Greg turns over keys to Big Red Car

If you have a kid under the age of 6 in your house, then you’re all-too-familiar with the Wiggles.

So the news today may come as a shock—Greg Page, aka “the yellow wiggle,” is leaving the group!

Greg, who is 34 years old, suffers from a chronic heart condition known as orthostatic intolerance. He’s quitting the kids group to focus on his health.

Although the condition is not life-threatening, it’s bad enough to keep him from being able to perform on stage.

A guy named Sam Moran, a longtime understudy for the group, will take over as the new yellow Wiggle. In a video on the group’s site Greg explains his condition, his decision to leave and officially hands his yellow shirt over to Sam.

'X-Men' artist Dave Cockrum dies

Wow. I just read some very sad news. Dave Cockrum, one of the comic book artists who put “X-Men” on the map, passed away on Sunday.

Cockrum was 63 years old. He died at his home in South Carolina after a long battle with diabetes and related complications.

Cockrum worked on many books during his career at both Marvel and DC, but he’ll be best remembered for his stints penciling “X-Men” in the 1970s and early 80s.

“X-Men” had failed to find an audience when it was first published in the 1960s. It was on the verge of cancellation when Cockrum took over the book in 1975 with writer Len Wein and later Chris Claremont. The rest is comic book history as the book became one of the most popular titles in the industry.

I have very fond memories of Cockrum’s work from my comic book collecting youth. He created one of my favorite characters, Nightcrawler, and helped create or shape many of the other characters that would later be featured in the “X-Men” movies.

Cockrum, who served in the Navy during Vietnam, never saw a dime from the three X-Men movies.

"Dave saw the movie and he cried -- not because he was bitter," family friend Clifford Meth said. "He cried because his characters were on screen and they were living."

There is a nice tribute to Cockrum on the Marvel Comics site.

Hero notes

Here are some thoughts on last night's episode of "Heroes"...

Does anyone else find it odd that Sylar (played by actor Zachary Quinto) looks like an evil Clark Kent? Coincidence?

Meanwhile, I finally picked up on the significance of Eden's name. At first I thought her power was simply that she could do the Jedi mind trick ("These aren't the droids you're looking for"). But so far we've only seen her use her power on men. So she can get men to do whatever she tells them--just like Eve told Adam to take the apple in (all together now) the Garden of Eden.

If this was obvious to everyone else already, then please forgive me.

Holiday fun & games

OfficeMax is spreading holiday cheer with two fun sites inspired by "A Christmas Story." Check out Stuck to a Pole and Don't Shoot Your Eye Out.

'It's a...nice day for a...White Christmas'

Something about seeing 80s bad boy Billy Idol doing his best Bing Crosby impression just doesn't feel right...

More Thanksgiving humor

WKRP Turkey Drop

For your Thanksgiving viewing pleasure...a little something to enjoy for dessert...

"As God as my witness, I thought turkey's could fly."

Spotted on Lost Remote.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

The Rooney family wishes all of you out there have a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy your time with loved ones. Don’t eat too much…oh, who am I kidding? Go crazy! Stuff yourself!

First Grade Feast

Yesterday was the “First Grade Feast” at Nolan's school. All of the first graders dressed as pilgrims and Indians and sat down in the hallway to have lunch together.

The menu included chicken nuggets, veggies and popcorn—just like the first Thanksgiving!

For entertainment, the music teacher led the kids in some songs and even the principal came down to perform a number for the kids on his guitar.

Fun was had by all.

Family hike

We had lunch early today and found ourselves with nothing to do. So we decided to hop in the car and go for a quick hike.

The trail we went to is not that far from our house. It runs between the GE R&D Center and KAPL. It starts on the side of River Road and takes you to the Mohawk River, right across from the Llenroc mansion.

It's actually quite a scenic hike when you consider that we're in the middle of town and a stone's throw from two industrial complexes.

A section of the area, I believe, used to be a commuter rail line that connected Schenectady to Troy a long time ago. The track is long gone and the area is all grassy now. But we did stumble across what looked like some old railroad ties--which thrilled a certain choo-choo fan in our party.

Oh my!

More great geek news...TrekToday reports George Takei (Mr. Sulu) will appear on "Heroes" as Hiro's father. He's set to make his first appearance in a cliffhanger episode on Jan. 29.

Meanwhile, the same article also reports Christopher Eccleston (aka the Ninth Doctor Who) will also be joining the cast. No word on who he will play or when he'll make his first appearance. Although I can't help bu wonder if he's goingto turn outto be the mysterious super serial killer Sylar.

NBC swag

This little NBC promotional item was passed on to me today. It’s my very own set of official “Save the Cheerleader…Save the World” pom-poms.

I brought them home and gave them to Thomas, who had fun shaking them and trying to place them on my head.

I’m looking forward to Monday night’s big episode of “Heroes,” in which we’ll supposedly find out why Claire the cheerleader needs saving and how that will save the world. The promo makes it look pretty cool—and we all know how well promos can be trusted.

VHS, 30, dies of loneliness

After a long illness, the groundbreaking home-entertainment format VHS has died of natural causes in the United States. The format was 30 years old.

No services are planned.

The format had been expected to survive until January, but high-def formats and next-generation vidgame consoles hastened its final decline.

VHS is survived by a child, DVD, and by Tivo, VOD and DirecTV. It was preceded in death by Betamax, Divx, mini-discs and laserdiscs.

Read the rest of the "obit" that appeared in Variety this week.

The story goes on to say that many retailers have stopped stocking VHS tapes since they no longer have shelf space for them. Subsequently, most studios have stopped producing videotapes.

Our two VCRs still get a workout in our household. They may not be releasing mainstream movies on tape anymore, but you can still find plenty of kid videos. And we also still haven't joined the 21st century world of DVRs. So if we miss a show, we still tape it, not "TiVo it."

Play ball

Major League Baseball owners approved television contracts today. The bad news is, the World Series will remain exclusively on Fox through 2013.

The good news is Fox will no longer have exclusive rights to the ALCS and NLCS. They’ll start sharing those series with TBS under the same system they used to have with NBC. Fox will have the ALCS next year, TBS gets the NLCS. Then the following year they’ll switch.

I don’t know if TBS will be any good or not, but at least it will be nice to have an alternative to Fox.

The ESPN article doesn’t make any mention of the Divisional Series. Right now ESPN gets some of those. I believe that’s part of a separate deal that’s still continuing.

Pahrump

If you watch “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” you might be surprised to learn that the dusty little town of Pahrump, Nevada—where Nate Cordry’s character got arrested and hauled before a gruff judge played by John Goodman—is actually a real place. It’s a town of about 40,000 residents west of Las Vegas.

Pahrump is in the news today because the town council there is fed up with those pesky illegal immigrants. So they passed a (unconstitutional) law barring people from flying the flag of a foreign nation higher than the U.S. flag or by itself. Doing so gets you a $50 fine and 30 hours of community service.

The town council also pushed through measures to deny services to illegal immigrants and make English the official language in Pahrump.

Coming soon

I’m pretty excited to find out one of my favorite books is being made into a movie. The lengthy title of the book is “Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II.” I suspect they’ll shrink that title down for the movie.

Peter Weir is in talks to direct. His most recent movie was “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.” He also directed “The Truman Show” and “Dead Poets Society.”

“Shadow Divers” tells the incredible story of two deep wreck divers who discovered a German U-boat about 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey back in the early 1990s. No one in the German or American governments had any idea how the submarine got there. These two guys spent the next six years obsessed with identifying the sub—risking their lives and their marriages in the process.

Although they survived, some other divers working with them were killed. This book portrays deep wreck diving as just about the most crazy, dangerous “hobby” anyone could ever take part in.

Although this is a non-fiction book, it reads like an adventure novel. It’s a real page-turner. I didn’t really know anything about diving or U-boats, but I got sucked into it and couldn’t put it down. It should be a great movie.

The story was also the subject of a documentary on “Nova” in 2000 called “Hitler's Lost Sub”. I’ve never seen it, but the companion website is still online.

The lost 'Spider-Man' footage

Well, Sony seems to have successfully exorcised that unfinished "Spider-Man 3" trailer from the Web. I can't find it anywhere.

TMZ.com has an article about how the movie studio scrambled to plug the leak and how Google and YouTube find themselves caught in a tangled web (get it?) when it comes to uploading copyrighted material.

But here's a screen grab of the top secret footage they don't want you to see...

Autumn

Kris took this picture back on Halloween. I just didn't get around to posting it until now...

2-D-lightful

Maybe I've been going a bit overboard with the movie trailers, but this one is worth while. Here's the latest trailer for "The Simpsons Movie"...



UPDATE: Well, it looks like the trailer got yanked from YouTube. So here it is on Google Video (why it's still available on one and not the other I'm not sure).

I don't really understand why studios don't want their trailers to go viral. Isn't it all about creating buzz for your product? I would think the more eyes that view a trailer, the more places it's available, the better.

Venom!

I don't how long this will last before it gets yanked--but check out this alternate trailer for "Spider-Man 3."

The big nit-pick on the one that came out last Thursday was there was still no sign of Venom. Then this trailer leaked out over the weekend. It's longer and clearly unfinished. A lot of the shots are missing their effects or are animatics. But stick around for the very end and you won't be disappointed!



A link to this trailer went up on Ain't It Cool News over the weekend and then was quickly removed when Harry Knowles got a phone call from the Sony folks. I guess they wanted to keep Venom under wraps a little longer. But a quick search found it on YouTube. They'll probably get the cease and desist order too, so enjoy it while you can!

UPDATE: Well that didn't last long. About an hour after I published this post, I went to play the trailer for a co-worker and it was already gone. So I've replaced the YouTube version with one from Google Video. We'll see how long that lasts.

In the meantime, in case that gets yanked too, you can see a screen grab of Venom here.