My head hasn't exactly been in the game since for the last two weeks TiVo's primary job in my household has been to record re-runs of Beavis & Butt-head. Good God, I wish that show was still on. Heh. Heh heh. I said "Job."

MOVIES! Only three!

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Those of you who aren't into the Harry Potter books may wonder, "What? Another fucking Harry Potter movie? And what's an 'Azkaban?' " Azkaban is wizard for "Hormones" and in this third film, Harry should be a slave to them, these dark loinal urges. Unfortunately, the book's crush Cho Chang fails to make an appearance in this movie, Harry mostly stands around and looks vaguely hurt throughout (when he isn't beaming) and except for a very clever and slyly adult opening scene, there's not a lot for Harry to get lustful about. I guess they're saving that for the fourth movie. I saw this film about two weeks ago and did really like it. It's much better than the first two movies, although adult viewers will tell you that's not exactly high praise from Wizard's Hill. The first two movies, though nice to look at, were stiff and literal. The subtext throughout was, "Whimsy, motherfuckers! Be awed by our wonder and fake snow, you little shits!" You kind of felt like your arm was being twisted by angry pixies. New director Alfonso Cuarón (¡Horale!) manages the crazy-difficult feat of making the film look and feel more sophisticated while also more spontanteous and fun. He's also a lot better with the actors than Chris "Mrs. Doubtfire" Columbus. It's a good movie, though to be absolutely fair, I gotta say the movie drags in the last third and the reveal in the Whomping Willow (again, I'm preaching to the Harry fans here) is a lot sillier on screen than it was in print.

The Agronomist: For the months leading up to this week, I was calling this movie "The Argonomist" and I was puzzled as to why a filmmaker such as Jonathan Demme would devote so much time to making a documentary about someone obsessed with Element 18 on the periodic table. Why not The Tunstenemist or The Pyriteologist? Turns out Argonomist is a man of the Earth, a sea salty man who was a Haitian journalist and radio personality. I can only imagine (because I probably won't see the film, which has gotten mid-to-okay reviews) how difficult it must be to be an Agronomist (Hell, it's hard even to spell) in Haiti. Here I am in Austin bitching about how my work chair isn't an Aeron, while in Haiti, you're lucky to file a story about a bake-off without getting your fucking arm shot off. Just call me The Aeronomist.

The Saddest Music in the World: This is a film by Canadian Guy Maddin, who has some crazy screw loose in his brain that tells him, "Go make a weird-ass movie in black and white that looks like it was made in the '30s. Hell, put a Japanese Dracula up in there." His previous movie Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary did indeed have such an Eastern-flavored Drac as well as, you would think, a virgin and some pages from a diary. It also had ballet and crazy-beautiful black and white photography. This new movie has something even better than Japan-Drac: Isabella Rossellini. Is there a straight man among us who is not in love with this woman? Yow. I'd watch her in crappy, low-reception VHS-quality washed out color, never mind gorgeous, big-screen B&W. She plays a woman with no legs (oh, where are you David Lynch?) who ends up with beer-filled prosthetic legs. You had me at "No legs," Guy Maddin. How I love you, you crazy-ass Canadian fruit.

DVDS: I'm not hopeful that I'll get very far into Monk: Season One given that I'm still 2/3rds of the way through Alias: Season One, but I sure will try. Also, Master & Commander has not yet sailed and we kinda sorta want to see what will probably be a mushy mess, Love Actually. We're kind of a silly married couple that way. Did I mention City of God last week? For the love of all that is holy and tasty, rent or buy this DVD.

L'il Floaty Omie Head discovers a 1997 issue of "Entertainment Weekly" in the garage highlighting the 50 funniest people alive. Wait, didn't they do that again this year?

The differences will astound you. ASTOUND!

The new (third) edition of SPACE MONKEYS! is up and ready for your comic-reading pleasure. We like these monkeys, my brother and I do, and we hope there'll be many more monkey adventures (with or without zombies) to come.

The other thing I alluded to yesterday is that I was cast as a voice in an anime project (a project that is already out, but is being dubbed and released on DVD for the U.S.) called Getbackers. In it, I'm doing the voice of Shido, a beastmaster loner who really needs to be a little more friendly. We finished my part of the recording for Volume II yesterday (I didn't want to say anything before I knew I wouldn't be thrown out on my ass for not being able to pronounce "Akutsu."), and the DVDs should be out this fall. I'm pretty excited about it -- going from throwing out all these words online to paying close attention to every syllable of every word spoken into a very expensive microphone is a humbling experience.

The projects page has been updated to reflect these new endeavors.

Crazy-busy today, but that's par for the course the day after a Monday holiday, right?

Two projects on the way: An animation thing that I wasn't able to talk about until now and, hey, maybe a new simian-based comic strip coming soon... like tomorrow morning soon.

Deep thought of the day: What if you got almost everything you ever wanted, all within about the same year? Would you be freaked out? Scared? Cautiously elated?

Artistically, is it better to be starving or overfull?

More later.