Hurm

No post. Spent the time I usually give over to the hypergraphia to re-reading Watchmen.

The edition I'm reading is the Absolute Edition, a slip-cased hard-cover printed on oversized, very high quality paper. I own it, and I still treat it like its someone else's artifact. It's heavy, and cumbersome, but the the details in Gibbons' art are just phenomenal.

Its been a few years since I read this thing, and like all good books, movies, etc... I can't believe how much is there that you let slip away between reads. Sure, once you know how it ends, it reads totally differently. Glad I'm taking the time before I inevitably end up seeing the movie.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... It is so of its medium, I cannot see how Snyder will translate this thing to film. Plus, man... how do you translate Rorschach for a mainstream audience looking for a superhero romp? Or The #$%^ing Comedian?



Fun Moore reading tip of the day: I recommend his run on "Supreme".

It's the Silver Age Superman story DC probably never would have let him tell.

2 things before bed

(1) A Confession:

My dream job? Game show host.


(2) From Mel's Birthday party last year.

Quote of the week:

"Kim Kardashian is soooooo pretty!"
-irony-free anonymous co-ed in library (at TAMU)

Every celebrity is somebody's hero. Which means somebody out there is really into Steve Guttenberg. And that is amazing.

Leaguers, what can I say but that this week was really... a week.

To TAMU and back. Work was jam-packed from Monday through Friday. Friday night we headed out to Guero's to assist Steven in celebrating his freedom from grad scool applications, and we toasted Steven with a few cocktails.

Saturday we headed to Auditorium Shores park with Jason and Cassidy, attempted to go to the new Mighty Fine location down off Brodie Lane, only to learn it had been co-opted as a "suburban family friendly cool" location. Which means that, for what's really a pretty standard burger and fries operation, the place was crammed with our local nuclear families, far past the point of reason.

Good for Mighty Fine's business, bad for me ever trying the place again on a Saturday.

I might mention, and I know this is heresy, but I'm not a fan of In'n'Out. We had them scattered across Arizona, and I was actually very excited to try my first In'n'Out, but wound up severely disappointed. It is, no matter the ingredients, legacy, what-have-you, a fairly standard burger. And I didn't care at all for their fries. But, holy smokes, does that place have a reputation, so beware being the one guy in the crowd who is "meh" on In'n'Out, for it has developed its own brand of acolytes and followers.

Seriously, I thought it tasted a bit like "Short Stop" here in Austin, and which I don't care for, either.

We then headed to San Marcos to visit Jamie's folks and watch the UT/ OU basketball game. Which, huzzah, UT won. But, of course, Jamie's folks are die-hard Sooners fans. So... we were as polite and gracious as possible about UT's upset of the #2 ranked Sooners.

Today we ate breakfast, gathered ousrselves and went to Lowe's. It being so nice out, I wanted to plant a tree in the back and flowers in the front. I am now the owner of a Chinese Elm I have named "Chairman Mao", who I hope survives his first Texas summer. We also have several petunias and whatnot dotting our front flower beds.

Chariman Mao, while deeply respectable, will need counter-parts, so next week I will head back to pick up a couple of Live Oaks, a true Central Texas tree if there ever were one. Our neighborhood is actually named "Grand Oaks" thanks to the large Oaks they left when they developed the area.

Planting a tree is a bit daunting. The tree may live or not. It may be a poor choice for your yard. And if it is healthy, it will grow at an incredibly slow rate, reaching maturation just about the time I begin pondering retirement. I like that idea. Being in this house to watch the trees grow to their full height and then spread wide as shade trees. Forgetting exactly which year I planted Chairman Mao, Zapata and Khan, but knowing it was in the first years I lived in the house, as I'm on my third or forth fence. But we'll look at pictures and say "when we moved in, everyone had just one tree in their yard that the builder put there," and it will look bare. And then we will get in our aero-cars and fly to the moon for space-burgers.

But RHPT has gazed into the crystal ball and found my future. Not for those who dislike naughty words, etc...

Here.

Sorry if we did not call you back this weekend, Nicole. We would like to see you this week, though. Or at least before Matt disappears to the Far East.

I hope everyone's weekend was lovely and relaxing. I am happy springtime is here. we're ready for the winter to pass.

Lovely Out

It is freakishly beautiful in Austin today. 70 degrees, clear sky, low humidity, a stiff wind. Went to Auditorium Shores with the dogs. Lucy was like a little black comet, flying all over the place in large elliptical orbits.

It is a Maxfield Parrish kind of day.



Despite what I understood to be a general snobbery concerning Parrish's work, I used to keep this poster on my wall in college. It was nice to have a bit of Parrish sunlight to remind you of days like today.

Blogging will recommence when it is not sunny and/ or very, very nice outside.

A whole mess of stuff

Sorry about the lack of blogging. I was back at College Station again on Tuesday. Its been a busy week already.

Steven applies himself

After several months of working on his grad school applications, he's now hit "submit" on the form. He's applied to a serious Research 1 university or two, and these days, that's a lot more than merely filling out a bubble sheet with your GPA.

Here.

The League is actually very interested in seeking graduate education himself in the next few years, and so we're watching Steven with marked interest. We've both been rejected by good graduate schools and accepted by less-good graduate programs. And actually walked away from a graduate degree a few years back when we had a moment of clarity and realized we did not want the degree nor career path we were headed towards.

We hope to once again actually feel its okay to not tempt Steven and Lauren with distraction. But it occurs to us that its now all the more pressing that we get as much Steven and Lauren time as possible fit in as we may be losing them come the fall.

Hmmm. That seems like a poor option.

Nannerpuss

I @#$%ing love Nannerpuss.



That is all.

Keeping Exotic Animals

I was going to write something kind of mean about the events in Stamford where a woman was attacked by her friend's chimp.

Maybe because I was raised with extremely mild-mannered dogs, as well as animals that were just as happy to bite me as take a meal (see: Perry the Python), and gerbils, fish, turtles and whatever... I've always appreciated dogs in particular for their easy ability to fit into a human lifestyle thanks to their deeply embedded pack mentality.

If my cat, who I know loves me (if sleeping by your head and purring loudly isn't love, I don't want to be right), but occasionally goes nuts and does something dumb, like attack my foot or whatever... what on earth makes people think that keeping a 200lb chimp around the house isn't going to eventually end in disaster? Or the story or two that comes up every year of someone with more money and machismo than brains whose tiger escapes its backyard enclosure and mauls either the owner or some unsuspecting neighbor.

Human fear and ideas about justice almost invariably lead to the animals being put down for doing what animals do. Which is always marked down as "suddenly unpredictable", when that's pretty much what most animals are. If they weren't, we'd all have pumas and pandas in our houses.

I'll never know what possesses people to feel they can or should put others at risk for what seems to be vanity or misplaced belief that they're The Beastmaster. I strongly suspect it has something to do with how far we're removed from a world in which we have a legitimate fear of being eaten by wolves and bears.

Thanks to my Dudes

I have to give a shout out to both JMD and RHPT, who always send me good stuff via e-mail. I don't often post those items, but I am publicly saluting you.

Don't ever change.

Watchmen

Countdown to "media critics" freaking out about Watchmen.

As long as we're going to exploit good comics that KIDS SHOULD NOT READ, it kind of makes me wish they'd do:

Frank Miller and Sienkiewicz's Elektra
Miller's Ronin
Morrison's Invisibles
We3 (perhaps one of my favorite comics of all time, for reasons that would be obvious once you'd read it)
Preacher (which is brilliant stuff, but I would be really upset if my mother accidentally read an issue)
Promethea

What did I miss?

Secret Identity Revealed

Anyone who spends more than 2 or 3 days at my house will see I watch an alarming amount of Austin's 24-hour news channel, News8Austin. Its all local news, weather, sports, events, etc... And its run the way I think a news channel should be run. It's mostly commentary free, unless they have "commentator" below someone's name, and the anchors and reporters don't freely editorialize.

But its also a small, shoe-string-budget operation where reporters build their portfolio or settle into News8's somewhat odd culture of "Pet of the Week" installments and showing up every time someone puts more than three folding chairs outside and rents a microphone.

This weekend they were taping the Austin Marathon (which may or may not have featured JAL), when photographer Eddie Garcia caught something entering the atmosphere and seemingly burning up. You can watch the video here.

Some speculated that it was part of the satellites which recently collided in orbit. NASA has dismissed all that. They say it was maybe a meteor.

Well, Leaguers. That was me. Its a little difficult to explain what I was doing in the ionosphere in the first place, but let us just say that wrongs needed righting, and I could not let the schemes of my nemesis, Dr. Nefario (aka: RHPT) come to fruition. Indeed, the fate of the world was at stake.

So, yeah, that's me and Lucy heading back to planetside. I didn't know I lit up like that on re-entry. Neat!

Li'l Leaguers

Due to an excellent suggestion by the League's own JMD, we now have a new category! "Li'l Leaguers" will mostly be about superhero and sci-fi stuff such as books, videos, etc... your kids may enjoy. It will probably also occasionally dole out advice on what you may want to avoid as a cautious parent looking to delve into superherodom.