornton and the multi-talented, multi-tanned Patrick Wilson. It's okay, ya know? Not a debacle by any means, and not a slam dunk either. It's very competent, almost exciting in parts. But do I think there's going to be tons of interest outside of Texas? I'm not Texan enough to think there will be. If you go see it, watch for my friend and former LCP member Elizabeth, who appears twice in brief scenes as Santa Anna's doe-eyed ho. I think I just attracted "Santa ho ho ho" google hits right then.

Ella Enchanted: I've completely missed the boat on these teen movies that are either based on Jane Austen novels, rooted in Shakespeare or that feature fairy godmothers and sort of do the Harry Potter Lite thing of magical modernism. Fuck all that shit. Teen movies should have parents leaving the country for a weekend, leading to a huge house party, and feature characters named "Booger" or "Turk." There should be a line item in the budget of the film for "Prop kegs" and a teen boy should score for the first time with a much older woman. That's a teen movie. This? This is My Little Pony: The Movie. And, movie critics? It disturbs me when you call an actress like Anne Hathaway, who was just recently posing as a teen princess in another movie, hot. She still looks about 16 going on 14. You make me think you're horny, dirty, dirty old men when you write like that, movie critics of America. Don't do that.

The Girl Next Door: All right, you can call Elisha Cuthbert hot, movie critics. I know you want to. I can't quite get past her character Kim's idiocy on 24, but sure, she's hot, whatever. Because in this film she's playing a former porn star (or a current porn star? I can't quite figure it out from the non-sensical, but musically sound trailers featuring The Darkness), but she's meant to be a sex object here, so drool all you want, Eberts. This film is getting surprisingly good reviews and favorable comparisons to Risky Business, a teen film that featured breasts, "Booger"-like characters and an awesome car falling off a pier. I miss the heyday of good teen movies.

Good Bye, Lenin!: That's a great title. You can imagine it, tucked on the DVD shelf next to, Cheer Up, Hitler!, and Don't Cry, Mussolini! It's actually a German comedy about an East German woman who slips into a coma right before the Berlin Wall falls and then when she comes out of it, her son pretends that nothing has changed. It's a film about how capitalism ain't much better than socialism and how Burger King is way worse than standing in line for toilet paper. I'm not sure I disagree with that, but in the spirit of the film's message, I suggest you keep your money and sneak into a screening for this instead of paying for it.

Intermission: Da, Irish, raise a pint, blarney! Yeah. Whatever. Next!

Johnson Family Vacation: I had high hopes (fine, low-to-medium hopes) that this film would be funny because I think Cedric is genuinely Entertaining (his sketch TV show was vastly underrated and I watched almost every episode, even when it got stale and repeated the same stuff every week) and he's great in the Barbershop films. Plus, Chevy Chase going batshit and alienating everyone in Hollywood has left a Griswold Vacation void in American cinema. Judging from the scathing reviews for this film so far, it's neither funny nor particularly effective at bottling and marketing Cedric as an entertainment commodity. Apparently, it can't hold Vacation's Johnson.

Secret Things: When I hear about movies like this, which are both erotic (in ways that would make Ron Jeremy blush) and actually good, I get really annoyed because Americans can't make good erotic movies. (I mean, outside of porn. Calm down, Ebert.) Our movies are either way too puritanical or they end up being Cinemax dumb-shit smut. We don't make intelligent erotic films and when we do, they end up feeling as cold as the end of an ice sculpture dildo. (Eyes Wide Shut? God, I wish they had been.) French filmmakers have figured out how to make very sexual, very Important Seeming films that break all the rules but don't come off as pompous or sexual just for sexuality's sake (even when they are). This film is about two women who decide to fuck their way through a bank and then meet their match when some Mickey Rourke dude turns out to be even dirtier than the two of them. If it were an American film, the guy would be played by Michael Douglas or some other elderly blowhard and they'd cut out all the sex and market it as a "Romantic Thriller." It would be awful.

The Whole Ten Yards: I usually remember every movie I've seen in one way or another, and I have seen The Whole Nine Yards, but it was so whispy and forgettable and lame that all I remember is thinking, "Who's this Amanda Peet lady and why is she both skanky and almost-attractive at the same time?" The smirk factor (Bruce Willis; Matthew Perry) is high on this one, and it's also got Kevin Pollack shameless mugging his way through another high-larious (except not) supporting role. If it were a choice between seeing this movie and having an elective medical procedure done, I'd start looking in the yellow pages for a good tonsil surgeon.

DVDs: I'm watching a Weezer compilation that was gifted to me by some good friends as well as the Simpsons Season Two set and a few other odds and ends. I may try to watch Love Actually. I'm a little frightened of this.

Here's my DVD review of The Matrix Revolutions. I can't believe I spent such a huge chunk of my birthday weekend watching it.

A few weeks ago, I did a DVD review of Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat, but it's no longer on the site. I was thrilled, though, that they let me write a 7-word review. Here is the review, reprinted in its entirety:

They should have stopped with The Grinch.

Great news on the astro-simian front: The new Space Monkeys comic is complete. I'll have it up late tonight/early tomorrow.

L'il Floaty Omie Head goes to the world premiere of The Alamo and walks on the endless yellow carpet.

Some food descriptions were edited out, making the ending read a little softer than it read originally, but eh. You get the idea.

We have some photos that we took that I need to scan in, but they're stranded in San Antonio for the time being. I'll try to post them here this weekend.

I keep forgetting to link to things I write for work, but here's one of them: a short review of Unreal Tournament 2004. I've got a Matrix: Revolutions DVD review coming up too; I'll link to that when it's up.

If this were one of those blogs where I just linked to things in every entry and said stuff like, "Go find out which Harry Potter character you are!" I'd probably end up linking to Penny Arcade thrice weekly.

But I restrain myself, and it takes absolutely all of my strength and resolve. Sometimes, it even takes Resolve™-brand cleaner.

The emergence of the purely nonsensical characters of Twisp and Catsby, however, has caused my brother and I no small measure of glee and perplexityationing. The latest Twisp and Catsby reveals an unforseen Twis(p)t: Catsby is actually the tiny demon and Twisp is the cat. GENIUS!

Someday, when we actually put out a comic more than once every two months, I hope we can be that silly and random.

I'm not one of those crazy Internet site people who keeps obsessive track of their hits and referrals, but check this shit out: Since about 3:44 p.m. Saturday, I've been getting an excess of hits. Not like a huge slashdot surge or anything, but a lot more than usual for a weekend, and a steady amount since then even though I haven't done any big updates this week or posted on DamnHellAssKings. So what's the deal?

My fantasy is that there's an island somewhere in the Pacific where they worship a king or a God or a GodKing named Omar G. ("Praise be to Omar G.," they might say) and there was some sort of natural disaster that forced them all to evacuate the island and find new homes in the urban wasteland of the west.

So these former islanders, now forced to wear actual shoes and drink coffee instead of warm coconut juice and who get cramps in their back from sitting in shitty office chairs all day decide to try to contact each other online, using their new Net skills. It's the one-year anniversary of the island disaster and they're all feeling a little lonely and dislocated (who doesn't in an office job?) and pretty soon, they're all googling for "Omar G." and "happy times" and "birthday" and "one-year anniversary" and somehow, they all end up here.

So, welcome islanders. Please stay awhile. Make yourselves at home.

Just call me "GodKing."

The "Dollar Dance" entry originally posted on Pineapple Girl's wedding blog is now a full-blown entry.

Also, a new front page and coming soon (hopefully later this week): a brand-new Space Monkeys.

Life is good, no?

It's just past midnight and I just got my first birthday e-mail.

Somebody's offering me some V*I*A*G*R*A!

You guys rule.