Jason F.C. Clarke

Yes, it finally happened. Last Saturday at noon, I asked for DG’s hand in marriage. Her response: “Okay–but just this once.”

We were camping in Greenfield, NH, in what will now become famous in JFCC-DG lore as “Campsite 149” (though I have little doubt I will someday misremember it as “Campsite 49,” owing to Pynchon’s 49th lot). I had planned to propose during a hike, but when it became clear that no force on this earth could get DG to go on said hike, I quickly and brilliantly devised a plan to just ask while we were alone at our campsite. It wasn’t quite as elaborate as I’d imagined I’d propose someday, but it was certainly memorable. Despite some reservations about being proposed to while not having showered in over twenty-four hours, DG accepted my proposal.

Before you ask, no, there’s no date set–best guess is “late summer ’08,” but nothing’s certain until she finishes her doctorate.

It’s interesting, being engaged. Technically nothing’s different, except my girlfriend now has a tiny, expensive piece of jewelry (which she admires and fiddles with obsessively). Yet something has definitely changed. I feel more adult, which is significant when your main hobby is collecting action figures.

In any event, all is well and we’re very happy. The photo below is from the following day, after we’d had a chance to clean up (including a shower) and head down to my parents’ house.

Penny-Arcade comments on an issue near and dear to my heart (for those who don’t know, I work in a library–though I don’t have an MLS, so I’m not a librarian per se. I’m a library assistant).

My personal suggestion: librarylock (cf. warlock for male witch).

This makes my third Die Hard-referencing post title in less than a month. Also, to be fair, I stole it from ToyFare.

Anyway…let’s see if I can recall everything that went on this weekend…

Friday night, DottyGale (DG) and I just hung around the apartment. It was her first full day of vacation (she’s off all this week too), so she’d had a busy day of not doing much, while I’d had a busy day at work not doing much. We ended up watching The Specials–which, despite a script by James Gunn (Dawn of the Dead ’04) and a cast including Rob Lowe and Thomas Hayden Church, turned out to be a poor man’s Mystery Men (and though I’m a fan of MM, I still think that’s saying something).

Speaking of “poor man’s x,” my friend Ryan pointed me to this: “The 20 Best ‘That Guys’ of All Time.” But how could they forget Robert Loggia, whose name I almost went insane trying to remember last week? (On a side note, I was one of the five or six kids who preferred Cracked to Mad, though that was primarily because Cracked had John Severin, whose celebrity likenesses in Cracked‘s movie and television parodies were always incredibly good.)

Where was I? Oh, Saturday: DG and I went to see The Simpsons Movie, which was pretty good. Yes, it’s basically a really long episode with slightly better animation, but it’s still better than half the Hollywood comedies out there. There’s also one sight gag that takes full advantage of the PG-13 rating and will probably go down as one of the best Simpsons moments ever. I’ll be getting the DVD (no doubt the extras will rock).

After The Simpsons, we went to hang out at our friends Razz and Jen’s new house, where I enjoyed my very first turkey burger.

Sunday I went home to my parents’ house in Carver to help out with some chores since my dad’s laid up with a bad back. I painted my grandparents’ shed (my right shoulder’s killing me at the moment), then mowed my parents’ lawn. I have to say, I feel almost guilty mowing a lawn with a tractor. You’re just sitting there burning fossil fuels. That said, I did get the whole thing done in about an hour.

Sunday night we watched my brand-new special edition DVD of The Monster Squad. In the film, the Goonies-like child heroes need to perform an ancient ritual to stop Dracula’s plot, and much time and humor is spent on trying to locate a female virgin for the rite. Both DG and my friend Kate wondered why it didn’t occur to any of the kids to try it with a male virgin. Personally I think they were just hedging their bets–female virgins were always used in previous instances, so why risk the fate of the world by changing things up?

I spent much of the weekend closely following the news coming out of the San Diego Comic Con. To be honest, there wasn’t a whole lot that I saw, other than the announcement that Sylar would be playing Spock in J.J. Abrams’s upcoming Star Trek movie. There were also a lot of toy announcements that interested me but probably none of you guys, though I will mention that NECA has the rights to make Gears of War figures, as I’d guessed. Also, Mezco will be doing Heroes action figures.

And that’s it for now. Tune in tomorrow, same Bigger-time, same Bigger-channel!

This is a church down the street from me…they’ve got some odd slogans.