The first thing I thought when I discovered Garfield Minus Garfield was, "This is brilliant." The second thing was, "How long will it take for Jim Davis's lawyers to take this down?"

The New York Times published an article in which Jim Davis (surprisingly) expressed his appreciation of the webcomic. But today things have gone a step further.

Day 4
This was our first full day in Philadelphia. It was rather uneventful.

I went with my Dad and Aunt to pick up my Grandma from her church. All of our relatives warned me before we went on this trip: it's been 4-ish years since she's seen you and Lauren. She will probably freak out a bit.

I saw her leave the church and my Aunt helped her into our car. My Grandma turned to my Dad. She hadn't noticed me.

"It's really crowded in there," she said. "I thought I'd be missing the crowd since I went to the eleven o'clock service."
"You'd think that," I said.
"Yeah," she replied. "It's a little muggy out."
"Hmm," my Dad said.

About a half minute of silence ensued. My Aunt and I gave each other "isn't this odd" stares. Finally my Grandma turned around.

"Oh, Thomas. Is that you?" She had reacted to my discovery as if she'd just noticed a friend's new pair of shoes.
"Yes indeed," I replied.
"It's good to see you," she said. And that was that.

The exchange was really kind of anticlimactic. Don't get me wrong - I hadn't been expecting a long-lost-siblings-after-he-mysteriously-went-MIA-in-the-war-20-years-ago sort of reaction. But I was surprised my relatives' warnings proved to be relatively empty. It wasn't like their preconceptions were without merit. My Grandmother did cry for hours when we showed up unexpectedly to her 75th birthday party years ago. Not to mention the time my Dad appeared on her front doorstep for Thanksgiving a couple years back - her face was soaking for hours. Ditto for last Friday, when we called her and informed her that we were minutes away from boarding a plane to Philadelphia. Waterworks every time.

Waterworks every time - except, like I've said, this one. My Dad found her low-key reaction equally baffling. "She's 85," he explained. "She's in her own little world." My theory was that since there was no surprise, her reaction was a lot more subdued - either one works, though. "If she is in her own little world, she has every right to be," my Mom said.

We ate at a place called the William Penn Inn, which wins the award for the fanciest restaurant I've ever eaten in. It's places like the William Penn Inn where I feel out of place, as if the wait staff is only seconds from coming up to me and shouting, "Impostor! Out with you!"

And that was Day 4.
Today is Day 8. Needless to say I'm a little behind.

Day 3

Woke up a little late this time around - I was a little tired from orientation. We checked out of the hotel room explored around the loop. Lauren and I got lost, but in the process we found DePaul's mythical loop campus.

We ate at some diner whose name escapes me and wasted an hour at Borders. The really weird thing about this particular Borders was that it had no chairs, save the ones in the coffee shop part.

Next door to the Borders was the Oriental Theater, where we saw Wicked. I'm not too big of a musical fan, but it was enjoyable. Weirdly enough, my highlight wasn't the costume design or the set work or the tech stuff or even the songs - it was the story. It made for a really neat supplement to the original Wizard of Oz.

Immediately after the musical we drove to O'Hare to catch our plane to Philadelphia. This was surprisingly painless. Lauren and I grabbed food at a mini Chili's, where the waiter confidently referred to her as "sir" without bothering to correct himself. I'm sure that did lovely things for her self esteem.

I typically have stress/panic related trouble flying, so I had a Valium before our plane took off. As a result, I was a drowsy semi-coherent mess. I listened to a couple albums on my iPod, and yet I have no memory of hearing them. I asked the stewardess for a Coke. It's safe to say the caffeine exacerbated things.

At some point I scribbled words on my hand, but I have no memory of doing that. The words were: "I just flew in from Pittsburgh and boy does my face hurt."

We got to my aunt and uncle's house at 1 in the morning. We all said hello very tiredly. It's a little strange showing up to relatives' homes at 1 in the morning; it's a little stranger to try to have a conversation with them when you haven't seen them for ten years.

Day 2 in Chicago
in 3 1/2 stories

One
A retired police officer talked to us about safety on campus. Our orientation leader told us that the man's talk was going to be insightful and entertaining (i.e. in Benspeak "hilarious"). Unfortunately, the talk wasn't as entertaining as our leader had built it up to be, though the officer's mannerisms and way of speaking added a bit of flair to the talk. He had a sloppy yet rhythmic way of speaking, adding emphasis to words that didn't really need it. The only way I can effectively describe his vocal stylings would be (unhelpfully) "Chicago cop".

Actually, scratch that. He sounded like a lot like Christopher Walken, except more sane.

I clearly remember only two specific parts of the safety speech to us. One was, "You are all eightteen years old. That means you're all really good. At not dyin'."

The second part regarded illegal file sharing on campus. A counselor explained to us that there are harsh penalties to illegally downloading music; the recording industry often charges around $1000 per song illegally downloaded. My theory: by that logic, it is cheaper for someone to physically steal an album from a record shop (roughly a $1000 fine in most states if you are caught) rather than to illegally download that album (one 10 song album times $1000 per song plus legal fees). Hooray for the legal system and US copyright system's attitude toward all things digital.

One and a Half
My schedule isn't too bad.

I've got a math course (Introduction to College Algebra - the easiest math class I can take) on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at about 10 AM.

I have Philosophy on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30 AM to 10 AM.

I've got Composition and Rhetoric on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:30 to 3 PM.

And finally, I've got an Explore Chicago course on Mondays from 1:30 PM to 5:30. This is one of the unique things about DePaul - every freshman is required to take a class about the city itself that focuses on a particular aspect of it. Mine is Photographing Chicago Landscapes, which appears to be part sociology/part photography course.

Two
Though I made friends and acquaintances throughout orientation, I realized I was censoring myself slightly throughout the trip.

Case in point: one girl told me, "I just found out my great-grandmother went to DePaul."
"Really?" I said.
"Yeah. It turns out that back then, women could only study at DePaul for two years."
"That's because they could major in only two things," I almost said in a mock bitter-old-man voice. "Cooking and cleaning the house!

Of course I would have meant it facetiously, but I'm told my sarcastic voice can be very similar to my normal voice, so I wasn't sure if she'd get the irony. I decided to bite my tongue. Perhaps I'd be able to say a similar comment another day. I'm in no hurry to alienate myself from my peers.

Three
We stayed in a super-nice (but apparently not very pricey) hotel called The Palmer House in downtown Chicago. It was within walking distance of the Oriental Theater (where we saw Wicked) and Millennium Park (which isn't as cool at night). It had a beautiful lobby. It reminded me of The Sun Also Rises, a book where much of the action takes place in hotels back when they were popular meeting points, even for those who didn't have a room.

But the highlight of the hotel was its elevators. Our first elevator ride was with a stern looking man in a business suit standing next to his son, who was carrying a Thomas the Tank Engine bag. A cheesy instrumental version of a Ricky Martin song was playing over the tinny speakers.

"What's that?" the boy asked his Dad.
"It's elevator music," he replied. "It's not that good," he said as condescendingly as possible.
The words weren't so funny, but the father's tone was hilarious. It was as if he had asked his father, "Daddy, that man with the funny mustache has a very pretty flag. It looks like a rainbow. Can we buy one?" (A flag, not a man with a mustache.)

Another elevator highlight: an instrumental version of "Torn" played. My sister and I mimed along.

This post is brought to you by the Apple Store in the huge-tastic King of Prussia Mall.

This daily posting thing might be a little bit more difficult than I anticipated. We've got network access where we're staying (my Aunt and Uncle's house), but Comcast seems to be less than reliable. So sorry if you're expecting daily updates - Day 2 of Chicago will likely be a little bit late.

But in short: it went well and I managed to get a good class schedule.

In the meantime, here are two articles comprised of questions the author would like to ask John McCain and Barack Obama. Some fascinating, thoughtworthy stuff here. It might be the most thoughtworthy thing I've ever seen come out of Fox News.

Day 1 in Chicago
In 4 Stories

One
My orientation leader was named Ben. He reminded me of a mix between my improv teacher at Second City and Charlie Bartlett. He looked like Michael Cera's brother and used this to his advantage. He actually tried to convince one of the incoming freshmen that he was his cousin.

"Here's the thing about orientation," he said. "It's kind of lame. But try to make the best of it. Later we're going to watch some dumb skits, but now we're going to play some stupid games."

Our first "stupid game" was one of his devising, which he called Haters. Haters went like this: Ben went around the circle and asked us to name something we hated. The game typically went like this:

BEN: (points at a girl) Okay. You go.
GIRL: I hate fake people.
BEN: Too bad. Because I'm incredibly fake. Next.
GIRL 2: I hate dumb people.
BEN: That's a shame. Because I'm dumb too. I'm dumb, shallow, and incredibly fake. Next.

I raised my hand and he chose me.
"I was riding in a car six hours this morning, which kind of sucks," I said. "But on the ride I realized that bumper stickers really piss me off."

This received laughter from the group, which surprised me. I hadn't said it to be funny, but rather for these reasons: one, it was true. Two, there was no way in hell he'd be able to say, "Pity. Because I happen to be a bumper sticker."

Two
We were watching one of the so-called stupid skits.
"Hey, David!" one guy onstage said.
"Hi, Charlie!" he replied.
"What've you got there?"
"I got some Adderol to help me stay awake to study!"

Laughter. Amidst this, the guy sitting next to me says to no one in particular, "Cocaine is the real stuff if you want to stay awake." I wasn't sure whether to laugh or nod. We didn't speak for the rest of the performance.

Three
Like most orientations, we had to participate in icebreaker type games, or what I better like to call "forced bonding". Our leader spoke through a shitty microphone, which made him sound like that guy from The Strokes, except his voice was much higher and had a distinct lack of badassery. He would frequently and effectively call out those who weren't participating with a handful of variations on the phrase, "Are you too cool for school?" The phrase was effective not because it was particularly biting; instead, because it got really annoying.

After this we were allowed to mingle as we pleased. Someone had brought a copy of Apples to Apples and a group sort of naturally gravitated toward it. About nine of us ended up playing for an hour.

Mollie, who I'd met earlier in the day, summed up my opinions on orientation pretty succinctly in one sentence: "I think I bonded more when they just let us loose."

Four

So there was this guy leading one of the orientation groups - and the first thing I thought when I saw him was "This guy looks like Rob."

Hours later I was heading to sleep in the dorms when I start talking to this guy named Kyle who saw my profile on Facebook. It turns out he's from Iowa too. We get to talking and he eventually says...

"Hey, on a random note: have you seen that one orientation leader that looks just like Rob Todd?"

"Holy shit!" I said, for two reasons:

1. He read my mind. He's right.
2. How the hell does everyone know who Rob is?!

"Yes!" I added, just to make it clear that I agreed. He raised his hand for me to high five him and I did. Before I had a chance to ask him how he'd met Rob, he got swept up in the crowd, like it happens.

And in case you're wondering - here's the orientation leader in question.

Did you know that the Westlakes Hy-Vee has Coca-Cola made in Mexico? They come in tall glass bottles and cost a little more than Coke typically does. The premium's worth it, though - since it isn't made in the US, actual sugar is used rather than its shady half-cousin, high fructose corn syrup. The Coke company claims that there's no difference in taste, but I beg to differ. It's a little weird - Coca-Cola is as American as the 4th of July and apple pie, but other countries are getting the good stuff while we're left with only a decent fascimile.

I'm going to be out of town until August 2. Tomorrow I'm leaving for orientation in Chicago, and after that I'm heading out to Philadelphia to see my grandmom, who I haven't seen in four years. Thanks to my Mom's laptop, my iPod touch and the near ubiquity of WiFi hotspots I'll probably be able to make a few posts while I'm away, but don't be surprised if I seem to go into radio silence for the next week.

Do you feel blame? Are you mad? Do you feel like wolfadabobrossflannisgaflannis BUJJ BUJJ BOOJEEJEE? Bearrammitiz a getcha getcha geejee geebe google?

On my sister's mission trip she met a seven year old boy named Skylar. He's completely blind and has a mild form of autism. He also loves Alicia Keys. He claimed he once got to perform with her onstage.

Here is a video of him singing one of her songs. I'm not sure why, but I think it's fantastic.

If I remember correctly, for six of the past seven days I've watched a movie every day. It's rare I watch movies so frequently.

Today's movie was High Fidelity, based on a book I like a lot. Pretty good movie. Entertaining. Todd Louiso and Jack Black play the lead character's co-workers at his record shop, and they do a fantastic job of portraying an awkward music nerd and obnoxious asshole respectively. The pacing was a little weird, but maybe I'm biased - the book was really well paced.

Best question asked to me today on ChaCha: "Tell me a blound joke." My irony meter nearly went boom.

My sister's back from her mission trip. She's brought back a slight Wisconsin accent with her. Weirdly enough, the trip was to North Carolina. She blames it on the Wisconsins surrounding her - apparently two thirds of the mission group was made up of Wisconsins.

It's kind of hilarious. Examples are hard to reproduce here, but one of my favorites was when an exclamation of "No!" was more like "Nohh!"

On a semi related note: Wisconsins? Wisconsans? Wisconsinans?

The Dark Knight is nothing more than a typical series of superhero cliches. It's standard and overhyped summer movie fare, and will undoubtedly make billions thanks to its complete lack of depth and ability to pander to the lowest common denominator. I bet you haven't heard that yet.

That's because it isn't true.

Thane did a pretty good job of summarizing The Dark Knight on his blog, so I won't say a lot here. I will say this: go see this movie. If this isn't the best movie of this summer, I'll be damned to see what comes next.

A thought: the more movies I watch and music I listen to and art I experience, I realize more and more that I often find genres irrelevant. Great works of art tend to be inspired by/borrow other pieces of art. Great action movies typically have a gag or two that'd fit perfectly in a great comedy. My favorite comedies usually have a moment that you might not be surprised to see in a drama. And so on.

I haven't seen a lot of superhero movies, but I think I can say The Dark Knight is the best one I've ever seen. And yet to call The Dark Knight a superhero movie is doing a disservice to it. It's like referring to The Beatles as nothing more than a rock and roll band. Yeah, they got their start covering Chuck Berry songs, but what do you call A Day in the Life? What do you call Blackbird? Hell, what do you call 75% of The White Album? (Nearly 40 years later and no one can agree on what to call Revolution #9.)

Where Spiderman equals Chuck Berry (laying the foundations, breaking preconceived notions, and still being somewhat rudimentary in form), The Dark Knight might equal The Beatles. Yes, it has a genre it sort of fits into - but there's so much more to it than that.

Similarly to The Beatles, the film manages to entertain to the mindless-popcorn-munching crowd while still keeping the interest of us sneering film nerds. It's something that Shakespeare understood perfectly - writing plays that entertained both the so-called groundlings and rich snobs.

But anyway: go see The Dark Knight. Analysts are predicting it will break box-office records this weekend with sales around $100 million. And you know what? I'm totally rooting for it.

Memento is a fantastic movie. The gist of it: a man with a short term memory problem attempts to figure out who killed and raped his wife. The entire film is presented backwards, which sounds incredibly disorienting but manages to be surprisingly easy to follow. The whole "backwards" thing also manages to not at all be gimmicky - it gives you a minor sense of disorientation that manages to allow viewers to easily connect to the main character. So anyway, see Memento. Fantastic, fantastic stuff.

I hope you are having a nice day. If you aren't, I suggest you have a look at these Germans who say nice things.

Crash was great. It's a heavy, somewhat depressing film that addresses various facets of race through a bunch of characters whose lives intersect in a Lost-ish sort of way. Two impressive things about Crash: it manages to address race without being preachy - something that few films (or people, for that matter) are often able to do. And secondly: amidst the heaviness and depression there still manages to be a few glimpses of hope. Anyway, see this movie. A full analysis would be better suited for big-ass essay.

A big ass-essay.

In other news: The New Yorker is taking heat over a recent magazine cover satrizing recent misconceptions about Barack Obama. My two cents: the popular American perception of The New Yorker (and its readers) was summarized pretty succintly by Family Guy. In one episode, Brian walks into the offices of The New Yorker to find a bunch of old, pretencious white guys wearing monocles, smoking cigars as they sit in plush overstuffed chairs.

Maybe if this cover had been presented in a different way, it'd have a better reception. I can picture Stephen Colbert in character on his show, crayons in hand, presenting the picture as a so-called "exclusive photo". But unfortunately for The New Yorker, they aren't Stephen Colbert. Irony can be a little difficult to convey when your audience is just glancing at you.

Tonight's movie: Memento.
Did you know the Tru-Value in Guthrie Center rents movies? I sure didn't.

So I got a lot of replies to the post about movies. Thanks for all of those. I've retooled my list accordingly, and added:

• American History X
• Crash
• Better off Dead
• The Usual Suspects
• American Graffiti
• Full Metal Jacket
• The Shining
• High Fidelity
• Back to the Future 1 & 2
• Terminator 1 & 2
  

I also watched the first Star Wars film ("Episode 4" I guess you'd call it) last night. Great movie. It's easy to see that modern film making (for better or for worse) has been influenced heavily by this film.

Sure, it has its flaws: The characters feel flat. (Leia = girl with an attitude, Obi-Wan = wise mentor, Luke = whiny bastard.) The dialog is less than impressive. But what is impressive is that Lucas managed to create such a vast and fantastic world with his films. Also neat is his ability to borrow great works (from comic books to Chinese philosophy) and combine them in such a way that allows Star Wars to still feel fresh to this day.

And speaking of feeling fresh: it's also managed to age incredibly well. The set design, sound design, and special effects were amazingly uncheesy. Then again, I watched the "Special Edition" - a digitally enhanced version with CGI replacing a lot of the original old-school special effects. I kind of wish I could have seen the original version. I realize that sprucing up the film was Lucas's way of getting the film closer to his original vision (or making more money, if you're a skeptic), but the CGI-ified version isn't what made Star Wars a household name.

Overall, good stuff. I plan on watching the rest of the original trillogy - and maybe the new ones if I have the opportunity.

Tonight's movie: Crash.

I finally got the new firmware update on my iPod. This means I can download new applications for it. I was a little disappointed by Super Monkey Ball. It looks fantastic, but the controls (tilting the iPod around) are really touchy and therefore very frustrating. I really regret spending $10 on that app.

But on the other hand: download Tetris. I feel like I've downloaded/purchased Tetris on nearly every electronic device I've owned, and yet I'm still glad I shelled out $10 for the iPod version. It's bright, colorful, smooth, and surprisingly intuitive.

My week at the lake came off to kind of a depressing start. One of our neighbors who lives across from us committed suicide last night. I never knew him, but I think my parents spoke with him and his wife at a picnic here last week. It's a little strange how even though I never knew the man, his death managed to put me in a bit of a bummer mood for a while. Perhaps it's the proximity. Perhaps it's the circumstances.

It didn't help that this morning I read J.D. Salinger's A Perfect Day for Bananafish. It ends with one of the characters unexpectedly committing suicide by shooting himself - the exact thing that happened across the street last night. The strange thing was that I didn't realize the coincidence until hours after reading the story.

About a year ago I posted a list of classic/popular/renowned films I haven't seen. Here it is again. Movies I've finally seen are red.

• The Star Wars Trilogy (I'm not interested in episodes 1-3.)
  
• Casablanca
• Citizen Kane
• Titanic
• Dawn of the Dead
• Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3
• Kill Bill 1 & 2
• The Godfather 1 & 2
• Anchorman
• Pulp Fiction
• Any of the Indiana Jones movies
• Memento
• American Beauty
• It's a Wonderful Life (I've seen only the last 2/3rds. I swear this movie has no beginning.)
• Alien
• The Terminator films
• Shrek 2 & 3
• Life of Brian
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• Jurassic Park
• The 2nd and 3rd Lord of the Rings
• Independence Day
• The Sixth Sense
• Meet the Parents
• Jaws
• Men in Black
• Fight Club

I'm thinking about coming back to this list every so often, adding films and removing the ones that don't interest me/seem irrelevant.

For instance, I'm contemplating removing the last two Pirates films from the list as well as Independence Day. And the Shrek films too - I liked the first one a lot and I've heard the sequels don't do much except ruin the legacy of the first one.

This is your opportunity to speak up: why shouldn't I remove these films from the list?

So the sketch show was yesterday. It went really well. To be honest with you, I was a little surprised by how well it went. I think we all knew we had some good stuff written, but I don't think any of us anticipated that it'd go as well as it did.

Typically after big projects I have a part in making I write a good-sized post show analysis of some sort. I don't think that's necessary for this one. To quote Forrest Gump: "And that's all I have to say about that."

The iPhone launch is taking place...and it seems Apple can't handle the load. Not the best of news. Even though I'm not getting one, I'd like for the problems to be resolved so I can download the new software update. I need me some Super Monkey Ball.

The sketch show is tomorrow. I'm a little amazed this thing is actually happened. I mean, this has been something we've been talking about since last December.

A byproduct of this show has been that my summer's been very structured. Depending on who you ask, this is either a step above or a step below a summer being flat out busy. A busy summer means you can't do anything because you've always got something going on. A structured summer means you maybecan but maybecan't make it to do something because you-know-you've-got-something-going-on-around-this-general-timeframe-but-you-aren't-entirely-sure-when.

Starting this Friday after the sketch show I think I'm going to go on a mini-sabbatical - to Panora, that is. That week seems like a great time to both clear my head and get a few things done.

I recently discovered this video thanks to Digg. It's about two guys and a surreal moment on Google Maps. It's absolutely fantastic - it manages to be funny and creepy at the same time. Sort of like a modern day Twilight Zone episode.

Lately I've been enjoying the Shuffle function of iTunes. There's nothing quite like a downbeat Wilco song followed by "The Sign" by Ace of Base.

Strange moment at the farm: falling asleep on the couch by the fireplace and waking up in a completely different room on the second bunk of a bed. With my pillow, sleeping bag, and iPod touch all intact. I have no memory of walking to the other room. There's the possibility of being carried, but I feel like I'd wake up if that happened. Anyway, it's a mystery. I swear no illicit substances were involved.

A week or two ago I became a guide for ChaCha. My favorite question so far: "what does the stereotype 'bagel miser' mean?" A search on Google returned only two results.

I'm back from the farm and had a fantastic 4th of July. I'm just a little amazed it didn't go more like this.

It looks like the daily post train has broken down. For now.

The upcoming sketch show has been keeping me pretty busy lately. The 4th of July makes posting a little difficult as well; I'll not only be in an area where internet access isn't an option, but electricity is barely an option.