I haven’t been the most frequent poster on MLD lately, but I do want to take some time to wish everyone a Merry Happy from myself and the rest of the MLD writing team  🙂  Enjoy some of my recent Lensbaby Fisheye shenanigans, on what I hope is at least a day you don’t have to work!  

What a treat for the end of the week!  The Sixers played the Boston Celtics on the road tonight at the TD Garden and came away with a one-point win in the last 23 seconds of the game.  This is clearly the Sixers biggest win of the season.  Hell, they only had six wins going in.  This was the first to come against a team with a winning record, and not only are the Celtics over .500, they have the best record in the NBA and came in with an 11-game winning streak.  I’m not saying this is anything more than one win, but what a fun win.  I’d say that merits a post.

Well, it’s the week before Christmas and all through the house… I don’t actually have a rhyme to go with that… Bottom line, I’m spending the weekend in sunny (or cloudy and rainy but still distinctly warmer and nicer) Florida. Heck, there’s a winter storm warning in effect at home for tomorrow night. Suckers.

Why do they even pretend to celebrate Christmas down here?

At home, they’re predicting a white Christmas. Down here they’re putting lights on palm trees.

Anyway, I took a break from the Operations Management final that I’ve been working on unsuccessfully for the last six days to join my wife for a trip to Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure today. Since Pete is such a huge Marvel fan, I spent the day harassing him with photos from the park’s Marvel Island. Pete suggested that I should be posting the photos here as well to share them with the world. So since I’ve been too buried with school work the last few months to post much, I figured that sounded like as good of a way to jump back into it as any.

So we’ll start with the scene when we arrived at Islands of Adventure this morning.

The lack of people suggested to us that we had slept through the Apocalypse overnight and luckily survived.

While uncertain about the fate of the rest of the world, we headed over to the Spider-man 3D ride where the line was unbearably long.

Actually, it was just us and Doctor Octopus.

We rode the Spider-man ride that seats 12 or 18 people alone. Just the two of us. It was so romantic until the fires and spinning started.

That was the highlight of the Marvel section of the park until I reached the gift shop and saw this.

Psycho is right.

I have no interest in the Punisher. None. But that bobble head might be the greatest piece of Marvel merchandising I’ve ever seen. It’s better than all three of his movies combined… (and I’ve only seen two of them.)

I soon realized that there was a whole line of Marvel products in this awesomely cute style. Here are some highlights.

Amazing.

Spirited.

Unpredicatable.

All American.

Seeing the Hulk pin made me sad as they didn’t have a larger Hulk bobble head to go with the line, but they at least did design work on him. As it is, I may end up picking up a Captain America for me and Spider-man for Pete but I wish I was coming home with a Hulk as well.

The final couple of photos I’ll share with you tonight are below. While I’m not a huge fan of the Harry Potter movies, I know some people freak out for them. Well, you may have seen ads lately for Universal’s upcoming Harry Potter attraction as they have been airing incessantly on television. Here’s a sneak peak at the still under construction Hogwarts school. I believe it’s set to open in the Spring.

That’s it for today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll share photos of manatees and gators.

I’ve been a Saturday Night Live fan for a long time and have stuck with it even through some very weak seasons.  The upside is that there are years when everything seems to come together nicely and makes for some great shows.  I think this might be one of those years.

The hosts so far have been pretty average with Taylor Swift being the only real stand-out.  This hasn’t stopped any of the shows from being a lot of fun since the cast really shines this year.  Some great recurring skits new to this season include What Up With That? and ESPN Classic broadcasts.  Combining these with spoofs of Tiger Woods and Fox News’ Fall election coverage have made for some fun shows.  The Digital Short offerings have also been solid with On the Ground, Two Worlds Collide, Shy Ronnie, and A Ladies Guide to Throwing a Party to name a few.  Lady GaGa was also surprisingly fun as a musical guest.

New featured cast members Nasim Pedrad and Jenny Slate have been great additions.  It’s just a shame that these two were hired as replacements for Michaela Watkins and Casey Wilson who I enjoyed last season.

Saturday Night Live airs Saturday’s at 11:30PM on NBC.  Tonight’s host is someone called Taylor Lautner who’s in some vampire movie and the musical guest is Bon Jovi who will likely get involved in other segments of the show.  An amazing number of clips from past shows are also available from the show’s official site.

The Lugubrious Mr. Lydon has been away from the Latest Distraction for some time, doing schoolwork and teaching kids how to read, so just ahead of Christmas, I’m back to give you my short review of Wes Anderson’s stop-motion rendering of Roald Dahl’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox“.

I’ve been a fan of stop-motion animation since I watched Nickelodeon in the 80s. This love was only bolstered by Christmas specials by Rankin and Bass, and old Sinbad movies featuring the work of stop-motion god Ray Harryhausen.  Though the love affair hasn’t been nearly as long, I’ve loved Wes Anderson’s movies since I saw Rushmore… what, ten years ago? So, marrying the twain together was a like a dream come true for me.

Full disclosure: I did fall asleep once during Fantastic Mr. Fox, but that wasn’t because of the story/the film itself. Haven’t been sleeping very well with end-of-term woes, and had only slept like 3 hours the night before. Bygones. What I did see (which was most of the film excepting like 10 minutes) was great! The colors, the character design, the sets, everything wowed me like I haven’t been wowed since Wallace and Gromit’s Curse of the Were-Rabbit! And hey, include George Clooney and Jason Schwartzman, and I’m up for the downstroke.

Not going to get into the story for you; you can read the book or see the movie for  yourself. Be wary, though, if you are not already a fan of Wes Anderson movies, or stop animation, you probably won’t think this is so fantastic. Pacing is very much like Anderson’s other movies, as is the writing. They’re not for everybody, as my friend Bill’s dad still reminds me to this day. I told him to rent The Royal Tenenbaums, and he STILL wants the 3 bucks it cost him to rent the movie.

But, if you’re like me, you’ll love this movie. Also, anybody wanna get a whackbat team together?

HOTBOX!