Before Heath Ledger died and snippets of his performance surfaced on the Internet, The Dark Knight was just another summer blockbuster; one of many superhero movies looking to earn more than the Gross Domestic Product of Bangladesh. Now, The Dark Knight is the hip thing to watch. If you haven't seen it, you are automatically knocked down a few rungs on the social ladder. Country clubs across the nation are making changes to the application right now. Those that haven't seen The Dark Knight need not apply.

If you've been saving your money all summer to see Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, I've posted a review of The Dark Knight so you can read about what you missed.

Thanks to a power outage last night and time needed to prep for a trip to Chicago, I didn't have an opportunity to finish the review for The Dark Knight. If you didn't like the first one, you won't find much to like here. It's much darker than Batman Begins and no matter what all the fanboys say, Heath Ledger's performance is not enough to claim best movie ever. Is it worth all the hype? To me, not really, but then again I wasn't completely sold on Batman Begins. Although the movie is two and a half hours, it seems like over three hours thanks to the slow development. I'll try to finish the full review and post while I'm in Chicago.

A friend of mine in the entertainment industry recently suggested that I post my movie reviews on TVGuide.com. He's had a blog there for quite some time that gets some good hits and has even been spotlighted by TV Guide before. He told me that my reviews were very good and he thinks I can get some good exposure if I post there and give my blog a catchy title.

I've been thinking about this for a few weeks, and it is something I really want to do in hopes of gaining some exposure. However, I can't think of a catchy blog title. So I toss this out there to my friends and faithful readers (there has to be at least one of them out there in cyberspace) to create a catchy name for my new TVGuide.com blog. I'd like for it to be connected in some way to my name or my basic mantra: reviews for average movie goers. I don't want to be considered a "critic" because that sounds snobbish and elitist. I'm no better than any other person watching a movie. I just like to express my opinions.

So I turn to you my cyber people and ask you to help me think of a name for the blog. If you have a suggestion, just post a comment to this blog. There's no reward except satisfaction that I chose your suggestion and told the world you were responsible. But, if I choose your suggestion and the blog completely bombs, I will disavow any knowledge of your existence. Your computer will self destruct an 3 seconds.

While you are pondering catchy blog names, I've posted my review of Hancock. Maybe it will provide some inspiration for you.

For the holiday weekend, we went to my parents' house to relax a little. Plans for the fourth of July included a baseball game and fireworks, but the rain clouds discouraged us from attending the baseball game. The weather did clear up for the fireworks, but instead of the game, we went to the theater and watched Wall·E. Unfortunately we were a little early to the movie. Instead of advertisements on the screen or satellite radio, we were entertained by a karaoke CD (and not a microphone in sight). Trying to pick my nose with my big toe would have been more enjoyable than listening to horrendous covers of 80's hits. Luckily, the movie more than made up for the nauseating pre-show entertainment. The review of Wall·E has been posted.

Our latest trip to the theater resulted in an annoying experience thanks to the trio of guys sitting behind us. Based on their actions, I would have believed them to be good ole boys still in high school or recently graduated. This was not the case. They certainly appeared to know about manners. Too bad they didn't exhibit any of them during the movie.

To start off, they acted like they were sitting on the sofa at home watching a movie. They would add their own comments loud enough that everyone around them could hear. Whispering was certainly not an option for them. Usually a glare or two toward the offenders would shut them up, but not these people. To make matters worse, they had to repeat lines in the movie. I don't need an echo. I'd rather hear the next lines than you repeating the previous lines in your southern drawl.

What ticked me off the most is the loud guffaws at the most minuscule of jokes. Yes, Get Smart is a funny movie, but some of the jokes do not warrant a reaction like it was the funniest joke you've ever heard. And considering they were the only ones laughing like that at certain points of the movie, it makes me believe they were either trying to put on a show, or everyone else in the theater agreed that it wasn't funny enough for a raucous laugh.

Unfortunately, Erika caught the brunt of the experience as the laughter was accompanied by kicking the back of her seat. A nice long glare around the seat at the offender seemed good enough for that since it didn't happen after that.

I don't know what these guys were thinking, but it really killed a theater experience. I generally look forward to seeing a movie in the theater because I like seeing it on the big screen and having the surround sound. I think I would have enjoyed Get Smart a little more had those guys not been sitting behind us. However, I tried not to let them influence my review of the movie which I've just posted.

After working out with Wii Fit for two weeks, it decides to be an ass. For the past two weeks I've worked diligently to incorporate Wii Fit into my regular workout routine and watched it tell me that I lost 4 pounds. Hey, that's pretty nice. That extra couple of hours every week with Wii Fit was doing something.

Well, this week, because of dinner commitments and doctor's appointments, I haven't had an opportunity to go to the gym, but I did have time to put extra time into Wii Fit. Instead of the gym yesterday I went swimming for the first time in a year. But, regardless of me putting in the time to work out with Wii Fit, it decides to be a bitch and tell me I've gained almost 2 pounds in 3 days. Never mind that I've eaten as well or better than I usually do. I even stopped eating dinner Monday night halfway through the pasta dish I had because it was quite heavy. So screw you Wii Fit. I'll enjoy my nachos and salsa at the Mexican restaurant tonight after I've stood on you with my extra two pounds and wiggled and stretched my body.

For the past few weeks, I have been creating video tutorials to help the faculty and students figure out how to utilize LiveText, the system I was hired to administrate. I doubt any of them will fully appreciate the efforts I'm making to make things easier for them, but nonetheless, it makes me look good when it comes time for a raise. A tech savvy colleague on campus pointed me to a nifty little tool called Jing which lets you record audio and what's happening on your screen. With this, it sounded like an excellent opportunity to use new technology to train people on the intricacies of this system. Little did I know how frustrating this project would be.

If I'm lucky, I can record one 5 minute video a day. If I trip over my tongue, it's back to the beginning. I've basically had to isolate myself in my office with the door closed and the ringer on the phone turned down as low as I can. I quickly found out, I cannot improv my way through a tutorial like I can in class. If I stumble over some words in class, no big deal. If this turns out to be as big as I expect it to be, every college and university in the state of Alabama could be using these videos, so I want them to be as perfect as possible.

So, for weeks, I've been perfecting my process. I have spent up to 15 minutes at a time perfecting what I want to say for a 30 second section. This has worked out fairly well except for being time intensive. The restarts are minimal because I make sure of what I want to say and how I want it to sound. The restarts are still aggravating when they happen, though. I've completed a video before and reviewed it only to discover I used the wrong term somewhere in the middle. I had to redo the whole thing. I wish I had some way to edit these videos so that when I flub up or the system times out, I can cut out that little part. Today, I was cruising right along when the system encountered an error. It was bad enough I already had to restart about half a dozen times, but now there's an error I can't get past to finish. I have to wait for someone from LiveText to fix the problem before I can continue. I have serious doubts I can get all of these done before school starts this fall because there is a truckload of more important work coming in next week.