Former Lincoln musician and cool guy Thomas Irvin created this parody of the Ginger ten Bensel song “I Love Nebraska.”

Here’s the parody:

And here’s the original:

From The Reader’s Media Notes blog:

In a front page story in Tuesday’s editions of the Omaha World-Herald, reporter Jake Thompson refers to Chuck Hagel as “Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel.” But Ben Nelson is identified only as “Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson” and not as a United States Senator.

There have been some fun debates going on lately in the comments section at Lincolnite.com. I can’t help but get suckered in when they happen (I’m working on that, though).

Here’s one that turns into a back-and-forth on the liberal bias of local news media:
More on the smoking ban

And here’s one about people calling Chuck Hagel a liberal:
For the last time, Chuck Hagel is not a liberal!

Enjoy!

I’m interested in finding some good, thought-out, Nebraska-based, conservative blogs.

When I say “good” and “thought-out,” I mean I’d like to read a conservative writer who doesn’t just immediately call any war-critic a terrorist sympathizer, for example. Someone who backs up their points with facts and logic as opposed to name-calling and taunting.

Any suggestions?

I swung by Homer’s in the Old Market to see if they had any Soup Dragons albums. They didn’t, but I stopped to browse through the super-discounted $1.99 section, where I found the following:

I haven’t posted anything here in a while so this is the best I could come up with to break the silence. 🙂 I’ve seen a handful of movies lately, so I thought I’d share some thoughts.

Casino Royale
Everyone I’ve talked to about this movie seems to say the same thing (which I agree with): “I’m not a huge James Bond fan, but this was actually a really cool movie.” I’ve seen probably four or five James Bond movies, and I’ve probably had the same level of enjoyment out of all of them – just kind of mindless fun with a few laughs at the sly jokes and double entendres. But this was a cool action movie.
I thought Pierce Brosnan was born to play James Bond, but this new guy whose name I can’t remember was awesome. The problem with PB is that I think he might be a little too pretty. This guy has that quality Kevin Nash looks for in a top-draw wrestler – the guys want to be him and the girls want to be with him.
And even though there were some gadgets involved, the James Bond: Year One aspect of it meant that it wasn’t going to be packed with over-the-top ridiculous gadgetry. And I loved the exposition of how James Bond became a hardened, commitment-free ladies man.

Night at the Museum
Every preview I saw of this made it look even stupider and stupider. I thought “Poor Ben Stiller.” I thought every dollar this movie makes only contributes to the idiotification of America.
And then I saw a commercial that listed the many stars in the film. And then I saw the name Steve Coogan. And then suddenly I wanted to see it.
I talked Sara into going, even though it looked horrible to her too, only on the strength of Steve Coogan’s presence. I absolutely love him as Alan Partridge in The Day Today, Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge and I’m Alan Partridge, and Sara enjoyed him enough that she was willing to sit through the movie. I told her, if it’s awful, just imagine him going “A ha!” every time you see him.
As the movie started, I saw it was written by Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant of The State, one of my favorite TV shows of all time. So I thought this thing might actually have potential.
It turned out to be a lot better than I expected. I actually liked it. Many of my laughs came from Coogan’s delivery and his interaction with Owen Wilson, but I was pleased that at least the movie attempted to have a moral and a story, rather than just a bunch of zany stunts with wacky special effects.

Devil Wears Prada
Sara got this for Christmas and so we sat down to watch it the other day. She was really afraid that I wouldn’t like it and that I wouldn’t catch all the fashion references. I’m sure I missed a lot of them, but I liked the movie. It bugged me how Andy’s friends were such knee-jerk jerks, and Sara explained to me the differences between how they act in the book and the movie, but I think by making Andy more sympathetic, it helped the discoveries in Paris more profound.

So there you have it. I like everything, so my reviews are useless! 🙂

I just wanted to direct people’s attention to the Legion of Doom comics blog to the recent post about the NRA comic book. I don’t want to just duplicate the post here, so head on over to the Legion of Doom and check it out. Interesting stuff.

KETV Channel 7 in Omaha did a story on Kermit Keeshan’s death. An old VHS copy of my Kermit mini-doc was discovered, and supposedly was going to be possibly tapped in to for the KETV story, but I think they found some better footage to use.

As soon as I get the VHS copy in my hands, I’ll put it up on here on the video -> documentary page.

I haven’t posted much here lately, so I just wanted to share a few little updates.

– Kermit Keeshan passed away. He was probably best known as “the guy who lives in his van by campus,” but he was a really interesting person and was always interested in talking and listening. I hadn’t seen him in a couple months, and I’ll definitely miss him. He was actually probably my first new friend after moving back to Lincoln in 2002.

– I just finished the illustrations for a children’s book by Liz Hansen. I posted a few sample pages in the “art” section of this site. I also started doing some illustrations for the Pro Wrestling Torch, although only two have run so far.

– I’m scouring hard drives to find more video to post. Sadly the documentary on Kermit appears to be lost forever, but I do have some other offerings to put online.

Over at Lincolnite.com, Mr. Wilson posted about the 9th anniversary of the October 97 blizzard.

I was living in England when that hit, and I remember going to the computer lab and loading up the Daily Nebraskan website, as I occasionally did, and being greeted with this photo (thanks to Quentin for finding it):

I thought Lincoln had been bombed or something. Many interesting stories came out of that week or so with no power and toppled trees. Mr. Wilson’s blog post includes a link to a site with quite a few more photos as well.