Part of the Bay Area News Group

MJ’s last rehearsal

By Tony Hicks
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 12:30 pm in Uncategorized

CNN just got their mitts on two minutes worth of Michael Jackson’s last rehearsal before he died. He looks pretty healthy to me. Of course what I know about health, obviously, could fit inside an onion ring. I imagine the whole thing will eventually be released at $59.99 each, making Jackson’s creditors very, very happy.

Greatest thing I’ve ever seen

By Tony Hicks
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 4:46 pm in Uncategorized

I know, I know - I say that a lot. But this really is the GREATEST thing I’ve ever seen. At least since the last seven times I watched Captain EO and wept hysterically. Please take note of the remote control move, then someone try to explain it to me. Enjoy:

And let me apologize now to my kids for ever getting on them for having tantrums. They’re are SO not in this kid’s league. I don’t know how it was humanly possible that one of his parents didn’t come in and subdue him with 75 pounds of bungee cord and lock him up in the basement until he turns 18.

MJ fans committing suicide?

By Tony Hicks
Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 3:59 pm in Uncategorized

This is a bit disturbing. According to the owner of the world’s biggest online Michael Jackson fan site, as many as a dozen Michael Jackson fans have committed suicide since his death on Thursday.

Even in seeing how fans have reacted the past few days, this is still fairly unthinkable. Then again, I talked to so many of his fans at his trial who absolutely refused to believe he was anything but innocent, and that the D.A. was pursuing some sort of vendetta. I even met people who moved cross country and got jobs in Santa Maria so they could live there for the duration of the trial. At the time I thought it was funny - both funny ha ha and funny strange. Now it seems like some sort of illness.

MJ did last video before death

By Tony Hicks
Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 3:40 pm in Uncategorized

The Associated Press, via, KTVU, reports Michael Jackson made one last video project before he died.

Made in Culver City five weeks before his death, it was called the “Dome Project,” and required four sets, including one recalling the cemetary set from the “Thriller” video.  The project is in post-production and will be finished July 15. No word on a possible release date, if there ever is one.

Michael Jackson on Dating Game

By Tony Hicks
Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 3:00 pm in Uncategorized

I don’t know how I remembered this, but I went and found it on YouTube:

Captain EO

By Tony Hicks
Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 12:05 pm in Uncategorized

I’m spending way too much time on YouTube today. I just got done watching Captain EO, of all things. It was kind of goofy, but definitely fun. That was a good time.

There is a God

By Tony Hicks
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 1:50 pm in Uncategorized

This makes me terribly happy. Now if they could somehow throw them in an undisclosed supermax prison somewhere … and lose all record of them being there.

From imdb.com:

Newlywed reality TV couple Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag have been banned from a U.S. television network after an overwhelming viewer-vote to end coverage of the controversial pair.

An estimated 94 per cent of E! viewers who responded to a network poll insisted they were tired of seeing “The Hills” stars — dubbed “Speidi” by the U.S. media — during the network’s entertainment news programmes.

The couple, blasted by viewers for their “self-promoting” press antics, caused a media storm earlier this month when they walked off survival competition “I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!”, where they were filmed fighting with fellow contestants in the Costa Rican jungle.

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Gym?

By Tony Hicks
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 4:42 pm in Uncategorized

Eight months after quitting my last health club, my wife and I signed up for a new one last night (editor’s note — not the one pictured above).

Great. Now I have no excuse.

I don’t know what I’m thinking. Yes, I should go. Yes, I used to be in shape (many moons back). Yes, I would feel better about all aspects of my life.

On the other hand, it’s just so much easier to lay around.

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Feeling dirty

By Tony Hicks
Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 12:43 pm in Uncategorized

What a week. I started on Sunday afternoon by spending my afternoon off watching one of the worst movies ever made — “Backdraft.” I will never understand how so many good actors (no, not the Baldwins, who almost single-handedly ruined the movie) could be part of such a disaster of overdrama and bad dialogue (not the fire scenes, though — those were pretty awesome). Yet I couldn’t stop watching.

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Goodbye Concord smokestack

By Tony Hicks
Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 10:55 am in Uncategorized

I was suprised at how sad I was to see workers knocking down the Cowell Smokestack on Tuesday (or grainstack — whatever it was used for). Growing up in this area, it was one of the few real monuments that clashed enough with suburbia to make the landscape a bit more interesting. Ever since I was a kid, I always liked the fact that they left it there, right in the middle of the suburbs — whether it was a reminder that homeowner’s associations didn’t always rule this part of the planet, or just because it was a unique way to gauge where you were in relation.

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