One of my photos from Amsterdam's Red Light District is included in an online travel guide, Schmap.com. A couple weeks ago I was contacted via my Flickr account asking for permission to use the photo as it was in consideration for inclusion in an update to the Amsterdam guide. This week the guide was released with my photo.

Amsterdam was my favorite destination in Europe (full photo set), so it's kinda cool to see one of my pictures included in a travel guide for the city.

Katz Bagels (& mediocre pizza) axed the crazy alien flying in a giant bagel from their signage recently. What is going on in my old neighborhood? Next thing they'll tell me is that B&K Cleaners will be overtaken by the Mob.

There's a before picture on Flickr where you can see the flying bagel in all its glory.

Because of my procrastination, however, I will be voting in Wyoming this year. Wyoming allows qualified individuals to register to vote at their polling place which is great. I'll get to register and vote at the same time.

I am slightly disappointed to not be voting in San Francisco this year. I am much more familiar with the city and state politics (plus it's much more interesting - just check out Proposition K), and there is a very important proposition on the California ballot: Proposition 8.

Proposition 8 comes down to discrimination regardless of your beliefs on same-sex marriage. The vote for Proposition 8 is a vote for the right to discriminate against citizens of the United States. We have arrived in the 21st century (even without the flying cars). Our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents still remember the fight for the right of women to vote and civil rights marches. Are we seriously going to regress back to a day where you and I could be walking down the sidewalk side-by-side and not have the same rights? It's an antiquated proposition and just plain ludicrous.

Click here for a real quick run down on Proposition 8. (It's a short article that gets right to the point.)

Not sure where to vote? Election Protection has a wealth of information and a phone number you can call.

A few more pictures of snow on Flickr.

As the title suggests, The Umbrella Academy are fighting to prevent the apocalypse. Sound familiar? Sounds like the plot of most comics, science fiction, Whedonverse, etc. stories, but there's a reason why it is so popular. We long to see good overcoming evil, and Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá do justice with first installment of The Umbrella Academy. (Let go of Way's rockstar status, and look at him as a kid who's been reading comic books forever.)

The next installment of The Umbrella Academy is Dallas with the first issue releasing in late November.

There might be a green light in the red planet's future. AMC is looking to outer space as it beefs up its slate, developing a series project with writer/executive producer Jonathan Hensleigh based on the sci-fi novel "Red Mars." "Mars," a 1992 novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, chronicles the inhabitants of the first human colony on the planet.

I'm a bit cynical on this announcement. Robinson's Mars Trilogy is my favorite set of science fiction books. However, the cost of a television show to portray the series is going to be astronomical. Does AMC have the money to produce a show the quality of Battlestar Galactica? Or will look like a bad tv movie?

The the concept reminds me of Earth 2 which wasn't given a chance to fulfill its promise of colonizing a new planet. Robinson's story is focused on the characters first which gives it an advantage as a character driven drama, like Battlestar Galactica.

It will likely be a couple years before we see the results of this discussion. In the meantime, I'm going to re-read the Mars books.

This summer I borrowed my brother's copy of H. G. Bissinger's book on which the TV show is based. The book chronicles the life of a town which lives and dies by the Permian high school football team in 1988. The struggles of the residents of Odessa outside of football are comparable to current events. In an election year, the first President Bush has a campaign stop in Odessa, and the town's economy goes up and down with the cost of oil. It's an excellent read. The book is controversial as it paints an honest portrait of the town of Odessa, and it was understandably not well-received after it's release by the community.

The movie based on the book, however, was a disappointment. Unlike the television series and book which focus on the entire town, the movie narrows its scope to the football season. I tolerate football mostly because it is a large part of my family's life (my brother is a punter on his college team, my stepdad calls the high school games for local radio). The book focused on the community and football. The television show excels at exploring the relationships, high school, and small town politics with the common thread being football. The movie's emphasis on football is where it fails to live up to the expectations set by the book and the television show. Unfortunately, I saw the movie sometime during the second season of the television show, so my opinion is tainted and maybe a little too harsh.

The television show is often dismissed by the pasty award shows, but it is comparable to other overlooked greats such as The Wire in the quality of production, acting, and storytelling. It's not about just football, and I think it is hard for some to move past the uniforms and see the realistic stories of the hard-working people in the middle-class town. Television viewers seem to seek the escapism of the shows with far-fetched portrayals of snotty rich kids instead of Friday Night Lights. It's been a struggle for Friday Night Lights to remain on the air even though its relatively inexpensive to produce. Only a bizarre deal between NBC and DirecTV is keeping the show in production. Watch it.

File under What will they think of next, MoreCowbell gives you the opportunity to literally add more cowbell to any audio file you upload to their site. You can also add more Christopher Walken, or a combination of the two. It's a hilarious idea for a great time waster. Have at it!

In preparation for Uh Huh Her post I am in the progress of writing, I've uploaded "Not a Love Song" and added more cowbell. (The non-cowbell version is significantly better and you can listen to it here.)

Bandsintown.com uses your location and Last.fm record to display weighted links, similar to a category or tag cloud, for all bands playing in your area. You can adjust the date range, price, and distance to change the results. The site relies on user input to expand the venue details and write reviews, placing Bandsintown.com somewhere between Yelp and Last.fm.

The Events page on Last.fm offers a similar feature without the fancy options to adjust your range and prices, and Bandsintown.com relies on Last.fm to recommend shows in your area. You can't have Bandsintown.com with Last.fm, but you can use Last.fm Events without the need for other tools. Bandsintown.com has potential until Last.fm - which is already established - adds more options to their Events page.

My first thought was this McCain's attempt to woo the uncertain Democrats who don't necessarily like Barack Obama. Most of the uncertain democrats are women, some of them are Hillary Clinton supporters. Palin finished her speech with references to former women who pushed at the political glass ceiling: Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton. (The response to Clinton's mention was both claps and boos.) These mentions cemented the key reason why Palin was selected.

Waiting to see how some of the narrow-minded Republicans respond. This announcement makes the Presidential campaign even more interesting.