The other night we picked up The Punisher on DVD.

As I giddily ripped through the packaging and loaded up our new copy faster than it took my husband to pick up the remote, it occured to me that he may think I’m a little wierd for liking the movie as much as I do.

“I can’t believe you like the Punisher.”

Now, I don’t know if that means “oh my god, this is SUCH a lame movie”, or “I never would have expected you to like an action movie.” But because he sat through it with me twice, laughed at all the funny parts, and was the one to pick it up at Best Buy saying, “we should get this” - I’m going to go with the a latter interpretation.

Its packed with goons and two-dimensional characters, big shiny guns, long flapping leather coats, whacked out Memphis blues singers, monster-truck-jumping-boat-flipping-motorcycle chases, guys stabbing other guys, melted faces, and the general observation that everything that can be blown up, will be blown up. It’s all guns and blood and leather.

And it’s all Thomas Jane. Lots and lots of Thomas Jane. I saw The Punisher in the “woah, that guy’s head’s as big as my house” section of the theater on opening day and after 70 minutes of shirtless Tom I thought I was going to lose…well, nothing I wouldn’t mind losing. This was hands down, the best eye-candy I had ever watched.

Beef. Cake. Babe-o-licious. Hey Daddie-o. I almost drooled.

And this was a real ephiphany for me, because honestly? I thought the whole “action movies are full of sex & violence because people love it” was a load of bunk. Mostly, my take on the writers who produced aforesaid material was that they’re really lazy and really repressed. The same could be said for the folks who watch it. But I suspect that was because those movies seem to be geared towards men, so you get the guns, bombs, and half naked women. And half naked women? Not so interesting to me. Half naked Tom? I get that.

The Punisher is a stupid action movie that gives a fair clever stab at not only having a plot, but playing faithfully off the actual Marvel storyline. They lend some depth to at least most the characters and also manage to instill a dark yet goofy sense of humor. And somehow it works. It’s seriously FUN.

Before and after you watch it.

Hey honey, is that a sawed-off shot gun, or am I just happy to see you?

Likes - Buying & selling on eBay (ok, mostly buying), Techno music, surfing the ‘net, creating almost anything with Photoshop, web-design, and MOVIES.

Dislikes - Taxes, internet fraud, employees who misspell “eBay”, chain letters and the 9 billion headers inside. Seriously. I don’t need your second cousin’s email address and everyone they ever met.

Favorite Websites - The Redhead Papers; TV Without Pity; Elfquest.com; Sting.com; the BBC; Shutterfly; Old Farmer’s Almanac; Witchvox; the Utah Baby Namer; Cookie Monster’s Analysis of Shakespeare; Uncle Griff’s Homepage

Bio - Sileah runs her tail off as a recognition & communications specialist for eBay Customer Support, happily designing and delivering internal messages and motivational programs to thousands of stressed out representatives. In her off hours, she takes Shaolin Kempo (karate) with her husband and otherwise does a lot of boring house work. Sileah loves reading, web-design, photography, crafts, eBay and working on her great American romance novel. But usually has only enough energy left to park it in front of the tv all night.

So…I had this FABulous introduction written about what the hell my blog name, Idaho Beach, is supposed to mean…but my computer ate it. Really. I swear. Ok. Actually, this big virus, um, Jdbgmgr.exe, cornered me in the hallway and said if I didn’t give him my essay, he’d beat me up in the parking lot at 3.

*Sigh* So the truth is, I lost it. Having spent the better part of an hour and a half tonight fiddling with the minute details of page format and picture layout (Because I’m a design jeek and yes, it freaking matters that much to get my image to display in the header. And yes, it isn’t there yet, but believe you me, it freaking will be.) I finally got around to thinking about posting an actual message.

I figured, it would probably be good to give my potential readers some context. Good start. Pretty easy, too, considering I’d come up with the concept, like, a year ago. Again, I spent the better part of two months designing the site, content and writing the html. Came up with my super-fabulous introduction, organized a photo gallery, and went looking for a free website service. Yeah. They all suck.

I may have a grand time spending hours on end designing html pages, editing graphics and writing self-entertaining editorials, but there is one thing I know that every webposter out there should - there is nothing interesting enough to endure those godforsaken popups or flashy advertisements plastered 2 inches above and below every page.

And thus, Idaho Beach stayed saved on my C: drive for the better part of a year. It survived the ‘blue screen of death’ crash in Jan ‘04…I think. I know I saw it recently and saying, “hey, you know, that was a cool idea, I should think about posting that sometime”. And what do you know? Just two weeks ago I was checking out Google for potential job opportunities in the Seattle area (and no, they don’t have any - apparently Google’s in CA with the rest of the cybersnobs who make the state totally unaffordable for regular people.) and happened upon this lovely little blogger tool.

Need a free site to post your thoughts with no html to maintain? BAM! Wanna load free pictures and not diddle with sizing and cropping and size limitations? BAM! Gotta find that poetic introduction about dreamscapes and wholeness of soul? Dude, you’re screwed. Go stand in line with the rest of humanity.

Stay tuned - when I find it, I’ll post it! ’till then, this is what I gots.