Not So Happy Birthday

Yesterday was my wife's birthday.

Over the years we've been together, there have been quite a few of them when she was working a lot of long hours. In lots of businesses, the fiscal calendars begin in October, so year-end closing usually occurs that first week of October to close out the end of the previous year. So, there have been birthdays where we've had to shift the celebration to a few days later.

In 1989, the first of her birthday's we had together was while we were dating, we visited her parents (the second time I had met them actually). That birthday was memorable in that she spent the first hour at their house with her right hand sort of hidden behind pillows on the couch as we talked with her folks. See, we had just gotten engaged the week prior and she was waiting to tell them the news. When we had a free moment, I whispered in her ear that she was just being a chicken and needed to do it. Once she told them, the tension was gone. We had a dual celebration that weekend - her birthday and our engagement.

In 1995, my wife was over nine months pregnant. Our son was past his due date and we had induction scheduled the week after her birthday. Still, we had been spending a lot of time doing things to try to make it happen naturally. She ate a whole can of cling peaches to try to induce labor, on my sister-in-law's suggestion; the only thing that accomplished was to turn my wife off to canned peaches for years. We did lots of walking in the mall. As a last ditch effort, on her birthday, I took her to the Angus Barn - one of Raleigh NC's well-known eating establishments. We both ate until we were about to bust. Sadly, no contractions that night.

Yesterday falls into one of those memorable birthdays, but not in a good way. We took our dogs to the vet in the morning only to learn the bad news about our boykin spaniel Cocoa (who is about eighteen months old). She is pretty much blind in her right eye due to cataracs and her vision is going in her left eye too. Now, we're dog lovers - have been for all our married years. We've lost a number of our babies due to various health problems, but this is the first time we've had one so young have problems. So, we're going to have to take her to a canine eye doctor to see what can be done and how much it will cost. Then we'll have to decide what we're going to do.

So, we're going to try and have a do-over today for my wife's birthday. Hopefully it'll be a little more happier.

Comic of the Week (10/3/07)

From my pulls this week, I had four regular floppy books to chose from for my comic of the week.

The All-New Atom #16 had a very fun fill-in story written by Roger Stern. Roger did a great job matching the "feel" and "narrative style" of regular writer Gail Simone.

Coundown #30 was just okay - it mostly focused on the world-hopping team's visit to Earth-15. The art on the main story was only so-so, and the villain origin pages in back on General Zod didn't do much to excite me.

The Tales of the Sinestro Corps - Cyborg-Superman one-shot special was okay as well - half of it was spent recapping C-S's history which I was already thoroughly acquainted with and the other half was really just a lead in to next week's Green Lantern issue. The art was nice though.



So, that leaves the book of the week to the Countdown Presents - The Search of Ray Palmer: the Crime Society. This one-shot special really is a tie-in to last week's Countdown #31 when the world-hopping team ended up on Earth-3. A little history lesson for those not savy on their parallel Earths history: Earth-3 is a world in which the known major heroes like the Justice League, etc. have villainous counterparts while the villains of Earth-1 might have heroic counterparts. So, on this world, the Batman-like character is Owlman and a criminal. The Superman-like character is Ultraman and a criminal. The Joker-like character is called the Jokester and he's a hero. The first Earth-3 was destroyed as part of the Crisis On Infinite Earths mini-series back in 1985. Earth-3 along with the whole parallel Earths concept was brought back, slightly different than before, at the end of the 52 mini-series last year. This issue actually focuses on that later character - the Jokester - how he came to be and how he is connected to the character of the Joker's Daughter who was killed in Countdown #51 (she was a world-hopper too). I very much enjoyed this looking at familiar characters through a reverse-mirror. The art was solid with a lot of homages to classic comic images from Batman books of decades gone by.

Happiness is...the Complete Peanuts

I just completed the second volume in the two volume slipcase of the Complete Peanuts 1950-1954. These books actually came out four years ago by Fantagraphics, one debuting in the spring and the other in the fall (with the slipcase also collected in the fall). The idea is to publish, chronologically, all the Peanuts daily and Sunday cartoons in a hardcover, black and white format. They are four years into the project (the fourth slipcase set came out just last month) with another eight years left to go to cover the full run of this classic comic strip.

Now, I have been a big Peanuts fan ever since I was a kid first learning to read in the late 60's. I recall enjoying the most current comic strips each evening in the newspaper, and I had a number of paperback collections as well that reprinted some of the early strips. And, naturally, I'd watch each year the Halloween and Christmas specials when they came on the local CBS station.

What I find really enjoyable about this new set is the fact that they are all here, in order. Back when I was a kid, the collections would jump around and be missing whole chunks of strips. So, quite a few of these I had never seen before - a couple hundred strips easily. Turns out, a lot of these earlier strips from these first two volumes were actually missing for a time. Fantagraphics has found them, cleaned them up, and presented them in wonderful keep-sake books that look great on the bookshelves of any fans of the series. And when I do run across ones I had seen previously, that wonderful nostalgia feel hits me; it takes me back to my days of carefree youth and sitting at a picnic table enjoying these funny drawings.

Watching the character development, especially in these two earliest of volumes, is interesting as well. You can see Charlie Brown evolve from a smart-aleck practical joker to the everyman type of character he became. You see Schroeder, Lucy and Linus go from toddlers into the age similar to the other kids. Some characters who were prominent up front like Shermy and Patty slide back into more secondary roles as others develop and grow popular. The 1953-1954 volume also includes the introduction of Pig-Pen, and we start to see where 'story lines' begin to run across multiple days of the week.

I find this to be light but enjoyable reading. I usually keep the volume I am working by the nightstand so I can read a couple dozen pages (a month or so worth of comics) just before going to sleep. With the first two volumes down and six more waiting in the wings, I'll be good to go for awhile. My only question now is: how far will I collect these? I just got the set that includes the most recently released book 1965-1966. This volume covers the strips of the year I was born. I will likely continue to get these through the strips that run into the late 70's or early 80's, but from there will I decide to stay on board until the end of the line? We'll see. The collector in me says "yes, of course". Having the full run in 25 volumes would be rather nice. The beautiful thing is that these strips are pretty timeless, so they can be enjoyed for decades and generations to come.

Celebrity Poker Hands

On my way into work yesterday morning, the DJs and their staff were playing a game called Celebrity Poker Hands with listeners. The idea is to find out which celebrities are born on your birthday and assemble the "best" poker hand (ie. five celebs) that you can. Of course, the "best" is going to depend upon who you're playing with - some folks might consider famous sports figures to be a really strong hand, others might think actors or musicians. The idea is to just see who has the "best" poker hand of the group.

To help, here's a website that allows you see who was born on your birthday: http://thecelebritycafe.com/birthdays/

I dropped into this site yesterday and assembled the following hand for my birthday (Feb. 23rd). Remember: I am a TV and movie geek so that influenced a bit of my choices.

1. Peter Fonda (1940) - I will start out with that Easy Rider himself. This actor has such a wide range of work, even active in such recent films as Ghost Rider, Wild Hogs and 3:10 To Yuma. All that longevity earns him a place in my hand.

2. Howard Jones (1955) - I have to include this 80's musician. I've always loved his songs and we (my wife, my son and I) actually saw him live in concert back in 2000 or so (on the same bill at the Human League and Culture Club).

3. Kristin Davis (1965) - I gotta go with her for a number of reasons. First, loved her back on Melrose Place in the 80's. Second, she's very funny on Sex In the City. And third, hey - same year born as me! How cool is that?

4. This one was a tough choice. Part of me wants to go with Home Improvement matriarch Patricia Richardson (1951). She played "Jill" for many years against Tim Allen's "Tim 'the Toolman' Taylor". However, the uber-TV geek in me has to lean more towards Marc Price (1968) who played "'Skippy' Handleman" on Family Ties for many years. Marc played that underdog dweeb so well in his ever-lasting fatuation of "Mallory". I gotta give the fourth spot in my hand to Marc for that.

5. The fifth and final place in my hand has to go, without a question, to Majel Barrett (1939). Wife of Gene Roddenberry and very accomplished actress in her own right, she will also forever be known as the voice of the computer systems on all of the next-generation of Star Trek TV series and films.

So, that's my Celebrity Poker Hand. Care to share yours?

And You Thought Your Ex Was Bad

Last week I had the chance to record and then watch My Super Ex-Girlfriend, another film from 2006 that I meant to see in theatres but didn't. Now, you might have missed this one. The film stars Luke Wilson as a NY City guy who happens to ask out a woman on the subway. The woman, played by Uma Thurman, turns out to have a secret - she's really the super-powered heroine known as G-Girl. This comedy film covers the rise and fall of that relationship.

I watched the film with my wife. She did like the whole 'becareful how you cross the woman you're dating' angles, but some of the things I found very humorous really just didn't make her laugh. See, I'm a comic book reader thus the whole "woman of steel/man of kleenix" angle was very funny to me. I loved the complete focus on 'things one must do to hide their secret identity' too. That was played up very well.

Still I could certainly see how this film could easily fall into a fanboy's dream (you know the comic book fanboy - the guy who will debate you for hours why hero X is greater than hero Y, etc.). The film really caters to that audience with a lot of the humor and the situations (what sex would be like with a dominating super-woman, and how said woman becomes the bane of the guy's existence when he breaks up with her).

Luke Wilson plays the everyman well and doesn't go over the top when he realizes the woman he's landed. Uma Thurman gives a great performance of a character who at times borders on bipolar. The actress who played the blonde in the office was cute enough though how things played out was pretty predictable. The actor who played the best friend really came off like a jerk, which is what the script called for. I also enjoyed Wanda Sikes in her supporting role. I wish there was more of her in the film as she is always extremely funny.

The only part of the film I thought was 'meh' was the final reel. Like the film Howard the Duck, this one does pretty good in the first two thirds of sticking to the genre without getting too cliche. The last part of the film sort of feels like a way to quickly tie-it-all-up because the end was approaching fast. The ending here was kind of cheesey - and even for a comedy like this it was too cheesey.

Definitely one you'd want to catch on cable for free as opposed to spending money on a rental. Hopefully you didn't spend the money to see it in the theatres in 2006.

Bang - You Got Me!

Just when I thought my Monday nights couldn't get any funnier, CBS added to the block of two of my favorite comedies a third, freshman show called the Big Bang Theory.

Last week I mentioned how much I enjoyed the pilot episode. It was very smart, very funny, very in-tune to the geek world. It referenced commentaries on Battlestar Galactica DVDs and one of the guys wore a Flash t-shirt. That's geeky. But, I thought, pilots are usually top notch to sell the show - how will the second week be?

Bang!

Last night was another awesome episode. From the opening discussions on how Superman: the Movie defied physics (and not just in that a man can fly - and how about them discussing a good Superman movie? Kudos!) to watching the two high IQ leads try to figure out how to move some furniture (with a Green Lantern reference yet!) to the final joke of the four scientists discussing the inferior design of said Swedish furniture, this show had me laughing out loud from start to finish.

The cast really works. Johnny Galecki (known from Roseanne) plays Leonard, the geek trying to rise above. Jim Parsons plays Sheldon, the organized neat freak who wears his super-hero shirts proudly. Kaley Cuoco plays Penny, the cute and not as smart nextdoor neighbor whom Leonard is determined to help in whatever way he can.

My hope is that CBS gives it a full season to find its audience. So far, it is doing well in the ratings. It is definitely a show that appeals to folks who have a bit higher than a high school education.

One Word - Titus!

I happened to be watching Comedy Central the other weekend and caught a rebroadcast of a 2004 comedy special. It was Norman Rockwell Is Bleeding which is the one-man performance by Christopher Titus. Born in 1964, the native Californian's comedy act is really a look at his dysfunctional family life in a rather humorous way. His father was an alcoholic and a womanizer who would rather his sons learn by their actions not to do stupid things versus just telling them not do. He constantly referred to his boys as "wussies". His mother suffered mental illness and killed her second husband. Titus' and his younger brother Dave's lives were forever impacted by the environment in which they were raised.