What’s up, friends. It is Powered by Caffeine here. Rendar can’t come tonight. He’s in the woods with a couple of other friends, howling six-word odes dedicated to Hemingway. Prior to uttering these supplications to Lieutenant Shotgun Suicide, they strip down to their underwear and chest-chop each other while telling one another how fucking masculine it is to take five fingers off the sternum. It is not until their pectoral muscles are bright red and they’re wheezing that they bark at the moon. It is an annual late summer festival, and I dare not come between him and such a spectacle. So here I sit, grinding away on the Mothership per usual. This here is Monday Morning Commute, the column where we give the rundown on the various arts and crafts we’re enjoying on a given week.

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[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]

Ain’t any narrative experience quite like watchin’ a movie in the theater.

Some’ll tell you that it’s the communal aspect, the fact that everyone has come together for the sharing of a story. From this perspective, the big-screen is the electrically-charged descendent of the fire that our cavemen ancestors gathered `round. Stories are means of sharing ideas with one another, and film accomplishes this unlike any other medium.

Others suggest that the infatuation with the movie-theater experience has actually been rekindled by the recent advancements in home video technology. Sure, it’s easy to stay home and watch a movie on Blu-ray or Hulu or YouTube or Netflix streaming. But at home, it’s just as easy to get distracted by text messages or emails or the baby that just won’t stop crying. But at the theater, there’s no pause button — time and attention are consciously dedicated to the narrative at hand.

And still others attribute the appreciation for the cinema to the fulfillment of a deeply-rooted psychological desire. These folks, who read Freud and Lacan and textbooks that I’ll never understand, draw parallels between wombs and movie theaters — dark, comfortable, and designed for the unilateral providing of sustenance (life-giving and consciousness-altering, respectively). According to psychoanalysis, theaters are uniquely affective.

I won’t try to figure out why, but I know for sure that goin’ to the movies has been the basis for some of the most memorable experiences of my life.

Feel free to twist it, rephrase it, or ignore it, but here’s the jumping-off point for our discussion: What is the first movie you remember seeing in the theater?

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I hate August.  It is my least favorite month.  It’s hot, it’s sticky, and worst of all, no holidays.  There’s no prebuilt excuse to engage in revelry.  So while we find ourselves in the center of this horrid month, let’s look fondly towards days of celebration.  You’ll notice a distinct lack of gift giving holidays on my list.  Some people think it’s because I hate fun.  Other people guess it’s because I was hatched a fully formed adult and have never been a wide-eyed child, anxiously awaiting treats.  My response to those claims is that they are false.  It’s because I hate the bullshit pretense that is built around them, especially when I am in no way affiliated with the religion that spawned them. Also I have no family.  I will never stop hating the pretense built into gift giving holidays, but if I did have a family, I’d suck it up and deal with it for them.

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“Ain’t even close enough to get me where I need to go.”

Rodrigo scrutinized the cup in his hand, sighing at the fact that there weren’t even enough coins to cover the bottom. Four hours at this goddamn shuttle station, and he’d earned no more than two dollars in assorted change. Which was a shame considering the lengths to which he was going to elicit the goodwill of the ticket-wielder passengers. He’d offered up the absolute cream of his milky anecdotes, skimming off the grimiest details about the mission to Saturn that’d first dented his sanity.

Gravity-maladjustment brain-bubbles killing crew members. Robotic death camps. Radiation sickness. A three-vagina’d Siren that forced herself on him and bore a son he’d later kill with a curling iron.

But nobody believed Rodrigo.

At this point, he was a week without a shower and even further from a clean shave. His fingernails were the color of rust and his breath smelled of sushi prepared in a bathroom stall overflowing with excremental exuberance. It didn’t matter that he still wore the boots from the Saturn mission and held onto the remnants of his helmet, without his DigID Card no one’d ever believe that he was Rodrigo Graham.

To the people walking about the Deimos Interplanetary Shuttle Station, he was just another space urchin.

As such, Rodrigo begged for change and the they kept on walkin’, content to gaze into their brain-rot glo-screens for updates every nano of the second.

shuttledelays.rodrigograhammemorial. civilunrestonearth. honeydon’tforgettopickupaquartofsynthmilk. livenudesfordeadsouls. superbowlreturnstohomeplanet. brutalstormsravagevenutiancolony.

And those that glanced up long enough to see Rodrigo’s desperate lips jabbering about still couldn’t hear the pleas. How could they? They were deaf with sound, ear-chewing on the synthesized bubblegum audio that piped into their brains without reprieve.

Rodrigo Graham was a hero of a human race that’d lost its humanity.

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Welcome to the Monday Morning Commute! I’m going to detail some of the ways I’ll be getting excited about life during the next week. Then, you hit up the comments section and share your own strategies for defeating boredom!

Let’s do this!

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Whoo! Do you see that? It’s Spaceship OL, and it looks like it’s gone to plaid! There can only be one reason for traveling so quickly to the OL STORE!

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Crack open a can of Perri-Air, pop in the newest instant-cassette, and enjoy the feeling of passing right by then. That’s right, everything that happens now is happening now. And as it happens you’re going to want to make sure to wear the sickest of all Spaceballs-themed tee shirts. Hell, I know that Lone Starr even keeps one packed in his suitcase labeled What I Need to Survive.

How do I know this? Simple – I figured out his luggage combination.

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Head to the OL STORE and snag one of these fine shirts!

[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]

It was during the 8th century BCE that the Greek poet-Jedi known as Homer detailed the events of the Trojan War with the Iliad. An impassioned narrative of a conflict between kings, warriors, gods, and mortals, Homer’s epic poem has been celebrated since its inception. However, the readers who stop after reading the final line of the Iliad (“Thus, then, did they celebrate the funeral of Hector tamer of horses.“) has only treated themselves to half of the story.

The second half of the tale comes in the form of the Odyssey, an epic which follows Odysseus on his dangerous voyage home. Odysseus is a hero of the Trojan War (like the Trojan Horse? Yeah, that was his idea), but he’s slipped into a slick puddle of shit-luck. As such, his return to Ithaca has been delayed by incredible storms, man-eating monsters, an encounter with Polyphemos that ends with being cursed by Poseidon, the allure of Sirens’ songs, and more than a few battles. Oh, when Odysseus finally gets home, he has to figure out how to kill all of the assholes that’ve been depleting his estate and trying to court his wife.

But don’t worry – Odysseus pulls it off, and in style!

“’Dogs! You thought I would never come back from Troy, so you have been carving up my substance, forcing the women to lie with you, courting my wife before I was dead, not fearing the gods who rule the broad heavens, nor the execration of man which follows you for ever. And now the cords of death are made fast about you all!’”

Not only is the Odyssey a mythological tour de force that’s still read and studied and imitated today, it’s also the first documented sequel in the history of narrative. And it’s bad-ass. Hell, many believe it to be equal, if not superior, to the Iliad.

Sure, there’s an argument to be had that most sequels are cheap cash-grabs that capitalize on the popularity of great works. There’s no denyin’ that much of the direct-to-video market is built on this premise. But with the Odyssey having been established nearly three thousand years ago, there’s a time-tested precedent that sometimes sequels are worthwhile continuations.

So here’s our topic of discussion: What is your favorite sequel?

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A new combatant has entered the battle royale that is the OL STORE!

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He has PhDs in psychology and parapsychology. He’s the host of World of the Psychic. He thwarted Vigo the Carpathian’s plan to bring about the apocalypse. He defended New York City from a 50-foot marshmallow man, and five years later he piloted the Statue of Liberty. And when need be, he can show a prehistoric bitch how things’re done downtown.

He’s Dr. Peter Venkman and he crushes ass.

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Head over to the OL STORE and snag the t-shirt that celebrates the paranormal promiscuity of Billy Murray’s greatest character!

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Curiosity has landed!  It will now spend the next two plus year rolling around Mars’ surface killing cats.  With that, this High 5 will take a look at my favorite facts and uses about Mars fiction.  So here we go.

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Want to know how to have a whole mess of fun?

Hide your grandpa’s medicine. Steal it from wherever he keeps it, and then put it somewhere else. Ideally, you’re goin’ to want to go at least two rooms over. After all, geriatric hips are rustier than robot dongs. And remember, you’re aimin’ to maximize your entertainment.

For example, if Grampy’s bottle of pills rests on the bathroom sink, filch that motherfucker and bring it to your kitchen. Once there, turn the bottle upside down and open it up over your dog’s dish. There’s no joy quite like that of besprinkling Alpo with Valtrex. Then, while you’re waiting for your parent’s parent to discover just how badly he’s been goofed, stand guard so as to make sure that Fido doesn’t start snackin’ away.

After all, the dog didn’t do anything.

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Welcome to the Monday Morning Commute! I’m going to show you some of the ways I’ll be keeping myself entertained during the hellish stretch known as the workweek. Then, you hit up the comments section and describe the weapons you’ll be wielding against the 40-Houred Beast of Burden. Yes, this is essentially electronic show-and-tell.

And no, you may not be excused to go to the nurse. Everyone must participate.

C’mon, let’s do this!

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[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]

I’m always down to eat pizza.

How could I not be? Even in its most basic form, pizza is the perfect food. Dough. Tomato. Cheese. I’m no nutritionist, but I’m pretty sure that those ingredients cover all of the important food groups. As simple as it may be, a large cheese pizza is a versatile accompaniment, perfect for business meetings,  birthday parties, and beer drankin’ sessions.

But the true beauty of pizza-pie is that there’re so many goddamn varieties.

You can make a pizza with garden-ripe ingredients and freshly-mixed dough, or you can treat yourself to a frost-bitten bad-boy from the back of your freezer. Not digging circular shapes? Then feel free to rock a square pie! Thin crust? Chicago deep-dish? Both’re wonderful. Oh, and when it comes to toppings there’re no rules – pizzas are blank canvases, eager to be painted with pepperoni and mushrooms and pineapples and onions and BBQ chicken and whatever else your depraved mind desires.

I’m no Hellenic expert, but I know that there’s a pizza for every member of the Olympian pantheon. While Zeus chomps on a deep-dish three cheese, Poseidon Earthshaker snacks on a shrimp scampi pizza. Everyone gives Artemis a hard time, because she asked the pizzeria to use the venison she flayed herself. And of course, Dionysus steals a slice from everyone, too drunk to realize that he’s not eating his own pie.

Mortal or god, chances’re good that you enjoy pizza.

But here’s what we don’t know: What is your favorite type of pizza?

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