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Saturday, July 01, 2006 ( 7/01/2006 11:04:00 AM ) Bill S. SCIENTIFICTION – Watched a taped copy of "The Science of Superman" yesterday. One of several specials recently released to capitalize on the new Superman movie (perhaps the most prominent being A&E's "Look, Up in the Sky"), "Science" is currently being shown on The National Geographic Channel. Blending interviews with scientists and comic book folk (Denny O'Neil, Mark Waid & Elliot S. Maggin the primary voices among the latter) along with the inevitable appearance by Hal Sparks(?), the special half-seriously attempts to analyze the scientific feasibility of the Man of Steel's super powers. Some of the earlier old sci-fi explanations from comics and radio are amusingly debunked (goodbye red and yellow suns!) and I liked the sequence contrasting the way that Superman used to launch himself into flying mode in the Fleischer cartoons and teevee series – getting up a small head of steam before leaping up, up and away – with the standing-still take-offs we saw in Superman: The Movie. The running leaps look more believable and dynamic, which may be one reason why we're more willing to accept an out-of-shape George Reeves as a superhero. As for the current science, I'm not the one to assess the tongue-in-cheek theorizing put forth in this lightweight semi-doc by the likes of Mark Wolverton (author of The Science of Superman), but I have to admit to being amused by the idea that "Kryptonian hemoglobin is similar to chlorophyll." Didn't I once read something similar in an Alan Moore Swamp Thing? # | ( 7/01/2006 06:57:00 AM ) Bill S. YUP – So we're catching an airing of Independence Day, which is being broadcast over the July 4th weekend on HBO, and near the end, my loving spouse turns to me and sez, "So if the aliens'd bought an updated version of McAfee, planet Earth would've been toast, right?" # | Friday, June 30, 2006 ( 6/30/2006 04:38:00 PM ) Bill S. JULY WEEKEND PET PIC – For what hopefully will be a long weekend off for most of y'all, here's a pool shot of Kyan Pup:  NOTE: If (like me) you wanna see more dogg blogging, check out the weekly "Carnival of the Dogs" at Mickey's Musings. And for a broader array of companion animals, there's Modulator's "Friday Ark." # | ( 6/30/2006 07:40:00 AM ) Bill S. "THIS AIN'T GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, FOLKS!" – The first issue of Andrew Cosby, Michael A. Nelson & Greg Scott's X Isle (Boom! Studios) both opens and closes on a beach: the first, a tourist-packed Hawaiian front, where the corpse of a large and toothy creature has washed up on shore; the second, is on an uncharted isle, where a scientific expedition looking into those ravenous looking creatures has gotten marooned. In between, we meet the cast of B-movie survivors, and true to this type of story, each one is a type. There's the churlish redneck captain with three hash marks on his arm: each one for ten men that he's killed in close combat – when he tells us that he's just one man short of four, you can feel the heavy hand of authorial foreshadowing. There's the Samuel L. Jackson research scientist who is accused by a jealous peer of coasting along on his race; there's the quirky professorial comic relief in water wings; there's the absent-minded workaholic professor and his alienated daughter – and the young handsome assistant who you just know said daughter will be clinging to before this all is over. If Boom! was producing comics back in the Silver Age, one of these characters would probably hail from Brooklyn. Our intrepid band is stranded on the book's title isle when their ship runs into a mysterious electrical storm while on the route to who-knows-where. Both the nature of the storm and the location of the isle are mysterious – neither our scientist dad nor the surly captain are able to recognize the stars that hover above 'em – giving us readers the opportunity to revive all those theories that we've since discarded while watching Lost. (They've gone into another dimension! They're somehow lost in time!) Considering how much these theories have been bandied about water coolers and teevee series fan sites, it's a toss-up as to whether Cosby & Nelson will be able to surprise us. Greg Scott's head-shot heavy art does the job setting up the both big mawed monsters and sci-fi movie protagonists, though I've gotta admit when he first shows us the electrical storm, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be looking at. So far, the main thing we see about the monsters is their menacing fang-y (made, we're told, of calcified fungus) mouths, though I suspect we'll be shown a closer look as the series progresses. Lookin' forward to it. . . # | ( 6/30/2006 06:47:00 AM ) Bill S. TEETHING – So about that toothache: took last Tuesday off to work on the house next door, and as the day progressed, one of my upper right molars started making itself known. A small occasional twinge at first, but by evening it was more than just a "howdy, neighbor." I went to bed with my upper mouth throbbing, unable to find a comfortable position (usually sleep on my right side, but just resting my head on the pillow was a pain) or get more than a half hour's sleep. Had a shot of Kahlua at about 2:30 and spent some time lying back on the couch, but that did me no good. When I got out of bed in the a.m., I phoned Dr. Dan, our friendly Unitarian dentist, for an emergency appointment. Got one for 10:30, so the next step was to cal the office and let them know what was up. A staff meeting had been set for 9:00, so I sat in on it by phone, barely registering what was being said, counting the minutes 'til my dentist appt. Well, I got to Dr. Dan's, and it turns out the trouble tooth is one with a crown – plus some deep & twisty infected roots. It's not a case he feels adept at dealing with, so he gives me a referral to an oral surgeon down the street. In the meantime, Dr. Dan writes me a prescription for Vicodin and penicillin. First thing I do is high-tail it to my local Walgreen's and get the scrips filled; a half hour after I've gotten back home and taken a Vicodin, I'm ready to conk out and make up for lost sleep. Wake up feeling groggy, but my tooth is no longer hurting like a sumbitch – just a more manageable persistent aching – so I take a couple more pills and vege out in front of the computer screen. My ability to read blog posts more than five of six sentences in length has significantly diminished, so I aimlessly drift around the blogroll until dinner. (Nuthin' too chewy, thanks, just hot dogs, tater tots and cherry tomatoes.) Try to play some Scrabble with Becky, but she understandably kicks my ass. ("You're playing with a handicap," she says sympathetically; I just grunt in response.) Halfway into the evening, I have to rise from the couch and hit the restroom to be violently ill, images of a Peter Bagge cartoon dancing in my head. Oops, looks like I need to take that Vicodin with food – not on an empty stomach. How does House do it? Thursday, I had an all-day work commitment that I didn't feel good missing – since it'd leave my co-workers short-handed – so I took another Vicodin with a container of Dannon coffee-flavored yoghurt and hoped the mouth would be more manageable the next day. I lucked out on this 'un: woke up Thursday a.m., barely noticing my tooth, so I was able to drive to work Vicodin-free. (Took the penicillin, though.) By evening, the little bugger was once more tippy-tapping against my nerves, though not as insistently as before, so I popped another hydrocodone. So here I sit, waiting for 9:00 a.m. to roll around so I can make an appointment for the oral surgeon, but not feeling as desperate about it as I did two days ago with Dr. Dan. Take good care of your teeth, kids! # | Wednesday, June 28, 2006 ( 6/28/2006 05:12:00 AM ) Bill S. A DUBIOUS STATEMENT THAT SURE SEEMED IRREFUTABLE AT 3:30 A.M. – There are no atheists with toothaches . . . # | Tuesday, June 27, 2006 ( 6/27/2006 10:16:00 AM ) Bill S. SCHMILLSON – Just read this a.m. that two Harry Nilsson releases that were inexplicably omitted during the big CD remastering boom of the mid-nineties – Son of Schmillson and A Little Bit of Schmilsson in the Night – are finally being released this week by RCA Legacy. Night, the singer/songwriter's overly respectful set of Tin Pan Alley tunes, is a bit of a snooze, in large part due to Gordon Jenkins' tedious orchestrations (what a more eccentric producer like Van Dyke Parks could've done with this material!) But Son is an enjoyably ramshackle collection with great Nilsson creations ("You're Breakin' My Heart," "The Lottery Song") and at least one heart-felt misfire ("I'd Rather Be Dead.") There's a crappily mastered version of Son that's been selling as a cheapie for years: great to finally have a respectfully handled domestic version to go alongside Aerial Ballet, Nilsson Shmilsson and the rest of this wonderfully eccentric popster's catalog. . . # | Monday, June 26, 2006 ( 6/26/2006 02:04:00 PM ) Bill S. EXPRESS-O – Watched a VoD airing of the Venezuelan thriller, Secuestro Express, on Starz over the weekend. I was unfamiliar with this darkly hyper-kinetic (at times you can see elements of Go and Run, Lola, Run in its storytelling style) flick and had selected it based on Starz's description, but for once the blurbs (which called the movie "intense") didn't lie. It proved plenty gripping. Express depicts the kidnapping of a young well-to-do couple that's randomly selected off the streets by a motley gang of working thugs. The duo is picked based on the quality of the car they're driving. Kidnapping – which writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz asserts is a common occurrence in Caracas – is treated as a largely class-based crime, though the movie's lumpen-pro kidnappers are by no means ennobled by this fact. If IMBD is to be believed, director Jakubowicz himself was once kidnapped, and he works overtime at communicating the jittery sense of dread that a victim feels in that situation. Watching it from the comfort of our living room, I'd say the guy succeeded: what the movie's heroine (Mia Maestro) goes through proves as grueling as Marilyn Burns' dining room travails in Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with the same queasy blend of twisted humor and threat. Recommended to those who find Tarantino's films occasionally too self-satisfied to pack a full wallop . . . # | Sunday, June 25, 2006 ( 6/25/2006 07:19:00 AM ) Bill S. R.I.P. AARON SPELLING – The first Aaron Spelling series to make an impression on me was Burke's Law. The premise was patently preposterous – Gene Barry as millionaire homicide detective Amos Burke who rode to crime scenes in a chauffeured limo and solved crimes because, well, apparently he liked to tell folks to "not leave town" – but as a young teen viewer I didn't care. The show's basic formula of padding each episode with a gaggle of well-known B-List actors was one that Spelling would use long past its expiration date, but at the time, I remember we had fun in our family placing bets as to which celeb was gonna be the murderer. Wasn't a big fan of his seventies celeb romp fests (Love Boat, Fantasy Island) or the much-loved Charlie's Angels, for that matter, but I see he was an exec produce for the exemplary HBO AIDS docudrama, And the Band Played On (which also had its abundance of names in the cast) – and Satan’s School for Girls. Now that's a Hollywood career! # | ( 6/25/2006 06:43:00 AM ) Bill S. HEART IN MY HANDS – Friday was the 22nd wedding anniversary of Becky and myself – and to commemorate the occasion, my wife put the following illustration as a wallpaper on our computer. It's a cartoon I drew for my sweetie back in the early days of our relationship, and if nuthin' else it shows why I don't cartoon anymore - and how tolerant my then wife-to-be was and is . . .  Here's to 22 more years of her putting up with my nonsense. . . # | |
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