The Weekend in Review:

All in all, the weekend has been absolutely top drawer.

Friday my mouth finally quit hurting and I managed to eat some oatmeal. Saturday I woke up and the pain was more or less gone. I'm kind of oddly sensitive in the mouth, but nothing too bad.

Last night we went to see the Phoenix Suns play the Houston Rockets at America West Arena. I love going to NBA games, even if I am not following the team. This year I've been following the Suns as closely as possible, and so I was very excited. Or would have been if the Suns hadn't lost to the Warriors the evening before. The League knows a bad omen when he sees one.


Amare goes up against the mighty Yao. Yao rode the bench most of the game after getting four quick fouls. Suns STILL lost.

It should be noted that all NBA games have a wild array of entertainment in addition to the game. At each TV time out, the Suns produce a dude in a gorilla suit who does various tricks, rolls around on a $60,000 motorcycle, and occasionally performs stunts, a la The Houston Rockets' former mascot, Turbo.


The Suns Gorilla has been genetically engineered to have sneakers for feet.

We also had the surgically enhanced Suns Dancers, the dude who played Shaggy in Scooby Doo, and the chubby guy from Kangaroo Jack (who, I think, is out on bail pending a sexual assault charge. Go figure.).

I had left during the second quarter to get my pretzel, dog and diet coke, and so during half-time I was available for the entertainment provided by Casino Arizona's Showstoppers Live! The program at the Casino is comprised, I believe, entirely of celebrity impersonators. They used to push their Michael Jackson impersonator, but I'm guessing that guy is less popular these days. Now they're pushing Blonde Ambition-era Madonna and some dudes pretending to be "The Blues Brothers."

It was "The Blues Brothers" who took center court on Saturday night, and, I admit, stole a small part of my soul. Whatever it was that made Belushi and Aykroyd really work as the Blues Brothers wasn't present at America West Arena. Nor was any semblance of singing talent. I will admit that these guys did a fairly good job of impersonating the speedball driven dancing of Belushi and Aykroyd, but, in no way, did they approximate the singing or vocals which have had 25 years to seep into the popular consciousness.

We had fairly terrible seats, being, literally, in the top row of the arena, but even from there, one had to wonder... At what point in your singing career to you go ahead and not only audition to be a stand in for Dan Aykroyd, but decide that this is what you are going to do every night of your life? Seriously, at least the seals at Sea World have an excuse for doing the same junk every performance. They get a fresh smelt.

But, hey, the show was free with the price of admission. And we didn't feel compelled to turn to a novel the way the 16 year old girl down the way from us chose to do during the entire length of the game.

Nonetheless, it was a good game, and despite my smack talk, the Rockets did, in fact, win. Luckily it was a tight game, and if the Suns had been a little more on, they literally could have taken the game with six seconds left to go. Ah, well. I think I owe Randy a small display of humility. MacGrady is as good as advertised. Rockets will be a tough contender for anyone they face during the play-offs.

We got up this morning, scrubbed our faces and rolled to the Phoenix "Cactus ComicCon." I hadn't been to a comic convention in many, many years. And I don't really know how to describe it if you haven't been to a convention.

Here's a general idea, though. We sort of parked in the wrong area and were walking aimlessly around downtown Glendale, trying to pick out the Convention Center, when Jamie said, "Oh, look. It must be over there by all of the Storm Troopers."

Yes. It must.

In the 80's there were always paunchy dudes in Trek shirts and Vulcan ears wandering around. These days, it's always dudes in $1000 suits of Star Wars Armor. And 1 dude dressed as Darth Maul, one dude dressed as Vader, and, we got a Qui-Gon. Hooray!

The teens love manga, Leaguers, and based upon the teen age girls running about in animal ears, kimonos and carrying swords, nobody is going to care about super heroes anymore in fifteen years. True, there was a baby Captain America, and a lot of kids were there getting ruined for girls by their overzealous comic-geek dads. I would guess the median age of attendees was probably skewing closer to 27. Lots of dudes.

I did spend some money at the convention. I picked up a lot of comics for about $1, including Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew #1.

It was a nice convention, but I didn't come prepared for the celebrity guests (Marv Wolfman was there, and me, with none of my Teen Titans comics!), and I was having a very hard time locating vintage Superman comics.

Seeing grown adults in super hero costumes is always a sort of odd experience. Part of you wants to cheer them on, and part of you wants to give them a swirly. I always wonder exactly what made them put down the character t-shirt and say to themselves, "I may be tubby, have a beard and glasses, but TODAY... TODAY I SHALL BE CAPTAIN AMERICA!!!! WOMAN, GET ME A GARBAGE CAN LID AND SPRAY PAINT!!!!"

These are my peeps. I get to make fun.

Anyhoo, it's been a good weekend. Hope ya'll had a good one, too.

I went and head a ton of dental work done today. No big deal.

But now the numbing stuff is wearing off. Mother of God, it's beginning to hurt.

Hey, looky! It's a countdown to the release of the new Superman movie.



A Kryptonian ship from the Kent farm set from the new movie.

CNN reports Cookie Monster to learn to eat right.

Given what my doctor keeps telling me, maybe Cookie Monster and I can learn to eat right together.

Cookie Monster, I feel your pain. I also get the crazy googly-eyes when presented with a plate of cookies.

From the files of: It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Could it be that the UConn Young Republicans' choice of guest speaker, Ultimate Warrior, was not the genteel, thought-provoking fellow we all believed?

It's really the photo (and my own memory of seeing Ultimate Warrior wrestle at the Erwin Center circa 1990) that makes this so grand.

Heidi Reports.

If only we could get Scott McClellan in that same get-up. THEN people would really be interested in the White House press briefings.

***update***

The Ultimate Warrior is not going to take this Ultimately lying down.

Here is Warrior's rebuttle (sp?).

Look, I have no transcript of the speech given by Warrior (as I guess UW is now called. Why is he no longer the Ultimate Warrior? I guess because Hogan reclaiming his belt in 1991 may have suggested he was not, in fact the ULTIMATE warrior.). And I know that when the hippies decide it's time to get rowdy, things can get a bit silly. So one does wonder, without the benefit of a transcript, what exactly went down with Warrior, the College Republicans, and the obnoxious hippies?

I want to give Warrior the benefit of the doubt. After all, he did become champion fo the WWF after Wrestlemania 6 (althogh i recall his victory relied upon the unfortunate circumstance of a referee losing consciousness during the match-up, and Hogan pinning Warrior several times without the match being called).

As boring as Political Correctness got in the 90's, the current trend of proudly declaring oneself Not Politically Correct has gone from a statement of "tellin' it like it is" in order to stand up to a perceived persecution by liberal elitists, to the indignant response of those who have no idea they are, in fact, a total jack-ass. It's sort of the same failure of logic that results from believing anything you don't like which you see on TV is part of the liberal conspiracy of the main stream media rather than accepting the notion that: occasionally people you support are jack-asses, too.

The League does confess to feeling a certain kinship with Warrior as Mr. Warrior also sees fit to refer to himself throughout his column in the third-person. However, the Warrior does not use the royal "we", which, we at the League find most gratifying in its employ.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

THE LEAGUE PRESENTS:
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
COUNTDOWN TO INFINITE CRISIS


Last week saw the beginning of DC Comics' new big event. Or, should I say, last week saw the first beat of the PRELUDE to DC Comics' new big event.

But even that isn't accurate, because with a change in editorial a while back, DC got a fire under it's butt and dusted off the psychic cobwebs and somehow recalled that folks might like to have a coherent space which the stable of DC Comic characters occupy.

For the past several years, for whatever reason, both of the major comic companies decided that the writer should be king, and part of that should mean that the writers weren't going to be asked to adhere to continuity or pay attention to what was going on in the comics published by the company.

Visualize, if you will, non-comic readers, the havoc this would play in watching, say, X-Files. One week Mulder & Scully might discover that aliens are the sole inhabitants of Boulder, Colorado. The next week, they wouldn't even mention it, and begin speaking about trying to locate aliens all over again. Then, two weeks later, they might discover that Mesa, Arizona is inhabited completely by aliens and be totally shocked and say things like, "We've never seen anything like this before!"

Anyway, annoying.

A while back Dan DiDio took over oversight of DC's main line of comics (known as the DCU) and seems to have dictated that this "writer's can do whatever they want" business had to end. Fortunately, the writers who were working there already more or less nodded in agreement and began figuring out what to do next.

It appears that the writers began plotting all of this sometime ago as evidenced by comments dropped in the Superman/ Batman comics released an entire year ago, Identity Crisis raising the stakes, and events in individual comics leading right up to last week's release: Countdown to Infinite Crisis.


Despite the fact that every other hero pictured can throw a Hyundia across a parking lot, it's poor old Batman who has to carry the dead guy again. But WHO IS THE DEAD GUY? (hint... it's not Batman)

Quite a title they dreamed up for their $1.00 comic. Fortunately, the comic is 80 pages, and if you read the same ridiculous number of DC Comics that The League does, a lot of things begin to click into place.

If you ever followed comics, you might know "Infinite" and "Crisis" are not words which should be placed together and taken lightly. So we got that going for us.

Now, in addition to the $1.00 comic, DC is releasing not one, not two, not three, but FOUR limited series all under the banner of "Countdown to Infinite Crisis".

The OMAC Project

Villains United

Day of Vengeance

Rann/ Thanagar War

I suppose this means that some time near the end of the year the actual event of the "Infinite Crisis" will rear it's head. In the meantime, the various comics are weaving in and out of this overall storyline in an interesting way. For the first time in years, the DCU feels like one place.

Of course the trolls who lurk about the comic internet world are beating their chests and howling about how they feel their comics are being ruined, but I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

Don't even get me started on what a mindwarp Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory is turning out to be.

For a SFFR on Sin City, go here.