Sunday
<< Rewind <<
I helped my friend Dave with moving yesterday. Just a few loads of boxes. It went pretty quickly. After that, he treated me to lunch. After the moving was done, I headed to Dr. Volt’s to see what goodies the Comic Book Fairy left in my subscription box. The only thing in it was the new issue of Ultimate X-Men. I checked the racks to see if there was anything else that I wanted. Guess what: There was. (Go figure.) So, I picked up the following:

  • X4 (Issue #5): The X-Men and the Fantastic Four team up against the Brood (pics: Queen, Warrior). The series had good potential, but this seemed a bit forced. And a little contrived.
  • Lex Luthor: Man of Steel (Issues #1 and 2): A look at the man, not the criminal mastermind. I really like the way that this is being handled. Brian Azzarello takes you behind the scenes and shows you the thoughts of Metropolis’ Number One Son… until a certain “strange visitor from another planet” arrives on the scene. And it explains why it is that Lex hates Superman so much. I’m looking forward to the rest of this series. I’m especially interested in seeing whether or not they show any interactions between Lex and Clark Kent, since they have retconned the Superman mythos to again include the fact that Lex and Clark were friends in their youth. I imagine that it would be very difficult, indeed, to watch one of your best friends as he descended into the depths of evil.
  • The New Avengers (Issue #4): A new team. A different direction. Brian Michael Bendis has a good handle on team dynamics (he writes Ultimate X-Men, among other titles) and dialogue, and that talent isn’t wasted here.

    Having identified the villain (Electro) who staged a massive jailbreak, the Avengers are tracking his current whereabouts…
    Iron Man: If he made any electronic money transfers or — Boston.
    Spider-Man: “Boston,” what?
    Iron Man: He’s in Boston.
    Spider-Woman: Can you pull his rap sheet?
    Iron Man: Yeah. Here. An hour ago he transferred a lot of money from a Swiss bank account to an account in Boston, and then took it out of a national bank.
    Spider-Man: What’s a lot of money?
    Iron Man: To me or to you?

    …and…

    After they find Electro, the team heads back to the prison to find out whom he was hired to break-out:
    Spider-Woman :Good evening, gentlemen… and lady.

    Most of you are drugged into a peaceful haze and you have your power-draining doggie collars on while we rebuild your cells for you — but I know you can hear me.

    Does anybody want to tell me who Electro broke out of The Raft last night? All I need is a name.

    *silence*

    Yeah, figured. Honor among $%^#ers.

    Anyway, tonight, for dinner, you will be having a meatloaf-esque main course and a pureed potato substance, much like you will be having every day for the rest of your lives.

    This is a fresh box of apple crumb cake Entenmann’s Donuts. They are awesome. I bought them for myself, but not that I am back in the tights — this is a big no-no. So, the first person that tells me who Electro took—

    *clamor of voices giving up the name*


    Bendis has also done a good job of piquing my interest as to how the characters are going to work together and how this team of Avengers will be different from its previous incarnations.

  • Green Lantern: Rebirth (Issue #5): Hal Jordan’s not only back… he’s back in uniform. And this issue shows why he wore the ring for so long. And so well. The core of the issue was a classic Hal Jordan-Sinestro fight. One of the best scenes shows Hal careening across the face of a moon, after a Sinestro-dealt smackdown. Hal gets up, wipes blood from his nose, and turns to face the reader – the approaching Sinestro – with a smirk. And you know that it’s on.
  • Countdown to Infinite Crisis (Issue #1): I was skeptical about this when I first heard about it last year. I mean… another Crisis? Undoing one of the best publisher-wide house-cleaning efforts ever written? Great. *sigh* I couldn’t have been more wrong. I don’t know if DC is planning on reinstating its multiverse, but I do know that what I read was one of the best setups for a continuity-wide conspiracy/intrigue story. And the ending…? Wow. That’s really all that I can say.

I went to see Sky Blue yesterday, too. I liked it, but I found that the ending felt rushed. It was like someone said: “Shite… we have five minutes to wrap this up! *PANIC* Um… here! Do this! And put a bow on it!” And that was it.

Last night after bowling (145 – 105 – 182/145 – 159) and breakfast, I was tired. Really tired. Almost ready-to-fall-asleep-at-the-table tired. Shortly after 2:00, I was ready to pack it in. Granted, that’s better than last week’s 1:30, but still…

> Play >

Today was just another quiet, sunny day here in the land behind the Zion Curtain. It started off quietly. That’s always a good way to go. and I went to Mimi’s Cafe for lunch. I tried the Grilled Chicken Tuscan Style; it was very tasty. I now have another dish from Mimi’s that I can recommend to friends. From there, we decided to go for a drive up Parley’s Canyon and back down through Emigration Canyon. It was a nice jaunt out of the city for a little bit.

We stopped at a few stores, too. Pier 1 Imports. Best Buy. Barnes & Noble. And I came out of each store empty-handed. That just ain’t right. Then we went to Super Target. And there… there… I saw the Holy Grail: The Justice League Unlimited: Episode 457 – “The Return” set of action figures. The Flash. Red Tornado. And the BALD JOHN STEWART. b00yah! Life is good. Oh, yeah… we got some groceries while we were there, too.

Stray Toasters

  • Garrison Keillor talks about his “hometown” of Lake Wobegon in his various books and on A Prairie Home Companion. That’s one of the benefits of having a nationally broadcast radio show. I, however, do not have such a program. But I do have Internet access. Which means I have both access to resources and to an audience. And armed with those, I present to you: Baltimore, Maryland. Now to see if anyone else will post links about their hometowns…
  • Whomever said that reading comic books is a complete waste of time was ill-informed. It was from comics that I first learned of the term “poison pill,” with respect to business.
  • Vos Solutions, Ltd. These folks are my new heroes.
  • From Reuters’ “Oddly Enough News”:
  • “You can talk!”
    “Of course I can. I’m a demon, you moron.”

  • I am really enjoying the new Kojak. While preparing to interrogate a suspect, Kojak hands him a baseball bat.

    “Since you like playing games with peoples’ lives, we’re going to play a little game. I’m going to ask you a few questions. Anytime you don’t feel like answering a question, you can hit me with this bat. Oh… I forgot to tell you: If you don’t knock me out, I’m going to whoop your ass.”

  • 35th Anniversary of Apollo 13 Splashdown
  • “And if I die today…” –
  • And did I mention that the O’s are on a “Whoop the shit out of the Yankees” roll? They are. They wrapped up this series by winning all three games. Which means that they are 5 – 1 against the Yanks this season. And the season is only three weeks old. There’s another stand against the Yankees in June. I’m looking forward to that.
  • : Mattel’s Scarecrow and Bane
  • “OH YEAH!”

Namaste.