New John Hodgman ad for "That is All"

I still need to get this book.

Signal Watch Reads: The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath is among the books you're supposed to read that I was never assigned in K-12 or during college (I only took one literature class in college, and I don't know if we read anything by an American author.  Film and History degrees.  Sorry.), and as Tom Joad never dawns a cape in the book, nor does Ma Joad fight a robot or gorilla, it fell to the bottom of my reading list.  But as part of my program to catch up on books you're supposed to read that also translate pretty well to audiobook, I recently finished the 22 hour odyssey of Steinbeck's best known work.

No doubt in the era in which it was released, the book was a piece of propaganda, and I imagine it was intended as something like the socially-conscious work of Upton Sinclair in books like The Jungle, using popular media to draw attention to the circumstances of those who'd been caught up in the crush of economic and environmental turmoil in the farming communities of the south-central United States (in our case, Oklahoma) during the 1930's.

As a quick summary - the book follows the fortunes of the Joad family which, like everyone else in their Oklahoma community, is devastated by a bad crop, and loses their farm to a large industrial concern (the books makes plain this misfortune befalls most small farmers in the middle states).  With farm as home, they have nowhere else they can go and earn a living, and so take to the road to California, where they believe jobs will await them picking fruit.  It follows the hardship of crossing the country when there's no money to start with, and the reason all those Okies believed that this would work.

gggnnngghhhhhh.... The "I'm Not Feeling Like A Real Post" Itemized Round-Up

This is sort of how I'm feeling at the moment.  I'm doing all right, but, man...  hordes of pinheads, why are you so many, and why do you keep coming?  Even when I keep swinging my axe into your squishy selves?

Its just been a sort of irritating two days, and I'm hoping tomorrow goes better.  Even when I know Friday is going to be a mess of scheduling conflicts.

Item - I finally finished DC's Brightest Day with Volume 3.

What a mess that thing was...  It had some good elements but...  by and large, I see no reason why I'd tell anyone else to read that thing.  I find it sad that the only DC event book that felt driven more by character than "putting a hat on a hat" plot contrivances was the controversial Identity Crisis.  And the only plot-driven one I felt worked as a story was Final Crisis, but only if you read the Superman tie-in.  Go figure.

Item - if you're in Austin on Friday night, go see Jason's band "The Mono Ensemble" at the Carousel Lounge.  Its from 9:00 - 10:30.  There might be a cover, but the rockin' comes free with the seat.

If you're wondering what sort of music Jason plays - its sort of like this.  Only with a lot more dinking around between songs.

Item - I'm in Dallas for the evening and very tired.  I slept pretty badly last night.  Probably why I'm cranky with humanity today, and why its okay if I'm holed up in a rather nice hotel room by myself for the evening.

Item - After enjoying both first seasons, I haven't made time for either Boardwalk Empire or The Walking Dead this year.  I just can't seem to be motivated by TV at the moment.

Well, I am still making time for almost ten shows I can think of, and that seems like plenty, really. And considering I can't find time to read or catch up on my Noir viewing - where the heck is my time going?

Item - Be kind to your fellow humans.  And animals.  Your daily reminder.

Item - Jamie and I will be attending the UT/  Texas Tech game on Saturday.  If you see it televised, I'll be the one in the orange shirt.

Item - Grapes of Wrath is a really, really long book.

Item - Be cool and buy my friends' album.  I can't guarantee you'll like it, but you'll make some very nice boys in Seattle just happy as clams.

Books, Comics, Personal and Movies - Come read a round-up, won't you?

I'm not really feeling like doing some big, hefty posts at the moment.  Perhaps all the DCNu has worn me down.

Books:  On my quest to get to books I haven't read yet that you're supposed to read, I'm currently listening to The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.  It's read by actor Dylan Baker, who I've always thought to be really good, no matter the project he's in.  And he's doing an awesome job thus far with this book.

Comics:  I just read Fogtown by Andersen Gabrych and Brad Rader from Vertigo Comics' Vertigo Crime line (my first dip in).  Its a pretty good detective story in the classic vein, but with a lot of modern sensibility despite its 1953 time-setting.  The protagonist/ narrator is very deeply in the closet, but its really the post-Chinatown content that keeps the 50's a setting rather than being truly evocative of the period.  Still, a good, brisk read.  And now that these books are in paperback and the price dropped, a lot better deal.  Feels a lot more like the dimestore novel this book emulates in spirit.

Personal:  My folks are off the Las Vegas for the first time.  It cracks me up.  They've been all over the planet, but I wasn't sure how to prepare them for the most ridiculous place I've ever been.  "Go to the Bellagio!" I said, unsure of what else to tell them.  What am I supposed to do?  Recommend The Gun Store to The Karebear?

Movies:  For some reason the 1984 film Streets of Fire kept coming up, so this evening I made Jamie watch the Michael Pare vehicle.  The entire movie makes so much more sense when you realize Jim Steinman, the brains behind Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II wrote some of the movie's music, and no matter what they tell you, this should have been a Meatloaf musical.  It also stars all kinds of folks you know from other projects from Rick Moranis to Robert Townsend to Willem DaFoe and a very, very young Diane Lane.

Dude, I can only wish that "what it meant to be young" for me had included shotguns, cool cars and Diane Lane.

The dialog is pretty goofy in that way tough-guy dialog from the 1980's just absolutely doesn't work at all anymore (and not because of dated slang, etc...  It was like they were just learning how to use swears back then).  And frankly, I'm not sure anybody is very good in this movie, but its absolutely interesting.

Our Own Nathan C interviews Michael Uslan! Uber-Batman Fan and Bat-Film Producer

Longtime Pal and Signal Corps Founding Member NathanC is at Texas Public Radio in San Antonio. In addition to his regular duties making radio happen, he covers cinema and programs the Summer Cinema series for TPR.

He also does a lot of interviews with film-related folk.  Now Nathan has landed an interview with Michael Uslan!

Uslan is a former comics writer, and is now a producer of Batman movies going back to the 1980's and running up to the upcoming Dark Knight Rises.  Uslan's memoir, The Boy Who Loved Batman, has just arrived, and I'd heard about it via the buzz its gotten on the comics interwebs (people were pretty happy Uslan, who is such a champion for comics and Batman, was chatting a bit).

Its a great interview!  Listen here.

The Giant Eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg

I have very few memories of reading The Great Gatsby in high school.  Well, not exactly.  I have several flashes of memory of reading The Great Gatsby.

1. I remember finding all of the characters insufferable except Jay Gatsby, which I guess is correct.  But at the time, it made turning every page feel like I was lifting a 200 lb. steel plate.
2. I remember the book was a slim volume, but we spent weeks deciphering it like it was a set of clues as if we were our own little symbologists uncovering a Dan Brown "mystery".  
3. I don't remember a lot of hand waving about the "examination of the American Dream", but nobody telling me what the hell that actually meant.
4. I was somewhat obsessed with the Giant Eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg because my instructor and my CliffsNotes were also obsessed with the Giant eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg.  
5. We had to do some sort of class project, and ours was a skit in which we re-enacted the fatal car crash.  I was very proud of the "Dr. T.J. Eckleburg" sign I'd made with Sharpies on poster board for set decoration. I also played Gatsby, I believe.  
6. By the time I decided to give the book another go, I had no memory of it save for
1. The green light at Daisy's dock and Jay reaching out toward it in the darkness
2. Somebody was hit by a car
3. The Giant Eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg

10 things I currently like

As I went on and on about things I didn't like in a few recent posts, I thought I'd share a few things that I have enjoyed of late.

1. Game of Thrones - This show got off to a rocky start with an all-exposition pilot, and I wasn't sure I was going to care all that much about a fictional history of a fictional land when there are very real histories to care about.  But it did have a certain je ne sais quoi, and by the end of the 3rd episode, I was in for the full season.  I can't spell anybody's name, or remember half the names, but its still a really well produced show.  And Peter Dinklage's character is my new hero.

2.  Batman Inc.  - Yesterday I read Batman Inc. # 2-5.  There's not a lot of emotional depth to this one that I enjoyed in prior Morrison Batman work, but its a compelling story and epic mystery. I think he does a great job of picking up Rucka's vibe with Batwoman, and I would likely pick up an El Gaucho series all on its own (which...  probably just me on that one, I guess).

3.  Batman Beyond - I did read Adam Beechen and Ryan Benjamin's first few issues in the collection entitled Hush Beyond, and I quite liked it.  I was a big fan of the TV series and straight-to-video movie, and I wasn't tired of the universe that was developed for the show and the JLU cartoon.  Beechen and Benjamin clearly were both familiar with the series, and its a fun read.  Very glad this series is ongoing and they they're giving Superman Beyond a One Shot to see how that goes. 

4.  Treme - I haven't made it through The Wire*, so don't start on me that this isn't as good as The Wire.  Its a damn good show, although parts have gotten a bit cute for my taste this season.  And its a good reminder of what happened and is still happening in our backyard.  Great ensemble cast, amazing ability to weave in culture and music, and it has Khandi Alexander outside of a CSI show that I can watch without feeling my eyes burn.  It is also job #87 or so that Kim Dickens has had in the last few years (JimD is right, Kim Dickens is pretty great).

5.  Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - A co-worker turned me onto this band, and they're much more listenable than  I would have guessed.  I particularly like the cut "I Love Creedence". 

6.  Friday Night Lights - yeah, I know its already been canceled, but I love this damn show.  And its so sad so many people bring their baggage from high school and apply it to missing one of the best shows on network TV.  The one downside is that I'm not sure the show ever got better than its pilot, which was one of the best hours of TV I've ever seen.  Also:  Connie Britton I could watch doing crossword puzzles or delinting sweaters.


7.  American Gods - is pretty good.  I need to just block out some time to finish it.

8.  Edamame - why nobody told me about this stuff before is mindblowing.  You are all on notice for not alerting me to edamame before now.


9.  The ACL Fest Lineup - Go figure, the one year I don't buy a 3-day pass, its a great line-up.  I'm only going Sunday. 

10.  My goofy gym - I love places with goofy names, and that includes my new gym:  Planet Fitness.  It just seems sort of half-baked, like they decided "eh, that's good enough" and called it a day.  Inside, the gym proudly declares itself "The No Judgement Zone" in four foot letters, which isn't a misspelling of "Judgement", but its also not how you see it usually spelled (ie: judgment).  And for that, I JUDGE THEM.  Also, literally everything in the gym is purple, yellow or black.  I can only guess this is seriously screwing up the rods and cones within the eyeballs of the employees.


*park it.  I will watch it eventually.

In which I choose to judge a book by its cover

This may be the greatest cover to a book I've ever seen. Well, maybe not the greatest, but it speaks to me.

Media Consumed While Travelling to and from London

On the way to London, mostly I slept.  But during the trip

I read:

The Score, by Richard Stark.  #5 in the series.  I really liked this one, and, boy do these books read fast.
Jonah Hex: Face Full of Violence - by Palmiotti and Gray (and others)
.5 of Jonah Hex: Guns of Vengeance - by Palmiotti and Gray (and others) I left this somewhere in the flat in Kensington.  Now I will have to fin another copy somewhere used or very cheap.
The first 175 pages of American Gods by Neil Gaiman.  If you start reading this and think "well, gee, this is a lot like Anansi Boys..."  keep reading.

I watched:

Space Battleship Yamoto - live action version.  It... wasn't very good. 
Jonah Hex - it also wasn't very good
3/4's of Black Swan - its good, but for a movie with so much hype, man, its about as subtle as a slap to the face.  I didn't turn it off out of disgust, btw.  The plane was landing.
Beverly Hills Cops - for some reason we all came back to the flat and stayed up late watching this on Sky.  No idea why.

Berkeley Breathed art on "Mars Needs Moms"

I am a fan of cartoonist Berkeley Breathed. His strip, Bloom County, was a favorite when I was hitting an age when I was scanning the page for more than just Slylock Fox, and I still enjoy the occasional Bloom County collection.

A while back, I picked up Breathed's children's book Mars Needs Moms, and it was a fun read, if a bit off-beat for a story aimed at kids. And then I heard it was being adapted to a feature film by Robert "I Sucked the Soul Out of The Polar Express" Zemeckis.

The thing is - Breathed's character style and sentiment is distinctly Breathed's. And, somewhat shockingly, unlike Polar Express, Zemeckis didn't seem to feel any attachment to Breathed's artistic style.

Its hard to really explain that Breathed's character design is part of the story, and so abandoning that design for the movie's humanoid, motion-capture friendly designs....  missing the point.

Look, Breathed's story may be a little scary for kids: its about a kid who sees his mom getting kidnapped by aliens after he's decided his mom is mean during a typical kid/ parent spat.  But the point of the story is to teach kids about sacrifice and explain to them exactly how much their parents love them.  Frankly, its not a bad thing to share with kids, and nobody is going to walk away scarred from either a picture book or movie about the depths of a parent's love.  Its called putting a conflict into a story.

Breathed's Mars Needs Moms is a slim picturebook, light on text and full of imaginative imagery.  Simply covering that scaffolding in typical "family movie" hoo-hah is going to do little but distract from and muddle a pretty straightforward story, and the only time I've seen it truly work was with Where the Wild Things Are.    Unfortunately we all know studios have a certainly saccharine version of reality they deal with when putting together family films, and it may be that adding spunky teenage Martians or whatever the hell the movie chose to do from the Hollywood Plot-o-Tron merely diluted the film to a nonsensical mess.

I'd guess Zemeckis and Co.'s insistence on the motion-capture technology took precedence over the exaggerated and intentionally absurd visual style that's been Breathed's trademark since his days on The Academia Waltz.  Trying to make the characters move and look "lifelike" was never the intention of Breathed's style, and its hard to imagine exactly why a decision was made to stray from what would have been a pretty unique and fun adaptation of Breathed's work.

I'm hoping to read Breathed's reaction in The Hollywood Reporter, even if I have my doubts that we'd get the full story or what it feels like to watch your much-loved book turned into something completely different on the screen and then watch that movie flop.  Or... we might.

I guess if there's any point to this post, its that a massive flop of a movie shouldn't reflect poorly on the source material, especially if the source is more or less ignored in favor of whatever the heck the producers feel is more fun to play around with.

Goodnight Dune now a complete children's book

found by @chris_roberson

I think this looks about right for this crowd...

A while back I linked to an image that was a pretty clever idea/  just a joke called "Goodnight Dune".

Well, its the 2010's, so of course, somebody actually went and made it into a book.

Here.

I strongly suspect Harms will now wish he had children.

Rubbernecking 1947 Crime Scenes: "The Black Dahlia" book and movie

So, I'm not quite ghoulish enough to spend a lot of time watching shows about true life murder (unless I'm unemployed, then all bets are off.  City Confidential is aaaammmaaaaaaazing.).  For reasons I'm not quite sure of, I've been aware of the Black Dahlia murder since at least high school.  "The Black Dahlia"* was the name used in the LA press to describe torture and murder victim Elizabeth Short, found dead and terribly mutilated in an empty lot in January of 1947.  Short's murder has never been solved.

The crime has been endlessly revisited, much like the Jack the Ripper slayings, due to the unthinkable cruelty inflicted upon Short, the seeming calculated ruthlessness, the bizarre manner of public disposal, the odd follow ups from someone seemingly Short's killer, and the fact that the crime went unsolved despite a media frenzy and all-out effort by the LAPD.

I'm going to interrupt you now and say, I am totally not @#$%ing kidding:  DO NOT GOOGLE FOR IMAGES OF ELIZABETH SHORT.  Due to the nature of Google image search, you're likely to turn up autopsy and crime scene photos, and, I repeat:  her manner of her death was absolutely horrific.

She looked like this in life.  There.  You're done.

Back in the 1980's, crime novelist James Ellroy penned a fictional account of the investigation of Short's murder, and I think its safe to say that Ellroy stuck to some basic facts of the case, held close to historical accuracy for the time, but otherwise readers should consider the book a work of complete fiction (including characterization of Elizabeth Short).

I recently completed the book and watched the movie, The Black Dahlia.  Reading the book and watching the flick back-to-back is something I've been doing a lot of late, although I confess I gave up on the film of Slaughterhouse Five, deciding I wanted more time between the book and movie, but in this case...  I hadn't been completely sold on Ellroy's Black Dahlia.  Maybe I should have been, but parts of the book felt like they'd been cut too short or sold short, other parts seemed to linger on a bit longer than I felt necessary.

SPOILERS, AHOY

Some of the characters are fairly obvious, and, frankly, I felt that the minute the entirety of the Sprague clan showed up, and the way in which our narrator meets the family, this would be another tale in which the well-hidden perversions of the wealthy lead to victimhood for others.

As the book arrived in the 1980's, I can't be certain that it hasn't been imitated endlessly since, or if its carrying on the tradition of stories like Hammett's The Dain Curse or The Big Sleep by Chandler, and there's been enough repetition in crime and noir fiction that its almost inevitability of the genre.  It doesn't really matter, I suppose as I wasn't able to guess, exactly, who was responsible for the Dahlia until it was revealed in the novel, but it seemed as if rather than pursuing red herrings, the book could have tried to come to less of a dead end so early on.  The winding mess does obfuscate the mystery, but somehow the denouement just feels a bit too much like a "hoo-dunnit" by the time the final chapters put things into place.  Moreover, unlike the similar fictional reconstruction by Alan Moore in From Hell, the players selected are all entirely fictional, and it feels a little odd solving a very real, very tragic murder with fictional characters, motivations, etc...

Frankly, I couldn't ever shake the feeling that making Lee Blanchard the killer would have been a more logical and more interesting choice, even after pursuing the Sprague clan, but...  a lot of people who've read the book apparently thought otherwise.

END SPOILERS

I do like most of Ellroy's style, and its made me curious to check out some of his other work (this seems like a very good companion piece to what I remember of the film adaptation of LA Confidential, also by Ellroy). 
I've been looking at American Tabloid as an audio book, and I might have to do that.

The sprawling cast of the book feels right, especially in the multiple environments our narrator passes through, and Ellroy does a good job of knowing all of his characters well enough that you don't get lost.  He seems to fully realize the world of 1940's-era LA and Hollywood, refusing to romanticize any of it. And while he's not as razor quick as a Hammett, Chandler or Westlake, his more "novelistic" approach to traditionally pulp material does give the proceedings a welcome bit of gravitas.

What's terribly odd is how... off I found the recent adaptation to film by Brian DePalma.

these poor jerks thought they were in the next big movie

Released in 2006, the entire tone of the movie seems simply off.  DePalma seems to want to imbue the movie with same sweeping grandeur he captured in The Untouchables, which was a movie far more like a tale of larger than-life heroes and villains playing out morality tales against the marble and granite backdrops of Depression-era Chicago.  Its a strange tack to take with a story that is, flat out, crime-fiction-noir, the kind of story that relies on dingy apartments, bare light-bulbs, cheap-looking actors and a bottle in either foreground or background of every shot.

I knew things had missed the mark fairly early on, but almost groaned aloud when I saw DePalma had transformed the dank, intentionally dark and unobtrusive "lesbian bar", Laverne's, into a swank, deco dinner club complete with a KD Lang (plus dancers) floor show.

Casting for the movie could have been mostly on.  Josh Hartnett was likely okay to cast as narrator Bucky Bleichert, but a producer somewhere decided you can't hire Hartnett and give him prosthetic Buck teeth, no matter what the character is named, and so the teeth disappear before the end of the Act 1.  Scarlet Johansson, always welcome on the screen or in my home, is clearly cast about 10-15 years too young for her role, coming off as a co-ed playing grown up rather than the worldly Kay Lake of the novel.  Hilary Swank never captures the acute weirdness of Madeline Sprague...  the list just kind of goes on.  But, man, do the Sprague-scenes feel like actors chewing up the scenery...  Aaron Eckhardt and the character of Lee feel simply wasted in this adaptation.

you would think Ms. Johansson would make everything better

But even the directing and cutting feel weird.  Scenes are awkwardly shot, seemingly lacking B roll and inserts for close-ups.  Actors seems to know their lines, but haven't quite found the scene, but that's what's on the screen.  And the investigation into the life of Elizabeth Short gets dumbed down into a series of sort-of-goofy screen tests.  Bucky and Lee's absolute unraveling just doesn't make it into the movie, and that's unfortunate (for Ellroy and the viewer).  It was so much the point of the book, and here it just feels like plodding plot points.

All of the pieces are there, from big name actors to up and comers, to beautiful sets, a name director and a best-selling novel as the source...  Anyway, don't take my word for it.  The New York Times also watched the film.

On the whole, its a missed opportunity.  My personal feelings about how Ellroy wraps up the mystery aside, something really weird happened here, and I doubt that's a story Mr. DePalma will ever get to tell.  And because Short's death was very real, and because its not completely outside the window of memory, even while preserved in records and black and white photos, somehow it seems you need to do better when you're given the chance.

In interviews and elsewhere, its no mystery that Ellroy carried (or carries) his own low-level obsession with the Black Dahlia, and wanted some sort of justice for Elizabeth Short. 

As I understand it, Ellroy isn't alone, and a few folks hit the LAPD for the Short files on a routine basis, hoping to find some new clue, somewhere in the endless amount of paperwork created during the investigation.I find it unlikely that with 60 years turning to 70 since Elizabeth Short died, that anyone will ever know what truly happened, but she was real.  And so you hope that those who want to use her memory to tell their stories will do so with the care that I believe Ellroy genuinely employed, but which somehow got lost in the same Hollywood that killed Short the first time around.


*the name was coined after The Blue Dahlia, a popular movie of the era starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.

Back from Sub-Diego - I read a lot

In the Aquaman comics from around 2004, the waterfront of San Diego was somehow cleaved from the shoreline and plunged into the ocean.  The populace that survived the incident were turned into water-breathing folks, like Aquaman's peeps, the Atlanteans.  Aquaman came to the rescue, and became the hero of Sub-Diego (get it?).

Unfortunately, the writers on the book took way too long to explain what the heck had happened and why, and what started off as a great story idea fizzled, was canceled and subducted into continuity oblivion by 2006's Infinite Crisis event (which also killed Aquaman and led to the very confusing and not all that interesting follow up with Aqua-Knight/ Fake Aquaman/ Who Approved This?).

Anyway, that's what I think of when I stand near the water in San Diego.  Also: oh, look, a sea gull.

I do not have the romantic attachment to San Diego that folks in Arizona had.  It was where everybody went the minute they had a day off.  There's no real equivalent for Texans, who hold their own beaches in semi-contempt, and who generally look down their nose at each others' cities (sorry, Amarillo).  And there certainly anything in Texas that looks like San Diego, although you can certainly see certain architectural similarities between the all-recent construction in San Diego and the more recent sky-riser condos here in town.  They all have that "this is shiny and looks like it was deigned on a computer!" feel to the architecture that I suspect we'll find regrettable in another 20 years or so.

That said, I do not dislike San Diego.  Its nifty.  Its clean and pretty.  It has a lot to offer and it looks expensive as @#$% to live there.

Anyway, I presented at a conference on Saturday, and I guess it went well.  Aside from that, there wasn't much to do.  I kind of walked around, but wasn't feeling very touristy.  So I wound up watching the Texas A&M game, read two graphic novels and the better part of two books.

I read the first volume of DC's Brightest Day, and kept thinking "I shouldn't be enjoying this".  Its kind of silly, it manages to set up a whole bunch of plot in a clumsy fashion and introduces ideas that I'm not sure I care all that much about, but...  I actually liked it quite a bit.  I'm a big Martian Manhunter fan from way back, I like how Johns handles Hawkman and Hawkwoman and their convoluted history, etc...  And I try to read anything with the Jason Rusch version of Firestorm (which I never thought got a fair shake when DC tried so hard with that series about 6 years ago).

Aside from that first shot at what looked like a neat run on Aquaman (see above), I've not been a huge fan of the comic or character.  I just never found a hook.  But I kind of like what Johns and Tomasi seem to be doing with the King of the Seas.  Sure, its not as straight up FUN as the Brave and the Bold version, but please, somebody at DC get Aquaman figured out.  And none of this magical water-hand or hook-hand hoo-ha.  Just...  Aquaman.  And that's what this first volume of Brightest Day seems to be offering up (and I like Mera, who has usually stood around like vermicelli more than a character)

And like most Johns and Tomasi stuff, it seems like its actually going somewhere, which is not what I'd necessarily say about a lot of series.  Sure, its a little aggravating that the White Ring won't just lay out its plans, and instead is being all elliptical and messing with Boston Brand and whatnot, but...  you kind of get the feeling that it'll be worth the payoff.

I am not reading every single tie-in.  I'll read stuff I'm already reading, but DC is not going to be able to convince me that buying Titans is a good idea.  And as little heat as its generating, I don't see me reading JLA: Generation Lost, either (because, man...  I was kind of done with Maxwell Lord as soon as Diana enabled him to see where he'd been, if you get my drift).

If the creative team on Wonder Woman can get Diana squared away (and that seems increasingly possible), this is the first time in  25 years I can think of that the Original 7 of the JLA have been able to walk into a room and look one another in the face (just when Barry shows up, J'onn and Bruce got taken out).  There's just so much potential there, and its potential I think DC squandered multiple times over the years - most recently by demonstrating that they didn't understand what Meltzer was doing with the JLA either strategically within the DCU or from a character standpoint.

In fact, I'm kind of looking forward to a DCU that seems geared toward trying, if even for a short while, to have the most recognizable versions of their properties in one place at the same time.  Sure, change is the thing that makes the world go round, but it would be nice to see the main continuity find a way to work in an epic age for itself where the characters were the idealized versions of themselves, just for a while.

No secret, I love the DCU, and I always will.  But I also no longer feel like I need to buy everything DC puts out there.  When you don't see editorial working to make sure their properties the best they can be, I don't feel the urge as a reader or consumer to participate.  Somehow Johns (and Tomasi, increasingly) almost always makes me feel like I am getting somebody's best effort, and the effort of someone who cares more deeply about doing right by the characters than putting his stamp on that character.  That stamping part just comes naturally, in a way that I think you could almost say reminds me of how the stable of 70's and 80's-era DC writers made it work.  I'm thinking of guys like Paul Kupperberg, Elliot S! Maggin, Cary Bates, and even Marv Wolfman.  Only, you know, its Johns, so you tend to see a lot more disembowelings (Mr. Johns will one day learn that you don't need to actually show the disembowelings, you can just mention that they happened). 

I also read a Greatest Batgirl Stories Ever Told collection, and it was really, really fun.   Some of its a bit dated, some of it isn't.  Aside from the original origin story, everything in it was new to me (bot not necessarily news to me), so I finally got to read the story of how Babs got sent to Washington to hold elected office.*

Also reading a good chunk of a collection called Lone Star Noir, which is a collection of crime stories written about various locales here in Texas.  I admit I jumped ahead and read the Austin section.  The stories are, admittedly, hit-or-miss, but its interesting reading.

And I'm plowing through book 4 of the Parker Novels by Richard Stark (aka: Donald Westlake), The Mourner.  It's tough to know what to say about it other than: that is most definitely a Parker novel. Dude likes to hit people with guns.

But I'm back!  And now it slate and I should probably just go to bed.

*a bit odd reading that on the day Rep. Gloria Giffords of Tucson was shot, I confess

No Gnu's is Good Gnu's (with Gary Gnu)

Yeah, its The Great Space Coaster. Deal with it.

I got nothing. I spent the past two days in South Texas, visiting colleagues in Corpus Christi and Kingsville. Returned home, ate some food, watched Monday's Bourdain on Rome, swore to get to Rome some day, then went and read some Jimmy Olsen comics.

I'm a bit wiped and will likely turn in early.

Not much of a pop-culture-tastic week.

I recently started using Google Sites to create a bucket list of books I'd like to read (or listen to), movies I need to see, and albums I need to add to my collection.

I figure this is good as the list will be a sort of nagging reminder that I need to get some of this stuff out of the way when I'm considering what to read, watch or listen to next. The book list is still very short, and I don't think I ever want to have more than ten or fifteen books on the list at one time, lest I decide its impossible and give up.

So, right now I'm listening to a very good audio book of Catch-22 and reading Lonesome Dove, which Jamie shamed me by reading last year, thus becoming more Texan than myself by at least a factor of three.

Catch-22 is brilliant and maddening and kind of reminds me of The Admiral. Not that The Admiral is maddening, but I think the sense of humor Heller demonstrates in the book is the sort of thing that The Admiral (a) finds amusing because (b) The Admiral has a pretty wicked sense of humor that I don't think many people really realize is there. But, no kidding, The Old Man is hilarious.

People always ask me where I eat when I travel. I always disappoint them by telling them the truth. I like to eat in the lobby restaurant of whatever hotel I'm staying. I don't expect a good meal, but nobody looks at you sideways for sitting there with a book, nobody wonders why you're eating alone, and the places are usually so empty, nobody cares if you sit and read for an hour (as long as you tip well. And I do.).

Last night the bartender/ hostess at the Hilton Garden Inn asked what I was reading, what with the massive brick of a book that is Lonesome Dove (which is why I've never read it. ADD usually means I'm good for about 400 pages and then done). I was surprised anyone under 25 had read the book, let alone also watched the movie.

Anyway, I'm not getting to West Texas anytime immediately, so I figured South Texas was as good a place as any to get into the book.

Next week: Waco. Then Brownsville in October.

I cannot quit reading the descriptions of Harlequin Romance Novels

Apparently Harlequin has decided to go all genre on us. I saw some of these at Borders over the weekend, but I did not... understand... the sheer magnitude...

You can see their line of Paranormal books here.

But i want to point to a random book i clicked on:

Zombie Moon by Lori DeVoti

The description:

Caleb Locke lived for one thing—killing zombies. And this man—this legend—was exactly what Samantha Wagner needed. In mist-shrouded alleys, hunted by zombies, haunted by fear, she vowed to find Caleb and convince him to help her. But she hadn't counted on falling in love….

Caleb kept his own secrets—like the one he couldn't hide when the moon was full. But his wolf was drawn to Samantha, recognizing her as his mate. With her in his arms, Caleb reveled in passion…and rued his deception. Would she still love the man who fought by her side if she realized that zombies weren't the only monsters? Samantha would have to make a choice—and she only had till the next full moon.

Did you get that? It's a book about a lady werewolf who falls for a fearless ZOMBIE HUNTER (and probably a vampire).

This thing is just ten kinds of crazy.

What's really amazing is that apparently there are oodles and oodles of female nerds out there who are not afraid to mix their soft-soft-core reading and hackey recycled monster plots. I am... amazed. The 21st Century has brought us lady-nerds. And they are powerful.

Super Pets: Books for Kids!

DC Comics and Capstone books will soon release a line of kids' chapter books starring the DC Super Pets! I know! I'm using exclamation points! (...because I'm excited!)

For those of you not in the know, back in the day Superman editor and controversial figure (aka: well-known jerk), Mort Weisinger was all about adding new characters and accouterments to the Superman titles. Thus, you got everything from Kandor to Beppo, the super monkey. Some stuff stuck, some stuff didn't.

Superman wound up with a whole line of buddies, the most famous of which is Krypto the Superdog.

The really great news isn't just that these books are coming, but that they'll be drawn by Tiny Titans wunderkind cartoonist Art Baltazar.









Sadly, I can't really justify buying these books. I think. We'll see. I'm a bit of an impulse purchaser. But those of you with kids should totally check these things out. It's a book with Beppo and Titano! How can you go wrong?

I think I'm lying. I'm totally buying that book with Krypto and Ace the Bathound on the cover.

Point Blank vs. The Hunter

Because I think Darwyn Cooke is a good drawer, a while back I picked up his graphic novel adaptation of Richard Stark's (aka: Donald Westlake's) crime thriller The Hunter.


ironically, the cover image of the novel is stolen from a scene in the movie The Big Combo. Great movie, by the way.

I didn't know anything about The Hunter other than that people seemed pretty keen about Westlake's work, and I picked up on the fact that the Parker books seemed to have a cult following.

The first installment in the Parker series is a fairly slim pulp read, a form of book you don't see much anymore, but that used to be a fairly popular consumer product. A lot of books like this used to get published, and every once in a while something would work better than expected, and you could wind up with the next Doc Savage, The Shadow or other pulp favorite on your hands.

Anyway, long story short, I was blown away by Darwyn Cooke's adaptation, and convinced I'd need to read the actual book. Long story short, I did read the book, and it was just as good on a second read, even without the power of Cooke's illustrations.

It's also notable that Cooke stuck as close as possible to the actual novel as possible, meaning that the adaptation is certainly its own entity in a way, but it also had the approval of Westlake who had previously allowed the story of The Hunter to be sold and adapted at least twice before that I know of, but had required that Parker's name be changed in both instances.

You can read about the adaptation and see pages here.

I'd not seen either filmic adaptation, Mel Gibson's Payback or the Boorman directed, Lee Marvin starring Point Blank, and so decided to check out a Boorman movie before I broke my self-imposed Mel Gibson hiatus (excluding Mad Max films).

If you were going to cast Walker (as he's named in Point Blank), Marvin is as good a fit as you were likely to get in 1967. And, John Boorman as good a director. That's high praise, by the way.

I'm not clear on whether Westlake asked that Parker's name be changed before or after reading the script, but I'm sort of glad that Westlake did so. Parker can remain Parker, and Point Blank is not Parker's story from The Hunter. They changed just enough details, and the studio didn't know how to tell the story without adding in a girl and dialing down Parker's anti-social/ sociopathic character.


a scene from Darwyn Cooke's graphic novel adaptation of The Hunter. I think Dickinson's character was an expansion on this character.

That said, Point Blank is a great piece of that span of cinema that lasted from the mid-60's to almost 1980. For a bit there, they were actually following the "show, don't tell" school of thought when it came to storytelling. That whole concept was pretty much chucked by the time Arnie was a major star and you had to hear about how awesome "Dutch" or "John McLargehuge" from his colleagues before Arnie had so much as an entrance.


This movie is about a hand, a gun, Lee Marvin's head , a tiny Angie Dickinson and the Doppler Effect.

In some ways, Marvin's portrayal of Walker must have been a bit of a surprise to audiences used to a hero rather than following a protagonist. As in the actual two Parker books I've read (waiting on the third, btw), Parker is more of a protagonist rather than anybody's ideal of a "hero". He's just the perspective we're following the story through. So, when we see Walker beat the holy hell out of a couple of guys, shoot before asking and accidentally send a key character to his doom... its not with any sense of moral vindication, false or otherwise. That's just what's going to happen with Walker.

While I'm a huge fan of characters like Superman and think part of what makes Superman nifty is his conviction to a higher moral ideal, its just as fascinating to see a character just as fully realized who has a completely different steering mechanism in place, and not one made of false bravado or BS machismo.

Anyhow, I actually highly recommend Point Blank as a movie, and am choosing to think of it as a separate entity from its source material. As a stand alone movie, Point Blank is a good, gritty crime drama.


An emotional and primitive man? They kinda did take a different direction from The Hunter.

I'm so out of the loop, I feel a bit awkward talking about direction, but I do like how the film hangs together, so I suppose Boorman did a pretty darn good job. The tension is right, and while I felt the urgency of Walker's hunt was a bit different from Parker's, it's pretty strong stuff. And you have to love some of the opening exposition, and how that's put together.

Also, Angie Dickinson.

Dickinson could have been just eye-candy (and how!), but her part, which is mostly made up for the movie and seems loosely based on a minor character in the book, is an interesting addition, and Dickinson is given some interesting scenes. It's an odd departure as it dilutes Parker's reflections on Lynne from the book, and gives him a new point of interest, which is one of those places where you realize the filmmakers were just going to make their own movie.


Dickinson and Marvin worry about crime during the swinging sixties

Anyhow, recommended. Check it out.

Computer Status, Television, Books

Maintenance: So, my job had assigned me a very nice laptop computer. When stepping out of my car about a week and a half ago, I dropped the computer, completely ruining the display. I basically have no laptop, which means I'm currently having to retreat to my office to blog, which is not SOP here at The Signal Watch.

I am unsure if the work computer will be replaced, but I do know its making it a bit of an effort to actually write anything at the moment as I've been forced into having to sit at my desktop computer like its 1995 or something.


Television: My cable package is as ever-changing as the T-1000, and so I was surprised to see a new channel added to my HD line-up this evening, "CI". I believe its "Crime and Investigation", which seems to translate to cop shows in re-runs, such as "Crossing Jordan". But it also includes "Twin Peaks". So, I spent a part of the evening watching episodes of "Twin Peaks".

In the week when "Lost" and all of its mysteries went off the air, free of its own will, and with its own producer-determined conclusion, it was interesting to see "Twin Peaks" at its height, with Leland Palmer/ BOB revealed as the murderer, and to ponder that had Season 2 not gone so horrendously off the rails, at some point "Twin Peaks" would have had to come to some conclusion, and let's be honest... wrapping things up was never David Lynch's style. Would the audience have been dissatisfied had the writers not explained The Black Lodge other than in the magical abstract? Or given a life history of BOB? Explained who, exactly, Cooper's Diane might be, and was she actually receiving the tapes?

But, ah... Sherilyn Fenn...

I've been a bit surprised at the flack "Lost" took on Facebook as the switch has flipped and the audience seems to feel gypped by the entire sixth season. Perhaps my aforementioned "casual observer" status had me preset to just accept whatever "Lost" put on the table, but I have to also wonder: seriously, what did the audience who felt the finale let them down expect? I have no idea.


Books: I'm currently reading "The Man with the Getaway Face". It's aces. And I am going to go off and finish it now, if you don't mind.