Things of Which I Am Now or was Once Afraid

Things I am afraid of with a 1 - 5 ranking system.  1 indicates "low anxiety", 5 indicates "high anxiety".  Failure of an item on this list does not mean I am fearless when it comes to that topic, it simply indicates that it is not something I worry about.  Example: lightning.  Yes, I know lightning strikes are harmful, but they just don't cause me much worry.  And my house got hit twice by lightning last year.


Heights - 3  
As a kid, I wasn't afraid of heights, then one day Jason yelled at me for playing too close to a ledge.  Ever since then, I sort of hyper-ventilate and get what I assume to be vertigo when I can see straight down more than 15 feet.


Eating bad shellfish - 2
I love shellfish.  I also have heard so many stories of what happens when you eat a bad clam that every new bite is filled with anxiety.  Still, clams and mussels are so delicious that I sweat my way through it and hope for the best.

Happy Birthday, Rosa Parks

Today marks the 100th birthday of Ms. Rosa Parks.

All of us Americans are forever in her debt.

Saying Good-Bye to Judy

In the early hours of January 1st, Jamie and Doug's mother passed here in Austin.  She'd had a stroke-like experience in August, and before Christmas, she suffered several more episodes.  We were lucky to have Doug and Kristen here in Austin with us, and we were together with Jamie's dad, Dick, throughout the very long days there at the end of the year.

This weekend we held the memorial for Judy in San Marcos, where she and Dick have lived since about October of 2008.  Prior to their move to Texas, Judy and Dick had lived for decades in Lawton, Oklahoma, where the McBrides still have a multitude of connections.

Of course the ceremony was extremely difficult, but as a reminder and celebration of Judy's life, and the many, many lives she touched - it was lovely to attend.  

I met Judy within a week or two of the start of my relationship with Jamie.  We were only twenty, and parental contact with the girl you're seeing at that age is something you don't necessarily want to dive into headfirst.  However, actually quite liking this girl and understanding already how close she was to her family meant that I figured I'd best not duck out when I had a chance to make a good first impression on the girlfriend's mother.

DC's "WTF? Month" pretty much sums it up

As if there were any doubt that DC Comics and I may be at an impasse, thanks to the requirements of the hype machine in the Direct Market, we already know that April is going to be "WTF? Month" at DC Comics.

this is, like, 10 layers of sad

Check out The Beat for more on this so-edgy-it-will-cut-you promotion.

Extensive bad language below the break.  Proceed with caution.

Noir Watch: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a tough sell for a "hey, want to pop in a movie and relax?" kind of movie.  For this reason, I hadn't seen it in its entirety since college*, and had to do some convincing to get Jamie to watch the movie with me - but she soldiered through,and I think she liked it again.

I will do what a straight dude in 2013 will rarely do and admit a lot of affection for Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, even though the number of films I have seen each of them in is fairly small.**  By this point in both of their careers, the two weren't considered bankable stars, and while we tend to think of the early 60's as a conservative time, it's almost impossible to imagine this movie getting made today - and getting an audience to look up from their phones long enough to pay attention.

Trailer for Animated feature - Superman: Unbound

A loose adaptation of the final Brainiac story from the pre-boot DCU.

Should be action packed.

No Post Thursday - Superheroes on TV

I watched the first 2/3rds of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? for the first time since college, and its even better than I remember.  Saving the rest for tomorrow, but, man, everyone in that movie is so good.

Anyway, we'll talk about that movie later.

And, we really need to find me a copy of Straight Jacket.

Also watched a PBS show, Pioneers of Television, that I think Randy originally sent me the link for.  Anyway, the topics was superheroes, and featured Batman, The Hulk, The Adventures of Superman, The Greatest American Hero and (sigh) Wonder Woman.


You can watch the whole thing on the PBS site, so go nuts.

Watch Superheroes on PBS. See more from Pioneers of Television.

Here, Lynda Carter has had enough of your nonsense:

Here's, like, 9.5 minutes of Diana Prince turning into Wonder Woman.  It's kind of weird.




 And, as a reminder, The Adventures of Superman is a terrific TV show.

Super Watch: Dark Knight Returns, Part 2

There isn't much to say about the plotting of this second installment of the direct-to-video adaptation of Dark Knight Returns that a generation of comics fans grew up with via the comics page.  The dialog, often the framing, the depiction of characters...  It's likely the closest adaptation I think you'll ever run into that doesn't fall into whatever trap Peter Jackson fell into with his The Hobbit Part 1 that felt like a checklist of scenes with no real narrative push or (dare I say it) heart in its desire to lovingly recreate each beat and scene.  Nor is it the Zack Snyder slavish recreation that misses everything about why Watchmen worked, and figures that showing the same stuff we saw on the panel is good enough, even if all the directorial decisions - like casting, emotional beats, musical selection and cinematography - were completely misunderstood.

In this second installment, as an audience we've had the opportunity to get used to Peter Weller as Batman (and he's actually pretty great), and we get Michael Emerson as a giddy, cerebral Joker (God bless you, Andrea Romano).  And, somewhat like the 3rd chapter in the Dark Knight trilogy from Nolan, Batman actually takes a back seat to some of what else is happening in the story.  World War III is seething to break out, Superman's relationship with the government is filled in, and against that backdrop, Batman is still running around concerned with cleaning up the streets of Gotham.  You can almost understand how it got ignored for all those years until he retired.

I recently saw a quote from comics creator Faith Erin Hicks noting how dated Dark Knight Returns felt on a re-read.  She's not entirely wrong, but I sort of also sort of rolled my eyes.  It's a work of its time with undercurrents that remain relevant and resonant.

Comics weren't really intended to have a shelf-life when the book hit the direct market, they were commenting on the moment, and Watchmen is no less a piece of the Cold War than DKR.  And we were so ready to forget about the cloud of nuclear annihilation when Gorbachev instituted Glasnost, I'm not surprised that a generation had grown up without the context, and doesn't quite get what it felt like to do duck and cover drills until everyone admits that it's kind of pointless when you're in about 3rd grade.  Nor has the era of street crime that pervaded the big cities been seen in Gen Y's lifetime (although Chicago spent 2012 doing it's damndest to recreate the era that made "Bloods" and "Crips" household names).

We continue to explore the strange marriage of Jimmy Olsen and Supergirl

Before reading this post, read last night's post.

So, I was all put out that I didn't know where to get Part 2 of the Supergirl marries Jimmy Olsen story, and Signal Corpsman Stuart of Kansas informed me the reason it sounded familiar was because it was in Jimmy Olsen 57, which I'd previously read.  Normally, that issue would be in a long box and hard to get to, but...

Viola!

I had recently bought a reader copy that hadn't made it into the longboxes.

So, what DOES happen in Part 2?

A whole lot more nonsense.

I like Jimmy's odd sense of vanity that runs through the Superman comics.  I envy him his cocksure certainty, but I guess when as many alien princesses have thrown themselves at you as they have at Jimmy, after a while, you have to start believing your own press.

By the way, something went wrong with how I was taking pictures, but I'm running with the weird effect on the pictures in the second half, so just bear with me.  I can't be bothered to take more pictures.

One thing I should make clear is that I didn't really ping to the fact that, while reading the comic last time, this is an "imaginary story", an out of continuity story that explores a "what if?" scenario in the world of Superman.  They're always fun, and somehow up the already batshit-crazy factor in Superman comics by a factor of 1000%.

Beg my pardon.

Who Was in Our Driveway When Google Maps Took a Satellite Picture?

A baffling photo.

Someone was in our driveway when the eagle-eyed satellites of Google Maps flew overhead and took a picture of our house.

That's definitely my car in the driveway, but I can't tell if that's Jamie's mom's car out front or not.

Judging from the light, it seems to be almost exactly noon when the picture was taken, and it seems it had been raining and was possibly last spring, based on the green of the trees.

At first I thought this was Jamie walking the dog, but she thought it looked like someone with a small child coming up behind.

I have no idea what's happening here in my driveway, but it looks like I was home for the picture.

I suppose we'll never know...