Doug Cornelius .com

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If you’ve seen How I Met Your Mother or Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, then you are probably a Neil Patrick Harris Fan.

But you may have missed his appearance last Friday on Batman: The Brave and The Bold. NPH supplied the voice for a villain (created especially for him) called the Music Meister. His shtick is to get the world singing and dancing to his evil tune.

You can watch the episode online at the Batman: The Brave and The Bold. Just look for the “Mayhem of the Music Meister.”

It’s a good musical episode. It wasn’t of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Once More, with Feeling caliber  or NPH’s singin’-supervillian turn on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

Bullies used to pick on me
Because I sang in choir;
But something very strange occurred
When I kept singing higher.

The ruffians around me
Quickly fell into a trance,
And it was then, with wicked glee,
I made those puppets dance.

You will need to be a Firefly fan to get the humor in this clip from last night’s Castle:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaclibrary/3798757956

The American Alpine Club just published a set of pictures from Richard Cassin’s ascent of Mount McKinley. His route, to become known as Cassin Ridge, was the most technical route climbed on the mountain at that time.

Seeing the equipment they used 50 years ago makes me appreciate Gore-Tex and synthetic fabrics.

For a gripping father-son story, try The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I devoured this book in two days.

Perhaps “devoured” is a poor choice of words.

The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, with a man and his son traveling south for warmer temperatures and hope. Existing food supplies are mostly gone and the people have turned on each other. Survival is day-to-day and you can’t trust the fellow travelers on the road. They are likely to take your stuff and eat you. Large parts of the remaining human population have turned to cannibalism.

For a GeekDad like me the book was a great combination of post-apocalypse survival and parenthood. But the book is tough on the heart. The survival of the father and son is often in jeopardy and there is constant sense of danger. On the other hand, there are the touching scenes of humanity and the little things that bring enjoyment sprinkled in the story.

There is a big screen adaptation of The Road scheduled for a Thanksgiving release. I’m not sure how well the movie can capture the great writing and emotional connection of the book.

I recommend putting The Road on your reading list.

The City of Newton delivered us shiny new barrels for trash recycling. Blue for trash and green for recyclables. The barrels are huge; bigger than our old enormous barrels.

The new barrels allow for automated trash pickup. No more shakers riding on the back of trash trucks. It also limits the trash each week to the size of the barrel. (It’s plenty big enough for us.)

Now I just need to figure out what to do with our old barrels.