Friday – 17 Oct 2008
Last night, I headed home for a quiet date night with SaraRules – on tap: CSI:, Sleeping Beauty (the Disney version… which I’ve never seen) and Senator Palpatine McCain on yea). Shortly after I got in, I received an unusual text… from . She was at SLCIA with a 90-minute layover and was wondering what I was up to.
*blink blink*
I told her to hang tight while I made a couple of calls.
I touched bases with and to see what they were up to; both of them had things on their agendas. I called up SaraRules to see where she was (just down the street) and when she got here, we headed to the airport. We got to spend about 45 minutes or so with before she had to head back to the gate area to catch her next flight. It was a pleasant – and quite unexpected – surprise.
On the way home, SaraRules and I realized that we were getting hungry and neither of us felt like cooking. We chose Macaroni Grill for dinner. (Actually, she chose it; I just did the driving.) It was a good call, too. I had the Chicken Marsala with a calamari appetizer. Both were quite good.
We got back home, found the couch, stretched out… and, in fairly short order, both of us were knocked out. That meant that we missed most of The Late Show interview; we woke up in time to catch the very last part of it. SaraRules went home and I finished reading Top 10: Book 2 and DC: The New Frontier.
Workout
Wes managed to get me to go to the gym yesterday. I would like to make it a more-regular occurrence. Before we got started with the main workout, I wanted to try a max press… just for the Hell of it. I was pretty sure that I couldn’t get a rep at 300 lbs, even though I had 275 on the bar and had found a couple of 10-pound weights and two 2.5-pound weights to get to 300. (There was a guy, a few machines away, watching as I added and subtracted weights from the bar. The expression on his face seemed to say,”Is he really going to try to press that much…?”) I backed it down to 250 lbs… and got two reps out of it. Not bad for not having really done bench press in nearly four months. The rest of the workout was good and tiring:
- Bench press: 3 sets/10 reps (2 sets – 185 lbs; 1 set – 155 lbs)
- Fly (machine): 3 sets/10 reps, 100 lbs (10 sec hold on 10th rep)
- Back Extensions (machine): 3 sets/12 reps, 80 lbs
- Curls: 3 sets/10 reps, 25 lbs (1 set), 30 lbs (2 sets)
- Lateral Raises: 3 sets/10 reps, 15 lbs
- Side Bends: 3 sets/10 reps, 25 lbs
- Tricep Extensions (rope): 3 sets/10 reps, 60 lbs
My post-workout weight was 179.9 lbs. That’s… a little higher than I like. Time to lay off the extra helpings of brownies and ice cream after dinner.
Four-Color Coverage – DC: The New Frontier and Top 10
I was introduced to DC:The New Frontier by way of the video that was released earlier this year. It adapted the story into a (roughly) seventy-minute animated feature. The ‘toon was good and adapted the story well, but it missed a lot of the details and richness that two trade paperbacks afforded.
The story is set in 1950s America. Thanks to the air of fear created through McCartyism, costumed adventurers have been outlawed… unless they take an oath of loyalty to the U.S. administration. A couple of heroes do, most decide to just fade into the sunset.
The movie focused more on the story of Hal Jordan, using him as the readers’ main connection to the story (similar to the way that Wolverine and Rogue were used in the first X-Men movie) and that worked well for the animated feature. The books, with the wider pallete of characters, included Jordan but also gave much more insight into the other heroes featured in the story. For example, “John Henry,” a character who received a brief nod in the movie, had a plotline that ran throughout the books and – along with the Martian Manhunter’s story – served to show a couple of sides of the racial struggles in America in the 50s.
The story was a fun read. Darwyn Cooke did an excellent job of taking characters whose adventures have become so familiar and placing them in a different time, but making them – and their stories – relevant and interesting. And, in another interesting tie-in to history, the book ended with excerpts (mostly from the last half) of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 Democratic National Convention Nomination Acceptance Address.
Top 10 is the story of Neopolis, a city where all of the residents have superpowers. The book was written by Alan Moore, also known for such books as V for Vendetta, Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
The book follows the police force, based out of Precinct 10 – more commonly known as “Top 10” – in their daily routines. The feel of the book is a cross of Astro City (1, 2) and Gotham Central… and it works. In the stories, we see not only the officers’ working their beats, but also glimpses of their personal lives, as well.
An unexpected treat that Top 10 also provides is the artwork. Not just the characters and the architecture… but the background characters. If you look carefully you’ll see that some of the extras are… “oddly reminiscent”… of other, well-known figures in comics and literature.
Alan Moore has created a rich setting with characters whose motivations and idiosyncracies are as diverse as the city in which they live and protect. The books were good reads and I look forward to checking out the two spin-off series and the sequel.
Stray Toasters
Quote of the Day
Excerpted from John F. Kennedy’s 1960 acceptance speech:
Can a nation organized and governed such as ours endure?
That is the real question.
Have we the nerve and the will? Can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only new breakthroughs in weapons of destruction, but also a race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tides, the far side of space, and the inside of men’s minds?
That is the question of the New Frontier.
That is the choice our nation must make — a choice that lies not merely between two men or two parties, but between the public interest and private comfort, between national greatness and national decline, between the fresh air of progress and the stale, dank atmosphere of “normalcy,” between dedication of mediocrity.
All mankind waits upon our decision. A whole world looks to see what we shall do. And we cannot fail that trust. And we cannot fail to try.
Namaste.
