Saturdays ROCK!

Well Saturday is usually when I venture to the comic book store, since I don't finish work in enough time during the week to do a run.

So today I went and picked up a few, Dr. Fate #3, New X-Men #147, Transformers G1 V.2 #6, Transformers Armada #16, Transformers: The War Within #1, and Teen Titans #2.

I read through them all and right now am watching Justice League on Cartoon Network. When I'm done, I also have today's X-Men: Evolution on tape.

Saturdays rock, so much comic/comic related goodness, it's almost criminal for a geek like me!

Sorry, had to gloat. Tomorrow my wife is going out to see a show with her Grandmother and Aunt at the local dinner theatre, which means that I have the day to spend alone with my daughter. I think we're going to go to the mall, since they have a Carousel there that she enjoys. Then I might watch Justice League again with her, she loves watching the superheroes with me.

In fact, when we were about to go for the ultrasound, we asked her what she wanted to have, a brother or a sister? She said "I want a brother to play super-heroes with!" Of course, now that we know it's going to be a boy, she keeps talking about "the brother." She was instrumental in convincing my wife that we should get the more expensive baseball fan then just a boring white one, since "the brother" will like it better.

I know kids tend to get jealous when their siblings are born, but I think my daughter has a chance of at least understanding it. And I think it will help if I try to spend time with her while my wife is taking care of "the brother." Make that our special time together.

If "the brother" is half as good as my daughter is, I'll be one lucky father, that's for sure. Kids are great, they really let you see the world through different, more innocent eyes.

It's the little things you know?

Stupid Box

So I had a sinus headache, I've been getting them more often due to sleeping in air conditioning this morning. I stop at a convenience store to get some medicine, since Aleve, which normally I prefer, does nothing for this type of headache.

I'm the type of person who gets drowsy using any medicine where the possibility of drowsiness is there. Even Advil makes me sleepy. So I buy the "Tylenol Daytime" Sinus and Allergy pills. I didn't read the back of the box and assumed (yeah, yeah, I know what they say about assuming things...) that "daytime" meant "non-drowsy." But no, so a few hours later, I'm like the living dead and even now, over 12 hours later, I'm exhausted, so I apologize for this post.

This was a lesson I should have learned long ago, never believe the front of a box, always read the warnings.

Music Stinks, What Else is New?

So, I know I'm not alone in feeling this, but music on the radio has lost it's spark. I think it was back in 1998 when I last really enjoyed listening to current music on the radio. Nowadays it's "What decent song will be ruined by having the radio play it to death?"

Yes there is good music out there. John Mayer has come out with really good songs, none of which I find annoying. I love Jason Mraz's "The Remedy" even after 6 months of near constant radio play. But then again there's bands like Matchbox 20 that produce songs that I know will annoy me after the fourth or fifth time hearing it.

I just wish they'd pay more attention to producing music that's good, instead of silly pop music that's good right now, but will embarrass you in 6 months.

Sad to say that my recent CD purchases include Elvis, the Beatles, and Pink Floyd. I can't even remember the last time I bought a CD that was produced in the past year, though again I would consider a John Mayer CD or even Jack Johnson.

Producers: Make quality music.
Musicians: Pay attention to what you want to do, not what others say you should do to sell albums
Consumers: Stop buying crap.
Britney, Christina, Justin, etc: Just. Stop. Please.

Another Post About Comics

I'm kind of on a recent comic kick, so I'll keep rolling with my thoughts.

Lately, after perusing some sights, it came to my attention that a lot of fans, including myself, have all taken "sabbatical" from comics for a few years. Some longer than others, but at some point, it seems most comic fans get fed up with the status quo and leave, only to be drawn back in for something.

For me it was when I got a girlfriend in college (who is now my wife). I just quit "cold turkey" from collecting back in November 1998 and didn't start collecting again until the summer of 2001 and then, I really didn't start being serious about collecting until very recently.

This wasn't the first "break" I took, but it was the longest. The others were due mainly to the loss of my local comic store and only picking up issues at the local drugstore, 7-11, or bookstore. Of course it helped that we visited my grandfather frequently and he lived about a block and a half from a comic book store.

Though outwardly it was getting a girlfriend that broke my habit, it was more then that, and I guess I was looking for a reason to stop collecting. At that time most of the titles I collected were in slumps or were just plain bad. Superman titles had gone from featuring the Electric Blue Superman to Superman-Red & Superman-Blue, right into a storyline featuring Superman in four different eras. Flash was embarking on Mark Waid's last major arc--the Cobalt Blue saga, Green Lantern was in a major slump after 4 years of Kyle Raynor not growing in his title at all, etc. Though just before I quit, I managed to collect all of DC's summer crossover, "DC 1,000,000," which is my favorite comic book storyline to date. Not only that, they had just recently published my favorite Superman story, A Superman for All Seasons.

But month after month I was more interested in going to the local comic shop to try to find a new title that would knock my socks off, so to speak. Recently though, I have been picking up more and more titles and have only dropped one. From JSA, to the Transformers titles, to Flash, to Teen Titans, and the recent mini-series Formerly Known as the Justice League, 1602, and JLA*Avengers.

I guess my point is that comics are a hobby and can potentially be an expensive one at that. You go in to read one title, you realize that there are other titles that character appears in or is mentioned in and you pick them up too and before you know it, you're spending a lot of money. I'll probably go into this in another post, but the price of comics is going up all the time, most of the series I buy are $2.25 or $2.95 an issue, with JLA*Avengers coming in at $6.00 an issue. Long stretch from even the days when I started collecting and books were $1.00 an issue (and, as my wife's grandfather likes to say, comics were $0.10 an issue when he was a kid). And as an hobby, it's important to keep looking at what your doing and trying to find out if you're enjoying it or whether it's time for a change.

And that applies to more in life, from relationships to jobs, sometimes you have to reevaluate why you are doing the things you do and whether or not you can or should stop. Case in point, I do things that annoy my wife, but I've been doing them my whole life, so it's hard to stop. But sometimes you almost have to look at yourself from the outside and realize that it's habit that's driving you.

Back to comics and other hobbies, it's important to step outside yourself for a minute and try to decide whether or not you really enjoy what you're reading. Too many times, especially with the internet where everyone can hear you bitch, it is easy to read a bad title, just for the sheer fact that you can log on to a board and state your displeasure to the world. If that's where you get your kicks, that's fine, but more times when I read posts, I begin to wonder why people spend money just to get themselves worked up. Life is too short for you to waste time purposely doing something you get annoyed with.

Life is short, just do the things you love and enjoy it!

Saw the Rundown tonight

And it ROCKED (bad pun, I know, SORRY!). It was a fun film and that's what I think has been missing from a lot of recent films, the fact that they are supposed to be fun. Best Matrix-like effects in a non-Matrix movie I've seen and even then they didn't appear to be total rip-offs of the Matrix style.

Along these lines, but probably done better, the trailer for "Kill Bill" ran before this and I can't wait for this movie, despite it being split into two "volumes." The music, the action, and most importantly the dialogue all combine to make an utterly exciting trailer, so I hope the movie(s) live up to this.

How can you not like Lucy Liu and Uma Thurman's little conversation:

LL: You didn't think it would be easy did you?
UT: For a minute there, yeah, I actually did.
LL: Silly rabbit.

If the rest of the dialogue is similar, Tarintino still has it. Best dialogue writer in the business.

So in the usual September/October slump, we are getting some good, fun movies, which makes me happy. "School of Rock" also appears to be in this bunch, but I think it might end up being a rental for me.

There's been a Vulcanquake, but the artifact's been unkryptoned, but I want to know what on Mars is going on!

Okay, I made an off-handed remark about this before, but I thought I'd do more to explain it.

As a fan of science fiction stories, there's always been something that's bothered me, namely the continued usage of the word "earth" to mean planet, even when spoken by aliens.

In these shows we constantly hear things like "there's been an earthquake" when they're on another planet, "we've unearthed the doohickey" when they have dug up something from an alien planet" or even a character saying "what on earth" when they are not on earth.

It's not a big deal, but if you're on the planet Vulcan and the ground shakes, wouldn't it be a Vulcanquake or at least an groundquake? And if you're doing an archeology dig on Krypton, wouldn't you end up unkryptoning the artifact? And if you see a weird alien, wouldn't it be kind of silly to say "what on Earth" when there is nothing like it on Earth?

I just think that when we do venture to other planets and meet aliens, they're not going to say things like this, if they do have similar sayings, then I'm sure they'd mention their planet's name and not ours.

Again, it's a miniscule thing, but it is a pet peeve.

Oh the joys of being a comic fan in the age of the Internet

I love the internet and I spend a lot of time on it, reading news, going to fan-sites, reading and posting on board, etc. I have to say though, that my comic reading was a lot better before the internet. And this isn't a condemnation of comic boards in whole, just specific things that drive me up the wall.

But mainly it's the "suspension of disbelief" arguments that get me. It'll go something like this, say in the recent comic Superman fights Lex Luthor and an alien that looks like Marvin the Martian who has the power to turn Superman's hair into flowers.

Now, being someone who likes a reasonable level of believability in stories, I might post that while I enjoyed the fight with Luthor, having Superman's hair turn into flowers was a bit much.

Inevitably someone will ask "So you're able to accept that Superman, an alien, has come to earth, gotten super powers, died and come back, but you can't believe that Marvin could turn his hair into flowers?"

Now, I understand that some people have been reading since the Silver Age, when strange things happened as a matter of course and imaginary stories were par for the course. But there is a line, and it's a fine one at that, I grant you, but it's a line nonetheless, between reasonable stories starring aliens with powers, who have died and come back to life that fight beings that operate within those same, but unbelievable rules and having that self-same alien fight someone who "breaks" those rules.

And yes, what may be far-fetched to me may make perfect sense to someone else, I agree, but there is a line and there is a reason it's called "Suspension of disbelief" and not "total abandonment of disbelief."

Sunday Ramblings

So it's Sunday night, again, and the work week begins soon. Which means that for the next 5 days I'll get less sleep then I should and spend all day at work, come home and before I know it, it's time to go to bed to get ready for the next day.

*sigh*

At least in a few weeks the new Simpsons season will start and then I'll at least have some reason to look forward to Sunday nights.

Nothing depresses me like Sundays, especially Fall and winter Sundays...