500  posts. Plus 2. That’s exciting. Shocking, too. Exciting and shocking. Reminds me of my last marriage.

Random notes:

1) Last night I had a dream I was watching a movie featuring Nic Cage as Benjamin Franklin and Jeff Goldblum as Albert Einstein and they were teaming up to fight vampires. It was called Science Dawn and I loved every moment of it.

When I woke up from said dream, I uttered one word: “Gangsta.”

2) Just caught up with the two latest episodes of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse via Hulu. The already canceled show will come back in January to air it’s last three remaining episodes and I’m now at the point where I can actually call it a tragedy.

I’d say that 83% of the first season was not all that great. The last two aired episodes last year were decent and the DVD only finale, “Epitaph One” was amazing, but almost like a whole other show.  The first two episodes of this season? Not that great. But then somewhere around their third episode this year, the writers must’ve realized that they were dying and they finally just started making really good TV.

The most recent episode, “The Attic” was brilliant and fun. Directed by comic book artist John Cassady (who did a gorgeous and amazing run on the X-Men with Whedon) and aping Neal Stephenson in places, it was like a whole other perfect show compared to where it was last year. I’m really looking forward to the last three episodes but there’s something heartbreaking in the idea that this show will continue to get better and better right up to the moment it dies.

3) There’s a Nick Tosches book called In The Hand Of Dante that I’ve always wanted to read and was reminded of it by glancing through the last issue of Entertainment Weekly, where it’s listed as one of “the essentials” of Johnny Depp. The fact that anyone needs to know what Johnny Depp’s essential anything is, well, it’s hilarious to me. But I’m thankful for the reminder and decided to pop online to get a copy for myself and possibly one for someone else since apparently Christmas is coming up. We still have a few weeks, right?

Anyway, they’re out of stock now on the book, and this is other suggested selections listed, the books that customers who bought that Nick Tosches book also bought:

I got a small chuckle out of that list, since those are the other “essentials” listed by Capt. Jack Sparrow in the EW article.

4) The other day this woman I work with was telling me a story about an elderly lady who was almost the victim of a home invasion. I don’t remember all the details, forgive me, but the gist of the story was that a guy kept knocking on her door, she lived out in the middle of nowhere, and the 911 operator told her to “do whatever you have to do” to protect herself, so she shot the guy with a shotgun.

Regardless of the details of whatever happened, the story terrified me. And it make ponder: If they remade Home Alone now – and that’s, what, probably just a year or two away anyway, right? – I feel like in our current crazy political climate, with all those arma ferre nutjobs out there, little Kevin McCalister would probably not use his brains or ingenuity to stop those stupid robbers but rather just go and get his parents’ gun out of the shoebox in the upstairs closet and would or kill himself and the two of them and maybe the family dog as well. And that’s just awesome.

5) Speaking of death and decay and literary aspirations and creative miasma: Counterforce actually had 500 posts. Well, 502 now. Shocking. How have the Elder Gods of the Internet not kneecapped us yet? Maybe it’s because we run so fast.

Again, sorry about disappearing on you for a few weeks there. We took a mini-vaca, I guess. There was a podcast recorded somewhere in there that probably sounded horrible, sound quality-wise, and wasn’t that thrilling, I’d imagine, content-wise. As I remember, it was a lot of talk about Dawson’s Creek, hate sex, sex with redheads, music, facebook, and… well, the rest is a blur. Rightfully so, I imagine.

Anyway, 500 posts. Here’s to 500 more! Or, at least, a few more. I feel like our posting schedule will be sporadic throughout the rest of December but there’s been some talk about a movie list from the past decade and several other interesting things. We shall see. Until then…

TOMORROW (I believe) on COUNTERFORCE: I’ll probably talk about my favorite albums from the past year, which I’m discovering was possibly even more forgetable than I realized.

And MONDAY or TUESDAY (I believe) on COUNTERFORCE: a book review.

Until then, just ask yourself this: