Not much to report from League HQ.

Jamie and I had an entirely uneventful weekend. One of the nice features of our neighborhood (and most neighborhoods in Arizona) is that they do not use a sewer system for rain run-off. Instead, most newer neighborhoods designate a green area in the middle of the nieighborhood that serves both as drainage and as a park. Ours happens to be large enough to play host to a sports field, which of course nobody ever uses as all the kids are inside playing their PSPs.

So, having no kids but having two dogs who are infinitely more entertaining than most kids, we went to the park and walked the dogs. It's lovely here these days. 85 degrees and low humidity. Nice day to get Lucy used to the leash. And it was nice day to take Mel off the leash and let him run in circles out in the grass.

In the afternoon we went to see Sin City, which I will not belabor you with a review. It was fun and interesting, and I look forward to seeing it again at some point.

Aside from that, we went to the gym and watched some of the coverage of the goings-on at the Vatican. Having just sat through the audio book of "Angels and Demons" it was interesting to hear the description of the steps to the Pope's funeral carried out.

My memories start to really kick in about age 4 or 5 when we moved from Michigan to Dallas. And I do recall my mother booting me out of the house on the day the Pope was shot. She wanted to watch the footage, but she didn't want me to get scared, so I had to go play out in the back yard.

I should mention that the Steans family is not Catholic, but that evening, when I was told what happened and what was going on, I sort of kind of understood the gravity of the situation.

This memory is tied up with three or four other media events.

1) Reagan being shot. I recall that one as The Admiral explained that GHWB would take over until the President was on his feet again.

2) The wedding of Charles and Di. I recall watching the footage with my mom and being astounded that she could stand up with a train which most surely weighed hundreds of pounds.

3) The freeing of the hostages from Iran. I don't remember too much about it, but I remember the news people being very excited and The Admiral sort of talking in vague terms about what we were seeing on the screen.

All in all, John Paul II is the only Pope to have been around while I've been conscious of such a thing. And not being Catholic, I have no idea what sort of Pope he was in comparison to the Popes before him.

It does seem if anyone would have a golden ticket to get past the pearly gates, it'd be this guy. But we won't know until we're all pushing up daisies, will we?

Next weekend we have tickets to see the mighty Phoenix Suns play the Houston Rockets. If McGrady shows up for the game in spirit as well as body, Phoenix may have a match on their hands. Yao seems to finally understand how to play in the US and is finally becoming the formidable player he was promised to be three years ago.

Anyway, hope everyone else had a good weekend.

I really need to go to bed.

Loyal Leaguer Nathan Cone gets a write up in the Trinity University Alumni Newsletter.

Do you call The League a liar? Read here.

The League does not see such praise for himself coming anytime soon in The Alcalde as The League refuses to benefit mankind in any way shape or form. Truly, The League is a leech on society.

Yes, The League is officially a Texas-Ex. Shut up.

I have Spam in my pocket.

Shit.

I just spent like half an hour working on another installment of "DITMTLOD". But I clicked the wrong dealy and it disappeared into the ether.

I blame only myself.

I confess if I were more focused and not trying to blog and watch the new program "Kojak" starring Ving Rhames, I might not have lost my posting.

Oh, well. What are you going to do?

On the plus side, I kind of like this Kojak show. I never watch cop shows, but I like Ving Rhames, and I sort of like catching up with this show from the first episode. If I come in even part way through a show's first season, I have trouble doing the work to catch up.

Alas, the DIMTMTLOD will have to wait for another day.

It should be noted that I also couldn't think up anything clever for April Fool's, so... uh... I feel as if I really dropped the ball.

Somehow I suspect you'll all get along fine for a few days until I get my act together.

Grenade Bot
There's no way this can be dangerous.

-M.League

Happy Birthday, Peabo!

The 26th of March marked the 30th birthday of Jeffrey "Peabo" Peek. Peabo is a great guy with a lot of hare-brained ideas, and a whole lot of moxie.

I met him in 4th Grade after moving to Austin. He told me the entire story of "Red Dawn", scene for scene, the day I met him. He also didn't mind that I ate all the food in his pantry, so I sort of stuck tight for the next several years.

Jeff is a buddy, a pal, and also one of my crack team of legal experts I keep on retainer just in case. A short while ago he married Adrianna, a girl I assure you who is far too good for him. They recently adopted a schnauzer named "Homer," and, I assume are enjoying their new home.

Back in our youth, Peabo had a multitude of wacky ideas which probably should have gotten one or both of us killed, but despite our best efforts, we're still alive today.

I certainly do miss the guy, and I don't get to talk to him nearly often enough.

Happy Birthday, Peabo. I didn't get you anything.


A scene from the childhood of Peabo and The League

The League Presents:
Suggestions for Further Reading
A Sin City Special



Friday will see the release of what is sure to be a divisive movie among fans of pop culture. Frank Miller's Sin City is finally coming to a theater near you.

I am not going to guarantee you will enjoy Sin City. The content of the stories is minimal, hard-boiled stuff. The look and feel are stylized enough to be alienating, and the characters are not going to be immediately sympathetic. Nobody is clean down in Basin City.

By now you've heard all about how Robert Rodriguez was so committed to retaining the integrity of Frank Miller's work that he decided to bring Miller on-board as a co-director, and thusly had to give up his membership in the Director's Guild as it is against Director's Guild rules to allow for two directors on a single movie. Maybe you've heard how Rodriguez financed a short, which ultimately became the movie's opening scene, out of his own pocket.

You've probably also seen publicity stills and whatnot of green screens and artificial backgrounds.

Lots of crazy stuff. And all to make sure that Miller's work didn't just make it to the screen in spirit... Rodriguez wanted to make sure the books made it to the screen word for word, panel for panel.

This sort of thing doesn't happen for anything adapted for the big screen, comic book, novel, play, whatever... No matter what, the folks at the studio who know better always insist upon adding their own spin, changing storylines, adding or subtracting characters... there's always something. Even Spider-Man, a comic adaptation which truly captures the silver-age essence of the Spider-Man comics, brings Mary Jane in dozens of issues before her first appearance. It changes the Goblin's origin and costume. And, heck... they gave Spidey organic web-shooters instead of his wacky little mechanical web-shooters.

Let's not even get into where the Batman films took a detour and became their own unrecognizable entity.

It would have to take a fanboy of uncompromising spirit to do what Rodriguez has done, and it would take somebody like Miller to get him to do it. It's the ultimate gamble, but also the ultimate leap of faith.

Miller gave us some of the best comics of the past twenty-odd years, comics which opened up our young minds to new and better ideas. But to get there, Miller wrote and drew comics which took existing ideas and figured out why the ideas were brilliant, burning off the fat, tearing away the weakness and reigniting the fires of old fantasies, not just into a comforting glow of nostalgia, but into a raging inferno of the possibilities of genre and character. As much as a craftsman as he might be with Batman, he could just as easily turn in something like 300.

It was guys like Miller who put the thoughts into the heads of starry-eyed kids like Rodriguez back when he was a kid. He told us all the stories hadn't been told yet, and that maybe there are new ways to tell the ones which we already know.

We all have heroes growing up, and for better or worse, for a lot of us geeks, Frank Miller was the man. Even if it was just his Batman work, or, for a lot of lucky folks, his Daredevil work, or the classic Wolverine limited series.

And, if I'd been smarter, I'd have picked up Ronin back when I saw it on the shelf at B. Dalton when I was thirteen.

These days it's fascinating to see comics movies shed the stigma of being this medium where the producers seem vaguely embarassed of their own projects. In the hands of the geeks, at least the movies have a shot at reflecting the maturity which has been blossoming in comics since the 70's. Between guys like Raimi, Rodriguez and Goyer, it's the first time the film creators are able to stand up proudly and talk about the guys who had a hand in shaping their world.

You're lucky, you lucky bastards who don't love comics. You haven't spent year after year watching the characters you know and love come to the big screen as pale, diluted versions of the books you loved, each one more apologetic than the one before it as producers chased dollars before even trying to understand why a property had survived for thirty or more years.

Even with all that, misteps will always occur. Two of Miller's triumphs have been turned into films in the past few years, and both failed to capture much more than the wardrobes of the characters Miller breathed life into. 2003's Daredevil was a shadow of Miller's original storyline, and 2004's Elektra seemed to do anything but recognize why anybody had ever loved the character.

But Miller didn't own Daredevil, or Elektra. Marvel Comics owned them, and they could damn well do as they pleased.

His script for Robocop 2 was diluted and diluted until Miller's fingerprints were only there if you knew where to look.

So if he was a bit skeptical of turning Sin City into a movie, a project which has no voice in it but Miller's own? Who can blame him?

Luckily for us, Rodriguez got what it was Miller was doing, and decided if he would adapt it, he was going to do it right. He was going to bring Sin City to the screen, and he was going to do it panel by panel, and he was bringing Frank along to keep him honest.

In addition to the readings I've linked to above, I'm also suggesting the entire Sin City run. In particular, I'd turn you onto the books which you'll see highlighted in the movie.

1) The Hard Goodbye. The first (and some say, best) Sin City story tells the tale of poor old crazy Marv.

2) The Big Fat Kill. "You gotta stand up for your friends. Sometimes that means dying. Sometimes it means killing a whole lotta people."

3) That Yellow Bastard. Hartigan is maybe the last honest cop in Basin City. And in Sin City, that doesn't come without a price.

4) Booze, Broads and Bullets. A collection of short stories.


So when you go to see Sin City, I hope you enjoy. This movie isn't going to be capes and tights. If you're going to need a non-comic inspired reference, it's Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet refracted through a broken whiskey bottle. It's going to be a crazy, hyper-violent thrill ride, and I hope you can sit back, relax, have fun and try not to take it all too seriously. Frank would be disappointed if you did.

It's some ways, this movie is nothing but the biggest thank-you one could ever think of giving Miller. We all just get to be in on it.


For the previous Suggestions, click here.