Brought to you by the letters W,T, and F

Also brought to you by a generous grant from the Chubb Foundation.
Keep watching this space.

DAMN YOU TWITTER!!!

I hate some of people on twitter. For a while it fed into my enormous ego when I would receive the email saying so-n-so is now following you. "SWEET, I'm popular" is what I would think until I looked at my followers and it would look like one of the hand-outs you get on the streets of Vegas advertising "special ladies". You know the ones I'm talking about, Art's pockets are stuffed with them. Anyway, I just spent the last ten minutes emptying out the harem the my follower list was turning into, I have an image to uphold. No sexy pics of scantily clad chicks on any of my pages. No sirree...I'm sticking to manly pics:

Good Lord I'm gay. Keep watching this space.

The origins of Bert

Today at work people kept asking me why all my friends and family refer to me as "Bert". Is my middle name Bert? Was I obsessed with Bert from Sesame? Am I touched in the head? All valid questions, well maybe not that last one, but the point is I get asked these questions a lot. My answer is I have no idea when and where it started. All I know is that my friend from high school Tim is the one who passed the name along to everyone else, like herpes. Not to say that Tim had herpes, its just a metaphor that...never mind, the point is he is the one that popularized the name and it has stuck since high school.

I do have one theory about the name's origin. The Disney channel used to show the things called cartoons, you know before all the Hanna Montana's Suite Life with Wizards of High School Musical crap that they now show ad nauseum . Anyway, one of the short toons they would air between shows was "Lambert the Sheepish Lion" and since my last name happens to be Lamb it was a simple way to make fun of my name. Problem is it never really bothered me. I pretty much can handle name calling and usually was able get back at bullies, typically by kicking them in the nuts and running away like a little school girl, but I digress. I guess Tim really liked the cartoon but it took too long to say the name and he liked calling over to me by going "BERTBERTBERT" which got further shrunk to just Bert.

Of course I have fully embraced the nickname, all my in-laws refer to me as Bert and it is very discomforting any time they say my real name. Even my mom will sometimes refer to me as Bert. So feel free to call me Bert, Bertrude, Berticus, or Mr. Most Awesomest Monkey Fighting Bad Ass That Has or Ever Will Lived.

One more thing. Every time I mention the cartoon, people look at me as if I just crapped on their chest. Apparently no one has ever watched cartoons, the Disney Channel, or have had their minds wiped in an insidious plot to make me look ridiculous. Well, since a man in my position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous and thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I give you from 1952 the academy award nominated short Lambert the Sheepish Lion:



Keep watching this space.

YouTube Tuesday

Got back from our tour of the Labor & Delivery tour at Kaiser. My wife is now scared of epidurals and seems very concerned about making sure the boy will be circumcised. I'm sure it can only get better the closer to the due date right? Anyway, since I'm not in the mood to come up with anything clever or original, I've decided to make to night movie night. Tonight we will be featuring the awesome short films of on Neill Blomkamp.

I first heard of Blomkamp about three years ago when rumors of a proposed Peter Jackson Halo movie were running rampant. Jackson wanted Neill, a South African filmmaker with no major motion picture directing experience, to direct the film. I suppose its understandable that the studio balked at the idea of handing a major franchise Halo to a first time director, but he did have the backing of Oscar winning director Peter Jackson and Microsoft as well as some very impressive short films and commercials, including one that would lead to a major box office success and my favorite film of the year so far.

First up is a commercial for Citroen, which features a car turning into a robot that looks like a robot for an amount far below what Michael Bay paid for his overblown Transformer designs:


HOW DID HE NOT GET A CONSULTING JOB ON TRANSFORMERS?!!!

I think this next one is my favorite of his and I hope he adapts it into a full length picture. If it bombs here it would definitely make a bank in Japan. Its called Tetra Vaal which has to be Afrikaans for ASS KICKING POLICE BOTS:

Its Robocop for the 21st century.

Here's the film that inspired a little film that's out in theaters right now making all sorts of money and basically saying "F*CK YOU!" to Hollywood for having so little in his abilities despite his obvious talent:


So whats a guy to do when a major studio gets cold feet and starts pulling back from making a film adaptation to one of the best shooters of all time. You get together with Microsoft and create a series of promotional videos to tease the release of a new Halo game and to show the studios how much ass a live action Halo film would kick if they would just let him do it. Seriously, I want him to make Halo after seeing this:

Ah, what could have been.

Well I hoped you enjoyed this look at the talented career of Neill Blomkamp. I'm positive you'll hear more from him in the years to come. If you want to look at some more of his early stuff go check out spyfilms.com. Also, go out and see District 9, you won't regret it, unless you take little kids with you. They might not go to sleep ever again, or turn into lame bloggers who have obsessed about the short films of a South African filmmaker for the past three years, hoping to one day see the big screen exploits of one of their favorite video game heroes, but ultimately getting hurt and betrayed by a movie system would rather get a shitty movie made by a shitty director with more Hollywood experience then a truly visionary new talent.

Oh, and Ted Kennedy has died.

Keep watching this space.

COBRAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Seriously, whats so hard about adapting this costume to the big screen? You had a budget of $170 million. Let's see what can be done for under $1000:

And if you tack on another $1000 you can get a sexy sidekick:

This is what a budget of $170 mil gets you:

So which do you think works better as a villain in a multi million dollar action movie that's designed to start a franchise that sells billions of dollars worth of merchandise?

Would be world conquering bad ass:

Or ass-hat:

I'll let you decide. Keep watching this space.

Another of life's milestones has finished

Finally, the dreaded baby shower has come and gone. As I type this, my wife is flipping through the telly, my dog is passed out, and I'm slowly regretting not putting sunblock on my pasty white flesh. Work is going to be so fun. Still, I would gladly go through with nit again just to spend time with family and friends, I mean holy crap, even Walter showed up, sans horse however.

Its funny however, I was so worried about not having enough food, only to find out we had way too much food and all I had to eat was one cheeseburger (thanks Chris for cooking them, you're the bert) and a couple pieces of lumpia. I didn't even have any of the food that I grilled. I am told that everyone loved the lemon lime tequila chicken from Costco that I heated up. That's right, I am the next Food Network star bitches. Hell even my dog at more than me. Next time I'm paying some people from Home Depot to do all the cooking for me. Who wants fajitas?

So, whats next? Finishing that damn nursery. Why did I ever agree to install laminate flooring? Maybe I can convince the man who wanders our neighborhood looking like a bum, and scaring my wife and dog, to do all the work. I think that would be perfectly fine with the little lady, who's not so little anymore. I'm so getting punched in the stomach later. That's OK though, now that she's bigger then me I can easily outrun her, so I should be safe til after Thanksgiving.

Now I'm off to lather my burnt body in a tub of aloe. One of these days I'll get to my rant about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Vomit. Keep watching this space.

For Sara,

I've been chastised for not keeping up with my blog. Well excuuuuuse me! I've been a little busy lately, what with making room fom the upcomming demon spawn and trying to stay busy at work. I have been able to do a few fun frivolous things, however, I'm too tired to go into detail right now. I spent all day painting the nursery and fixing the mistakes made by my so called good friends, who shall remain nameless. You know who you are, stalkers.

Anyway, I promised to update this site and I have met that obligation. I also promised an answer to the riddle I asked last month. If you forgot it you can find it here. So, without further adieu scroll down for the answer to the most awesome riddle you've ever read.







Its simple really, you ask which door would your brother tell me to take and you simply chose the other door. The brother who tells the truth knows his brother would lie and tell you the wrong door. The brother who lies, knows his brother would tell you the right door, but since your dealing with a liar he would obviously lie about which door his truth telling brother would pick. The end result is that both brothers would point to the wrong door so you should pick the one not selected and go on your merry way. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Next time, I'll rant about how Hollywood continues to ruin my childhood. So keep watching this space.