Another pretty good weekend.
Friday night Jamie and I stayed in, are buffalo wings and watched "The Life Aquatic", which I'd never seen. It's definitely a Wes Anderson movie, and its certainly charming, but its a bit of a mess. At some point Anderson is going to need to move beyond the trick of having his characters deliver dialog in a flat and practiced manner, including non-sequiters regarding the unfortunate fate of various pets. What worked very well in his faux-Glass household somehow didn't work quite as well on the high seas.
Also, watched the first half of Superman III, which, if it did not feature Annette O'Toole, would be somewhere near the same level of unwatchability as Superman IV. Director Richard Lester clearly believes Superman can't be taken seriously as even an action film, and so heaps on slapschtick, beginning with the credits. Superman can be fun, but poor Richard Pryor is asked to play to the kiddies instead of his built in audience, and its just a poor, poor decision. You kind of feel bad for the guy.
Saturday we continued with Car Hunt 2007. The whole thing wound up with me picking out a Honda Element and taking on a car payment. Yes, the Honda Element is the boxy SUV/ mini-van. But it matches my needs, it fits my bulky frame, I can get the dogs into it with no problem, and it sort of looks like a Transformer.
Yes, it is blue. I pick it up Tuesday night.
Saturday night we headed to Pat's for his birthday party. Chatted with Amy C. and Billy Jo quite a bit. Billy made a great cake with peanut butter frosting, which sounds gross, but is actually really good. Also met Pat's mysterious brother. Jamie was droopy, so we headed home a bit early. And then i stayed up until 3:00 AM watching the 1994 film "Richie Rich" starring MacCaulay(sp?) Culkin. It wasn't a good movie, and it sadly lacked the robot maid, Irona, from the cartoon, but Butler Cadbury totally hooked up with Gloria's mom. So that was weird.
Sunday we returned to Threadgill's for breakfast and to meet cousin Sue, mom and Uncle Donald. Always good to see Uncle Donald, but I think I committed to visiting the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with him next summer. That's fine. It's been 13 years since I've been up there.
Sunday night we met up with Carla Beth and her husband, David. They moved into a house down near Riverside and Congress, and its one heck of a place. I think if they keep the house as is, David could go totally Miami Vice villain, but he's going to need some Chinese jackets and a lot more swords on the walls. And henchmen.
Carla made some amazingly good pizzas from scratch and we sort of hung out in the kitchen. It's sort of remarkable, because I haven't seen much of Carla after she moved briefly to Kentucky and we relocated to Arizona, but some folks you've known so long you just sort of pick up where you left off.
Anyhow, Xander made no appearance as he'd already been put to bed for the night when we showed up. We'll catch up with that dude later.
A grand weekend, all in all.
Sometimes I reflect upon how much more full our weeks are here than in Arizona and I'm a bit stunned.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Thursday, June 07, 2007
I'm healthy again
RANDY SPREADS HIS GENOME ABOUT WITH NO REGARD TO THE SAFETY OF OTHERS
In case you didn't know, Loyal Leaguer, Randy, and his lovely wife, The Mysterious M, have had a baby.
Congratulate Randy. He is 50% of the face of a new generation.
THE INTERWEB IS WATCHING
I can only assume that Technorati, etc... are to blame for why so many people are finding The League in reference to themselves. I had another person find me.
Here. Read the comments.
I don't know who posted the original bit about Dave Ramsey, but you've helped to make the world a little smaller.
TOTALLY LAME
Blogging about blogging is totally lame. But...
As much as I understand WHY visitors to the site may wish to remain anonymous, I'm not a big fan of anonymous posts to the comments. In a perfect vacuum, I suppose it shouldn't matter who you're speaking to, but that's just not reality.
Without exception, I like and respect the folks I consider to be Loyal Leaguers. And I think you'll find that even in the most heated debate, I tend to try to pick my words carefully when I'm talking with someone I consider a pal, no matter how far on the other end of an ideological spectrum. That's just common courtesy. Also, if I know with whom I'm speaking, I always have the option of taking the conversation off the blog and into an e-mail conversation.
But I also don't really want to block out the random folks who roll by. If they want to drop a comment, that's okay.
I'm a bit baffled by the recent exchange which took place in one of the posts. Not that someone disagreed with me, because that's par for the course, and I'm cool with that. I just had no idea with whom I was speaking, and that's a bit odd. Obviously this person became upset with me, but I also sort of felt like this person hadn't been around for some of the more colorful debates which have occurred here at The League.
At some point when someone is posting anonymously and failing to identify themselves, you don't necessarily feel as if you've got to put on the same "we're all friends here", game show host face. There are certainly times when i know exactly who "anonymous" is, but I choose to behave with some bizarre gentleman's agreement that I will not reveal the identity of "anonymous". In this case, I don't mind as much, but it does make debate a bit difficult at times as part and parcel of this gentleman's agreement is that one not reveal the identity, even when certain revealing examples could be relevant. But, as I tend to like these folks... I mostly play along.
But the truly anonymous posters...
In no small part, truly anonymous posters are a bit like a person who has crashed a party and then decides to pick a fight with the host. It's a bit baffling to me when a poster such as the one from this week's debate takes umbrage and declares I'm standing on a soapbox. While I'm writing on my personal blog.
In this instance, I sort of think that "anonymous" wasn't anyone I know. At this point I recognize the writing of most Loyal Leaguers, and, moreover, most of you know me well enough to know what my opinions are and where I'm going to draw lines and how I'm going to debate. I'm still not sure what "academic" debate this guy was trying to have, but he didn't get it, I guess.
What was most downright hilarious was the insistence that Anonymous was so busy, so pre-occupied with higher minds than my own that he didn't have time to actually debate with me. But he had time to keep coming back. And surf sites mostly dedicated to nonsense, while leaving lengthy comments.
Anonymous, I salute you.
Tori Amos and school children...
This is incredibly sweet. And with all you Leaguers dropping kids onto the face of Mother Earth, I thought I'd share a moment of brightness and hope that makes me think kids aren't just small, stinky, stupid people...
Skip to the 4:00 countdown mark
In case you didn't know, Loyal Leaguer, Randy, and his lovely wife, The Mysterious M, have had a baby.
Congratulate Randy. He is 50% of the face of a new generation.
THE INTERWEB IS WATCHING
I can only assume that Technorati, etc... are to blame for why so many people are finding The League in reference to themselves. I had another person find me.
Here. Read the comments.
I don't know who posted the original bit about Dave Ramsey, but you've helped to make the world a little smaller.
TOTALLY LAME
Blogging about blogging is totally lame. But...
As much as I understand WHY visitors to the site may wish to remain anonymous, I'm not a big fan of anonymous posts to the comments. In a perfect vacuum, I suppose it shouldn't matter who you're speaking to, but that's just not reality.
Without exception, I like and respect the folks I consider to be Loyal Leaguers. And I think you'll find that even in the most heated debate, I tend to try to pick my words carefully when I'm talking with someone I consider a pal, no matter how far on the other end of an ideological spectrum. That's just common courtesy. Also, if I know with whom I'm speaking, I always have the option of taking the conversation off the blog and into an e-mail conversation.
But I also don't really want to block out the random folks who roll by. If they want to drop a comment, that's okay.
I'm a bit baffled by the recent exchange which took place in one of the posts. Not that someone disagreed with me, because that's par for the course, and I'm cool with that. I just had no idea with whom I was speaking, and that's a bit odd. Obviously this person became upset with me, but I also sort of felt like this person hadn't been around for some of the more colorful debates which have occurred here at The League.
At some point when someone is posting anonymously and failing to identify themselves, you don't necessarily feel as if you've got to put on the same "we're all friends here", game show host face. There are certainly times when i know exactly who "anonymous" is, but I choose to behave with some bizarre gentleman's agreement that I will not reveal the identity of "anonymous". In this case, I don't mind as much, but it does make debate a bit difficult at times as part and parcel of this gentleman's agreement is that one not reveal the identity, even when certain revealing examples could be relevant. But, as I tend to like these folks... I mostly play along.
But the truly anonymous posters...
In no small part, truly anonymous posters are a bit like a person who has crashed a party and then decides to pick a fight with the host. It's a bit baffling to me when a poster such as the one from this week's debate takes umbrage and declares I'm standing on a soapbox. While I'm writing on my personal blog.
In this instance, I sort of think that "anonymous" wasn't anyone I know. At this point I recognize the writing of most Loyal Leaguers, and, moreover, most of you know me well enough to know what my opinions are and where I'm going to draw lines and how I'm going to debate. I'm still not sure what "academic" debate this guy was trying to have, but he didn't get it, I guess.
What was most downright hilarious was the insistence that Anonymous was so busy, so pre-occupied with higher minds than my own that he didn't have time to actually debate with me. But he had time to keep coming back. And surf sites mostly dedicated to nonsense, while leaving lengthy comments.
Anonymous, I salute you.
Tori Amos and school children...
This is incredibly sweet. And with all you Leaguers dropping kids onto the face of Mother Earth, I thought I'd share a moment of brightness and hope that makes me think kids aren't just small, stinky, stupid people...
Skip to the 4:00 countdown mark
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
SICK!
dang it! I'm sick!
I noticed when I got up, I didn't feel terribly well, but due to Jamie's jimmy leg and Matt Mangum in the guest room, I wound up sleeping on the couch last night. Being a little extra groggy after a night of couch sleeping didn't seem like a big deal, and so my plan included a Starbucks Double Shot while en route to work.
I still couldn't shake the general feeling of fatigue after arriving and trying to get some work done. I went and grabbed a coffee, and then got cranking, but during my 10:00 phone conference, I began drooping. By the time we were fifteen minutes into the call, I felt a bit like I was hearing things through glass and I just wanted to put my head down.
By 11:15 I was pretty sure I was getting sick, and by 11:45 I was headed home feeling feverish and awful.
Anyhow, I feel not great. Hopefully better tomorrow.
Off to go lay very still.
I noticed when I got up, I didn't feel terribly well, but due to Jamie's jimmy leg and Matt Mangum in the guest room, I wound up sleeping on the couch last night. Being a little extra groggy after a night of couch sleeping didn't seem like a big deal, and so my plan included a Starbucks Double Shot while en route to work.
I still couldn't shake the general feeling of fatigue after arriving and trying to get some work done. I went and grabbed a coffee, and then got cranking, but during my 10:00 phone conference, I began drooping. By the time we were fifteen minutes into the call, I felt a bit like I was hearing things through glass and I just wanted to put my head down.
By 11:15 I was pretty sure I was getting sick, and by 11:45 I was headed home feeling feverish and awful.
Anyhow, I feel not great. Hopefully better tomorrow.
Off to go lay very still.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Monday, June 04, 2007
Adventures of Superman DVD's on Sale!
Never in the history of man has there been greater news. Well, that's not really true at all, but this is good news.
Amazon has all the George Reeves DVD's on sale! HALF OFF!!! (Come on, Randy... you're having a baby. You have plenty of time to watch these episodes!)
Anyway, here's the story from the Superman Homepage.
Amazon has all the George Reeves DVD's on sale! HALF OFF!!! (Come on, Randy... you're having a baby. You have plenty of time to watch these episodes!)
Anyway, here's the story from the Superman Homepage.
Bankston in the News
My former roommate, KB, has made the news.
Here's the article.
Well done, KB.
Honestly, I think that's the first time I've seen him in a baseball hat.
Here's the article.
Well done, KB.
Honestly, I think that's the first time I've seen him in a baseball hat.
Time and Time Again...
So back when I didn't feel like blogging for a few days, I asked for Loyal Leaguers to submit questions. And one Loyal Leaguer asked the following super-related question:
Aside from how Superman has made me sort of poor... I can't think of a compelling argument for why I would convince myself not to become a fan of the Man of Steel. My Superfandom has sort of served as a funnel to contain a lot of my smaller tics and obsessive tendencies that I am absolutely certain would have manifested in other ways. And as I honestly believe that the ideas behind Superman are kind of neat, if not merely benign, I'm not sure if I can form a compelling argument as to why I wouldn't be a Superman fan.
I think my Superman fandom sort of forms out of this perfect storm of how Superman intersects at so many of my areas of interest. There's film, TV, comics, pop-culture history, a passing interest in mid-20th Century sci-fi, somewhat more substantive history (as in the context of Superman's genesis and how subsequent portrayals have reflected the attitudes of the time, as well as corporate culture). Add in my love of mentally categorizing things, date-stamping items, cataloging, etc... (I've often thought I should get a master's in Library and Information Science). As well as the sheer vastness of not just the DCU, but 70 years of Superman media... There are literally over a thousand Superman comics I'll never own, maybe thousands of stories I'll never read. Whole television programs I may never have a chance to see (every episode of Smallville, Lois and Clark, the Adventures of Superboy, the many iterations of Super Friends and the various Superman cartoons that have hit the air...)
So, yeah, there's sort of an endless realm of discovery within the character and franchise, brand, what-have-you.
And in some ways I almost think I need Superman to occupy the portion of my brain that enjoys worrying about those sorts of things. As I said before, I am pretty sure if it weren't Superman, it would be something else such as airplanes or cars, sports or music or something.
The source of the Superfandom has a few crucial moments, and I have no idea where the cut-off would be. Would it be The Admiral taking me to see the first movie when I was a little kid? When I saw the second movie? The third? Watching SuperFriends? Tying on handmade capes received as gifts from my grandmother and playing SuperFriends in our basement when I was three or four? (I always got to be Batman or I pitched a fit. The Superman thing came along later).
Would it be when I saw Superman: The Movie on TV one night (the first time I'd seen it in years) when I was 14 and was blown away by how genuinely good it really was? Would it be when I saw internet bulletin boards for the first time in college and was reading Superman forums? When Bruce Timm and Paul Dini launched the Superman animated series? When I crossed the line from picking up the occasional Superman comic in college to picking up the full line? When I started reading up on some of the randomness of the Superman comics in order to make sense of Big Blue, sometime around 2000? When I hung that enormous Alex Ross poster in our living room in our first house and poor Jamie had just seen the tip of the iceberg?
Like any other memory, the idea of erasing some part of your mental make-up can be a bit horrifying. Who would I be if not for the Man of Steel? Much different? I've no idea, but like any icon from our youth, it's difficult to imagine what we'd be if it were stripped away.
Perhaps at the root of the question may be the possibility of whether or not I think I would be a more successful person, a kinder person a more decent person if I were not a Superman fan. I don't think so. Do I think Superman has made me more successful, kinder, more decent...? I can say that surely my interest in the character was based at least in part upon a representation of what I felt reflected my ideals, especially once I no longer found myself as interested in some of the more extreme elements in comicdom. Whether Superman reinforced those ideals or not..? maybe you could ask Jamie. There's nothing mystical there. I just happen to think we tend to seek out those things which have a ring of the familiar.
I'm fairly certain that at this point it will be a long road ahead for me as a Superman fan. I enjoy picking up vintage back-issues, enjoy reading up on Superman's many incarnations, track the movie franchises and look forward to the release of Superman material on home video. Jamie's been plenty patient with the whole thing and has nary batted an eye as whole sections of the house have been given over to Super-Memorabilia.
So, yeah, we'd probably be driving gold cars and living in a mansion now were it not for Superman. But, you know, we have our fun.
The funny thing is that I know I'm not alone. There's a Superman Museum in, of course, Metropolis, Illinois. The Superman Homepage is very well trafficked, and Superman through the Ages, the Supermanica Wiki is cool, and there are a slate of other encyclopedic-style web sites dedicated to the Man of Steel.
We are among you, and our numbers are legion.
This was a tough question. Hope you don't mind that I took so long to answer it.
If you could go back in time and convince yourself not to become a fan of Superman, would you? Why or why not? If not, what would you go back in time to tell yourself, and to what year would you go?
Aside from how Superman has made me sort of poor... I can't think of a compelling argument for why I would convince myself not to become a fan of the Man of Steel. My Superfandom has sort of served as a funnel to contain a lot of my smaller tics and obsessive tendencies that I am absolutely certain would have manifested in other ways. And as I honestly believe that the ideas behind Superman are kind of neat, if not merely benign, I'm not sure if I can form a compelling argument as to why I wouldn't be a Superman fan.
I think my Superman fandom sort of forms out of this perfect storm of how Superman intersects at so many of my areas of interest. There's film, TV, comics, pop-culture history, a passing interest in mid-20th Century sci-fi, somewhat more substantive history (as in the context of Superman's genesis and how subsequent portrayals have reflected the attitudes of the time, as well as corporate culture). Add in my love of mentally categorizing things, date-stamping items, cataloging, etc... (I've often thought I should get a master's in Library and Information Science). As well as the sheer vastness of not just the DCU, but 70 years of Superman media... There are literally over a thousand Superman comics I'll never own, maybe thousands of stories I'll never read. Whole television programs I may never have a chance to see (every episode of Smallville, Lois and Clark, the Adventures of Superboy, the many iterations of Super Friends and the various Superman cartoons that have hit the air...)
So, yeah, there's sort of an endless realm of discovery within the character and franchise, brand, what-have-you.
And in some ways I almost think I need Superman to occupy the portion of my brain that enjoys worrying about those sorts of things. As I said before, I am pretty sure if it weren't Superman, it would be something else such as airplanes or cars, sports or music or something.
The source of the Superfandom has a few crucial moments, and I have no idea where the cut-off would be. Would it be The Admiral taking me to see the first movie when I was a little kid? When I saw the second movie? The third? Watching SuperFriends? Tying on handmade capes received as gifts from my grandmother and playing SuperFriends in our basement when I was three or four? (I always got to be Batman or I pitched a fit. The Superman thing came along later).
Would it be when I saw Superman: The Movie on TV one night (the first time I'd seen it in years) when I was 14 and was blown away by how genuinely good it really was? Would it be when I saw internet bulletin boards for the first time in college and was reading Superman forums? When Bruce Timm and Paul Dini launched the Superman animated series? When I crossed the line from picking up the occasional Superman comic in college to picking up the full line? When I started reading up on some of the randomness of the Superman comics in order to make sense of Big Blue, sometime around 2000? When I hung that enormous Alex Ross poster in our living room in our first house and poor Jamie had just seen the tip of the iceberg?
Like any other memory, the idea of erasing some part of your mental make-up can be a bit horrifying. Who would I be if not for the Man of Steel? Much different? I've no idea, but like any icon from our youth, it's difficult to imagine what we'd be if it were stripped away.
Perhaps at the root of the question may be the possibility of whether or not I think I would be a more successful person, a kinder person a more decent person if I were not a Superman fan. I don't think so. Do I think Superman has made me more successful, kinder, more decent...? I can say that surely my interest in the character was based at least in part upon a representation of what I felt reflected my ideals, especially once I no longer found myself as interested in some of the more extreme elements in comicdom. Whether Superman reinforced those ideals or not..? maybe you could ask Jamie. There's nothing mystical there. I just happen to think we tend to seek out those things which have a ring of the familiar.
I'm fairly certain that at this point it will be a long road ahead for me as a Superman fan. I enjoy picking up vintage back-issues, enjoy reading up on Superman's many incarnations, track the movie franchises and look forward to the release of Superman material on home video. Jamie's been plenty patient with the whole thing and has nary batted an eye as whole sections of the house have been given over to Super-Memorabilia.
So, yeah, we'd probably be driving gold cars and living in a mansion now were it not for Superman. But, you know, we have our fun.
The funny thing is that I know I'm not alone. There's a Superman Museum in, of course, Metropolis, Illinois. The Superman Homepage is very well trafficked, and Superman through the Ages, the Supermanica Wiki is cool, and there are a slate of other encyclopedic-style web sites dedicated to the Man of Steel.
We are among you, and our numbers are legion.
This was a tough question. Hope you don't mind that I took so long to answer it.
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