May we see your photos, please?
All of "Todd's 31st birthday photos" have now been added to Shutterblog. Thanks again to Dan and Stacy for the wonderful nite out!
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Signs you're getting old...

Sign #402 that you're getting old... Your friends throw you a big birthday bash at Chuck E. Cheese, and not only does your cake have enough candles to light the entire room -- but after the birthday song is over and the hostess goes to cut it -- she asks, "Is there something burning?" And it turns out, there was. Your 31 candles had started to melt their plastic cake display. Whoops. Hope you had a happy birthday, baby!

Stay tuned for more photos later this weekend...
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I'm so excited -- and I just can't hide it!

I love the smell of football in the morning. Kickoff at 7 p.m. on Fox Sports.
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I'm just a girl
Had to go out and get all pretty for the meeester's birthday:

Ahhhhh...nothing like a new haircut to make you feel good!
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They're the people that you meet each day
I won't be around today, so here's reading material in my absence:

Glimpse of a Grrl -- her birthday was yesterday!
Spathic -- don't know what it means? Look it up!
Beware of the crusty french fries -- mmmmm, tasty.
Incoherent Babbling -- thank Mikey for this one, kiddos.
Pixie with a Crash Helmet -- this is not to be confused with "the special helmet"!

If you still can't get enough of their love, start here...
posted at 04:44 AM | link-

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You say it's your birthday? It's my birthday, too! Yeah!

[Happy birthday baby - I love you Todd!]

Today is a very good day for birthdays. Not only does my darling husband turn the big "3-1" today and officially become a "thirty-something" -- one of my very best friends since high school, and Todd's cosmic soul sistah, Kitty also celebrates her 31st today as well. So give it up for the Wonder Twins! Happy birthday! And -- I love you, Todd! -Robyn
posted at 04:23 AM | link-

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The city that never sleeps
Next week is the actual ceremony on "Today Throws a Wedding". This week it's a chance to vote for the couple's honeymoon destination. (The New York souvenir gift pack was the audience choice last week.)
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Sixty minute man...give or take fifty
Rapper Busta Rhymes has made a somewhat unusual request for his backstage room at tonight's MTV Music Awards. He wants two boxes of condoms. Personally, I don't find the request all that impressive Mr. Rhymes -- although I'm quite sure that was your intent. The average box of condoms has 12 each for a grand total of 24 requested condoms. The awards ceremony is slated at 3 hours long. Add in another hour for pre-show preparations, and you've got 4 hours total. Divide 240 minutes by 24 condoms, and you get exactly 10 minutes per lay -- not accounting for the time you might actually be presenting, performing, and/or in the audience. My what stamina you've got there, Busta. *swoon*

Other star requests include:

Six bottles of Cristal champagne, of course (Ja Rule)
Drinking straws, to save her lipstick obviously (Shakira)
48 towels -- is there a significance to that number? (Pink)
Nintendo games console (Justin Timberlake)

Oh to be so famous, rich, spoiled, footloose and panty free!
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Kiss traditional animation goodbye
This entry was written by a guest-blogger -- my husband Todd. Enjoy:

This is what I call "disturbing news". A mistake is about to be made. A fork in the road of history is about to be reached. And to be honest, I'm not sure there is anything we can do about it.

Word is that Disney will be closing the door on traditional 2-D animation in the coming months, and if you were an employee in the animation studios, you were either told to drop your pen and paintbrush and pick up a computer, or you were shown the door.

Traditional animators are a dying breed in the new 3-D culture at Walt Disney, as Michael Eisner declares that "2-D is dead". Eisner has panicked given the poor box office that movies like Atlantis and Treasure Planet, for example, have shown. Disney has two traditional animated features in the pipeline for the coming year, Brother Bear and Home on the Range. Those are expected to be the last feature films featuring 2-D hand-drawn animation that Disney produces.

The same thing is happening at Dreamworks, where Jeffery Katzenberg had, in the past, made it his mission to reinvent classical animation. Well, after Katzenberg had flops of his own in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (I guess every Dreamworks title has to be subtitled...), he too is panicking and beginning to focus exclusively on computer animated features.

What probably didn't help these gentlemen in their irrational thought processes is that Pixar studios, makers of the excellent Toy Story films, A Bug's Life and Monsters Inc. just had a tremendous box office smash hit with the computer animated Finding Nemo.

What they failed to realize through visions of dollar signs dancing in their heads, is that although Pixar is a CG studio, it is first and foremost a teller of compelling stories. And therein lies the fatal error that Disney and Dreamworks have yet to discover.

Take a look at the film that won the inaugural Oscar for Best Animated Feature - Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away. This feature was almost entirely hand drawn, painstakingly, over a process of several years. Miyazaki himself is intimately involved with every frame of his films, and the quality shows. He has been rewarded for it.

But there is something more sinister at work here, and that is the potential loss of an art form so that these animation houses can continue to churn out low quality stories in order to sell more cross merchandised junk. It started to happen sometime not long ago. The studios became more interested in selling you the toys, clothes, and food items that were branded with the films name, than actually telling you a story.

The problems with the traditional animated studios are deep here in the U.S. Above and beyond the inability within the last five years to put together a film that actually tells a story that is worth seeing, one of the biggest errors that animated film producers have made recently is an asinine use of Hollywood film actors to voice the characters of their animated fare instead of hiring voice talent that's trained to do that kind of work. Why are Brad Pitt and Michael J. Fox and Catherine Zeta-Jones doing voice work? They aren't voice actors. They're just actors, and often poor ones at that. I have found famous voices distracting in animated features for years, and voiced that opinion regularly. The quality of the voice acting has gone down since the early 90s when films like Aladdin and The Little Mermaid served as a renaissance for Disney.

3-D animation continues to look fake as well. There is something distracting in it visually that I can't place my finger on yet, and I can't quite suspend disbelief at times. Granted, a compelling story will help alleviate this a great deal, but aside from Pixar and Dreamworks' Shrek (which could have been a lot better than it was), no one is producing quality 3-D animated stories right now. The horrible Final Fantasy comes to mind as a computer animated film (with Hollywood voice talent) that just wasn't ready to be made, technology wise or vis-a-vis the storyline.

I feel that 3-D animation is really a novelty right now, and audiences are seeing some of these films just for the "wow" factor of "look what they can do with computers". As the audience's tolerance level matures, I suspect we will see a corresponding drop in the numbers of computer animated film revenue - so long as they cannot tell a compelling story.

Let us all hope that an art form is not lost forever as thousands of pen and paintbrush animators are kicked to the curb because of the severe lack of vision from the heads of these studios. I don't want to see all computer animated films. I suspect no one really does. What is it going to take to save traditional animation? Don Bluth jumped ship from Disney years ago and produced amazing films such as The Secret of NIMH and An American Tail, successfully challenging his former employer and forcing them to rethink their entire game. We should all hope that a star emerges from cuts at these animation studios that can rise up and again challenge them and force compelling animated stories to be told on their own merit.
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ATTN. Fontaholics Anonymous
I was just kindly pointed towards DaFONT -- a very nice font archive with lots of scripty fonts. Have fun kids.
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Brother, can you spare a dime?
Use Blogrolling? Love it? Never quite got around to paying for it? Well now's the time to get off your collective arses and help a brother out. New user sign-ups have now been suspended due to a rapidly growing user base. 95% of the traffic and overhead comes from free Blogrolling accounts.

I firmly believe in paying for what you use. And things are never able to continue on for free forever, people. There are hard-working, devoted people behind the curtain that should be rewarded for their time (and bandwidth). If you use it -- don't abuse it. Spread the word and pony up.
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So here's the deal
Thanks so much to everyone for all the responses. I really appreciate 'em!

Here's the decision I've made. I'm going forward because it's something I said I would do -- and it's something I want to do. I'm very proud of what we all accomplished in 2002. However, it won't be a one-woman show this year. I'm going to take on help and lots of it. And I've developed an amazing amount of control -- especially with pre-approved comments -- and the ability to just walk away if something gets to be too much -- here over the last year. I'm not above stopping donations and entries mid-swing and cutting Komen a check for the amount earned to date and saying "that's it". My health, and especially that of my child, will always come first. And believe me, I have a husband sitting right here next to me making sure of that. You might have noticed he's walked away from blogging altogether because he simply got tired of all the BS that can be associated with it... He is the main reason why I went on brief hiatus in July.

But despite all the flak, flaming, and general bitchery I took last year -- and still take for it to some extent with all of the name calling I receive -- again, 2002's event is something I'm proud of. Being able to make the final donation call to Komen, and purchase Statia's plane ticket, was truly one of the highlights of my year. I've been blessed a lot this year. I'd like to pass that karma on... I've always been a firm believer in doing that.

So there you have it. You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. So...I can quit quoting lyrics for maybe five seconds? -Robyn
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Do that to me one more time...once is never enough
[mmmmm pickles]

I'm now officially a statistic. And I don't care. It also suddenly makes sense why Vlasic has a stork for their company logo... Blonde moment #4,720.
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Part deux
Ok, looking at the results below now -- one more pop-quiz.

Do you think hosting this event is worth my time/energy?

If you answered "no" to either of the previous questions, are you still planning on looking at (and looking forward to) the photos submitted?

UPDATE: Will you link to it on your site this year?

I put in 14-18 hour days last year with the Boobie-Thon, and that was when I actually had energy. If we're going to raise substantial funds this year, by all means I'll pull in help if need-be and find a way to do it and keep it going. I just don't want to spend unnecessary time putting together a design and maintaining the site / manning the donations if we're only going to raise a $100 or so. I'd rather spare myself the time and headache (and potential flame-storm again) and make a donation in that dollar amount myself if that's the case. Basically I need everyone's word they're going to help promote it and help me make it a success. Thanks again! -Robyn
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About that time
Ok, it's just about time to start thinking of preparations for the Boobie-Thon 2003. Things are going to be run a little differently this year, so I want to take a couple of informal polls (please don't multi-vote and skew the results) as to where we're at... For obvious reasons, I'm participating in a behind-the-scenes only manner this year now -- so I need to know if it's even going to be worth it for my time and bandwidth.

Do you plan on donating any funds this October?

Do you plan on submitting photographs* this year?

*Instead of putting the names on the images this year, all images will remain anonymous. There will be a master list of participators -- in addition to the list of donors -- but no boobie-photos (covered only, please, for the public page) will be paired with blogger names for privacy and security's sake.

My readership has changed a lot in the last year -- and I just want to make sure we can equal or better last year's event before I spend the very little, precious energy I do have right now. So please answer truthfully and thank you for your time! -Robyn
posted at 02:51 AM | link-

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This second-hand living, it just won’t do
Lollapalooza: Then and Now (from FARK.com)

I'll never forget camping out overnight for hours back in college with Kitty down in Dallas for tickets to the '92 show -- Chili Peppers, Ministry, Ice Cube, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Lush, and Jesus and the Mary Chain. Or the euphoria we felt for being so close to the front of the line. Or the sheer letdown when they started handing out numbers just before the tickets went on sale, meaning your place in line meant absolutely nothing -- the number you were assigned meant your order. (Yep, some of the little hellions that showed up an hour before the tickets went on sale ended up with better seating options than we did.) Or the kick in the gut I received for getting the worst case of food poisoning in my life the day before the show and watching my roommate take off for Big D with the tickets I'd stood in line for -- and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. But $53.50 to see Jane's Addiction, A Perfect Circle, Jurassic 5, Incubus, Audioslave, Rooney, and The Donnas today? I think I'll pass... Thanks for the memories.
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Buon Compleanno!
It seems just like yesterday I was sending Michele wedding wishes and happy 40th birthday greetings... Now today is her first anniversary and 41st birthday. Make sure to stop by and give 'er one to grow on for good measure. With all that working out she's doing lately -- can't have her losing the ass, too! Happy birthday schnookems!

posted at 05:30 AM | link-

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Goddess on a mountaintop

[kiss my tiara]

I got the greatest little care package in the mail this week from Lisa. It had a toy for the baby and this shirt. Could it be any more perfect? Thank you!
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You make me feel like dancing
Blender has named the 50 worst artists in music history. The only one that left me scratching my head and saying "huh?" was The Doors at #37. C'mon people. You gave up a spot on the list for Leo Sayer for that? Other than said-Doors CD -- here are the CDs I've purchased or owned by other bands on the list:

Tin Machine - Tin Machine - at #12 (Bowie in the $1.99 bin ain't all bad...ok, maybe this time it is)
Richard Marx - Richard Marx - at #30 (it was the best of times, it was the worst of times)
Live - Throwing Copper and Mental Jewelry - at #34 (it's a never-ending debate in this household, I can't help myself and Todd cringes every time)
Blind Melon - Soup - at #40 (Galaxie is one of my all-time favorite songs so deal with it)
The Spin Doctors - Pocket Full of Kryptonite - at #46 (you show me the early 90s college student without a copy, or a copy of a copy of this CD, or a roommate sans one of the above, and I'll call you a freakin' liar)
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Fear - at #49 (actually I didn't buy this one, it was a gift from someone that knew I liked "All I Want")

Leave your purchases in the comments if you'd like. It can be our own little support group of sorts... (Link courtesy of FARK.com.)
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With this ~~ring~~ lugnut...

Because nothing screams "timeless romance" like a lugnut wedding band...

Coming soon to a Tiffany's near you — the official platinum NASCAR collection! Tuxedo t-shirt not included.
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Reach out and touch
I think one of the best things about being married is being able to roll over in the middle of the night, stick out your hand, and just touch the other person -- if for nothing else to make sure they're still there and reassure yourself they're ok. It's a habit we both have if we wake up or get up in the middle of the night. And every time my hand meets his, there's still electricity. Even seven years of marriage later. I simply cannot imagine any longer what it would be like to reach out and just find pillow next to me... I am truly blessed.
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