I know I sound like a broken record with the pimping already, but good golly Miss Bollywood we're having a great time over on the new Videogamey site.

There is actual, genuine comedy being produced over there, laughs which bend down and leap, transcending the videogaming world with their massive air. I just made a Carl Weathers joke over there. Shit is liberating!

The technology now afforded to us, you see, allows for better writing, funnier references, more topical imaging and a sleek user interface that blows fresh air into your face when you comment.

That air is minty.

I'm helping organize a moderated forum chat on TWOP with Steven DeKnight of Smallville tomorrow afternoon with an interview to follow. There's abuzzness about it.

Let's see, what else is going on -- everything work-related is exciting and chaotic and really weird and a little wonderful at the same time. Opportunities are presenting themselves with a warm handshake and a grin.

I think a part of brain really does love this swirl of crazy activity, this mix of day-job, LCP, Web sites, recapping and everything else that pulls me in so many directions and has done so for a long while now. "Pull" is a bad word because it sounds bad, when it's really fun and exhausting. It's to the point where I can't really turn off my brain to sleep sometimes. It's a nice problem to have, I suppose. When it's been the opposite -- when nothing's going on -- I get nervous, lethargic and a little bit sad.

It's too busy for me to be anything but happy right now.

Glark: Did you sign up for a gravatar?

Omar: Yep. Waiting on image approval.

Glark: Keen. You didn't reg the goatse pic did you? DID YOU?

Omar: goatse?

Glark: Oh God. Forget you saw that. Don't google it, don't pass go. I'm deadly serious. You just don't want to go there.

Omar: Pumpkin?

Glark: Shhhhh there there. No pain where you're going boy.

Omar: Why is that pumpkin on its -- WHOAH!

Glark: I can't believe you've never been subjected to that goatse pic. I mean bravo. I think I first saw it as a Counter Strike spray. (Shudder.)

Omar: Ha.

Glark: Dude, don't surf for it at work. It is extremely pornographic.

Omar: Heh. Nice. Well I've succeeded in not actually seeing the image, so I think I'm ahead on this one.

Glark: Yeah, let's just say to could drop about 5 ipods into the real thing. I ain't kidding

(A few minutes later)

Omar: ACK! NOOOO! Why, GOD WHY!!!!

Glark: Duly warned dude.

Omar: Shit. There goes my last bit of childlike wonder.

Glark: Go take a shower.

Omar: I can't. I'm afraid ass will come out of the shower head. "You're with me, anus."

Glark: Ew.

If your Internet connection's DNS is up to date, you should be seeing a newly designed, newfangled Videogamey.com..

Glark did all the heavy lifting (I think I may have suggested a tag or two), and the purpose was to move to a more flexible platform (WordPress instead of TypePad) and to create a system that will make it easier for some new contributors to post and for Glark to keep adding cool features.

My last Smallville recap of the season:

Are You There, Zod? It's Me, Clark. -- Clark has to decide whether to kill Lex when he finds out that General Zod (of the Krypton Zods) plans to inhabit his body in a totally straight, yet alien, way. That becomes sorta moot, though, when Professor SoFine releases a little computer virus that causes L.A. to riot again and Metropolis to burst into flames. Also, Lana gets worshipped. A lot.

If you start hearing, "You're with me, leather" on sports shows or see it on T-shirts, understand that this is where it came from.

Given that I met my wife at a bar/salsa club and that we did leave together that night, I'm going to re-write history to say that all that happened when I first laid eyes on her was that I walked by and said, "You're with me, Curly," and she followed me without another word toward our destiny.

Ohmygah.

Lindsay Lohan's freckles come shooting out of what? Firecrotch, huh?

I don't usually partake of these sorts of celebrity shenanigans, but... wow... this is humanity at its most YIKES!

This is about seven or eight entries worth of material and thoughts that I've been too busy to get to lately because of work/recapping/family committments. It's just been nuts lately and then it's allergy season, so even basic motion makes me exhausted and I've been going to body combat with my wife and that class kicks my ass every single Sunday and... you really don't need to hear all this whining. Let me move on to what's been going on:

The graduation

My brother graduated from college on Saturday, and now he's on the road to looking for a job or whatever it is that post-grads do. I had an internship lined up right after college that turned into a job, so I didn't really have to think about my post-college direction. It just sort of fortuitously happened, so I have a lot of respect for anyone who has to stake out and find their own path when it doesn't just fall into their lap like it's tended to happen for me.

We went to PJ's graduation, which was three hours long, which I guess is pretty standard for a public college ceremony. My college graduation was outdoors in May, and I remember getting an awful sunburn that left a Dracula-shaped tan-line on my forehead from the graduation cap. This was indoors, at least.

PJ and I text-messaged each other through the entire ceremony. At least he was more discreet than the girl two rows up who was having cell phone conversations out loud right in the middle of graduation.

"3 hours!?" I text messaged him. "We'll walk fast," he responded. "Don't do a victory lap," I advised.

A family nearby held up glittery gold signs for "CHALO." One of the family members got tired and sat down. "Now it says HALO," PJ messaged me. "He must be AWEsome," I sent.

We made fun of the (allegedly) drunk speaker who talked about Arthur Ashe as a role model, I suspect, because she couldn't pronounce "Navratilova." PJ sent me a photo of the condiment stand outside the arena and texted, "This is so ghetto. I miss my high school graduation." "Someone just gave birth up here," I responded.

PJ got up there and accepted his diploma, then he made the walk-around as we cheered and hollered.

"WOO!" I messaged him, "wait, sorry. That was for CHALO."

---

The anniversary

My wife and I had our second-year wedding anniversary recently. Year one is the year of paper. Year two, I think, is crayon shavings.

We did some nice things for each other like agreeing not to make each other cry for one weekend and making sure not to reproduce, then we went out to eat at El Rancho Camino, this restaurant near San Antonio we've suddenly come to like.

They have a table-side margarita that won an award in 2005 from a city-wide magazine (judging this contest = best job ever) for Best Margarita in San Antonio. San Antonio residents are some margarita-drinking motherfuckers, so any margarita there that has won any sort of award is probably worth your time.

We ordered the thing, which costs about what you'd pay for a discounted CD. It is indeed brought near your table and poured from several shot glasses with a tequila of your choosing as well as other exotic liquers that I can't remember. The result is a very large alcoholic beverage that is as smooth as a baby chick's balls.

We also ordered the botana platter. Understand, we often share entrees at restaurants because we're just not huge eaters and even when we share a dish, we end up with leftovers. So we'll often just get one nice big entree and maybe an appetizer if we think the food will be too light. We share drinks, too, which seems schmoopy, and which I'm sure drives waiters nuts. We tip well enough to make up for it, I hope.

Anyway, we order this botana thing and it's on a huge oblong silver platter, its own refried-bean-based ecosystem, and I think they just went down the list of all the Tex-Mex foods ever invented and threw all that shit together. There were tacos, flautas, nachos, quesadillas, stuffed goddamn jalapenos, sauces and quesos, pieces of fajita meat, insanity. Everything seemed to come in fours.

It was as if scientists found a way to personify appetite and decided to pummel the beast they created with crowbars and bombs. This meal was unrelenting. It ran up behind the speeding car of your hunger and locked its claw hands on the bumper, hanging on, climbing to the hood and punching through the windshield with its suddenly liquid metal spike arm.

We ended up very full for our anniversary. And we had leftovers.

---

The kitten

This makes me laugh every time I see it. Thanks, Defamer.

---

Candy

I just bit into a Payday Chocolate Avalanche for the first time. I think my mouth just gained five pounds.

---

The concert

A few Mondays ago, PJ and I went to see The Islands at Emo's.

Understand, we both had some problems making their South by Southwest shows, which were short anyway, so this was really our first chance to catch this new band formed from the sad remains of The Unicorns and represented on Terribly Happy '05: The CD I Hope You Ordered.

We bought our tickets early and I guess word's not out on this band yet because it didn't sell out. The tickets said the show would start around 10, so I insisted we get there around 9:30. We arrived and saw about four people standing around swaying to this funky electronic outfit on the indoor stage. We looked over to the stage. The schedule looked like this:

9:30: Band we've never heard of (Inside stage)
10:15: Band we've never heard of (Outside stage)
10:45: Band we've never heard of (Inside stage)
11:15: DJ we've never heard of (Outside stage)
11:45: Band we've never heard of (Inside stage)
12:15: The Islands (ex-Unicorns) (Outside stage)

PJ and I both looked at each other. 12:15?! It was a Monday night. We both had early starts the next day. My Tuesdays are my busiest day of the week. If the show went an hour and a half, I supposed as I did mental calculations, and I still had to go back to my car, drop PJ off at his car and then had to drive back to New Braunfels, shower before bed, I'd be in bed at about ... FUCK!

We debated for about five seconds on whether we should bail, but PJ had driven all the way from San Antonio. We'd already invested $20 and travel time. We decided to stay.

We sat around and talked about comic strip ideas for our upcoming return from hiatus. We came up with about 10 good strip ideas, sitting on the bleachers waiting for the show to start. I drank a beer. We watched a rapper do a set with the drummer from Islands and that was cool.

The crowd began to thicken about midnight and we grazed up to be near the stage. As the instruments were set up, the soundtrack to Katamari Damacy started playing, and we knew we were in good hands. It went, "Naaaa. na na na na na na na na na na naaaaaa." Awesome.

We watched the people around us. There were at least four guys who were (on purpose, I suspect) rocking my bushy-haired, thick-glasses look from high school. I don't understand how my intense suffering from high school is now a viable fashion choice, but there you go.

Here's my high school yearbook picture. Four dudes at the concert looked EXACTLY LIKE THIS:

[[Well... crap. Turns out I don't have the yearbook photo I thought I had. I'm going to have to dig through some old photos to find it. I'll hit you on the rebound, prmomise. Pretend it's me with big, round, bushy hair and thick-ass Clark Kent '70s glasses you're seeing in this space.]]

And I bet they're getting laid. LIfe is so unfair.

Then The Islands went on stage and it was crazygonuts. The singer swung from the overhead pipes and climbed on top of the keyboard player. Two dudes played violins. There was a banjo. Three guest rappers came in and tore up, "Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone."

Goddamnness. What a great show.

We groggily went back to my car. I bought a taco from a shady dude on the street. It had potato.

I got home very, very late. PJ got a speeding ticket on the way home.

I only ever stay out late on a weeknight like this once in a blue moon. This one was so totally worth it.

---

The conclusion

A lot more happened the last few weeks, but my fingers are pooped. I won't wait so long before posting these stories next time.

I just wrote a really long multi-part entry today and the only reason I haven't posted it yet is because I have to go home and scan a photo of myself from my high school yearbook to go with it. Yeah, now I know you can't wait.

The entry will answer the burning, itching question, "What's Omar been doing lately?" with some specific events and descriptions of actual life moments.

In other news, I just sent off my last Smallville recap for the season (should be posted soon), and now I'm working on a super-secret bonus recap that I hope to have done by the end of the weekend. There's some other stuff I'm working on, but it's not as exciting as my Schlitterbahn season pass or my cats running around chasing after toys, I assure you.