St. Valentine's Day (Massacre)

It ain't all roses, hearts and chocolates.

On February 14th, 1929, 7 men of the "Bugs" Moran Gang were brutally murdered by what is now believed to have been possibly Capone's gang dressed up as cops. Prior to the Massacre, Chicago had been a bit loose with their gangsters, treating them a bit like celebrities who provided jobs and booze in the era of the Volstead Act.

A bizarre but telling detail of the incident:  One victim (with 14 bullets in him) was still alive when found. Asked by the cops who had done the deed, he said "Nobody shot me".

Wikipedia has a phenomenal amount of info on the gruesome crime.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to my best girl and our dog(s).

this probably captures our situation a bit better

Take a minute today

Who was your New Years' Kiss?

A little Casiotone for the Painfully Alone to get you started on 2012.

Happy New Year's Eve from Me and Cyd Charisse

60 years ago, Cyd Charisse helped bring in the New Year!

Here, Ms. Charisse dances her way into New Years.



May your New Years Eve be Cyd-worthy.

Ye Compleate Santor o' Yon 2011

A final Christmas gift from us to you this year. Collected here are the many videos Santor left us all behind. Watch in amazement as Santor warms each heart with the true meaning of Christmas.

Yon foretelling o' his'n arrival


The message of preparedethness

Santor's Work Ends for another year...

Santor must say good-bye for another year...




Santor hath finished his merry work for another Christmas!

Do not worry, children. Santor is with us all the year through, so long as you keep him in your hearts and your dreams and think of him when you hear a noise in the house when you believed yourself all alone... (it might just be Santor checking up on you!)

Santor will return next holiday, and the holiday after that, always with us, always watching you.

SW Advent Calendar December 25

Santor hath finished his Merry Duties

and so a very, Merry Santor-mas to you and yours!

Superman (and I) wish you a Merry Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas, Signal Corps!

I can think of no finer sentiment to share on this Christmas Eve than the words of the Man of Steel.

Tonight, let's be grateful for those with whom we spend the holiday, loved ones or otherwise.  And I hope you were able to help out your neighbors and fellow humans here on Planet Earth.

Here at Signal Watch, we're raising a glass to you!  May your  Christmas Day be merry and bright!

If you're out and about, come home safely.  Tell your family I said "howdy", and let's look forward to 2012 as the year where we figure it all out.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!  God bless us, every one.

SW Advent Calendar Day 24

Merry Christmas Eve, Signal Corps!

I hope you've had a chance to get out and enjoy the sights and sounds of the Holidays, however you celebrate them and however they look in your town.

Like Superman, here, I get to spend Christmas Eve with the lady for whom I'd make the world spin backward.  That's all I need for Christmas this year.

Have a lovely silent night.

Santor, he deliverith

SW Advent Calendar December 20

Merry Christmas from (left to right)  McSteans, Santa and The League

Just FYI:  This Santa was just incredibly cool.  He saw me a bit concerned about placing my considerable bulk down on his knee and said "Ah, don't worry.  I've had two 450 pound linemen sit on my knees."

Santa is taking one for the team, indeed.

Also - the beard and mustache were totally real.  I like to think we met the real Santa.  He's at The Galleria in Houston.

Santor is Back with a Merry Christmas Tune

That old sweetheart. He's a sentimental fool.

It is remarkably hard to write a non-trite Christmas story

I had an idea that I would try something new this year and try to write a Christmas story. It turns out that, in the short story format, this is very hard.

Of course, the short story format is an enormous challenge to begin with, but add in the complication of the sentiment and sentimentality of Christmas, you can either go sweet and twee, or you can go dark and maybe just end up wallowing in an obvious bit of cynicism or horror that really doesn't get anyone anywhere.

One of the challenges that Hollywood faces, that I've become acutely aware of, is that the message of Christmas is a generic "believe" or "fill yourself with the spirit of Christmas", but what one is to believe, or how one defines the spirit of Christmas (or what that spirit should then encourage one to do), is never really explored.

SW Advent Calendar December 5: It's Krampus Day!!!

Forget Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Your Holiday season can officially begin with Krampus Day! Yes, that merry old emobdiment of terror is here for your children, just in time to remind them that being "naughty" may have grave consequences beyond making your parents buy you the XBox Santa refuses to deliver.

It's Krampus! Keepin' Christmas REAL.

Holiday Helping Hand

Hey!  It's the Holidays!

It's the time of year when movies and TV tell us we learn important life lessons about the real meaning of Christmas.

This can mean family, giving, whatever TV and movies seem to say, I suppose.  In the case of Die Hard, it means blowing up Alan Rickman in a spectacular fashion.

Things are rough out there, of course.  Nobody is saying it isn't.  But it can also be a time to step back from buying that one more $15 present and putting that money toward something that will help somebody who actually needs the money more than you need one more package under the tree to make things symmetrical.

If you give to any charity this year in the spirit of the Holidays, why not send me a message so I know what you've been up to, and I'll post a Signal Watch Holiday Honor Roll.  You don't have to say how much you gave, but we'd love your name, who you gave to, and if you feel like saying so, why you gave to that organization.

Superman helps out with more than a donation

You can also mention any groups that you regularly give to, especially if you have someone you give to monthly.

I'll give an example:

I give monthly to Capital Area Food Bank, which provides food to local families in need.  

If you have an organization you give to (that I won't find creepy), just send it our way via our email or click the contact tag on this website.

Santor has advice upon the topic of Christmas Gifts

Happy December 1st! The first day of December, and already, you're probably a bit sick of Christmas.

Santor is here to help. He has prepared this inspirational video to get you through the holidays.



he struggles, he does. Poor Santor.

Nice Holiday and Muppets

Hey!  Welcome back from the Thanksgiving Holiday.

We had a very nice weekend.  For a brief rundown:  Thursday we didn't actually do Thanksgiving.  

I got up, watched the parade as much as I could, and thanks to a very busy schedule for the next few weeks, figured I better hang our Christmas lights.  So, that's done.  Dug and K arrived around 3:30, so we had a nice, oddly-timed meal (not quite lunch, not quite dinner), and then they headed down to San Marcos.

We watched the UT game at my folks' with some family friends, and, of course, enjoyed that outcome.

Friday I really didn't do a lot.  Austin Books and Comics was having a Black Friday sale on back issues (and who am I to not support local business?), so I headed down for 1/2 off on back issues between 8:00 and 10:00 AM, and then picked up 4.5 lbs. of back issues at the ABC Sidekick store, where they were literally (and hilariously) selling comics by the pound.

I have a lot of 70's-era Superman comics to get through.

My workout schedule was destroyed during all this, so in the afternoon I headed to the gym and did a few extra minutes on everything.

And then Friday evening I caught up with longtime pal ShaunaC and her husband, Fred.  It was terrific catching up.  Too long inbetween seeing each other, but what are you going to do?

Saturday we had Thanksgiving Dinner at Judy & Dick's in San Marcos.  My brother and folks also came down, along with longtime League-pal Heather "Daredevil" W.  

We capped off Saturday by coming back to the house and watching a slew of short subjects, many of which were Holiday themed, all of which were awful, including 1980's syndicated Superboy episodes and the now-infamous-at-our-house We Wish You a Turtle Christmas, a cynically, cheaply and quickly produced series of videos featuring live action turtles from the touring production, clearly with no script or real rehearsals.  There's something bizarre and dream-like about the entire production, with nothing making sense and everything sort of geared to drive you mad.  I'll leave it to Cinemassacre to explain the video as best one can.  

Anyway, that (and maybe a festive cocktail or two) is why this happened:

I should mention we were also screwing around a lot this weekend with the iPhone App that The Dug is currently employed to develop. It's called Vlix, and its actually really neat. They just released a holiday-themed version you can download for free. Just search for "vlix" on your app store.

The Holiday App and Vlix deal in short videos, so the Holiday app is really an easy way to make a video Christmas card.

Prepareth, Ye! It is Santor.