It is unfortunately far from the weekend and the weather here is hovering around the century mark which is frankly quite miserable. So here are a few things to distract you from the midsummer heat and not-yet-midweek blues.

Mike Mignola, creator of the incomparable Hellboy comics, did a one-shot story a few years back entitled The Amazing Screw-On Head. It was a fun, tongue-in-cheek story featuring the titular Screw-On Head as an American super agent, fighting evil during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. With Mignola’s blessing this steampunk adventure has been animated. You can see the pilot episode in its entirety here on Sci-Fi. The show features the vocal talents of Paul Giamatti, David Hyde Pierce, and Molly Shannon. The show is quite well done and very funny in spots. They captured the look of Mignola’s art perfectly and the show had the mood that I hoped it would. I really hope they make more.

I’m not one to forward on silly emails. Once in awhile, however, something comes along that is too entertaining to pass up. If you enjoy Career Builder’s chimpanzee commercials, first featured during the last Superbowl, you’ll really enjoy their Monk-e-mail service. You can pick your chimp, outfit him or her with a number of outfits and accessories, pick a background, and get ready for your message. The message is the fun part. Choose “text to speech” and type your message. You can pick one of four voices. It is a computer generated voice program so the way in which it pronounces things adds to the hilarity. I recommend double spacing between each sentence. That way the program pauses somewhat and you can understand what the monkey is saying. Numerous people have already received Monk-e-mails from me and I apologize profusely, I just couldn’t resist.
Well, that’s it. Just wanted to give you a little something to occupy your day. If you happen to watch The Amazing Screw-On Head you’ll notice a similarity between the two time wasters: monkeys! Hope everyone has a marvelous Tuesday!

It’s horridly hot here too.
How cool that they put the whole episode on-line!
Ditto on things being unbearably hot…central California is miserable. Yuck.
Love the Monk-e-mail!
Our water bill is going to be so high. The kids won’t go outside to play unless the water
hose is on.
The monkey-e-mail was a very entertaining Friday afternoon activity. Thanks!
I’ve seen the Monkey e-mail. Very funny…
I finished Neverwhere while on vacation. What a great book! Can’t wait to read another one by him…
Cool, I’m totally torrenting Screw-On Head!
I must find time to watch that this weekend. maybe saturday night…doh! not then 🙂
The monk-e-mail was fun. Doesn’t “the Boss” look hot dressed in a suit? Sounds like we’re all preoccupied with the heat…and the great news that it’s going “down” to the 90’s!
So glad you liked Neverwhere Shannin. It is indeed one of my favorite books of everything I’ve read. Try Stardust next, it is a wonderful tale.
I recommend Stardust as well, it’s my fav as Carl knows. I think you might enjoy Anansi Boys as well next though too. It’s sort of in between Neverwhere and American Gods to me in tone.