nosce te ipsum I'm lousy with free time. Well, maybe that could be read more that colloquially and inferred that I have too much of it, but I wouldn't agree. All I meant was that I don't handle it well. Oh, there were many things I was obliged to do during this time off, but with so many things waiting for me -- unread books, magazines and comics, a Legends deadline a week away, a multitude of dust-covered projects -- I've instead gone through much of it in a restless stupor, like someone waiting for a bus. Nothing self-revelatory there -- I've been slapping myself with this particular fish for years -- but I need to remind myself of it every so often if I'm ever to have a hope of changing my behavior. What was something of a revelation this past week spilled from the previous weekend's clix competitions. It wasn't until the week began that I rolled back over it and realized another of those strange legacies of my odd upbringing: Somewhere early in life...
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Clix: The next moves With the marquees for Fantastic Forces just behind us - I'll cap that later in this piece - the next points of focus for clix fans are September's Icons and November's Armor Wars . Those with more of a DC fixation are likely more mindful of the former, Marvel fans the latter. Icons will be the new DC base set, which is to say that it's designed to be an introductory point for the DC fan into this game, replacing Hypertime -- which not-so-coincidentally first hit stores the same month three years earlier. The Icons checklist is already starting to fill up, between c lix and cards. The third official sneak peek hit yesterday, unveiling the new Darkseid , this time prese nted as an REV so we can choose a level for him. This time they went with what strikes me as a sculpt based on a John Byrne version of him, vs the more Jack Kirby-derived version we saw in Hypertime . The new version is on the whole more powerful, and certainly more mobile at...
Where'd I put that compass? I'm taking a couple days off from work - today and tomorrow - making a 4-day weekend for myself. The past couple days of work were long ones, so by the time I came home and took care of the things that needed to be done, got a shower and began to relax I had too little juice left for much else. Sleepy-bye time for the weary old guy. Today saw more details that needed to be tended to, including taking Ari around to more medical appointments, getting some light food shopping done (vegetables, rolls, that sort of thing) and working up the lunch that might be dinner. Everyone here is on his or her own schedule. At the moment - just past 3pm - I'm the only one awake. Aside from a few things I have to take care of tomorrow -- some bank business, mailing off the rest of the eBay items to the auction winners who've paid, and making an appointment to get one of the vans inspected sometime (other than Thursday) next week -- I'm theoreti...
In the thick of it Just a quick word on FX's latest show launch, Stephen Bochco's Over There . Last night was saw the launch of the series, as we meet and follow a group of recruits as they begin their tour of duty in Iraq. I was torn in my approach as a viewer, knowing on the one hand that when Bochco finds suitable collaborators the results, at least on the level of character-driven drama, are excellent, but on the other hand being distrustful of any series focusing on the war in/occupation of Iraq that would be appearing on a FOX station. With the first episode down it's "so far, so good." Bochco decided early on that he wasn't going to make a political statement, which still strikes me on some level as either gutless or displaying a lack of conviction on Bochco's part. However, once one gets past that objection we're given a blend of very human characters from different circumstances dealing with overwhelming circumstances. Based on the prem...
Wot's all this then? Just waking up on a Sunday morning, starting to check the news after taking care of some post-auction emails, and I find a piece in the New York Times informing me that even the police in Britain have admitted that the man they gunned down last week had no connection to the bombings . As I understand the piece, the man was a Brazilian eletrician and was ultimately gunned down for looking suspicious. The shocks going through the UK, where gun control laws long ago produced a police force routinely on the beat without sidearms, must be enormous. If the revised details hold up, I hope that the death of Jean Charles de Menezes will help the UK arrest it's halt into an armed, paranoid police state at this stage. Of course, cictzens of the UK, depending upon where they live and travel, are under virtual round the clock surveillance while out in public, with some estimated 7 million "security" cameras in operation . The public notice laws for su...
Post-marquee, pre-auction closing I can sit and watch the minutes tick by on my auctions (the shameless plugs continue!) or I can try to focus on some other things. I went to the marquee mentioned in the previous entry and had a fairly good time. I won two of the three matches, and the nine other players were mostly good sorts. Due to the limited figures to choose from (9 clix from three boosters, rather than 12 clix, and My team was an Experienced Moonstar (66pts), an exp. Scarlet Witch (49 pts), a rookie Dr. Strange (82 pts) and a veteran Iron Fist (71pts). I added a 10 pt Shake Off card to Moonstar, though I didn't use it once, bringing my team total to 278. My pulls included rookie and veteran Juggernauts, an exp. Nightcrawler, rookie Mirage and rookie Awesome Android, which made for lousy point fits. It's possible I'll give them another look and realize I skipped a better configuration, but this one worked well defensively and aggressively. Worst moment (asi...
Saturday One of the simple pleasures is waking up with the initial jolt of a weekday only to quickly realize that it's Saturday. Being able to melt back onto the bed is usually part of the wave of relief, but bladders have their own priorities. As I was up anyway, I figured I'd check online. Quickly clearing out the junk email, reporting the spam, then answering a postage question to someone in Germany who was looking at one of my Clix auctions . (Hey! I've been good about it this week, avoiding regular plugs. Now I'm approaching the half-day mark until they close and am hoping for much activity.) Now a quick note here. I might lie back down after this for perhaps another hour, might not -- but, for the moment at least, I seem to have the choice. Still, I'm signed up for a Heroclix marquee back in Bensalem , at 11 am. I'm going for fun, to see how my luck is in pulling something of interest, and to possibly do some trading. I'll be most of an hour tr...
So, what are you listening to? Many people put on CDs, be they straight commercial affairs or ones they've burned themselves, or keep television on as a background while they roam online, and I've done both. I-Pods stuffed with dozens of hours of mp3s and podcasts may even be the level you're operating at. During the weekdays, unless current events become too focused on one event that it becomes almost unlistenable, I tend to listen to my local NPR station, WHYY . Not so long ago that wouldn't have been something worth mentioning to people outside the broadcast area, but now that streaming media and higher speed access have become so common and reliable (it used to be so tinny and brittle) it strikes me as something worth mentioning since listening to it over the net can be so easily done . The programming on WHYY is news, information, general entertainment and interview most of the time, with classical music programming (that once upon a time was its focus) retreat...
What will emerge from the chrysalis? Recently checking out the postings on mommycool , where the perspective is decidedly one of parents seeking a path of responsible, effective, nurturing parenting, was part of what caused a piece on children spending more time indoors to get my attention. The piece attempts a balanced view, pointing out the conflicts and concerns parents have concerning children who can sometimes present them with the paradox of children who are simultaneously spending much more time at home while often becoming increasingly removed from family life. The piece doesn't indulge the panic of some of the extreme views, and really the only element that jumps out at me as being patently misleading is this bit: Studies indicate that children who spend lots of time outdoors have longer attention spans than kids who watch lots of television and play video games, says Frances Kuo, director of the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Ur...
All Beamed Out James Doo han , Star Trek's most famous engineer, "Scotty", died at 5:30 (his) local time this morning . I'm sure numerous tributes are already popping up across the net. Any of the interviews I'd heard or read of the actor presented him as a likeable guy who realized early on that he had become part of something large and lasting enough that it made sense to stop fighting it and go with the flow. That's an admirable grace to come from an actor, as I'm sure it must have meant some lean years between going from a poorly-paid actor in a not-immediately-commercial tv series that was cancelled and the time when Star Trek came back into its own as a series of films nearly a decade later. Sure, he had various movie roles, etc. , including some in-character voice work as Scotty for the 1973 cartoon series, but I doubt that interim work was particularly high-paying. Until I read the obit I hadn't known he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, ...
Can you hear them now? Upon reading that wild birds have begun mimicking ring tones heard on the huge number of cell phones, I was reminded that I never mentioned Mlaika, the elephant who speaks truck . While we're looking at animals, I may as well toss in this video of a dog with either a great imagination, an emotional disturbance or a possessed hind leg .
RIP: Jim Aparo I just learned that highly distinctive comics artist Jim Aparo has died . Mark Evanier provides a brief eulogy here . Fred Hembeck writes about him, too. I had just recently reread the collection of his Wrath of the Spectre work, which triggered numerous memories of his work on Batman and Phantom Stranger stories, too. I don't seem to be able to put my finger on a good, current checklist of his work at the moment, unfortunately. I thought I had one branching off a fan site , but the link was dead.
Whither Danforth? Tonight, at 9pm Eastern, el Shrub has asked the broadcast networks for roughly 10 minutes to try to sucker punch the competition by plugging his Supreme Court nominee. He'll spin a web of bullshit about the need for an unobstructed process, implying that any use of whatever means at hand to halt the progress of a candidate the president's selected is not to be tolerated by decent folk. His careful selection of senators and other party faithful, who have already been briefed on the nominee, will be quick pound away on both how wonderful the choice is and how "unprecedented" any "partisan obstructionism" in such an instance will be. I'm not going to speculate on the most likely candidate to be sprung on us. That much is set, and we'll see soon enough. Speculation and ramifications can be found directly or via additional links over at SCNo minationblog . As you've doubtless heard, the one getting the most buzz is Edith Clement . I...
Another sweep Another assortment of Heroclix auctions are up. Twenty two auctions this time. I decided to start it on a Saturday so the sales will be settled by next Sunday, and hopefully most of them will be set for mailing on Monday. A couple of the previous sets of auctions arrived at their destinations by today and I've copnsequently gone up a couple feedback points; the rest (of the domestic ones) should have them by Monday's mail. Australia and Spain will more likely be by the end of the week. That'll likely do it for eBay clix sales for a while, with the next step being getting the bulk inventory list together, prices attached, and online. My next trick will be to ignore the auctions for a while, rather than check them every five minutes. Aside from a trip out for a few items I didn't realize we needed when I picked things up on Friday, but aside from that I stayed in my low-humidity, sub 70 degree F environment. Not quite Mr. Freeze, but - as with the...
Tally? Me bananas! Finding myself bereft of anything resembling a creative impulse late last night I started to do a full inventory of my extra clix, the eventual aim being to make them available for trade or sale. They're taking up too much space, even in storage, so the aim is to turn them into space and/or something else I want. The approach was (well, is , as I'm optimistically at the halfway mark) to use Wizkids' set checklists and then sort the figures alphabetically in order to make them easier to find. It'll be easier to list four or five types of Spider-man with a set abbreviation attached than to organize them by sets. Ye gods! Am I overwhelmed with extras! I might run some as auctions on eBay, especially as I uncovered a cache of extra uniques that had gone missing since before the Christmas holidays. Running some REV sets alongside uniques, offering to combine shipping costs can be a good way of selling off some of those (relatively) common pieces. If some...
They got a message from the (in)Action Man Mostly mundane things today, despite my having taken most of the day off. Banking, food shopping, cooking, that sort of thing. Damn. I just remembered I had some envelopes I need to have on their way early, so there'll be one more trip out late tonight to get them into a box by a post office where they'll be pulled and sent on their way Saturday morning. Aside from that, I've theoretically cleared tonight and much of my weekend of much of the drudgery. Closer to the mark, though, is that I've lost the knack of enjoying myself for more than a few, self-unconscious moments aside from narcotic writing such as this. Boo fucking hoo. At this rate I may decide to get a life while on my deathbed. If I could pull my 18 year-old self into the present I don't know if he'd laugh, assured that this is surely a joke, or be seething with anger and disgust. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the wa...
Demon in a Blue Dress Okay, the two sites have little in common, but each has a narrow focus. Between the two they should offer something fun. The first is Monsterblog! , which bills itself as "a tribute to the Monster comics of Jack Kirby." The site's focused on the monster, horror, and sci fi tales that (along with westerns and romance titles) were Marvel comics' staples before launching the Fantastic Four and the parade of heroes that soon filled the 1960s. Many of these titles persisted into their age of heroes, though after a while they became more and more a case of reprints. The only deficiency in the site's direction is that it sticks solely with the tales illustrated by Jack Kirby, ignoring (at least) Steve Ditko's work in the same era. Still, if you want to stroll the covers of the early Marvel Age - monsters and heroes - there's always the Silver Age Marvel Comics Cover Index , which among other things is a fun way to see what w...
Fantastic Box Office I was pleased to see that Fantastic Four did so well this weekend . I'd avoided reviews in general, but apparently the reviewers weren't especially kind, and so the studio expectation going into the weekend was much lower than the $56 million it ended up doing, and managed to reverse a downward trend for box office receipts versus the same time last year . Michael Chiklis must be in an odd place with this news. On the one hand it's always great to be integrally connected to a come-from-behind success story, and he's a long time fan of the characters the movie was based on, but on the other hand he had profound problems with the heavy, latext suit and appliances necessary to turn him into The Thing. The problem was so intense that by the second day of shooting he had to start seeing a therapist just to get him through the psychological ordeal. He clamed that he was okay while the cameras were rolling and he was actually playing the role, ...
Getting set to watch 'em fall The auctions are now now all under an hour 'til completion, and by the time I finish getting the first stage emails out on the last of them and maybe deal with a few early details I'll have to be trying for sleep, so this'll likely be all from me until sometime Monday. Though it took them a while to make it active, we've officially had a free access weekend for Showtime , which includes Showtime On Demand. We've been taking advantage of that today to watch the episodes of Dead Like Me that are there. Happily, they have them all up currently, from the start. We're up to episode 13. The series centers on a group of "undead"whose official duties are as grim reapers, reaping souls just before death. The info they receive is scarce - a name (often partial), an address and a time. Their official duties are uncompensated, and since their new bodies still need food & shelter they have to come up with some ways to ma...
So... Rove did do it..? (I don't mean to imply that I ever believed he didn't do it. I'm just dubious that he left a smoking gun behind.) The latest Newsweek piece claims proof, though it's still far from a shoo-in in terms of a conviction . Given what Newsweek went through recently with the Koran abuse story (despite the allegations ultimately proving to be backed up) I'm guessing they wouldn't run with this story unless they had everything pinned down. So... we'll watch and see what happens and what doesn't.
Saturday Status Snapshot So far today, Nick and I : Made it to the bank to deposit the paycheck. Wouldn't direct deposit be nice? Hit the post office to send off a couple packages, including a clix trade, so D might see those as early as Monday. I know the other half of the deal will be on its way to me sometime Monday, which works well for me, too. I'll be too busy to do more with them until later in the week, so earlier would be almost pointless. I also picked up some Priority Mail shipping boxes so I'm ready for any of the domestic buyers who win auctions (running entirely too silently since some activity yesterday afternoon) Sunday night and shoot the payment to me before I head off to work on Monday. We had an hour to kill before the movie, so Nick and I walked around the adjacent Plymouth Meeting Mall. There I checked on the recently renovated Comics and More location on the second floor, which included several, large gaming tables mostly laid out for Heroc...
Fryday (Won't let go) A long week, but nothing so terrible, simply draining. Much running about all week and more to come. Still, it's the early hours of the weekend and the illusion of eternity is strong. Had I any sense I'd have gone to sleep an hour or so ago, but, well, that thought completes itself. My thoughts have been running in too many directions, national and world news among them, but as Mark Gibson noted "...the working class is too tired to give a rats ass." Or, at least, to dig into them for any useful examination in print. Of course, Mark (as with Highlander-D - who's also unceremoniously into the manual labor end of things) is dealing with a much more directly physical workload, and from the sound of it he's taking some damage from the process! Good luck with marshaling your energies in the search for a more suitable job, Mark. Speaking of draining searches, my thoughts have also been with Tony Collett 's pre...
Yes, but will it come with a live chicken or snake so the examinee can bite its head off? Read about one Japanese publisher's attempt to raise the social status of the otaku ("stay at home"), which is one term for people whose hobbies tend to be solitary, indoor passions - from gaming to computers to comics, etc... though, cynic that I am, I suspect the main reason is to increase his magazine's circulation. I'll presume that, unlike the article's author, the magazine in question is leaning on the term otaku and not geek . Maybe some are still aiming to co-opt the term "geek" and raise it (as seems to be the case with this Pennsylvania comics shop - which is a good shop, btw, but a singularly unfortunate slogan), but I'm all for ditching it and going with otaku .., if we really need some banner to unite under.
Much to do today... Aside from getting out in the sun and open air for a while - something I did very little of on Sunday - I have a few projects to work on at home. So long as I get seriously into at least one of them, I'll feel the fleeting day was reasonably well spent. A nap somewhere in the mix is fine, but falling into staring at television is verboten . I set up a page of Heroclix wants and extras , so far focusing only on Fantastic Forces pieces as it's the obsession of the month. I've set up a permanent link to that list in my sidebar, over to the left. It's a little clumsy, but as I have that free Geocities space I thought I may as well use it. I may do more of that in order to allow me to post some larger pieces than I've been inclined to do in this blog format, where large pieces scroll the page. We'll see. I've also set up a link there to my auctions . The early days for a new wave of auctions tend to be the quiet, frustrating ones - espe...
Happy 4th of July - where you can find it! Down here we're still under the heel of the Bush administration, with el Shrubbo speechifyin' today about how grateful his financial backers and some twisted, bloodthirsty version of Our Lord, Jesus Christ are with the sacrifices made by our armed forces, so there's not so much in the way of great things to drink in down here on Earth. Still, the weather's terrific here in Pennsylvania today, and hopefully the same's the case where you are. We'll have a local fireworks display tonight, and all indications are it'll be an excellent night for it. So far the best news for this hoiliday in conjunction with the US government is that the Deep Impact mission went off well, based on all overnight reports. The image seen here was taken by the flyby craft's medium resolution camera some 16 seconds after the washing machine-sized impactor probe struck comet Tempel 1 at 10 kilometers per second (6.3 miles per second) at...
Playing back towards the black Yesterday I spent part of the day looking for some in-person trades to work on my Fantastic Forces set, and in the process I happened into a game out at Wade's Comic Madness , a superbly-stocked comics shop in Levittown, PA. While I was there I arranged some trades and picked up rookie and vet Sub-Mariners , vets Shocker and Cage , and exp & vet Lockjaws , making my set much healthier while helping to fill out a couple other players' sets. That leaves me lacking (from the base set) only the experienced Jolt and Sub-Mariner and the vet Invisible Woman . I'm in no particular rush to get this done, though sooner is always preferable. I might turn to some online trades for those and maybe the couple Super Rares and three uniques I'm still looking for -- or else I'll just wait a little while longer. The marquees are coming up in a few weeks, and that can be a good time to trade for things, especially if the word can get around...
Kill Rachel (Once more, as it's opening week for a movie, I'll endeavor to avoid significant spoilers.) Son Nick, his friend Zack and I went to see the Spielberg/Cruise project, War of the Worlds Saturday night. It was pretty much all I expected, so I wasn't disappointed -- though it's important to note that my expectations were kept close to the ground. It's a summer, holiday weekend movie, so I went in looking for a spectacle and was given a spectacle. Things go boom, things go bam, and people 'splode into steam and ash real cool-like. The alien machines are impressive, all the way down to the bellowing sound they make just before commencing the latest slaughter. Cruise's character, Ray Ferrier, was almost exactly what I expected, as was his awakening/transformation through the course of the film, which rendered me immune to most of it. The scene involving the lullabies was really the only effective one for me in that vein. I was pleased that there w...
Live 8 I haven't said anything about Live 8 largely because it hasn't loomed large on my horizon. The lineup assembled here in Philadelphia has elicited mostly disparaging comments from local DJs who looked at the lineup scheduled to appear in Philadelphia and were less than impressed. Linkin Park? Destiny's Child? P Diddy? Jay Z? Def Leppard? Black Eyed Peas? Will Smith?! I mean, really . Sure, we did pull Stevie Wonder, and if I could choose the songs I might even be able to muster some enthusiasm for Dave Matthews Band. People can't help but look back on 1985's Live Aid and compare this lineup to that one: Crosby Stills and Nash, Tom Petty, The Pretenders, Santana, The Cars, The Beach Boys, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, hell, even Patti Labelle, Duran Duran and Phil Collins would be more entertaining than most of what Philly pulled this time. So, yeah, it's largely an age thing. Plus, I do realize that this time i...
A critical misstep for Rove? It's still too early in the tale, and it's best not to get unduly excited, but here's what has developed since yesterday: An MSNBC analyst has claimed that infamous GOP kingmaker and puppeteer Karl Rove was the source of the Valerie Plame as CIA agent "leak". The information about Plume was given to reporters Robert Novak, Judith Miller and Matt Cooper, passed into print and Valerie Plame's utility as an agent was largely history. This revelation of a government agent's identity is illegal. The penalties, as I understand them , are a fine ($50,000 was mentioned in an unverified source) at a minimum and/or a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Given the level of politics at which Rove has been operating, anything but the maximum penalty should be out of the question. This action would be one of near-treason, and done for political reasons. Then there's the question of a perjury rap for Rove if he told a grand jury that ...
SCOTUS Fears to come With a retirement annoucement from Rehnquist seen as an eventuality in the near future, Sandra Day O'Connor has announced her retirement . Again, a good catch-all for information will be the Supreme Court Nomination blog . The Deadly Joke of Pennsylvania Avenue is set to make a public statement on the matter any moment now, but I try to avoid listening to him at all, particularly indoors where spitting is to especially be avoided. I'll catch those "details" a little later. I'm sure we're about to come in for wave after wave of GOP scam artists in mock indignation, decrying "partisan obstructionism" the likes of which the world has never seen as any nominations are handed down from the White House for what they seem to feel should be a rubber stamping. As Crypt Leak passed to me days ago, the GOP has not just been loading their guns in advance but even firing off some of them prematurely . Brace yourselves for a shitstorm of ...
Taking some of the "F" out of Mr. Fantastic (Back in work again today, btw, though I'm hoping to wrap things up early.) Word's come around that the lycra proved a trifle too revealing for studio execs when it came to actor Ioan Gruffudd's crotch as he plays Mr. Fantastic in the upcoming Fantastic Four movie. Reportedly they ultimately had to resort to digital touch-ups to tame the welshman's manhood. The most amusing thing about spreading this sort of information is that it'll have people looking who normally wouldn't and, I suppose, will give the others an excuse.