Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has continued to be preoccupied with “real life” and hasn’t made time to blog consistently (or at all really). Sorry ’bout that. But he is now doing a little post because of a noteworthy anniversary today.

Yes… Today would be Elvis’ Seventy-fourth birthday. The King of Rock and Roll would be an old geezer now were he not dead. But your Maximum Leader would still be a fan. A big fan in fact. If your Maximum Leader hasn’t put you on notice before, in the Mike World Order, Elvis’ birthday will be a paid holiday - by law. (Your Maximum Leader will even push hard to have Elvis declared “Saint Elvis of Memphis.” If the Catholic Church will not accomodate this, your Maximum Leader is sure he can get the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans and AME churches to go along.) Graceland and the grave of Elvis is already a pilgramage shrine. Your Maximum Leader is sure many have been healed of their ailments by visiting the grave of Elvis. It shouldn’t be too hard… Plus… Can you imagine how cool it would be to have a Caddy or a Stutz Blackhawk that was once owned by a Saint? Very cool indeed.

Your Maximum Leader hasn’t checked, but his is pretty sure that something fun is going on at the Elvis website in honor of his birthday.

Happy Birthday to the King of Rock & Roll.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader must concur with FLG’s positive assessment of this video.

Very cool indeed.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader submits for your viewing pleasure the short film “Nailing your Wife” starring Nathan Fillion and Aria Giovanni.

Very funny.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is tired. He is tired due to a combination of lack of sleep and the onset of some nasal stuffiness.

Why is your Maximum Leader tire due to lack of sleep? Well… Friday night he went to a formal ball and didn’t get home and to bed until way past his normal bedtime. Indeed, he was only crawling into be at 2am. Then he woke up on Saturday morning to the loving embrace of his villainous progeny. That occured at about 7 am.

Then on Saturday, your Maximum Leader and his good friends Kevin, Smallholder and Polymath got together and went out to see Bruce Campbell’s new flick “My Name is Bruce” at the E Street Cinema in DC.

The orginal plan was for Smallholder to buy tickets to the 7:45 pm showing. After the 7:45 showing the man himself, Bruce Campbell, would give a little talk and answer some questions. Being geeks, this appealed to us all.

Alas, Smallholder isn’t as technology savvy as we would like. He has trouble with Al Gore’s fancy interwebs and clicked on the 5:30 pm showing (one without Bruce Campbell). So… We saw the early showing and missed out on Bruce Campbell.

We toyed with the idea of trying to sneak around in the the cinema and insinuate ourselves into the 7:45 showing and get to see the movie twice and Bruce Campbell once. Alas… There were cinema employees crawling all over the place to assure that this very course of action could not take place. Your Maximum Leader supposes that if we’d had a little more time to plan (and slightly fewer scruples) we could have made it work out. As it turned out, we now have something to hold over the Smallholder’s head and did get to see the film. Mocking Smallholder for not being able to click the correct circle will almost be worth missing the main event.

After the film, we four trudged up to Georgetown and had sandwiches at “The Tombs” - a favorite of Kevin’s since his Hoya days.

After “The Tombs” we dropped Kevin off at his house and returned to the Villainschloss. Then we watched Tivo’ed episodes of “Chelsea Lately” and “Get Wild with Cindy Garrison.” We turned in at about 1am. Then it was up at 7am with the kiddies and breakfast. Smallholder and Polymath left in the late morning to return to their homes. Your Maximum Leader cleaned up the Villainschloss and watched football. It was during football that he realized that his nose was runny and that he was feeling worn down. Rather than doing the smart thing and going to bed early, he had to stay up and watch the Redskins/Cowboys game.

Tonight he will likely be out by 8 pm…

Review of the film will follow…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know if this video is real or staged. Either way it made him chuckle.

See the video for yourself. Clicky the linky here.

Your Maximum Leader would have embedded the video here, but it is a little too wide to display correctly in his column.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, as longtime readers know, is a real Dracula afficianado. Something about the story speaks to him. He is quite fond of the films as well. Indeed, while doing some painting at the Villainschloss your Maximum Leader discovered that he had quite a number of versions of Dracula on DVD. Perhaps he’ll have a Dracula-fest on Halloween…

Anyhoo…

You should go and vote for your favourite film vampire over at AMC’s Fearfest… Here is the link to get you to the first round of voting.

Of course you need to vote Bela Lugosi… Not like your Maximum Leader is trying to sway your vote or anything…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is a big believer in the marketplace of ideas, free competition, blah, blah, blah, blah…

So… Imagine his interest in the concept of competition in art appreciation…

The Heretic Boys for Art.

Catchy…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is still having computer problems. He believes we’ve eliminated virus as potential cause. It is either that a Windows XP update went horribly wrong… Or the hard drive is dying a painful death. Either way your Maximum Leader is still screwed on the computer front.

But… For those of you who are interested… The theme music to the upcoming Bond film has already been used as a Coke commerical. Here is the commerical for your viewing pleasure:

Interesting… Your Maximum Leader wouldn’t have pegged Bond for a Coke Zero guy…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure why he didn’t jump on the bandwagon sooner! What bandwagon… Well the “rate your favorite James Bond” bandwagon of course. All the best blogs are doing it. Sir Basil. FLiG.

So here you go:

1. Sean Connery - is there really any doubt of this? He could even pull it off wearing that horrid rug in “Never Say Never Again.”

2. Daniel Craig - Heresy for putting him so far up the list? No. Your Maximum Leader really thinks he nailed the role. The upcoming film might affect this rating… But for the moment here he is.

3. Pierce Brosnan - Now we are getting towards the dregs. Brosnan was a less-Roger-Moore than Roger Moore Bond.

4. Roger Moore - Sure he did “Moonraker”… But he also did “For Your Eyes Only.”

5. George Lazenby - “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” would - without a doubt - be the best James Bond film made if it had anyone but George Lazenby starring in it.

6. Timothy Dalton - Always looked constipated. ‘Nuff said.

And for those of you who care… Back in November of 2006 your Maximum Leader rated his favourite Bond girls… That list still stands…

Did your Maximum Leader mention that he received the new James Bond novel for his birthday this year? He did. He read it. “Devil May Care” by Sebastian Faulks The “big deal” about this book was that Faulks was going to “write in the style” of Ian Fleming. The “style” was a decernable attempt to replicate the way in which Ian Fleming turned a phrase or wrote action. Alas… The story just seemed to wear thin on your Maximum Leader. Indeed, he’s now sat for a few minutes just trying to remember the plot at all. There are a few parts of the book that he could remember (bombers blowing up a big hydrofoil in one part). But on the balance the book was completely forgettable.

Your Maximum Leader just might sit down tonight with a scotch and watch “From Russia with Love.” (Or he might sit down with a scotch and watch Tivo’ed episodes of “Burn Notice” and “Penn & Teller’s Bullshit.”)

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has a few moments before dinner and wanted to type out a blog post. Of course a grandiose post concerning America and her future is percolating in his mind. Alas, there isn’t time to type it out now. So… What to do… How about a page out of the ole Elisson playbook?

Yup… Highlights from what has been randomly dished out by your Maximum Leader’s little black iPod. Here you go…

1) Blood Brothers - Bruce Springsteen

2) Let me clear my throat - DJ Kool If you would allow your Maximum Leader to be open with you here… Your Maximum Leader has about 10,000 songs on his iPod. A great many of them come from the CD collection of a relative of his who was a DJ for a number of years while in college. Your Maximum Leader believes that there are probably about 5,000 songs on his iPod that he’s never ever heard before. This song is one of those. It was just dished out randomly today and listened to…

3) Pictures of You - The Last Goodnight This song was randomly dished out to your Maximum Leader as well. It turns out that he had heard the song before and never knew the name or artist until now. So he gave the song a good rating and now it will appear on some other playlists he keeps on his iPod.

4) Young Americans - David Bowie This song and “Modern Love” by Bowie always seem to compete for the honor of being your Maximum Leader’s favorite Bowie song.

5) Jesus the Missing Years - John Prine

6) Flowers on the Wall - The Statler Brothers Yes. You guessed. Your Maximum Leader isn’t a huge Statler fan, but does like this song. Since it happened to be on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, he owns it. Why is it that your Maximum Leader now only buys soundtracks of Quentin Tarantino movies? Because they fricking ROCK!

7) Anna Begins - Counting Crows

Hey Bartender - Koko Taylor This is another of those songs that your Maximum Leader didn’t realize he owned. He loves Koko Taylor, but just had never looked at this song title.

9) Concerto #3 in F - George Fredrick Handel

10) Leaving normal - Cowboy Junkies

11) Western Union - Elvis Presley Your Maximum Leader has nearly 775 Elvis songs on his iPod. Yup, you read that correctly… Nearly 775 Elvis songs. More accurately that is nearly 775 tracks. He has many versions of the same song. This is a result of your Maximum Leader owning many Elvis box sets. Sets like “The Complete 50’s Recordings” etc etc. If you ever want to hear an Elvis tune with your Maximum Leader you can bet he got it on the iPod…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t have much to add to this graphic other than “Yup. This is all awesome stuff.”

Okay… Your Maximum Leader will add that he doesn’t quibble over most of the elements. But he does think that Elements 32, 33, 37 and 95 aren’t all that awesome. But that is likely just a personal bias. Your Maximum Leader isn’t all that excited about antimony, bromine and selenium either…

Many thanks to the totally tubular bloggers over at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is pissed again… He now has yet another new DVR/HD cable box. The cable company just brought it by.

Perhaps it is the dwarves slaving away under the Villainschloss… Perhaps it is the electrical storms… But your Maximum Leader has lost three previous DVR/HD cable boxes in the past two months…

He is getting a bit pissed off at having to reprogram all the shows to record into the new boxes…

Of course… There aren’t that many shows he’s recording in fact. Right now set to be recorded are: Chelsea Lately, Penn & Teller’s Bullshit, Burn Notice, The Simpsons, Scrubs, 30 Rock, and any episode of Sherlock Holmes mysteries on PBS.

Your Maximum Leader really likes Burn Notice by the way. It has Bruce Campbell. That is a big plus. Gabrielle Anwar is pretty damned hot. And the stories are fun to watch.

By the way… This is mostly for Robbo… The Musgrave Ritual episode was on PBS last night. Your Maximum Leader had forgotten how insane the housekeeper looked in this episode…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wants to do two things in this post. First, comment some more on “The Dark Knight.” And second, blog about a big ole (yet sorta fun) waste of time he just completed earlier this week.

To begin! “The Dark Knight.” Your Maximum Leader is still thinking about the film. It is that memorable. To address a few items left by various commenters on the preceeding post… For our good friend Brian, the Bruce Wayne as playboy/fop or brooding millionaire… Your Maximum Leader might be missing some nuance of your description. He has felt that the best Bruce Wayne was Michael Keaton. Keaton’s Bruce Wayne was the sort of absent-minded yet innocuous rich guy. Christian Bale pulls this much more towards the young rake of a rich man. Not foppish, but very self-centered and self-indulgent. (In “The Dark Knight” a ballet performance is cancelled because Bruce decided to take the whole ballet troupe with him on his private yacht for a little woo-pitching.) Your Maximum Leader thinks that Bale’s Bruce Wayne works well with the alter-ego of Batman. Without attempting to get all Tarantino here, is Bruce Wayne the “act” or is Batman the “act?” Which is the real “essence” of the man? Your Maximum Leader thinks that for the purposes of these movies Batman is the real man - and Bruce Wayne has devolved into the cover story. In a way, Bruce Wayne, the rich playboy is someone we can identify with. We see plenty of rich celebs all over teevee and the interwebs. We want to see Batman. So, in the end your Maximum Leader doesn’t think that “The Dark Knight” will do much to change one’s impression of the Bruce Wayne side of this character. Wayne is essentially a minor subplot.

Your Maximum Leader finds Ellison’s comment interesting. The interesting part is this: What amazes me is that a movie this good was made with DC characters. Maybe Marvel doesn’t have the monopoly on three-dimensional heroes and villains with a backstory. Perhaps after years away from the genre, he is having trouble with the idea that Marvel comics always had the more developed characters. Your Maximum Leader’s years of reading comic books were in the 80s and into the 90s. This was the age of Millers “Dark Knight” reinvention of the Batman story. (And it was the era of “The Watchmen” (soon to be a major motion picture - and still a fantastic comic book). It could be that the comics in which your Maximum Leader indulged were all well written and well developed. So he’s never thought that DC lacked for good characters. It could also be that the movies based on the DC characters have lacked good screenwriters…

Anyhoo… Moving on from movies…

Your Maximum Leader, on Wednesday night, decided to check in to see if his Blogger/Blogspot logins worked. (They did.) He then did something that he’s never done before. (But perhaps you have…)

On the left side of the Blogger main page there is a little rotating spot showing the names of blogs that have recently been updated. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t believe he’s ever clicked on that link before. But Weds. night he clicked through on any blog name that he thought sounded interesting. He did this for 1 hour. He rarely had to wait more than 30-40 seconds for an interesting sounding blog title to appear. Just for the record, he didn’t click on any purely numerical blog titles. In fact, here is a list of blog title “types” he didn’t click on: all numeric, chinese/japanese/asian characters, any blog title that was a song lyric, any blog title that was “businessey” sounding, anything written in “3l33t.”

So there…

He was surprised at how many innocuous blog names just linked you to pages that were obviously set up just to improve someone’s web site search results. There were also a number of blogs that were really fronts for dating sites. Your Maximum Leader was surprised at the dearth of porn sites. In 1 hour he probably only saw 5 or six blatantly pornographic titles appear as links - and only clicked on two that were not blatantly porn but were instead funny and suggestive.

Well… Over the course of 1 hour there were only three blogs worthy of note. Here they are.

A Very Creepy Blog. A blog dedicated to discussion of the art and articles of the horror magazines of the 1970s and 1980s. Your Maximum Leader was a “Creepy” and “Vampirella” reader back in the day.

Smells Like Grape. A wine review site.

I write it, you skim it. A personal blog with some rather interesting posts. Some neat links too. Including this one: Barack Obama is your new bicycle. Barack Obama is not your Maximum Leader’s new bicycle, but he is the new bicycle to so many people…

Your Maximum Leader might play this little game of Blogger update again some time…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is sitting in front of his computer. It is 12:58am. He is blogging.

You may be asking yourself, “Self. What could possibly compell my Maximum Leader (a man who likes his sleep) to break off his own little All-Star break and blog at one o’clock in the morning?”

Well, loyal minion. That something would be the fact that your Maxmium Leader just got back to the Villainschloss after seeing a 10pm showing of “The Dark Knight.”

Wow.

Your Maximum Leader has seen every Batman film. In the theatre. Within a few days of the movie opening. (Most of the time he’s gone opening night.) Yes… He even paid money (American dollars in fact) to see “Batman and Robin” on opening night in the cinema. (NB to loyal minions: Sweet Jebus… Paying money to see “Batman and Robin.” That was a mistake.) He knew that he was going to ditch his family and see “The Dark Knight” on opening night. He was going to see what all the fuss was about.

Now, allow your Maximum Leader to state on the record that while he thought that “Batman Begins” was pretty damned good, the 1989 “Batman” was a bit better. Perhaps it was the fact that Katie Holmes’ weird smirk annoyed him. Perhaps it is because he has a soft spot in his cold heart for Michael Keaton (an underrated actor). Perhaps it was just the sheer magnetism of Jack Nicholson… But the 1989 Batman has always been the best Batman film in your Maximum Leader’s opinion.

That was until about 30 minutes ago.

Not only is “The Dark Knight” the best Batman film of the collection; it is the best “comic book” movie ever. It may actually be a fantastic film when considered against any film in any oeuvre.

Yes… It is that good.

You should make every human effort you can to see this movie in the theatre.

It is not overhyped.

Go ahead and pay the exhorbitant charges to see the movie. Even if you live in New York, Chicago, or LA where movies might actually cost more than $10 per ticket. Pay. If you have to buy a ticket online and pay some $1-2 service fee to do so. Pay.

It is that good.

It is not just the performance of Heath Ledger that is superb. Every single actor - even the minor ones - are that good.

Let your Maximum Leader tell you how good Heath Ledger is as the Joker. Your Maximum Leader never once thought of Jack Nicholson’s portrayal during the movie. And even now your Maximum Leader is thinking to himself, “Damn. Ledger made that role his bitch. He owns the Joker role.” Your Maximum Leader doesn’t see how anyone else could even try the role in the future. Because no one else is going to be as good as Nicholson; and Nicholson wasn’t as good as Heath Ledger.

Frankly, Christian Bale’s portrayal of Batman is underappreciated. Your Maximum Leader has read reviews saying that the Joker is so much more interesting than Batman that the viewer “forgets” the “hero” as he is drawn into the villain. (NB: Your Maximum Leader thinks that this observation is true. We may not find Batman/Bruce Wayne as interesting as the Joker - or any villain. Because we know Batman’s motivation. We know what drives him. We also know that he is basically good (vigilantism aside) and that he operates with constraint. As the bad guys do not operate wtihin constraint, they are more unpredictable and fascinating.) But, Bale does a masterful job of bringing some nuance and real emotion to the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne. His performance is noteworthy, although overshadowed by Ledger.

Your Maximum Leader isn’t going to go into spoilers or deep plot review (although he may in a few days - to give you a chance to do the right thing and see the movie). But let him just say two more things in praise of this film. First, he will make every effort to see it a second time in the cinema. Second, if there was a place where he could sign up right now to reserve a prepaid copy of this movie on DVD he would ante up.

Do yourself a favor… Go see this movie.

Oh yeah… Do yourself a good parenting favor… It is not a movie for kids. Your Maximum Leader believes that no kid under 16 should see this movie. It isn’t just the violence - of which there is much. It is the story itself. It is an adult film with adult themes. Your Maximum Leader saw a few parents with kids around 10-13 at his showing. Unless those kids were intellectually sophisticated (and guessing from the parents your Maximum Leader would say they were not), this movie was just an action flick. Those people didn’t get it.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been enjoying some tv time with his kids during bad weather over the past few weeks. We’ve been watching the Star Wars movies (in numerical order - not film release order). They all love the films. It is fun for him to watch the movies with the kids. It is helping him recapture some of the magic they once held for him. The horrible dialogue and acting aren’t a big distraction to your Maximum Leader’s villainous offspring. In fact, they sorta dig it. (Which just goes to confirm that George Lucas probably never learned anything about writing dialogue after age 15.)

Anyhoo… Your Maximum Leader and the kids were looking on the interwebs for various Star Wars fan clips to view and get a chuckle out of. Your Maximum Leader happened to see this one and it made him laugh and laugh…

Funny.

Carry on.