Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?

I'm a bit excited this week. For starters, "Scrubs" is back on Tuesdays, and tonight, a new episode of "The Office."

But it gets better, cats and kittens.

Soon, perhaps today, the next disc in my Netflix queue will arrive.

I don't always watch the movies in the order in which I'm going to review them, so I've already seen the H and J movies. Heck, I've already gotten the N movie. The G movie sits on my own shelf o' movies, and the next movie, the F movie, seems interesting after watching the first 8 minutes.

As many of these are horror movies, I have to watch them while my son is napping, which is not that often these days.

Anyhow, the imminent arrival I'm awaiting is the Ray Dennis Steckler classic, "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies."

This movie shot to the top of my must-see list as soon as I learned of it. I was tantalized by brief clips of it in "It Came From Hollywood."

I tracked it down in the days I tried to watch every horror movie I could find -- junior high. One of the local video stores had a dusty copy sitting on the shelf, so I talked my parents into renting it for me, and I took it home, eager to see what was billed as "The World's First Monster Musical."

See, this came out before "Xanadu."

As the movie started, I was impressed by the use of silence. Usually horror movies were loud and spooky-sounding from the beginning. It was only once people started talking and I couldn't hear them that I realized the tape was defective.

And of course, with such an odd movie, it's not like they had more than one copy. I had to settle for some other celluloid crapfest instead and have now reached my 30s without having seen it.

Technically, this arrived last week -- I was ready to pop it in and check it out. Then I noticed the large crack in the disc.

Fie! Stymied again.

So now I wait for the mail to be delivered.

Wait, wait, wait...

Triangle Man hates Particle Man, but Brody likes Triangle Man

Last night, I was goofing around on my keyboard (the musical kind, not what I'm doing right now), playing They Might Be Giants songs for my 2-year-old, Brody. As he was deeply involved with his letter cards, I assumed he wasn't paying attention.

But then I picked out the accordion riff and played it without too many mistakes. Brody stopped what he was doing and looked at me.

"Triangle!"

"What?" I asked, turning around.

"Triangle!"

Brody has been exposed to vast quantities of They Might Be Giants since birth, but aside from "Here Come the ABCs" and selections from "No!" I didn't think he was paying attention.

I was happy for two reasons: first, Brody's appreciation of music is better than I thought, and second, I played the part well enough for him to recognize it.

W00t!

Happy new year

Unlike many, I declined to recap 2005, mostly because, well, it was the worst year of my life. Lots of good things happened, but it all was overshadowed by the bad. My wife and I were tempted to have a "Bite Me, 2005" party. Well, that's not exactly the name I suggested, but I think you can do the math there.

So no more 2005. We're a few days into 2006, and while they've been rainy and gloomy, nothing particularly bad has happened. So far, so good.

At the risk of sounding cliche, I'm going to try to improve my health this year. I'm not going on a full-blown diet or joining a gym, but I'm going to try to eat a little better and actually do some exercise.

I've already gone without eating fast food this year so far. I'll see how long that lasts.

As for this blog, there'll be more movie reviews (I'm up to F in Bad Movies A to Z; my goal is to finish the alphabet before the end of the year), more glimpses from years past and of course, mildly inappropriate humor.

I'll try to keep this up on a more regular basis, but life has a way of interrupting and tends to take priority over talking about toys I used to have.

More regular blogging tomorrow, so tell all your friends. Why, I bet I can crack the high double-digits for visitors this year if I try hard enough.

Here's to a fresh new year.