I’m still recovering from Kevin Smith’s marathon Q&A on Thursday night (he spoke for 7 hours, meaning that the event ended at 2 a.m. and we got home from Red Bank at 4), and so I don’t have much to write about, but for your information, I’ve rejoined the Last.fm community and you can now see what songs I’ve most recently listened to and click through to my profile to see my top artists.

Note: Any grammatical errors in the song labeling is Last.fm’s fault, not mine.

It seems that the first position in my “people I’d like to meet” section of my MySpace page is charmed. The first resident of that spot was Steve Burns; I met him twice this summer. His replacement? Matt Nathanson, who you’ve already read about me meeting (evidence at right). Now I need a third honoree. Who should I put in that place, improving my chances of an encounter? Keira Knightley could move up one spot, but I’m afraid I’d pass out if I actually met her. Also worth noting: all jokes about meeting a dateable girl will result in your immediate banishment from the Internet. I talked to Al Gore about it, and he’s on board. So beware.

It’s been a while since I updated my blogroll, largely because I haven’t been looking for new and interesting sites lately. Today, one fell into my lap - or, more appropriately, my IM client. Please go check out The Grammar Vandal, a blog in which my sister’s college roommate tries to save the world from itself by stealthily (some times more than other) correcting its grammar. Kate is officially my hero.

Also worth checking out is O.K. Critic, written by Movie Hawk reader Heather, occasionally/formerly of The Typewriter and more often of her pregnancy/baby blog. I think it’s Heather’s goal to one day have as many active blog accounts as ESPN has networks.

Back later today with a review.

I just ran an upgrade to WordPress; the magical blogging elves that run the technical end of Movie Hawk should be working under much better conditions now. Please let me know if you experience any problems, particularly with the RSS feed.

In the meantime, go check out my Flickr photo sets. It’s the reason I haven’t been updating here as often as I’d like. Extremely amateur photography is a new hobby of mine, and so I’m sucked into that right now.

So, remember that promise that I made that I’d be back up and blogging once the curtain finally fell on “Beauty and the Beast,” and that I’d be blogging from an exotic locale to boot? Well, add a week of almost nonstop action in the Windy City together with a forgotten cable to link my digital camera to my computer and you get a week without posts. I know you all missed me.

As I gather my thoughts on my vacation, I’ll be more than happy to post them here in some sort of recap. But that’s a few days off. Luckily for you, I have two distractions for you. The first is a review of Hot Fuzz, which I saw tonight and should be properly reviewed by midday Monday. Secondly, click on the linked phrase or the picture to your right to visit my set of Chicago pictures, posted to Flickr. I’m certainly not as great a photographer as some people on my blogroll, or even in my own family, but I think they’re decent.

When it comes to posts bemoaning the fact that one no longer has the time or energy to devote to blogging - a past time entirely devoted to filling one’s time when they don’t have the energy to do real work - I usually side with the majority of the world who despise excuses. But since I can wrap in a nice shameless plug, I’m going to write such a post.

You may have noticed my dip in productivity in this space, and you should be warned that it will continue for another week or two. You may also remember that I was cast as the Beast in the St. Bernadette Players’ production of Beauty and the Beast. There’s your reason. The past few weeks have been devoted to nailing down my part and trying to remember the words to my songs. This week, I’ll be going straight from work to tech rehearsals and won’t have the time to pre-write any posts. Save for a review of Blades of Glory set to go live tomorrow, don’t expect to hear from me.

But worry not. I’m still here, and I still appreciate you, oh tens of readers. Once the show is over, I’ll be back to a decent posting regularity, and am happy to announce that Movie Hawk will be hitting the road and giving you posts from exotic locales. In the meantime, continue reading for the show dates.

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In an extremely coincidental and totally unplanned set of circumstances (these phrases instead of the popular use of “ironic,” which it isn’t, much like most of the situations people use “ironic” to decribe), my review of 300 was entry number 100 here at Movie Hawk. If I really think about it, that’s a low number, considering the fact that I’m nearing eight months in this space, but that’s just a fact you’re going to have to deal with. Here’s some interesting (to me) figures of the activity of the first 100 posts at Movie Hawk.

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At right is the list of most-viewed articles today on Blogcritics.org, the “sinister cabal of writers” that I’ve been doing music and movie reviews for over the past few months in exchange for swag. I know, I know, it seems more likely that I’d be shamelessly promoting my own story on the demise of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, but my article is actually the one right above it: a review of the debut album from American Idol runner-up Katharine McPhee. Earlier today, it was the number one most read story. Am I ashamed that I had to write a review of “popular” music to get that kind of readership? Sure. But at least I got to start a flame war with a bunch of Taylor Hicks fans.

Back later today (or at least tomorrow morning) with regularly-scheduled programming.

Music Review: Katharine McPhee - Katharine McPhee (Blogcritics.org)

Update (1:25 p.m.) - And now it’s officially gone from the top 5. Maybe the Soul Patrol will leave me alone now.

Just a tiny bit of shameless self-promotion this afternoon: your humble author has been cast as the latter titular role in the upcoming production of Beauty and the Beast at St. Bernadette’s Players in Drexel Hill. Rehearsals start next month; the show goes up in April. Start clearing your calendars now, because if anyone has ever seen the man behind the keyboard, they know that I’m a natural looker for the part.

Any of the four of you who stopped by Movie Hawk yesterday might have noticed that we were down. That’s because, for something like the fifth time, we got hacked. Anyone who came by early enough saw a particularly offensive splash screen that might have suggested the culprit was a drunken Mel Gibson. For the record, not only do we toleraet (sic) the Jews here, we’re actually big fans of many of them. Specifically Jesus. We’ll be back by the end of the day with a quick hit and back full time tomorrow with a real post.