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January 10th, 2008 2 comments

So: Heroes. HW and I are about halfway through the DVDs of season one, usually knocking out 2 or 3 episodes a night while cleaning, or working on our lappies, or whatnot. So far, here are my thoughts:

  • I am on the freaking edge of my seat. Seriously, it’s all we can do to get to bed by 11pm, and invariably when there’s any doubt, we watch another episode. We’re starting to reach the point, though, where keeping track of all the various plotlines is taking its toll on our sanity; about 10 episodes in, they introduced yet another new character, and Sarah paused the DVD, looked at me, and said, “Oh hells no.”
  • The show is deceptively gruesome. Early on we watched a few episodes with Charles in the room (not that he pays attention; the only things he likes on TV are “The New Yankee Workshop” (he likes to say “Morm!” when Norm Abram appears) and “Days Of Our Lives”), but after a few episodes I realized that the despite the fact that there’s very little actual violence in a given episode, there’s a heck of a lot of shots of the results of violence. For example, in an early episode (mild SPOILER ALERT), Niki rips a couple of mafia goons to shreds, quite literally. You don’t get to see it happen, but you do get a couple of glimpses of corpses with significant limbs in alternate locations. Later on, some people get their heads sawn open; you don’t see it happen, you just see the results. Pretty gritty stuff. IT’S AWESOME.
  • HW extols the acting of Ali Larter, who plays (another SPOILER ALERT) a chick with multiple personality disorder, but I don’t think it’s that hard. There’s no real subtlety between the two characters; one is timid and nice, and the other is insane and likes to tear people limb from limb. It’s interesting to see her switch back and forth in the span of a few seconds, but I think any actor outside of Keanu Reeves could probably do that. None of the acting is really that exceptional, although that’s mostly because the characters just aren’t that deep. They all have funny abilities and are conflicted about them. The best of the lot is probably Adrian Pasdar, playing politician Nathan Petrelli, because he’s the only one with more than 2 layers. (I don’t count Ali Larter here because she’s basically playing two separate characters who happen to look identical.) Nathan has his politician mask, his win-at-all-costs shark persona, his mild confusion and conflict about his abilities, and underneath all that, there’s a foreboding menace that’s hard to describe because we’ve only gotten to see glimpses of it yet.

    Hayden Panettiere is a little disappointing, mostly because her half-hearted attempts at a Texas accent falls WAAAAY short. On the other hand, she’s so hot that I have to put on loose pants to watch the show. So I can’t be truly objective about her acting. And don’t remind me that she was probably only 16 when season 1 was taped; I already have to counteract my shame and guilt with massive amounts of high quality English gin. Although I don’t feel so bad, now that she’s dating Milo Ventimiglia, who is 8 months older than I.

  • The inside jokes and shoutouts to other films and TV shows, usually involving Hiro Nakamura, are SLAYING me. When he tries to travel backwards in time a few minutes, and accidentally goes backwards approximately 6 months, he says “Great Scott!”, an obvious reference to “Back To The Future.” Later, we noted that his father was played by George Takei (aka Mr. Sulu), who rolls up in a limo with the license plate “NCC1701.” It’s also worth noting that Hiro is the most amusing character in a prime-time drama since Thomas Magnum. And Hiro’s cuter. All the nerdgirls I know crave his hott parts.

Right now our DVR is choked with episodes from Season 2; hopefully we can wrap up Season 1 in the next week or so and start to get caught up. If only to see what happens when Hayden Panettiere’s character hits her slutty college years.

Categories: artsy fartsy, wtf Tags:

January 7th, 2008 5 comments

In my never-ending quest to be exactly 4 years behind my peers, technologically, I finally got an iPod. For a long time I maintained that any music player was as good as another, and in fact convinced my wife a few years ago to buy me a little 256MB player that held 70 or 80 songs and was very small and compact and handy. It had some downsides, though: it used a single AAA battery, which it would burn through in about 45 minutes; it was nearly impossible to control the volume easily, which probably took a few hertz off of my audible range; and also it required a proprietary USB cable which I immediately lost, so the songs that were on it were gonna stay on it, which is unacceptable as long as Justin Timberlake keeps releasing albums.

So anyway, I put an iPod nano on my Amazon.com wishlist a while back, and managed to update it to the new video version long enough before Xmas that HW bought me one. It’s simply fantastic. It’s like a monolith, and it has changed me from a raving caveman into a hip Seattle-style intellectual. (Sorry, I just read 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time.)

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to turn into some kind of indie band blog, ’cause let’s face it: 99.9% of indie bands are independent of the major labels because they suck Donkey Kong.

Anyway, a few thoughts on the iPod nano:

  • It is ridiculously small. Seriously, I look at it and marvel at what science can do. It’s about the size of 3 credit cards stuck together, and holds 8 freaking gigabytes of data, be it mp3s, videos, photos, or even games. Note: playing games on an iPod is kinda sucky.
  • I had never really gotten into the whole “podcast” thing, because without an actual iPod I could only listen to them on my computer, and if I’m sitting in front of my computer I’m undoubtedly reading something or playing a game, and can’t concentrate on the voices in my ear. Having an iPod changes everything; I download podcasts and listen to them in my car, which is fantastic because the average podcast is roughly 25-30 minutes, and it takes me 25-30 minutes to get from where I work to Sarah’s parents’ house to pick up Charles. So awesome.
  • Perhaps it’s just the shape of my lobes, but the earbuds just won’t stay in my ear very well. It’s not a problem if I’m just sitting at my desk listening to tunes, but I can’t imagine jogging with them. I think my ears are just too big. They make decent headphones that wrap around the ear (I have a pair I bought for my other mp3 player, although they’re kinda beat up now), but the iPod earbuds sound particularly good, and I don’t think a cheapy set would fit the bill. Some of my readers are enormous individuals who probably have iPods; how do you guys listen to your jams?

Also, since I’m always about 2 years behind on pop culture, HW and I are getting caught up on “Heroes,” which I think is the best network drama on TV. More about that later in the week.

Categories: dear diary, musings Tags:

January 2nd, 2008 1 comment

I don’t know when the hell I got so old, but somewhere between the ages of 18 and almost-30 I lost the ability to play a game of football without being crippled for days. I played some beach tackle football with my old Ychrome buddies yesterday, and as a result I can barely walk today. Every muscle in my thighs is on fire, my lower back is basically sending a constant series of “F U” messages to my brain, and also I think I dislocated part of my nose because I got elbowed in the face while trying to tackle the QB.

I also learned some things about my athletic ability:

  1. I am not an accurate thrower. What I am is a hard thrower. So the best option is to have someone park themselves near the line of scrimmage so I can throw the ball at their heads, like Peyton Manning. If they run to the endzone, I whip it far over them. So I am useless at that position. We tried it for 2 downs and I never threw the ball again.
  2. I am not an effective receiver, because I am fat and slow. This means that, despite the fact that I can pretty much catch anything thrown within reach, I never get open enough for someone to throw to me, unless they have specifically drawn a play up for me.
  3. I am a good runner, because I have no problem simply lowering my shoulder into whomever is attempting to tackle me. Since I was one of the 2 largest players, and the other one was on my team, the 80+ pound weight advantage was key.

In the end, we won, mostly because we had actual athletes on the team, but also because there were a few opportunities for me to run over people. Fantastic times. Except that now my groin hurts. And Charles has a fun game where I’m required to lie on the floor so that he can jump on my nutsack. So I’ve got that to look forward to later.

Categories: wtf Tags:

December 20th, 2007 1 comment

This warms my heart every time I look at it:

Straight stolen from icanhascheezburger.com

But then, so does this:

Straight stolen from thewvsr.com

What does that say about me?

Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

December 18th, 2007 1 comment

Oh yeah. It’s heck of xmas, yo.

Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

December 10th, 2007 1 comment

This is the cold that never ends. It just goes on and on, my friends. Some germs got in my body made me feel filled up with fuzz, I can’t seem to get rid of them and it’s all just because this is the cold that never ends…

It’s not a BAD cold, it’s just ANNOYING. Just a sort of general ague that leaves my nose running, though I can still breathe through it, and my throat filled with various goos that I can’t seem to cough up. Plus my earache comes and goes, that’s an added bonus. I managed to fight through it for a Messiah performance yesterday, but that’s mostly because my solos were all in the first part, so I didn’t have to try and save myself for stuff towards the end. All the worrisome bits were done by intermission, which meant I could just stand up and sit down and periodically yell in baroque counterpoint, while stuffing cough drops into my mouth and yawning to drain my eustachian tubes. It was good times for all! Yes, yes it was.

The performance went superbly, actually; we had some new soloists this year, a tenor named Ken, and an old acquaintance named Gus singing countertenor. Dude sings like a lady! It’s awesome.

The rest of the weekend was spent completely ignoring my self-imposed dietary restrictions in favor of chips, fudge, and alcohol. These are a few of my favorite things, particularly when the chips are Grandma Utz’s, the fudge is handmade by yours truly, and the alcohol is in vast quantities. Plus my wife let me sleep in on Saturday for no good reason at all. If I could have figured out a way to not get called for work all weekend (despite not actually being on call; my job is really great) it would have been very restful.

I hope your Christmas shopping is in a better state than mine; my usual effort to make up for being a dick 364 days a year by spending too much money on friends, family, and charities is WAAAAAAY behind. I have some stuff, but need to make an inventory before making any further purchases so I don’t end up with a situation in which I have 17 items for my father and 3 for my mother. (This is hyperbole, you understand, but I’m pretty sure as of now I have 2 or 3 big presents for Dad and not one thing for Mom. Although I think Sarah has stuff for her; I’ll just replace her labels with ones that say “from your loving eldest progeny.” Just like every year!) Usually by this time I’ve already basically completed my purchases and just have to make with the wrapping, but it’s been a busy fall. BTW: people that want good presents make and update their Amazon wishlists. If you leave me to just buy you whatever I think you might like, well, that’s how people end up with CDs like this.

Categories: dear diary, wtf Tags:

December 7th, 2007 1 comment

I’m still sick, and it’s starting to become a Nuisance. For example, I have to sing in a Messiah on Sunday, and during last night’s rehearsal I developed what felt like an ear infection. Today it seems better, but I’m all clogged up again.

Is this God’s punishment for that time I wiped a booger on another chorister? Uh…my bad.

More heavenly disdain is being communicated to me by the fact that my /? key is faulty. In order to get it to work I have to push really hard on it; I think there’s a pretzel crumb under there, or a piece of salt, or maybe another chorister’s boogie.

I wonder if I could hook a vacuum to my head to relieve all the pressure. A few months back I bought a 16-gallon 6.5HP Wet/Dry Super Industrial Kickass Vacuum/Leaf Blower; the thing could suck the stain out of an Affleck end table (just like your mom! Ha ha!). I bet I could suck mucus out of my sinuses with it. Maybe I’ll try later.

Speaking of furniture, my lunch today consisted of a 220-calorie bowl of Kraft Easy Mac, which I got from a machine and heated up, and which tasted like wood glue. I think the Diet Coke I had with it was more nutritious. Dieting straight sucks, lemme tell you; I could’ve also run to the Wendy’s down the street and had 4 Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers, a “Biggie” Fries, and a “Biggie” Diet Coke for like $7 and then just gone back to work and had a nap. It would have been fantastic, and I wouldn’t have the raging headache I have.

Yep, it’s bitch bitch bitch bitch, all the time, at matthearn.com! Glad you’re here. Now go forth and sin some more.

Categories: wtf Tags:

December 4th, 2007 2 comments

Let’s chat about humor for a moment. I’d just like to take the time to address a big problem in the world, and that is that a surprising number of people have a misconfigured sense of humor. Oh sure, some things are universally funny:

  • Fart jokes
  • Actual farts
  • Reference to the sex lives of the Amish
  • That story your dad tells every time he gets hammered about the time he took a dump in a mailbox
  • Any joke involving a priest, a rabbi, and a 300W rainbow-colored marital aid
  • Covered wagons, aka Dutch Ovens

The laughs never end, when those topics get broken out at parties. Particularly if the party as at my house, and the participants have drunk between 5 and 17 bottles of homemade Continental Pilsner apiece. But certain topics seem to make certain folks laugh, and other folks whine in great dismay.

For example: my wife is in the business of assisting the differently-abled. (They used to be called “handicapped,” and before that, “crippled;” by 2015 they’ll be called “Judiciously Improved.”) I fully support this, except that the Political Correctness Brigade has now weaseled its way into my very home. During my adolescence, it was perfectly acceptable, when someone did something stupid, to call him “retarded.” And mirth would result. Now, I have to expend great amounts of brainpower trying to not say that word in front of my wife and her coworkers. (In a similar vein, we were allowed to call anything we disagreed with “gay,” as in “Dude, homework is totally gay,” or “Bobby and Jimmy kissing behind the school was so gay.” No longer. The internet has invented a substitute word, “ghey,” which is totally gay.)

As far as I can tell, the word “retarded” is no less funny than it was in 1993. And yet nowadays people get their undergarments in a SEVERE bunch if you break it out anywhere but a hockey team’s locker room. This is a disturbing indicator of the path we’re on, in which I won’t be able to say things like “Dude, your new subwoofer has a totally fat sound” without some overweight ninny saying “What did you say? Fat? How dare you!” and then attempting to kick me in the nards but failing because her thigh-fat precludes any actual upward motion of her legs. (Note: this would actually be HILARIOUS to witness.)

And lest you think I’m just some completely irreverent buffoon that would laugh at a baby’s funeral, let me show you the depth of my intellect: I have seen the other side of the coin, albeit for a totally retarded stupid reason. Last night I was watching David Letterman, something I normally avoid because Paul Shaffer’s voice makes my ears bleed, and they were doing the top 10, which was something like “top 10 ways you can tell that gasoline prices are out of hand.” #3 was, “Anna Nicole Smith married a Texaco franchisee.” My initial response was “Damn, that’s cold. Her bloated corpse is barely cold yet.” But then I realized that, due to the Writer’s Strike, all the late shows are in re-runs until like 2009, and the joke dated from 2005 when Anna Nicole was still barely alive. Why did the fact that she’s dead make the joke seem less funny and more mean? It’s ridiculous. It should be the other way around; now that she’s dead, it’s not like she’s gonna hear about it and get pissed off. The joke is just as funny as it was in 2005, which is of course to say that it’s not funny at all and never was. (Brian will probably have a heart attack, but I’ve always found Letterman (and all the late-night guys since Johnny quit) to be pretty overrated when it comes to bringing the funny.)

I got to thinking about this, because a few weeks ago I set my Facebook status message to something like “Matt Hearn is wondering how people can confuse ‘they’re’, ‘there’, and ‘their’; is it because they have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?” Which you have to admit, if you don’t have FAS, is pretty funny. I still got some irritated messages about it. If you do have FAS, it might be perceived as insulting, but 1) if you have FAS and know the difference between those three words, then obviously the joke isn’t directed at you and 2) if you have FAS and don’t know the difference between those three words, then perhaps my little jibe will inspire you to go to school and study hard. It’s win-win! And if you don’t have FAS, but have a problem with sand in your vagina, just go to the bathroom and rinse it out. Stop annoying me because Uncle Gropey took away your girlish laughter.

It’s hard to avoid being insulted by certain jokes. I think the secret is not to flip out about it. If you hear a joke that offends you, just laugh along with the rest and tell your own insulting joke right back. Note: this may only work with minorities.

November 30th, 2007 No comments

The human body is a strange thing. And not just because the last few days mine has been filled with phlegm and other gross things and has been completely unresponsive to medications. (My throat feels like Rachael Ray has been trying to zest it, which, if you aren’t familiar with basic cooking techniques, is less fun than it sounds.) I’ve been dieting a bit over the last few months, basically just trying to avoid stuffing my face with bacon and Mimolette long enough to maybe fit in a few leaves of romaine. Anyway, because of my moderately freakish size, my weight fluctuations are…out of the ordinary.

The 2 weeks before thanksgiving, I had managed to get down to about 233 pounds, 9 pounds of which I lost in about 7 days due to the magic of water weight. Then, over the break, I gained 11 pounds in about 10 days, back to 244 as of Monday. Today, 4 days later, I weigh 235. It’s all very amusing, except for the part where I still have a big ol’ gut and my ass looks like a pair of basketballs stuffed into cheap khaki. That part, well, that part sucks.

Categories: wtf Tags:

November 28th, 2007 1 comment

Don’t worry, not dead; we have some doings going on at work lately that have me busting my butt. Hard work not being something to which I am accustomed, it’s all I can do not to go home, squirt Cheeze Whiz into my mouth, and pass out in front of the TV. I have a bajillion picture albums I need to go through and get uploaded, so that’ll at least provide some entertainment, something to look forward to, for you, my reader. (I’m pretty sure there’s just the one, at this point.)

I shouldn’t complain, actually; I disappeared all last week for a lengthy Thanksgiving break, went and visited a new baby (Hi, Olivia!), and then crashed at a beach house on the Outer Banks for 5 days with Charles. I’ve been on a major beer-making frenzy for the last couple months, so I had plenty to take with me (and will have something like 3 cases + 3 kegs available for New Year’s); I had something like 2 cases plus a small party keg onhand, so we got our festive drink on for 5 solid days. Thanksgiving morning, I cruised back up to DE so that Charles and I could be on hand for official celebrations with Sarah’s parents. Then we spent the next three days recovering, by which I mean eating and drinking everything in the house. After managing to lose something like 9 pounds in 2 weeks prior to the break, I gained 11 pounds in 10 days. Go me!

In other news, I have acquired a New Car, specifically a 1997 Saab 9000 CSE. It was a gift from My Pops, whom I thank profusely, because driving to North Carolina in a 1998 Mazda Protege would have been uncomfortable and possibly unsafe. The Saab is a year older, and has something like 20,000 more miles, but it’s a Saab, so it’ll last for another 100K miles, and the Mazda was destined to fall apart like the Bluesmobile at any moment. (If I’d thrown a rod somewhere in Virginia, I would not have been surprised.)

That is about the absolute latest and greatest. Not that you care. I’ll try and actually make with the funny with a quickness, since the last month has been apologies, religious war, and pointless diary entries. Yay!

Categories: dear diary Tags: