Netflix & XBox Live Is Awesome

So, in an unexpected move, my folks got me an XBox 360 for Christmas. I was pretty shocked and I know I’m super out of date with this kind of stuff, but there’s a whole lot of cool stuff on XBox live. First and foremost, I’m a huge fan of the ability to watch your online Netflix movies on the TV, especially because neither of our computers can stream the movies for whatever reason. So, yeah, we’ve been watching all kinds of stuff like National Treasure 2 (love that series, Nic Cage at his best crazy), Hello Dolly (Em wanted to watch it after watching Wall-E again, not bad, but I fell asleep), 30 Rock Season 1 (the show makes a lot more sense when you see episodes from the beginning), Westworld (hopefully I’ll get to a review on this soon), a really cool Pixar documentary about their history (highly recommended), a female version of Animal House called H.O.T.S. (completely ridiculous, but still pretty funny. I turned it off about half way through) and 20-30 minutes of Point of No Return which I hope to finish tonight.

A lot of these bad boys expire on December 31/January 1, so I’ve got a lot of watching to do. Hopefully that will translate into some good posts.

Calendars, Man

The rad folks over at Asgard Press dropped me an E-mail last week and asked if I wanted to check out their Vintage DC and MAD Magazine 2009, so OF COURSE I said yes (thanks again by the way). So here’s the deets. These 11×30 calendars go from September of this year through December of 2009. Each picture can be removed (the edges are perforated) so you could hang them up in your room or frame them if you’re classy and feature either classic DC or MAD covers from the old school. They cost $18.95 and get a super added bonus in my book for being printed on 100% recycled paper with soy based inks. I don’t know exactly what that means, but it’s good for the Earth right?

I’m definitely not as familiar with MAD as I am with golden and silver age DC comics, but I can definitely see why this calendar would be a treat for any fans of MAD. My personal favorite in the bunch is actually from this month originally printed as the cover to MAD #105 from September 1966. It features a painting by Norman Mingo of an Adam West Batman and Alfred E. Newman as Robin. Good stuff.

Each month, in addition to the huge piece of art you also get thumbnail sized reprints of various pages from the feature issue as well as the back covers and the name of each artist.

Okay, so on to the big whammy, the Vintage DC Super Heroes 2009 Calendar which feature 16 rad reproductions of the first appearances of Barry Allen as the Flash, the Justice League, Batgirl, Supergirl, Wonder Woman and the JLA/JSA crossover. There’s also some surprise picks like Captain Marvel #6, a cover I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen before and some great, campy holiday-related covers, my favorite being Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #1 with Lois Flying around on a broom and Superman wondering “Great guns! Lois has supernatural powers–and they may prove mightier than mine!” Great stuff. Each month also gives a brief description of the contents of the issue along with general info. This calendar is perfect for any fan of DC comics who wants to keep all his dates in order, maybe even as an early holiday gift .