This is the new Web Team area. It’s much bigger and sunnier than our old spot, which was in the most remote, forgotten bowel of the building.

This is my office. There are no windows, but the lighting is actually surprisingly natural, and leaving the door open lets in copious amounts of sunlight from the main area.

The view from my desk. I still need to hang pictures and maybe get a plant to make it seem less spartan, but overall it’s much nicer than I expected. I feel like now I really need to earn my space by being extra productive.

That’s my favorite part about working at UW-Whitewater. I might not be making as much money as I could be in the private sector, but I feel much more valued and respected than I would if I were working in cubicle farm.

Plus, the work I do helps students find out information about classes and more easily manage their education. At the end of the day, I’d rather be able to say I spent my time doing that, than hacking away at some line-of-business software for a giant financial institution or something.

In the last 12 months, I did the following:

• Took my first “real” full-time job at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
• Adopted two dogs
• Bought a house
• Got married
• Drove to Tennessee for two weeks for my honeymoon
• Printed my band’s first “real” album that you can buy
• Was the best man in my best friend’s wedding

I think it’s going to be a while before I beat 2011 on the eventfulness front. That’s why, as you’ve heard so many sports coaches do before me, I’m declaring this a rebuilding year.

What I mean is that, while Mary and I want to start our family sooner rather than later (since we’d like to be less than a million years old when our kids graduate high school), we’re barely scraping by as it is due to student loan payments and paying back money we spent on stuff for the wedding.

So, this year is a rebuilding year. We’re going to keep our heads down and pay off as much as we can so that, at some point, we might be able to actually keep some of our money rather than have it all immediately spoken for in loan and credit card payments.

There’s nothing wrong with a rebuilding year, everybody needs them once in a while. It will actually be nice to just spend time with Mary and the dogs and do projects around the house and “pay our dues.”

Your fondest memories are usually of the times you were just goofing around at home with your loved ones.

We got some good prospects. Who knows, maybe next year we’ll win the pennant!

We’re living in a time in our country where every issue is completely divisive and polarizing. You’re either for us or against us, and many people vote entirely on single issues, regardless of the actual policies enforced by their leaders.

What I have to say is this: whether you’re a conservative or a liberal, a Republican, a Democrat or an Independent, take a moment to ask yourself whether you want to be seen by future generations as a hero or a villain.

We need heroes to ensure we have good schools and healthcare for our children and our neighbors children. We need heroes who have the empathy it takes to give up some of what they have when their neighbor doesn’t have enough.

A villain pulls his neighbor down with him, arguing that if he can’t have some, nobody should. A villain looks at his neighbor not to make sure that she has enough, but to make sure she doesn’t have more than he does.

No movie has ever had a hero who cut jobs, increased tax breaks for the wealthy, and made drastic cuts to education. We all want to be George Bailey, nobody wants to grow up to be Mr. Potter. So why do we vote for politicians and policies that hurt our communities? Why do we ruin our children’s futures and let our homes and cities slide into decay just to save a few dollars in taxes?

When future generations are dealing with the long-term effects of the policies and laws we enact today, do you want them to think of you as a hero, or a villain? Do you want them to inherit a government bereft of empathy and hope, that denies your fellow man the bootstraps he needs to pull himself up?

So, no matter what your politics, next time you’re at the polls just think: Am I really voting in my and my neighbors’ best interest? Will this vote do the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people? Does this vote make me a hero? Or a villain?

I was excited, but also trepidatious, when I heard they were making a new Muppet movie. I love the first two movies, The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper — the former has been my answer to “What’s your favorite movie?” for a couple decades now, and the latter has the distinction of being perhaps the most worn-out VHS tape in my parents’ basement. Additionally, the Muppet Christmas Carol is still my favorite (and, if you ask me, the most true to the novel) version of A Christmas Carol, and I own all the (released) DVDs of The Muppet Show.

So, I have a reputation as “the guy who likes the Muppets” among family, friends and co-workers. Naturally, I was asked by essentially everyone who knows me whether I was excited about the new movie. I was, because I heard Jason Segel was writing it, and if you’ve seen the finale of his Forgetting Sarah Marshall, you know he gets the sense of humor that makes the Muppets so inherently funny and enduring.

I also heard that Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords was writing the songs, which was another point in the movie’s favor. The Flight of the Conchords (and their excellent TV series) have a cartoonish “anything can and will happen” sensibility that has a lot in common with that of the Muppets.

I was excited, but with reservations. My skepticism was not due to the major names attached to the project, but rather a result of letdowns by the more recent post-Jim Henson era Muppets outings. Muppet Treasure Island wasn’t awful, but was forgettable, and had way too much of that effeminate kid singing. Muppets From Space was funnier, but got Gonzo’s personality completely wrong.

It seemed like each successive outing focused more and more on new characters introduced on Muppets Tonight, while the personalities of the foundational characters were allowed to drift farther and farther from what made them universal, identifiable and, most of all, funny.

Why was Gonzo suddenly a whiny sad-sack who looked like he raided Mr. Rogers’ wardrobe? Why was Fozzie no longer a comedian? They all live in a big house now? What happened to The Muppet Show? Or even Muppets Tonight? They are, at their core, supposed to be a troupe of performers, right?

The biggest thing The Muppets gets right is that the characters have all been restored to their Henson-era personalities and proclivities. Gonzo is once again a chicken loving, thrill-seeking performance artist who doesn’t give a damn what he “is”– he’s a Muppet, damn it. Fozzie is a needy cornball comedian. Miss Piggy is a drama queen and a singer. Kermit is the commitment-phobic ringleader with the singular ability to rally this collection of misfits together to put on a show.

The odd thing with the movie is, as this article states, it is essentially a work of fan fiction. The fan (Jason Segel) has inserted himself in a major “Mary Sue” role (with a Mary Sue Muppet brother to boot), making himself the catalyst for getting the old gang back together. The Muppets apparently could never have done it themselves, for reasons which are never explained.

Kermit and friends, at several points throughout the movie, reminisce about the old days and how long it’s been since they’ve all seen each other, seemingly ignoring everything that came “post-Henson,” like the 2005 Muppets Wizard of Oz, and 2002′s It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie. Not that either of those are particularly great, but it’s still odd that this new film essentially positions itself as canon while sweeping those under the rug. It’s similar to the odd way that Brian Singer’s Superman Returns took place after the Christopher Reeves-starring Superman II, thus supplanting the story lines of the Reeves-era Superman III and IV with its own events. Why?

If you’re going to do that, why not just go for a full-on reboot? Why have characters reminisce about how great it was in the old days while simultaneously pretending the more recent days never happened? Rather than inserting yourself into and trying to “fix” the old version you loved as a kid, why not just make a new one? It’s like George Lucas’ neverending “upgrades” to the original Star Wars trilogy. When is enough enough? Can’t new generations be trusted to find the things we love about our pop-cultural touchstones without someone pointing them out and commenting on it the whole time?

I don’t know the answer, and don’t get me wrong: The Muppets is very good. It does its best to earn a place among the rightfully-vaunted Jim Henson era Muppets films. There are great songs and a lot of laugh out loud moments. It’s the out-and-out funniest Muppet show since The Great Muppet Caper.

I’d recommend it to anyone with any interest in seeing it. It’s very funny and well-done, especially if you’re a longtime Muppet fan. But it’s definitely been made with longtime Muppet fans in mind. It’s a celebration of the Muppets and a pat on the back to everyone who’s kept up with them over the years rather than just being its own, original Muppet story.

My hope is that now that they’ve done the throat-clearing “let’s bring the old gang back” film, they’ll get the same crew to continue to make more movies this funny and well done while the iron’s still warmed up, and that they will be able to forge ahead with new, original stories rather than continue to look back with longing at days gone by.

I was trying to fix a bug which was preventing me from using Windows Live Writer (which is excellent) for posting to this blog, so I ran a “database optimization” WordPress plugin. Which, it turns out, “optimizes” your database by deleting all your posts, pages, and everything else WordPress stores in the database without warning. Boo!

So, it looks like I’ll be starting over from square one with this blog. As a way of apologizing, here’s the theme song from Square One:

And an old favorite, “Less Than Zero”: